Web Strategy for Higher Education

The other day I was listening to some marketing expert who said and I quote, “There is nothing like online marketing strategy, now-a-days marketing strategy has to have an online aspect, it is the new era marketing”. The advent of web 2.0 has made organizations rethink their marketing strategy…or…if we may call it…their web strategy.

Higher Ed institutions ought to have a very well defined web strategy as they are dealing with the first internet generation, the generation of Facebooks, Twitters, and Googles. It’s the time Higher Ed institutions realize the untapped potential of the web or be ready to miss the boat. In here, I try to identify few key factors that can help a Higher Ed institution to decide upon its web strategy;

1. Use the power of Social Media:- It is established through various online surveys that a large number of new and transfer student prospects use web as their primary resource for researching an institution of their requirements. The students are smarter than what we think. They probably will take opinions from their pals over social networks like Facebook or MySpace or read through some Higher Ed Blogs.

Higher Ed marketing & communications departments can consider making their institution’s official page over social networks like Facebook to penetrate into these student groups with targeted information. Doing something like Wofford College will make you realize the opportunity you had been missing.

With micro blogging tools like Twitter, students are already doing things like setting up reminders for their homework, schedules, trips and getting updates right into their mobile phones. Institutions can make their admission counselors initiate discussions over twitter, create targeted twibes keeping students and their objectives in mind while their search for the right institution.

2. Get the right CMS for your website:- For Higher Ed institutions it is very important that investment is made in the right website content management system. Good CMS systems would allow you to create content which is ADA compliant. Through workflows, it will allow different departments from within your institution to represent their department on the web and yet allow marketing and communications to control the publishing & make sure that market-able material goes out.

With a good CMS, Academics as a department can have its own News, Announcements and Events published at the Academics page on the website. Some good CMS tools even allow you to optimize your website for search engines, checking for meta-tags, ALT tags, Headings etc. Any good CMS system facilitates you with multi lingual & multi channel (mobile, web, desktop) capabilities which further allow any Higher Ed institution to broaden its’ reach.

3. Have useful tools on your website:- When new students or prospects come to your website they are particularly looking for self service web apps which can give them quality information without really delving deep into it. Some of these web apps can include;

• Calculators/Web Apps for Scholarships & Financial Aid
• Effective Search Utility
• Orientation & Testing Apps
• Transfer Students Apps
• Student Portals
• User Friendly App for Program & Majors

4. Have content & messaging strategy in place: - The web world is all about the right content. Whatever I mentioned above would be useless if the content is not targeted, if the messaging is not sticky. It’s just few seconds in which your messaging has to make an impact on the audience; another click and you might lose the lead altogether. The best approach is to engage a content strategist who will study your audience together with you, make use cases around that and help you develop an approach for generating content. Remember, for a prospect coming to your website, it's just the quality and value of the content that matters.

5. Tracking User Behavior: – The web today has become quite mature as a business platform. Web provides you mechanisms which further allow you to monitor and track the user behavior and interest on your website. Tools like Google Analytics & Optimizer not only allow you to evaluate the keyword based traffic coming to your website but also establish which content blocks are converting more leads to students.

Many standard CMS products also provide integrated components for user behavior tracking and relative content based user targeting.

Overall, the essence is that your website should engage its’ visitors, it should talk to the students, and your web strategy should involve students, their perspective. In this dipping economy, even more than getting new students, it is important to retain the existing students. The new web gives you the ways to know the direction and thought flow of your students and prospects.

Make your website a living piece; keep generating more relevant content on different online channels for your college; Give up that conventional college brochure website mindset…make it interactive..Develop a user experience……and see the difference.

by Muktesh Kandpal (muktesh.kandpal@edynamic.net)

How can you derive an optimum distribution mix for your B2B marketing dollars? - Part 3

Optimum Mix - Almost there!

Here’s a quick rationale for my choice of content & channel mapping in my previous piece. For instance, C/V level decision makers in larger businesses would rarely, if ever start researching stuff on Google. They will ask somebody with more time to do it. They wouldn’t mind attending a webinar & if they miss out, they could be found though looking up social media – blogs, video & audio networks – in spare/research time just to catch up on what’s going on. This explains choices for 1 & 2.

Now about 3. Analyst white papers are typically, red hot lead generators for you. Picture this – a Veep asks his managers to look up some strategic content around data rationalization so that they can review what’s out there, what they can do, next steps, etc. in a team meeting next week. If I am targeting this scenario 50% of my time as a B2B marketer, my white paper will potentially get me almost every single lead there is to milk in my area.

The catch is, I have to get ‘found’ at any cost. Here’s where my paid search needs to be ultra aggressive & my organic search guy needs to think between his ears. If you notice too – I have kept just a month aside for my paid search & that’s because any piece of content has just about 30-40 days of shelf life on paid search for a particular region/geography. Beyond this, you will notice a sharp drop in both the quality & number of inbound leads from that particular content.

Finally 4. Press Releases are great tools to tell all who matter or care that ‘we have done something exceptional! Come visit us’. In the age of feeds & widgets, online PRs have just gone up several notches in importance. If nothing gets to your target audience, a well written & distributed PR always will. In many ways, PRs also drive people to 1, 2 & 3 & ensure your planning doesn’t go bust.

So what does an optimum mix look like from quarters 1 to 3?

• Analyst White Paper: 15%
• Content Syndication through social media: 10%
• Press Releases: 10%
• Pay-per-click: 15%
• Search Engine Optimization: 20%
• Webinars: 30%

What I have tried to achieve is a ready-to-go, B2B demand generation mix which will work on more days than not. If you notice, I have not spoken about things like Mobile, behavioral/contextual targeting, etc. That is because those are more elaborate, relatively risky options. They hold undeniable value, but we will think about them in Q4 or year 2!

by Abhiraj Banerjee (abhiraj.banerjee@edynamic.net)

Best Practices for building Insurance Websites - Part 4

Step 4 – Define “Measures of Success” against each Goal

Most often we get caught up in defining objectives, strategies and tactics but forget to identify metrics that will provide an indication of what is or isn’t working. Analytics is one of the most critical components of any web projects. Implementing an analytic tool is simple and some are even available for free.

This becomes nearly impossible as your website grows to a point that it receives more than a thousand visitors daily—no one has the time to keep up with the constant inflow of new traffic. One of the main reasons to add the Analytics Tool is to track trends. You’ll want to know, in a snapshot view, the results of different “campaigns”, posts and social bookmarking/networking stumbles etc. Without these trends, you cannot grow your site, neither do you know if you are pleasing your visitors (resulting in a general increase in traffic) or targeting the right keywords.

Although you generally form your visitor base with the content you write, implementing a statistics program on your site will benefit you by allowing you to more accurately target a market, whether in a specific country, age group, or lifestyle (earnings, home value, etc.). Out of all factors, this may be the biggest reason to ensure tracking of your website.

by Subir Singh (subir.singh@edynamic.net)

Best Practices for building Insurance Websites - Part 3

Step 3 – Define Strategies that will lead to achieving these Goal

1. Enable Customer Education & Research
2. Simplify product offerings
3. Ensure the website is a source of Information & Knowledge for Prospects, Customers, Agents, Employees, Media personnel, etc.
4. Connect the offline branding & promotion activities with the online channel
5. Provide visitors on the website with adequate tools that enable then to conduct research
6. Provide customers with self servicing capabilities
7. Encourage Lead Generation

by Subir Singh (subir.singh@edynamic.net)

Best Practices for building Insurance Websites - Part 2

Step 2 – Understand your Target Audience

Before you get down to defining strategies that can enable your goals you need to understand your Target Audiences and their needs

1) Prospects – Looking to buy Insurance can be categorized as follows:

• Those who know exactly what they are looking for. They understand their need and know the product they are looking for.
  
• Those who have a specific need and want to identify products that fit their needs. E.g someone who needs to buy a Child Insurance Plan that would provide them a sum of money for their child’s graduate education.
  
• Those who know they need insurance but are not familiar with the various categories of insurance (Child, Health, Pension, Growth, etc.)

2) Customers – These are existing customers who can be categorized as follows:

• Those looking for specific information to do with their existing relationship
• Those looking at using the web as a channel to pay renewals
• Those looking for additional products. They could then fall into any one of the categories mentioned in 1 above

3) Agents – Existing & Prospective Agents

• Existing Agents
• Self Servicing Requirement – Looking for specific information for themselves – product related, access to the Agent Portal, etc.
• Client Servicing Requirement – looking for product related information, NAVs, etc.
• Prospective Agents – Looking at a Career with the Insurance company – this could be an agent with a competitor and wants to switch someone completely new to Insurance and is looking to make a career in the Insurance Industry

Based on the objectives, the needs of the target audience need to be prioritized and the website structure laid out accordingly.

by Subir Singh (subir.singh@edynamic.net)

How can you derive an optimum distribution mix for your B2B marketing dollars? - Part 2

Optimum Mix – Achieving the Demand Generation Mojo

My first task at the start of Quarter 2 soon as my webinars have ended & I have the analyst endorsed content piece would be to create a ‘content map’. This map would comprise pieces of audio, video & static content taken from the webinars & analyst pieces.

While my team was handling the logistics of Q1 activity, I was researching & thanking John Kotter for ‘A Sense of Urgency’ & basically getting on with it. And what was I researching - how should I distribute my content?

This is key to the magic unfolding over the next 6 months wherein I intend to bombard my Sales folks with leads enough to last forever. Content distribution planning also enables me to show to my bosses up there that I have been able to achieve the stars without denting the dollars & gives me the leverage to demand for & get these dollars when I would need those most – at the start of Q4. Here’s how a part of my content distribution plan could look like:

First:

• Content: Webinar-1- 4 minute video extract
• Target: Mid rung decision enablers
• Objective: Lead Generation to engage for reaching higher rung
• Channel: Website, Paid Search, SEO with specific landing page optimization
• Geography: As applicable
• Time: 3 Months

Second:

• Content: Webinar-2-5 minute audio & video extracts
• Target: C, V level decision makers
• Objective: Lead Generation, thought leadership branding
• Channel: Website, Social Media for audio, video & 3rd party blogs with specific search optimization & linking
• Geography: As applicable
• Time: 3 Months

Third:

• Content: Analyst White Paper
• Target: Mid rung decision enablers
• Objective: Lead Generation to engage for reaching higher rung
• Channel: Website, Paid Search
• Geography: As applicable
• Time: 1 month for paid, 3 months for organic

Fourth:

• Content: Press Releases
• Target: All rungs
• Objective: Lead Generation, spreading awareness & branding
• Channel: Online premium wires
• Geography: As applicable
• Time: 15 days

If you are reading this piece, then I shall talk about why this kind of a content map will give
me what I need. But, that’s for next time!

by Abhiraj Banerjee (abhiraj.banerjee@edynamic.net)

How to select a Content Management System

A must see brief presentation for Marketers on how to select a Content Management System (CMS) for their websites...

How To Select A WCM product

View more presentations from eDynamic.

Top 10 Reasons for choosing SQL Server Reporting Services

Why SMBs should go for Business Intelligence (BI)?

SMBs always perceived BI as behemoth systems involving huge amounts money, time and labor. Trying to assemble a working system from shrink-wrapped software is often considered daunting. Or pulling together products from multiple vendors could prove a challenge; pieces and parts may have worked individually, but integrating them together could prove a monumental task. And fully custom-built solutions can represent an astronomical expense, putting them out of range for many small- and mid-sized companies.

Not anymore. While the Microsoft BI platform is not magic—some work is required to achieve results—Microsoft’s SQL Server platform and integrated BI tools overcome these past challenges.

The delivery of BI information to decision makers in a company can be accomplished in a number of ways. This is where Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services is an excellent vehicle for the basic display and dissemination of BI information.

SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) combines the benefits of a centrally-managed reporting system with the flexibility and on-demand nature of desktop and web-based applications. A complete reporting platform, Reporting Services supports the entire report lifecycle, from authoring through deployment.

What makes SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) an ideal BI Reporting tool for mid-market?

1. Support for Five Styles of BI

As a company forays in Business Intelligence, it must have a technology that can seamlessly deliver all five styles of BI with a single unified architecture and metadata. The five styles of BI are:

i. Reporting

ii. Scorecards and Dashboards

iii. OLAP analysis

iv. Ad-hoc query and analysis

v. Alerting and Report Delivery


Equally important is the need for a single technology to provide all five styles as plug-and-play components on a single unified backplane and through a unified user interface. The unified backplane ensures that all styles of BI share common services and automatically build upon one another. The unified user interface ensures a common experience for all users, allowing them to seamlessly move between styles of BI without cumbersome application switching.

Companies can post reports to a portal, email them to users, or allow users to use the web-based report server to access reports from a folder hierarchy. Navigation, search, and subscription features help users locate and run the reports they need. Personalized subscriptions let them select the rendering format they prefer.

2. High Data and User Scalability

Over years, companies are faced with an explosion in the volume and scope of data they collect and generate. The myriad of systems, including ERP, CRM, Web sites, sales force automation, SEC compliance, and supply chain management, contributes to this massive data influx. BI must be able to access all these databases to be truly effective.

A ROLAP (relational OLAP) architecture is necessary to access all data to the full depth and breadth of the largest databases. Relational OLAP architecture provides access to the largest databases with the highest interactive performance. SSRS, in conjunction with SQL Server Analysis Services, can access very large databases, yet maintaining considerable user interactivity. The product's modular, web-based design scales easily to support high volume environments. One could create a reporting server farm with multiple report servers accessing the same core reports, serving thousands of web-based clients.

To achieve the highest user scale, companies need a BI technology like that of SSRS, capable of reaching all business users through the interface of their choice; a zero-footprint Web interface that is instantly deployable to geographically distributed users; and a dynamic caching architecture. A dynamic, multi-level caching architecture provides increased performance as more people use the system, making each user’s experience faster and more interactive, while imposing the absolute minimum load on database resources.

3. User Self-Service – Ad hoc reporting

As the population of users and amount of data in the enterprise grows, user self-service becomes absolutely critical. To achieve broad-based self-service, companies need the SSRS technology that offers “what you see is what you get” (WYSIWYG) design, eliminating tedious user training in report design.

SSRS has an ad hoc reporting tool that enables business users to create their own reports and explore corporate data. Report Builder incorporates a user-friendly business query model that enables users to build reports without deep technical understanding of the underlying data sources.

4. Automated Maintainability

Cost-effective enterprise BI requires the ability to update all reports automatically, reflecting continual changes to underlying business definitions, business structure, and database structures. SSRS provides for centrally defined and administered business rules which ensure that all users have a single version of truth to look at.

5. Cost Effective

If your company has an Enterprise or Standard edition of Microsoft SQL Server running, you already have SSRS available with you. You don’t need to shell out extra money for purchasing SSRS. That’s the advantage that companies can draw from Microsoft Business Intelligence stack which provide a complete set of tools for end-to-end BI solutions.

Even if your company does not have an existing implementation of SQL Server, SSRS has the lowest licensing cost among the important vendors in the BI space. It does not require an ‘army of consultants’ to implement. In addition, the server-based license model of SQL Server is definitely more cost effective as against user-based licenses.

In the long run, report maintenance becomes the dominant issue in total cost of ownership. Automated instantaneous updating provided by SSRS becomes a critical requirement and ensure the cost per report is minimized.

6. Granular analytic capability - Drill through and parameterized reports

Even more effective for user self-service is a BI technology that can drill anywhere, allowing users to seamlessly drill through any combination of data in the database. SSRS provides the users with such functionalities that have become standard in today’s BI market. They arm the end users with key insights into their KPIs.

As they say, facts never lie. SSRS, with its advanced functionalities, has to capability to provide a measure of your company’s past and current performance with intuitive analysis. If blended with planning and trending data, it can also give an insight to the future performance.

7. Microsoft Office integration

It’s no surprise that SSRS provides seamless integration with Microsoft Office products. The integration does not require any customization or programming. End-users can use the familiar desktop environment to enable them to be more productive without learning new software.

Integration with SharePoint Server enables an end-user to view and manage reports completely from within a SharePoint document library. In addition, SSRS can also export reports into PDF for pixel perfect reporting.

8. Open APIs

Reporting Services offers a complete, server-based platform for creating, managing, and delivering traditional and interactive reports. At the same time, the modular design and the extensive application programming interfaces (APIs) of Reporting Services enable software developers, data providers, and enterprises to integrate reporting with legacy systems or third party applications.

Because of the complexity and time required to embed reports into applications, reports are often created outside of the application using third-party tools and distributed manually or through batch jobs. By using SSRS, these applications can easily be extended to include a complete reporting solution, embedded within the application.

SSRS also provides a tight integration with the Visual Studio .Net development environment.

9. Presentation formatting with company branding

SSRS offers picture perfect formatting with company branding. No longer is a manual process required to juxtapose company logo and client information with the invoices. SSRS integration with Microsoft office and Adobe PDF provides for a one-step process to come out with a reporting document with company branding.

10. Security and administration

SSRS implements a flexible and a role-based security model to protect reporting resources. This ensures that every employee is allowed access to data which the user role is entitled to. In today’s world, security of data has assumed paramount importance. SSRS provides enough security measures to ensure the safety’s of company data. SSRS also includes extensible interfaces for integrating other security models if desired.

by Ankit Katariyar (ankit.katariyar@edynamic.net)

Best Practices for building Insurance Websites - Part 1

As the Insurance Industry becomes more competitive and product offerings more complex there is a growing need for customers to do more research before they decide on what product they need to buy.

While Customers today are willing to buy certain categories of Insurance online such as Travel or Automotive insurance the Internet is yet primarily a channel for Research. However, researching on the Web often doesn’t translate into a policy application through any channel. Low conversion rates are the result of a complex product and a low-commitment research channel.

Life insurance as an example won’t see the same online sales success that auto insurers will enjoy. However the web can prove a useful channel to promote the prospect to the next level and lead to applications through other channels.

In a survey done in the US by Forrester Research in 2007 it was seen that of the 3 million Americans who have researched life insurance during the past year, more than one in three used the Internet to do so, making it the second most popular research channel after researching in person.

Insurance companies need to clearly identify & understand the objectives and purpose their websites serve.Assuming that the website can become a huge Point of Sale is not only a false expectation but it can also ignore the need for providing information that will enable prospects to conduct research and maybe even fill out an enquiry form

So the question really is – What should Insurance Websites focus on that would make them “successful”? “Successful”being the loaded and operative word here! So let’s start

Step 1: Identify the Goals for the website

Step 2: Understand your Target Audience

Step 3: Identify Strategies that will lead to achieving these Goals

Step 4: Define “Measures of Success” against each Goal


Let’s start with Step 1– Identifying the Goals for the website

For most insurance companies the goals could be summed up into the following

1. Customer Acquisition - Both lead generation and sales in some cases

2. Customer Retention – Servicing existing customers

3. Agent Recruitment – The agent network is the primary sales channel and hence there is strong focus on this area

4. Employee Acquisition – the website could be a large source of resumes

5. Brand Promotion – last but not least this is every Marketers objective. To not only promote the brand online but also create recall and align with offline promotion activities


Along with defining your goals it is also critical to prioritize them. This is very useful when it comes to allocating real estate and defining content focus on the website

Stay Tuned for – Step 2 – Understand your Target Audience

by Subir Singh (subir.singh@edynamic.net)

Direct Marketing for B2B in Digital Scenario

Even though businesses have been utilizing Direct Marketing for long, it is widely believed that not all B2B marketers have been able to fully leverage the growing clout of digital capabilities available today in the market place.

The existing digital environment today presents opportunities to convert the prospects into customers via a carefully crafted digital plan - listening, supporting and delivering along the customers purchase cycle. This in turn results in generating referrals and plentiful opportunities to deliver a positive return on marketing spend.

Even though more and more users are spending large amount of their time online, how many B2B businesses do we know who have a full-proof plan to market their products online? How many businesses are able to create an integrated offline and online customer experience for its prospects? How many businesses do you know who can confidently track their customer through his purchase cycle?

Today there are ample tools and technologies that will allow you to do this successfully.

However a strategic approach is required to understand how to apply, target and optimize the process of marketing across the various steps of customers purchase.

To understand the various tactical digital initiatives that one can pursue, we should first understand the general process. The Go-To–Market process for any B2B client can be broadly classified into a 7 step process:

1. Understanding Customer Needs

2. Communication Message

3. Fulfillment (information)

4. Generating and Qualifying Leads

5. Transaction (online or offline)

6. Relationship Management

7. Referrals

In order to drive a perfectly aligned marketing program across the various stages, the quintessential requirement is to have a tracking,measurement and reporting system in place.

Below are some of the tactics that can be utilized across the different stages.

Understanding Customer Needs:

A brief from a client is the first bit of information that can be used to prepare a basic strategic draft and define one’s approach to the problem

Other than the information derived from client brief , your website analytics and automated customer surveys can also play a part in defining a customer’s needs.

Communication Message:

You’re messaging in terms of creative and copy is equally important in closing the loop. By automatically serving a different message to your various target segments you can see visible increase in conversions and leads.Moreover, A/B testing of various creative messaging options or landing page scan help you successfully optimize your creative messaging and increase interest and engagement.

Fulfillment:

All users are searching for a certain set of information or content – it may be in form of a certain kind of whitepaper, or request for information or even a free trial. Fulfillment of any form of information draws the customer closer to eventual sale. An automated system that keeps track of user information consumption patterns will help you in re-targeting your customer and allow one to provide value to the prospect.

Generating and Qualifying Leads:

Lead generation and qualifying them as MQPs (marketing qualified) prospects is another process that can be carried out online or via a call-center. SEM or search engine marketing today is one of the most important lead generating tools out there. With more and more people dependent on Search Engines to acquire information, the search engines form a favorite hunting ground for such activity.

Webinars, Database driven marketing campaigns, Newsletters and online events they all form a powerful set of tactics to generate leads.

The other not so direct yet powerful ways of generating leads online can be Blogs, Social Media and Virals.

Transactions

As and when a transaction occurs,your prospect converts into a customer. To be able to track this transition and define the value of the transaction will allow you to tier your customer and know more about the various points of interception that he experienced. This in turn rolls back into the marketing campaign planning process and optimize future acquisitions.

Having a digital way of connecting leads to transactions and then data-mine to drill down on those transactions will provide you with powerful behavioral data of your customers.

Your messaging and treatment met to the customer at this point will make way for future referrals.

Relationship Management

Once a prospect is converted into a customer an equally important task of managing relationship with customer begins. Loyalty programs, rewards and recognition and a knowing more about your customer will allow you to build that relationship with your customer and provide value to them.

The emphasis on a relationship management is on one-on-one marketing – that knows your customer to an extent that you can tailor make your offering for him.

Referrals

Referrals are the greatest validation of a satisfied customer. Referrals can be in form of leveraging a testimonial of an expert who also happens to be a client or even someone who can pitch in with a good word for a Prospect.

In some products Referrals can also be used to generate a buzz or awareness and increase the interest levels of the prospects.

Even though the above describes the perfect set-up where one is tracking and end-to end customer behavior through his purchase cycle, a focused campaign aimed at any of the steps in a purchase cycle can be instrumental in generating leads and qualified marketing prospects and shortening the time it takes to convert a prospect into a customer. With more and more people seeking that information online, Direct Marketing is going all Digital in coming days , much sooner than we think.

by Aditi Kumar (aditi.kumar@eynamic.net)

WCM/CMS - Shortlisting Blues

It is 7:30 in the evening, a Friday, and apparently David is busy working on something critical, it must be some marketing campaign, I believe. …ohh...no.…I realize he has been asked to do a thorough analysis on finding the right-fit WCM solution for our new website project.

Well, picking out the right CMS for your website is not just about doing some research over the internet. The process is threefold, knowing what you need, identifying what different vendors have to offer and then mapping the vendor capabilities to your requirements.

Step1 - Knowing what you need – This is one of the most significant but perhaps one of the least weighed upon criteria in identifying the solution of your needs. Do you really know what you need? Perhaps you do or maybe you don’t.

This question might be a little tricky as it may have different meanings and value depending upon who this question is directed to. To me, it’s actually a further set of questions which need to be answered at different levels before somebody answers the bigger question on the needs. Some of the common questions can be:

• Are you just looking for a CMS that helps you straighten the possibly out-of-order content publishing process within your organization?
• Is there a need for a system that helps your website integrate well with other existing systems, maybe a CRM, a DAM or an ECM?
• Is there a particular budget bracket, which you’re considering for this initiative? If yes, are you ready to compromise on some functionality and user experience for price points matching your plan?
• Do you have a need of managing multiple sites and catering to multiple channels?
• Are you looking for content management solution for a portal and not a website?
• Is there any inclination towards a particular technology or framework within your organization?
• Do you want to reuse your existing web based content with the new implementation?
• Do you need a CMS/WCM which has capabilities of tracking user behavior, audience targeting and web analytics?

Yet another important aspect to need assessment is about knowing the business drivers for the CMS/WCM initiative within your organization. Forrester research in its web content management online survey identified different likely business drivers for any new CMS/WCM deployment. They included:

• Improved Web site customer experiences
• Increased sales conversion rates
• Brand consistency
• New eBusiness initiatives
• IT consolidation or cost reduction
• Web operations cost reduction
• Improved employee communication

Your business drivers for this initiative should highly influence your decision for the choosing the CMS/WCM product for your organization.

That’s about need assessment. Over here we do not take those requirements into account which would be catered by almost all the standard web content management systems.

Once the needs have been clearly identified, the next thing is about establishing what different solution vendors have got to offer.

Step2 – Identify the offerings – One may get a fair idea about different CMS/WCM vendor offerings at a high level from browsing through the different product websites over the internet. Forrester research in its CMS/WCM Wave ‘09 weighs different solution vendors based on diverse criteria, and one of those important criterions is any products’current offering/solution.

Forrester evaluates the product offerings from a content management, product architecture, and additional capabilities viewpoint.

It is very important to evaluate how a particular product handles the content life cycle? How versioning, audit trail and workflows play out? How do administrators manage and configure the system?

Also, knowing the product architecture is very vital. There may be scenarios where the package is very appealing but the architecture doesn’t stand valid with the changing face of technology. A vigilant review of products’ architecture gives good insight into its scalability and extensibility potential.

Additional capabilities like multi site/channel implementations, multivariate & A/B testing for testing content changes on audience segments should again be carefully weighed upon.

Here is a checklist of some of the common features which are available with a typical WCM/CMS product.

Checkpoint	Details	Supporting Products (few)
Content Repository
	Library services, check-in/check-out and versioning	IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SDL Tridion, Sitecore, Ektron, Fatwire, Interwoven, Clickability, RedDot
Authentication
	Advanced access control, permissions, role delegation	IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SDL Tridion, Sitecore, Ektron, Fatwire, Interwoven, Clickability, RedDot
Content Authoring
	Authoring through browser based templates, or from MS Word	IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SDL Tridion, Sitecore, Ektron, Fatwire, Interwoven, Clickability, RedDot
Workflow
	Workflow should support a proper approval/rejection cycle.	IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SDL Tridion, Sitecore, Ektron, Fatwire, Interwoven, Clickability, RedDot
Content conversion to XHTML or XML.		IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SDL Tridion, Sitecore, Ektron, Fatwire, Interwoven, Clickability, RedDot
Content Delivery through web servers		IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SDL Tridion, Sitecore, Ektron, Fatwire, Interwoven, Clickability, RedDot
Rich Metadata capabilities		IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SDL Tridion, Sitecore, Ektron, Fatwire, Interwoven, Clickability, RedDot
Web Analytics & Reporting
	Either integration to extrinsic analytics tools or in built functionality.	IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SDL Tridion, Sitecore, Ektron, Fatwire, Interwoven, Clickability, RedDot
Page Layout Design Capabilities for end users		IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SDL Tridion, Sitecore, Ektron, Fatwire, Interwoven, Clickability, RedDot
Professional Services Support		IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SDL Tridion, Sitecore, Ektron, Fatwire, Interwoven, RedDot

Other than knowing the feature set, knowing the strategic path a particular product takes is very critical before finalizing on any vendor.

The question is that, how does a customer analyze this factor? From a customer viewpoint, it can be figured out by looking at;

1. The product updates/add-ons any particular vendor has planned or achieved in a given period.
2. The partnerships and associations which the vendor has made in last couple of years.
3. What existing customers have got to say about the product and its capabilities?
4. How many new customers has a vendor acquired in last two quarters?
5. The technology route which the product has taken or is going to take from an architectural viewpoint.
6. If the vendor has grown in terms of its geographical and market presence.

Step3 – Mapping product capabilities to needs – Now this might seem very straight, right? But actually it isn’t. Think about the fact that do you really need everything a good product has to offer, probably not.

To exemplify, there are products which are WCM/CMS leaders but recognized for their integration with their existing portal products. Now the question that you should ask yourself is that other than the portal integration, which perhaps is not something you need, has the product got a better value proposition than a mid-range product with much modest price points?

The point here is that perhaps you don’t need everything that’s offered by different product suites. Mapping your requirements to offerings should result in creating a traceability matrix, which should give you a clear picture of what product(s) you should vouch for.

As a concluding remark, I would say, as identifying the right WCM/CMS product is not your competency, and thus in all probability there can be mistakes, which might be disastrous from a long term web strategy standpoint. To my mind, the best approach would to engage some WCM/CMS consultant even before going ahead with the project in the discovery phase.

by Muktesh Kandpal (muktesh.kandpal@edynamic.net

Key criteria for selecting a Web Content Management system

This blog provides insight into selecting a Content Management System. This is focused towards marketers in the mid-market space. I’ve tried to keep the content as non-technical as possible.

Content Management products (CMS/WCM) have started to become commoditized. All of them seem to offer similar features, which makes the selection process increasingly difficult and frustrating.

So what do you need to think about when you are selecting a WCM system?

1. Product Strategy and Roadmap

Look at the strategy and roadmap of a product to understand the short-term and medium-term goals of the product. Understand how often the product has been updated in the past few years – history is the best indicator of the future.

Understand what medium- to long-term technology decisions have been made. For example, one of our partners, Sitecore’s, strategy has been to stay close to .NET technologies, so this makes Sitecore an ideal product for mid-market organizations focused on .NET. Similarly, Open Text Web Solutions (formerly RedDot) seems to be going through a re-architecture exercise moving them towards the .NET framework as well.

2. Technology

Your choices typically include .NET, Java or Open Source. Given .NET’s popularity with the mid-market segment, a lot of the popular products are aligned with .NET. Some products that have their own underlying languages. Getting your users ramped up and keeping them updated on these these technologies can be a challenge. Integration and development is key with products. The more ‘open’ the products are (ie. how extensively they expose their APIs), the more flexibility you have. Products that expose their API completely will allow you to integrate easily.

A question that comes up quite often with clients is whether to consider Open Source products in the enterprise. Quite often, the main consideration is cost, but you have to remember that Open Source does not mean “free”! In making cost decisions, consider the Total Cost of Ownership instead of just the license costs. Development and maintenance costs can be higher with Open Source platforms, and support has also been an issue in organizations.

The key issue with Open Source product is that you need to know the underlying technologies very well, since support is not always easily accessible. Some very mature Open Source platforms do exist though, so stick to technologies that have a strong development community behind them. Drupal is one product with a very strong community and support model. In the last few years, we’ve seen Drupal make an impact in the Enterprise. This trend will continue.

3. Content Production

When we talk about ‘content’ on a WCM, it doesn’t just mean ‘text’; it also means audio, video, and images. One of the core elements of a web content management system is producing that content. Content production consists of content creation and development, management, and publication.The blog that you are reading right now went through a simple content production process: it involved me typing in the content, my colleague reviewing and providing feedback, and then me publishing the final content out to the site.

When assessing how content is created and developed in the WCM, check that the sytem supports the type of content you need, and provides an easy-to-use editor to create it. Most content editors these days are similar in what they offer. Also, check to see if authoring and transformation features are available.

Worklow is a critical capability of a CMS. Some organizations have complex workflows, in which case a flexible worklfow is needed. For example, certain features – like the ability to enter workflow tasks into email applications or integration into existing intranets – will get people using the WCM quickly.

Once you’ve created the content, you’ll have to utilize the product’s deployment capabilities to put the content on the website. Make sure the the product can provide support and central management for multistage deployment and publishing.

4. Marketing Automation

What if you could get the right content in front of the right person at the right time – how would it impact your customer acquisition process? This is what’s making this space exciting. The ability to serve up dynamic content based on user paths and profiles allows marketers to truly control the web environment.

Marketing automation in a CMS includes web analytics, personalization, lead management, and automation capabilities. Some of mid-market products have started rolling out marketing automation and analytics capabilities – these have been available in Enterprise CMSs like Interwoven.

5. Migrating Content

Most CMS implementations are typically migrations, since you are usually moving content over from existing sites or resources. This can be both tricky and annoying.

There are two ways to migrate content: manual or automated. You probably want to avoid having to do this manually if you can, and just go with automated migration techniques and tools. However the structue of your content does not allow for automated migration, you may have to go with the old-fashioned manual copy-and-paste approach. It’s about as much fun as cleaning a house after a frat party, but sometimes you may not have an option.

6. Costs

Your budget for the CMS implementation should factor in several things, including:

• Licensing costs for the WCM system
• Development
• Training
• Content Migration
• Content Creation
• Hosting
• Other related software

Quite often, decision-makers only see licensing costs, which can be deceiving. Development costs, for example, may vary depending on the CMS. If a product is less common, or more complex, finding resources to support training and development for your project can become expensive.

7. Get an expert opinion

There is a lot of material out there on selecting content management sytems. Listening to what experts say will help you get down to a shortlist quickly. Forrester, Gartner, CMS Wire, CMS Matrix and Aberdeen are some sources you can rely on.

eDynamic has a process in place to select a WCM product that we can share with you. We work with several CMSs like Sitecore, Ekton, Drupal, MOSS and Kentico, among others, and this insight is based on our knowledge derived since 2001. Email me and I’ll send the process document across to you.

Also, we recently released a short video to guide marketers on how to WCM solution. You can find it on our website www.edynamic.net

Feel free to reach out to me with any questions you may have, I’d love to help

by Rahul Khosla (rahul.khosla@edynamic.net)