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Home > Community > Business Blogs > Industry Insight > Whither goes WCM?
Where are we all going? I ask myself that a lot. And the "we" I'm referring to is the WCM industry in general. I've been saying for years now that it's not about editing content anymore. It's pretty clear to me that everyone has figured out how to build a pretty usable interface. Heck, even the oldest of vendors have finally gotten on that bandwagon. Nope, that's just blocking and tackling. So what's next?
Where do we go as a market? If you ask me, as a category, we're in jeopordy of following the word processor marketplace if we're not careful. I mean really, how many more features can Microsoft put into Word? And still, that application does not really help me be more effective in my work. It doesn't make it easier to get business done.
It's still pretty much a tool. A screwdriver, a hammer, a wrench. So what's next for us? Some would say personalization, or put a fancy name on it like "experience management." I've been there before, when that wave started to take off, and even helped launch one of the first products that drove that message into the WCM market. But again, that's just another tool at best, or perhaps just a fancy attachment for my screwdriver. No, that is not the answer either. So lets take a page out of Home Depot's playbook. Home Depot wanted to sell more tools, building supplies, etc. What did they do? They started teaching people how to acheive their goals. Helped them demystify home improvement projects. In essense, they helped people understand how the tools Home Depot sold can achieve the goals they had for themselves. And an interesting thing happened, the sold more stuff of course, but on top of that, they spawned demand for things even they didn't realized they needed to sell.
Due to this new approach, they drove demand for all sorts of products that enhanced home living. And they sold a lot more stuff. So what can we learn from all of this? Most of the Enterprise WCM companies already solution sell. But the real question is, are our products really as far along that solution path as they should be. Sure, many of my competitors our there have huge armies of Professional services that can make their products do anything. The proverbial ball of clay. But is that good enough? I say it is not good enough. Our products need to evolve to the place where they are built to enable companies to execute their web strategies faster. In fact, I think over time, WCM technology should be configurable to embrace those web strategies...Out Of the Box.
Pretty words, I know, but I think that is where we all need to go. That is the course we are charting for ourselves as a WCM vendor. Enough of the toolset mentality. We will not become a glorified word processor for the web. We all need to evolve to allow our customers to start treating their websites as the business applications that they are. So, like any good business applications, our websites should have ROI's associated with them. I was chatting with one of my colleagues the other day and the concept of a "Taxonomy of ROI" for websites came up. It was one of those things that just came out while I was on a roll. Maybe I was playing buzzword bingo, who knows..but it's a great idea none-the-less. The concept is simple. I'd like to build up a taxonomy or hierarchy of the types of ROI you can get from your website.
These are the measurement points where you can demonstrate business impact as a direct result of an organizations website. I'm going to give this a shot so here goes:
Public /Customer Facing
Revenue generation
Cost Reduction
Reduce Risk
Employee Facing
This is a work in progess, and I'd love your feedback, so post your comments and let me know where you think I'm wrong, missing something, or areas we should expound. As the saying goes, the journey of a 1000 miles starts with a single step...
Tags: WCM Marketplace
Darren is broad technologist with a deep understanding of the Web CMS marketplace. Early in his career he served as Director of Technology for a large financial organization. He subsequently ran e-Commerce operations for a large regional Consulting organization, building sizeable e-Commerce and CMS solutions for enterprises.
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