Many enterprises that stood up corporate websites several years ago now have a mess on their hands. They're struggling to reconcile disparate content repositories, legacy systems and, as a result, ineffective architecture. A web content management revamp is in order, but there are many things to consider in the WCM selection process and implementation.

A calculated approach is critical in order to avoid the problems of the previous iteration of the website, and that means building something that can scale with the business and be properly maintained.

During a March 30 WCM event hosted by Capital Cabal in Washington, D.C., Tony White, CEO of WCM consulting firm Ars Logica, and two WCM practitioners offered tips for organizations looking to make sense of previous website efforts through a WCM reboot. 

First, think about what you need. "If you're a marketer, you need to sit down with IT and describe what exactly you do, what you want to achieve on the web, and what the business drivers are that underlying that," said White. This is especially true if an enterprise decides to adopt a platform. The broad nature of platform solutions, requires more customization at the time of implementation--meaning more interaction with other processes.

Consider measurement. If the WCM selection process ignores the capabilities of analytics tools, the enterprise will miss out on a huge part of effective engagement, said White. Many users are simply overwhelmed by the amount of information provided by analytics, but "if you can take some time, put your nose to the grindstone specifically on analytics and the behavior that you can influence, you'll be shocked," said White.

Get buy in early. Getting all lines of business involved early ensures a clear scope of all the moving parts that will need to work together, said Mark Pilipczuk, VP of Marketing Services at Neustar. "We considered what other platforms were running--in our case Salesforce, Marketo and 30, 40 or 50 different applications on the back end that were very technical and used for our customers in various lines of business to link into the system." If IT or marketing had tunnel vision, the WCM implementation would have failed to fully integrate and meet business line needs.

Know your roles. With WCM implementation, it's important to consider how back-end users interact with content and how content can best be structured, managed and placed in a system for that interaction, said Meghan Walsh, director of eCommerce Product Development at Marriott. To better understand this, Walsh divided users into two sets of roles: Content managers, or "power users" and content developers, or "power thinkers."

The process of implementing a WCM can be a complex one and all speakers noted that the project will likely take longer than expected. Still, urged Walsh, managers shouldn't lose sight of the goal and rush to the finish line. There's nothing wrong with throwing on the breaks and pausing part of the project if the development team or vendor begins to lose sight of the deliverables and requirements.

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