One on One with Michael Seifert of Sitecore

Michael Seifert is CEO at web content management vendor, Sitecore. In 2002, Seifert was President of a successful multimillion dollar custom software development company when he came up with the idea for a Microsoft-centric system for creating and managing websites. That idea turned into Sitecore. We asked Seifert about what it was like competing in the web content management space and how he differentiates his company from the rest.

FCM: Sitecore is trying to compete in the crowded Web Content Management space. How do you differentiate your company from the pack?

MS: According to our discussions with Gartner, based on actual license sales of software, Sitecore is one of the top three vendors globally in Web Content Management software. We build the software and support it, and our more than 700 implementation partner companies worldwide provide the bulk of the professional services around the deployment. That model coupled with our global sales success is what makes us different.

FCM: Many web content management companies including yours are catering to marketing pros. Do you believe that marketing should be in charge of the company website? Why or why not?

MS: Your website is ultimately all about converting potential customers and/or community members. Being able to convert leads relies on your ability to communicate, and it all begins with understanding your audience, segmenting it, and identifying tasks and goals they want to accomplish. This is not in the typical vocabulary of IT departments, but more of a marketing function. So, yes marketing professionals are and should be in charge of the company's web presence. But it is a highly collaborative effort.

Our most successful customer implementations offer content in personalized ways at the right time, using Sitecore’s built-in, real-time capabilities. But, they test often and learn from it. That is where our built-in multivariate testing ability makes it easy for marketers to be better connected with the voice of the customer. Our customers are experiencing amazing results when real-time personalization is applied optimally on their websites.

FCM: I see you are Microsoft Gold Certified? Are you built on .Net or are you integrated with SharePoint?

MS: Sitecore is purely built on the .NET framework. Unlike most other WCM vendors, Sitecore is not burdened by hybrid technologies (i.e. mixing .COM, .NET and Java around in your solution). Having a mix of technologies is expensive, in both the maintaining the technology environments, the training, and the complexity of implementation. So why do it when you don’t need to?

SharePoint is not required in any way as a part of the Sitecore solution, but Sitecore integrates very well with SharePoint. This strong integration is a huge advantage because the SharePoint marketplace is a $1 billion market and represents a lot of organizations that want SharePoint for their inward facing collaboration and document management and Sitecore for public-facing websites. With a common .NET basis, you can leverage experience, training and keep complexity under control.

FCM: Analytics are so important for people managing external websites. What tools do you have in your product (or do you leave that to a third-party vendor)?

MS: Analytics is supposed to be able to tell you if what you’re doing online is a success, and to help you understand exactly what works and what does not work on your site. Even down to the level of identifying potential usability problems on your site. That’s the reason analytics is a core element of Sitecore, we can bring important analytics data right up in the content editing interface, allowing you to understand how visitors are reacting to your content to further improve and refine it.

External analytical systems are a step removed from the website itself and prove to be complex and less flexible. If your analytics system is your website system, understanding it and making tests and changes is an integrated process. Not only are marketers now empowered by Sitecore’s analytics, but the sales team and other stakeholders can get visibility into their web visitors--an enormous step forward.

Basically, analytics is a part of the puzzle but yields only limited results when used as a stand-alone solution.

FCM: What do you see as the big trends in Web Content Management as move into 2010?

MS: The WCM, analytics, optimization, print, email marketing industries are all in the middle of a market transformation. ECM and WCM have never been farther apart than I see them now. I believe that by the end of 2010 we might begin to get an idea about what the future holds for everyone, and possibly get a hint on how all these markets will converge. I see many vendors leading the way, but everyone executing differently.  And yet many other vendors are still stuck in traditional WCM or analytics thinking and I believe that they will get a wake-up call very soon. In converging markets, the vendors with scalable architectures and newer foundations like .NET have a tremendous advantage, and since these are Sitecore’s cornerstones of success--this gives our customers great confidence.

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