My Take on Content Management Systems and Outsourced Web Support
Dee Rambeau prompted some interesting dialog about hosted content management services while I was away on vacation. In case you hadn’t noticed, David Johnson continued his side of the argument on his blog. His blog is for Phoenix Information Services, LLC, “Speaking to the Automotive Retail World.” So David may be coming from a really big and multi-layered industry perspective.
Another participant in the discussion, Dominic Jones, also commented on David’s blog. Dominic comes from IR Web Report, which bills itself as “the world's #1 source for investor relations website advice and best practices.”
My own perspective is from a growing, medium-sized global company. While both David and Dominic have their points, I think they miss what is the central issue to me:
- The world is moving to outsourcing (including lots of IT jobs)
- The world is moving to hosted software services (even key business applications such as CRM and ERP)
- There is no inherent advantage for a business to do anything internally that can be done more efficiently by an outside vendor
There was a day when many large manufacturers had their own delivery trucks. Now they mostly let outside carriers do it. There also was a day when large companies had huge PR departments, and huge engineering departments, and huge IT departments. Those days are passing, too.
Corporate websites are business tools. The enabling web technology is just that: it is the carrier of the message, not the message itself. The business doesn’t care how the message is carried. They just want to get it done quickly, reliably, professionally, at the least possible cost, and in keeping with corporate graphic and stylistic standards.
You would have a hard time today finding IT people who do not embrace the Internet. But that was not the case so very long ago. Just as mainframe-oriented IT folks resisted the PC, we’ve all seen our share of IT people who were unprepared for the Internet. This certainly helped gave rise to hosted services, such as Dee Rambeu’s MediaRoom, which is itself a CMS that is optimized for PR use.
I am a great believer in content management systems, but content management systems don’t have to be tied to internal resources. I’ve had excellent results in outsourcing web development/hosting and associated support services. When K-Tron International created its web department six years ago, the first thing we did was develop a CMS. From the beginning, our focus was on business results, not the technology. We used an outside service to develop and host our first website in 1995, and we continue to use the same service today.
Our web department is separate from IT, though I report to the CFO, as does the head of IT. Although I do not work in IT, am a great fan and supporter of the services they provide. I have excellent working relationships, indeed friendships, with our IT managers.
As K-Tron grows into new markets, or acquires new companies, our hosted CMS allows us to create new websites, or move exiting websites onto the CMS platform. In every case our new business users have enthusiastically embraced the CMS, which frees them to create and manage their content with little or no assistance from K-Tron’s web department and no dependence at all on their internal IT support.
When K-Tron acquires a company, the objective is to let the business run itself. Beyond integrating the acquired company’s financial system into K-Tron’s, one of the few things we change is to move the company’s website into our CMS. You can see examples at Jeffrey and Pennsylvania Crusher of websites that were greatly enhanced by being moved into our CMS. You can also see Penn Crusher’s Chinese website, a new website created at the same time. The results for Jeffrey and Penn Crusher are striking:
- Easy to navigate, user friendly websites that for the first time generate valuable sales leads for the companies and provide enhanced satisfaction for customers and prospects who visit the websites
- Vastly improved search engine visibility
- An exponential growth in web traffic, which has resulted in more business opportunities
- Empowered business users, who can instantly update existing pages and add new pages with no assistance from either web or IT specialists
One final thought on the “big company” CMS issue: When an IT department becomes perceived by another department as a barrier to getting its messages delivered via the web, right or wrong, the IT department has an image problem. They might want to take a look at their own internal public relations. Indeed, rather than playing power games with their PR department, they might want to ask for some help in a) understanding how they have alienated their customers and b) devising appropriate actions and communications to win back the trust and support of their customers.
Don Dunnington
Excellent post Don from a position of deep and well-researched experience.
The “build vs. buy” battle was for many years a bloody one. Now there are so many excellent vended products out there with amazing subscription-based price points that make that battle a distant memory.
We're a small software development firm (read: we develop software), yet we use Netsuite for our CRM, we use Basecamp for PM, we use Rally for keeping track of software releases and iterations, we use Urchin for site tracking, we use Verisign for eCommerce, and on and on.
Could we build all of those applications in a proprietary environment. Sure…but at what cost to our resources. So we use hosted applications to make us more efficient and help us keep our eye on the ball servicing our core product line and our paying client base.
Don,
There is a big difference between what you are doing and what Dee's product does.
You have a hosted CMS, but your company determines how to use it and what to do with it.
Dee's product is a template website. Yes, it has a CMS integrated, but that CMS only applies to the template-based website. It wouldn't work for the things you've outlined in your post.
You say, “There is no inherent advantage for a business to do anything internally that can be done more efficiently by an outside vendor.”
Agreed, but since you are in a Web department, I assume that your company believes it is more efficient to have an internal web department designing and running its websites than outsource this function.
Unfortunately, most companies don't have internal web communications departments. They essentially outsource the function.
And that's really my point about Dee's product and others like it. They have resulted in companies not only outsourcing the technology, but also the thinking or communication strategy that goes into the website.
The existance of template sites relies on companies believing that departments like yours are uneccessary. Do you think you are unnecessary to your company? What value do you provide that cannot be achieved by a template?
Finally, and this is important, while what you say is true, I disagree entirely with the underlying philosophy of the following paragrah:
“Corporate websites are business tools. The enabling web technology is just that: it is the carrier of the message, not the message itself. The business doesn’t care how the message is carried. They just want to get it done quickly, reliably, professionally, at the least possible cost, and in keeping with corporate graphic and stylistic standards.”
The technology is part of the message. You cannot separate the technology from the message on the Web. How the technology works affects the message.
Businesses should care about how the message is carried because it matters to their Web users. When companies make decisions about their websites based only on their own internal needs, they invariably will be unsuccessful.
Actually, both Dominic and I would (probably) agree that a lot of outsourcing is happening in business and the evolution of SaaS is helping that. However, from a manager's perspective, implementation is decided on a cost/benefit basis and outsource/insource are options.
Template sites are useful when the medium (while important) is not being used as a competitve advantage, but where a level of basic functionality is necessary to meet industry baselines in functionality. For smaller companies (which I work with mostly) this is important; it allows them to compete in this specific target but focus their efforts elsewhere.
“Build vs. Buy” may no longer be a battle but for the practical business person it never really was. A battle is a zero-sum game with a winner and a loser; reality is that things are ever changing and the economics and environment surrounding business needs to be evaulated and either choice can be better for a given need. We put new labels on things and delivery is different, but SaaS/On-Premise “solutions” have been around since before computers were invented.
A good IT department can provide a longterm perspective to counteract the “make it work now” mindset of most users.
Dominic,
Thanks for your thoughtful response. I didn't mention this in my post (because I feared it was already getting too long), but we do use a PR Newswire product for our investor news. It isn't the complete CMS that Dee wrote about, but a simpler model where our investor news is sent to PR Newswire. PR Newswire distributes the news to their list and at the same time uploads it to a web page that mirrors the look and feel of the news page on http://www.ktroninternational.com. We have been doing this for 10 years. It works well, and we've found it to be a good value. In this case, K-Tron doesn't conform to PR Newswire's template; rather they adopt our template. When it comes to website design, this is also the model that Dee's CMS is able to follow: the news portion can be exactly the same as the larger corporate website—or completely different—it's up to the organization and their business objectives.
Concerning templates, the whole web is moving toward style sheets (CSS) and away from creating pages ad-hoc with all sorts of font tags. I have been going through the somewhat painful process of converting our largest site to CSS (it's not live yet). I really don't see templates, whether on one of my sites or hosted on a MediaRoom site, as a threat to my job security. My job is to do the “thinking,” as you put it, and to make sure that both senior and line managers understand the strategic importance of the web and the impact of the decisions we make concerning the web.
I agree with your point that “technology is part of the message….. How the technology works affects the message.” Moreover, I think we have reached a point with the web where the technology “working” is to be expected. It's to be expected just as we expect the telephone to work when we pick it up or the light to come on when we flip the switch. Sure, there are still people out there using inadequate technology, hosting web sites internally on a too-small server that's also running their business applications (shudder). But if you are lucky enough, or wise enough, or experienced enough to select good people (internal or external) to provide your web technology, you really don't have to worry about the technology working well.
Don
Re: Templates –
CSS is just one aspect of templating, and probably a fairly minor one. It is useful to template for CSS regardless if dealing with a single company or publishing a system for multiple clients. Separation of design and information is always a good idea for any but the most simplistic one-off solutions.
Other aspects of templates, and ones I have become familiar with, are for automotive dealerships. Inventory display, service appointments, chat and other features become part of all of a template as functions in addition to the style pieces. It is the functional and “big picture format” (as opposed to colors and such that CSS handles) is what I mean by template. Additionally, even with CSS, most sites that are looking for impact use graphics for appearance elements.
This whole concept of “working” seems to be vague. Working in a on/off sense is assumed at the high-level. Working at the “influence” sense it what needs to be looked at. Do TV messages work? Radio? Is the reach of RSS large enough to be cost effective? It is questions like these the need to be asked and answered on the technology side. From the website, does using a template lessen the impact of the message on the viewer? Does the viewer even recognize that a template is being used (subconsciously or otherwise)? In the dealership world, if 10 dealers in the same market use the same template system any attempt to standout in the web medium will have problems. If they are the only one, however, a solid template will be effective.
David,
Now I understand your point: by “template” you mean a cookie cutter solution, like a PowerPoint presentation template, or clip art, to use some simple, more-often abused examples. In websites, we even see people try to use technology (templates) to automate content creation to the point where it replaces any human thought. I'm never sure if the users intentionally wish to avoid the need to think, or if the template inhibits their ability to think. From my understanding, the MediaRoom would not get in the way of individual creativity; rather it is optimized for the needs of creative PR people, and can be configured to work within the look and feel of a larger corporate website.
Don
excellent points all around gentlemen. I realized after re-reading Dominic's comments that he doesn't understand what our company does and that is my fault. Our MediaRoom solution is one of the templated offerings that we have for very specific niche audiences and purposes. Our full-blown CMS can compete with anything in the marketplace…but that solution is NOT sold through our sales channel arrangement with PR Newswire…only the Mediaroom is.
What I've found in working with over 400 of our clients to implement some form of CMS, is that the solution often depends upon which department is making/driving the decision. If it is IT…then they're going to be looking for a very comprehensive solution across all departments. We've done this for Centura Health here in Colorado which has over 35 URLs and 17 individual hospital sites being driven from the same CMS. If the department driving a decision is the PR or marketing department, they often want a simple, templated solution for the very reason that their IT group is bad…unresponsive…or unable. We've found this to be true in many of the Fortune 500 clients that we've implemented mediarooms for. The disconnect between the PR team and the IT team is glaring.
While I agree with Dominic and David that a GOOD IT team should be able to handle what the PR team's needs are…the REALITY is that they aren't.
I was specifically referring to the MediaRoom product and others cookie cutter “solutions” like it.
While I understand why PR departments use them, I think they'd be better off using a full-blown CMS to create their own customized site. It could be done using Dee's or someone elses full-blown CMS.
Yes, I know PR Newswire, Thomson, MarketWire, PrimeZone have prepacked media sites that make it easier for PR people. They don't have to think about what to include on their PR site. It's a “brain-and-hands-free” solution. Quick assembly, no tools required.
But I happen to think that there are a lot of PR people who could come up with much better ways to present their companies if they were given a blank canvas rather than a paint-by-numbers offering spoon fed to them.
Or am I wrong? Are PR people technologically stupid, don't know their audience and completely lacking in creativity?
Seems to me that the purpose of the IAOC and template sites are at odds. If we want to inspire communicators to understand and use technology better, then vendors should be focused on giving them the knowledge and tools they need to create their own masterpieces.
Most often what happens, though, is that they get cookie cutter sites pushed on them.
Dominic,
we do little or no marketing of our Mediaroom solution. 90% of our sales come from requests for demonstrations. Clearly these PR people (even if they are technologically challenged) are facing some pain inside their organizations that their own IT team is unable to take away.
This solution was created based upon a vast market need…and has never been pushed on anyone. I'd say that the success of all of the vended PR and IR solutions indicates that there is a clear market need for it…even if in your mind it's not “best practices.”
Dee,
I honestly don't think it is all about poor IT departments and PR people feeling pain over a lack of support from IT.
The problem is more to do with many PR and IR departments just not recognizing the importance of the online experience on stakeholders' perceptions.
My experience is that when PR and IR people recognize that what people experience on their websites and on other sites has a profound influence on user perceptions, they are no longer willing to be contrained by a cookie cutter product.
That's when they get their acts together, take control and put the proper resources in place. While they might consult with their IT people, the PR and IR people drive the agenda and make all the decisions.
And again, they will outsource things that make sense for them to outsource. But mostly, their sites are their own inventions.
This is far from being the norm, but more and more this is what we are seeing in our research. A move away from cookie cutter solutions to customized, internally managed hybrid sites.
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