IDC 1721

I D C M A R K E T S P O T L I G H T

Next -Generat ion Web Content Management for the D ig i ta l Market ing Era

June 2014

Adapted from Digital Experience Survey 2014: User Needs and Strategies by Melissa Webster, IDC #249016

Sponsored by Telerik

As consumers increasingly turn to digital channels to shop, consume their favorite content, and connect with family and friends, marketers have followed them online. Today, a large and increasing share of the overall marketing budget in most organizations is devoted to digital marketing. This, in turn, is driving increased spend on digital experience technologies such as Web content management.

There are new requirements, however, that set modern Web content management solutions apart from the legacy systems that were designed for a simpler time. Next-generation Web content management solutions must enable marketers to create relevant, personalized, and engaging experiences across all of the digital touch points — Web, mobile, and social — that customers use to interact with their brands.

This IDC Market Spotlight examines the new requirements of next-generation Web content management systems in the context of the long-term shift to digital marketing and provides context to assist buyers as they evaluate vendors.

The Rise of Digital Marketing

We are in the midst of a long-term and profound shift in the way companies interact with their

customers. This shift is being driven by the same four megatrends that are transforming IT: cloud,

mobility, social, and big data.

Already, 40% of the worldwide population (and 80–90% of the population in developed economies)

uses the Internet; by 2018, 3.7 billion people will be online. Today, almost half of Internet users

access the Web using a mobile device; by 2018, nearly three-quarters will. The number of mobile

Internet users will more than double from 1.3 billion today to 2.7 billion by 2018. Facebook and

Twitter have 1.3 billion users and 650 million users, respectively, and dozens of other social networks

around the world have attracted millions of members. Forty percent of Internet users will buy products

online this year; by 2018, more than half will — that's 1.9 billion online shoppers. B2C and B2B

ecommerce transactions will total $15 trillion this year and $24 trillion in 2018.

As consumers have migrated online, marketers have followed them. Brands, retailers, media and

entertainment companies, and organizations in every other industry have invested heavily in their

online presence, establishing ecommerce, digital marketing, digital media, and other teams chartered

with creating and delivering the digital customer experience.

Digital marketing is claiming a steadily growing share of the overall marketing budget. On average,

about a quarter of the marketing budget is devoted to digital today and spending on digital marketing

is growing in the double digits. (In high-tech companies, digital marketing already claims more than

one-third of the total marketing budget and will account for half of it two years from now.) We

increasingly hear marketers speak of "digital first" and "mobile first" initiatives as they formulate

strategies for acquiring, engaging, and retaining customers — customers who, increasingly, came of

age in the Internet era.

©2014 IDC 2

Need for a Modern Platform

The shift to digital marketing is bringing marketing and IT together in new and unprecedented ways.

Historically, marketing has been the least automated of the line-of-business functions. This shift, however,

requires a high level of automation to sense and react in real time and predict the next best action.

Companies have adopted a variety of point solutions for different marketing roles to address specific

digital marketing challenges, but this siloed approach is an obstacle to the effective delivery of

cross-channel customer experiences. As Figure 1 shows, marketers are targeting an ever-growing list

of digital channels, and new channels will emerge in the future.

F i g u r e 1

Growing Number of Digital Channels

Q. Which of the following channels are priorities for your company/organization for creating and delivering

digital customer experiences?

n = 617, United States/United Kingdom/France/Germany

Note: Figure shows the percentage of respondents who rated the item important or very important on a scale from 1 to 5.

Source: IDC's Digital Experience Survey, April 2014

As the number of digital channels continues to grow — and as marketing becomes increasingly data

driven — marketers need a modern platform, one that lets them leverage rich customer profile

information including both explicit and implicit data to create relevant, personalized experiences while

maintaining brand consistency.

0 20 40 60 80 100

Traditional Web

Mobile Web for smartphone users

Mobile Web for tablet users

Social networks or community sites

Email campaigns

Mobile apps for tablet users

Mobile apps for smartphone users

Digital signs and kiosks

Smart TVs, other "connected" devices

Wearables

% of respondents

©2014 IDC 3

Content at the Core: Next-Generation Web Content Management Capabilities

Content is at the core of these digital experiences, and the Web content management system plays a

central role in the delivery of cross-channel experiences. As IDC research shows, however, most

customers are still struggling with a variety of challenges related to content. Sixty percent of

companies say they need to be able to create new content more quickly and economically, while 58%

say they need to be able to more easily reuse/repurpose content across all of the digital channels to

maximize their investments in content and deliver a consistent brand experience. More than half say

they need to make better use of analytics to optimize content strategy and placement across all of the

digital channels they are serving.

As Figure 2 shows, companies are looking to vendors to provide cost-effective solutions that are easy

to use, quick to deploy, extensible, and easy to integrate with other systems such as portals,

ecommerce solutions, and enterprise applications.

They need support for multichannel publishing, and they want integrated digital marketing tools such

as targeting, personalization, recommendations, A/B or multivariate testing, analytics, campaigns,

social marketing, and so forth. They want community features such as commenting, rating,

discussions, forums, and user-generated content (UGC) as well as support for rich media.

Companies also need strong workflow capabilities to streamline and control the publishing process

and support multisite capabilities that let them manage sites globally while providing for regional

flexibility and localization.

F i g u r e 2

Web Content Management Selection Criteria

Q. How important are the following capabilities in choosing a Web content management solution?

n = 617, United States/United Kingdom/France/Germany

Note: Figure shows the percentage of respondents who rated the item important or very important on a scale from 1 to 5.

Source: IDC's Digital Experience Survey, April 2014

0 20 40 60 80 100

Cost

Ease of use/authoring

Quick time to deploy

Ease of integration/extensibility

Strong workflow

Multi-site management

Rich media/video capabilities

Multi-channel publishing

Digital marketing tools

Community features

Availability as SaaS

Availability as open source

% of respondents

©2014 IDC 4

Let's explore the key capabilities that next-generation Web content management systems need to provide in more detail.

Usability: Empowering Teams

First and foremost, next-generation Web content management systems need to empower teams of

people with diverse roles — including content creators, designers, developers, site administrators,

and marketers — and help them collaborate effectively to build engaging Web sites and mobile

experiences. These solutions provide excellent usability for all stakeholders:

Content creators. Content creators need easy-to-use, WYSIWYG tools and prebuilt content

modules that let them quickly and easily author and change content — whether they're pasting in

Microsoft Word content, dragging/dropping new artwork or photos onto a page, or creating a

customized news feed. The solution must be intuitive and easy to learn so that new users and

casual content contributors are instantly productive. Next-generation Web content management

solutions are designed to speed their work and eliminate repetitive tasks with features such as

automatic reformatting of copy/paste text, built-in spellchecking, control over page URLs for

search engine optimization, and so forth.

Next-generation Web content management solutions are also dynamic. For example, they make it

easy for a content creator to drag a press release control onto a page and then apply a filter to it so

the site automatically displays current stories. Similarly, these solutions make it easy for content

creators to change the structure of the site without needing to manually adjust site navigation or

worry about breaking links. Next-generation Web content management solutions eliminate the need

for extensive quality assurance — reducing effort and speeding time to market.

Designers and developers. Front-end designers and developers need the freedom to create

templates and widgets that let content creators create truly differentiated experiences while

ensuring brand consistency. Next-generation Web content management systems support modern

Web standards and take advantage of the innovations in HTML, CSS, Web scripting languages,

and libraries to keep designers and developers on the cutting edge.

Marketers. Marketers must be able to quickly and easily define and target customer segments

and personalize content for those segments according to business rules. They need easy-to-use

tools that let them test offers and messages prior to launching new campaigns. Marketers need to

be able to quickly create microsites for new offers and special events — without the help of IT.

They need visibility into how content on the site is consumed — what seems to be resonating

with customers and what isn't — so that they can optimize it.

Site administrators. Next-generation Web content management systems give site

administrators an easy-to-use console that lets them quickly define and change user rights and

privileges using an inheritance model as well as integrate with enterprise identity management

systems such as Microsoft Active Directory.

Further, next-generation Web content management solutions provide the robust workflow capabilities

required to orchestrate the work of the many people who play a role in creating, managing, and

delivering digital experiences. Depending on the size of the company, there can be dozens,

hundreds, or even thousands of contributors; adding to the complexity, they come from different

functional areas and teams may be distributed around the globe. Strong workflow capabilities

facilitate collaboration and support the end-to-end publishing process from creation through review

and approval to publication.

©2014 IDC 5

Digital Marketing Tools

The ability to create, manage, and deliver the digital experience requires integrated digital marketing

tools. These tools may be provided as integral components of a next-generation Web content

management solution, or they may be best-of-breed solutions that integrate with it. Either way, the

Web content management system plays an important role in bridging the functional silos of CRM,

marketing automation, and Web analytics to deliver a more personalized customer experience.

Digital marketers need integrated tools that let them:

Segment visitors and contextualize content for different segments in conjunction with other

factors, such as time of day, geography, and so forth.

Build a unified cross-channel profile for each customer. Brands need a complete 360-degree

view of the customer that leverages all of the customer's interaction data — from all digital

channels, including the Web, email, social, mobile, and so forth.

Personalize content to site visitors, leveraging buyer profiles and online behavior to deliver the

right content at the right time on the right device and create a conversation that deepens brand

commitment.

Build community via social media features such as commenting and content rating/ranking,

blogs, and moderated forums to bring in the voice of the customer.

Engage with customers via social networks. Digital marketers need to create and manage

brand pages on Facebook, create and manage Twitter campaigns, and bring the conversation to

the social networks their customers are using.

Deliver campaigns and quickly launch microsites, reusing content to ensure brand

consistency and speed time to market.

Test and optimize content and campaigns to ensure maximum impact and return.

Companies are collecting huge volumes of information about their customers and prospects today,

but most companies struggle to make this information actionable in the context of customer

interactions.

Next-generation Web content management systems play a pivotal role in managing the

implicit/explicit visitor profile information that personalized experiences depend on and in enabling

digital marketers to take action in real time to convert visitors into customers.

Integrated analytics are key to understanding customer behavior and taking action in real time.

Companies are collecting huge volumes of information about their customers and prospects today,

but much of this information resides in separate systems that are difficult to relate.

Mobility and Cross-Channel Publishing

As noted previously, today's digital marketers need a unified publishing system that lets them deliver

consistent branded experiences to a long and growing list of digital channels, including the Web,

mobile devices, social networks, and email campaigns. Marketers must be able to reuse and

repurpose content effectively and at the same time create differentiated experiences for each of these

channels. As our 2014 Digital Experience Survey shows, only about half of organizations feel they do

this well today.

©2014 IDC 6

Responsive Web design has been a hot topic during the past couple of years, and making the

company's Web site responsive for visitors who using mobile browsers is usually one of the important

goals of a major Web site refresh. Our survey research shows that a little over half of companies are

delivering a fully responsive Web experience today.

But responsive design is just a starting point: Companies are investing in a broader array of mobile

experiences, including mobile-optimized Web (e.g., touch-friendly) and installed app experiences. In

addition to mobile, they are investing in social, email, and new and emerging channels. Next-

generation Web content management systems enable marketers to deliver tailored experiences for

all of these channels using a unified publishing workflow. This ensures that the right content is

provided to the right customer at the right time on the right device, and it ensures against disjointed

experiences that confuse the customer and can damage the brand.

Extensibility

No single vendor provides all of the useful templates, modules, and widgets that marketers might want out of the box. Today's marketers want to be able to create differentiated experiences that set their brand apart. They need the ability to easily create new types of content items such as news clips, blogs, lists, polls, forums, images and documents, events, and newsletters and then reuse and modify them, using drag/drop and their familiar authoring/design interface.

This requires a Web content management solution that is extensible via Web parts or other controls so that new capabilities can be made instantly available as part of their standard user interface, as if built in. Add-ins extend the task bar and are managed by the content management system. (This is an area where large open source communities shine, as marketers can benefit from the contributions of the broader community and not rely solely on IT.)

Extensibility is important for user interface customization. Many organizations have a large group of casual content contributors who need access to a subset of authoring capabilities.

Integration

There is a long list of back-end systems with which the Web content management system must

integrate, and new requirements emerge all the time. Ease of integration will become only more

important in the future as an increasing share of customer interactions are digital and as the digital

marketing platform evolves.

For example, the Web content management system must integrate with identity services for user

authentication and single sign-on. It needs to integrate easily with portals to address the

organization's broader publishing needs, which extend from public-facing Web sites to extranets and

corporate intranets. It must integrate with enterprise applications such as CRM and ecommerce for a

complete view of the customer. The ability to share data — especially customer information —

between applications is critical, and the Web content management solution should provide

standardized mechanisms for persistence and retrieval of data objects.

eCommerce integration has been a particularly challenging area. Many Web sites offer a jarring mix

of product pages served up by the ecommerce system and merchandizing pages coming from the

Web content management system; the moment a buyer clicks on a product, all context is lost.

Marketers need to be able to flexibly integrate marketing content and product information in a richer,

more immersive shopping experience. They are also much more productive if they can leverage a

common set of tools to build these experiences. Deeper integration between ecommerce systems

and the Web content management system helps address these needs.

©2014 IDC 7

Analytics is another key area for integration. Digital marketers need good cross-platform analytics so

that they can see how customers are responding to offers and content. As our survey research

shows, many companies are struggling with too many separate analytics dashboards/sources of

data; it's difficult to coordinate them to take action. At the same time, digital marketing is increasingly

automated and analytics driven, and more than half of companies we surveyed want to leverage real-

time analytics for dynamic targeting and personalization. Only about half of companies believe they

make effective use of analytics today to improve targeting and optimize the offers, advertising, and

content they put in front of their customers.

Considerations for Buyers

In the era of digital marketing, it's critical to choose the right Web content management platform. As

Web content management increasingly becomes intertwined with the rest of the digital marketing

stack, it will become more difficult to rip and replace solutions that fall short. Companies should factor

in both current and future needs.

Our research shows that companies are continuing to wrestle with whether to choose a "suite" vendor

that provides both Web content management and digital marketing tools or go with a best-of-breed

strategy. In our latest survey, 33% of companies are pursuing a single-vendor suite approach; 41%

are pursuing a best-of-breed approach; and one-quarter expect to use a mix of the two. All of these

strategies are viable. Customers have been buying point solutions for different marketing roles and

functions for several years, and they want to leverage their existing investments. Vendors that are

assembling suites have done so largely via acquisition, and it takes them time to integrate these

acquisitions and shape them into an offering with common services and look and feel. Given the rate

of innovation in the digital marketing space, we will undoubtedly see many opportunities to augment

the digital marketing stack over the coming years.

This underscores the importance of choosing a Web content management system that is easily

extensible and easy to integrate. IDC also believes that winning Web content management vendors

will be those that foster strong partner and/or developer ecosystems so that companies can leverage

a wide variety of preintegrated components and tools. Leading vendors and successful open source

communities will have the edge here.

Conclusion

The ability to create, manage, and deliver engaging, personalized experiences across the growing list

of digital channels is critical to business success today. Digital experience management is a mission-

critical capability for any organization that seeks to create meaningful "conversations" with its

customers. Customers are "in charge" today, and they expect the companies they do business with to

communicate with them using their channel(s) of choice — whether Web, mobile, or social. They also

increasingly expect a personalized experience — one that is relevant and that acknowledges their

history with the company. Modern digital experience platforms give marketers the tools they need to

create and engage customers in the personalized, relevant conversations that deepen brand

commitment and inspire customer advocacy.

Next-generation Web content management solutions form the core of the modern digital experience

platform. They foster collaboration among the many people from diverse departments who must come

together to create, manage, and deliver cross-channel digital experiences — including content creators,

marketers, designers, and developers, among others. These solutions also provide key ingredients of

the rich customer profile upon which data-driven, personalized experiences depend. Further, they serve

as an important integration point for the many digital marketing tools companies are using today.

As our research shows, many organizations are still using homegrown or custom solutions.

Others still rely on legacy solutions that are difficult to use or that require significant IT involvement.

©2014 IDC 8

These organizations risk falling behind as innovation accelerates and the digital experience platform

takes shape. Companies should ask themselves the following questions:

Does our existing Web content management solution provide intuitive WYSIWYG, drag-and-drop

authoring tools that make content authors maximally productive? Does it separate content,

presentation, and structure so that designers can control the site's look and feel via templates?

Is the process of implementing sitewide branding changes simple and straightforward?

Does our existing Web content management solution give us the unified publishing workflow we

need to create and deliver cross-channel experiences, speeding time to market and ensuring

brand consistency? Can we easily reuse/repurpose content across channels? Does our current

solution provide support for all of the mobile experiences we need to deliver, whether responsive,

mobile Web, or native app? Does it provide flexible, configurable workflows that streamline the

publishing process as well as ensure that our review and approval policies are followed?

Does our existing Web content management solution include integrated digital marketing tools

and/or integrate with best-of-breed solutions from other vendors that enable our marketers to

quickly and easily define customer segments and target content? Can marketers quickly and

easily personalize content based on user profiles? Does the solution offer integrated ecommerce

capabilities and/or seamlessly integrate with third-party ecommerce solutions so that marketers

can quickly and easily combine content with product information to deliver personalized offers in

real time to create a compelling shopping experience? Or are we authoring ecommerce

experiences using two separate, unrelated solutions, struggling to keep the information in sync?

Is our existing Web content management solution extensible so that developers can easily add

on new content modules and widgets that enable content authors and designers to deliver a truly

differentiated experience?

Does our current solution integrate easily with our enterprise applications? Are we confident we

can easily integrate it with new applications in the future as new requirements emerge? Does it

support important Web standards?

If some or all of these are pain points, it's time to investigate next-generation Web content

management solutions. Now is the time to put in place a next-generation Web content management

solution that can meet your organization's needs for years to come. Replacing those homegrown and

legacy solutions will become only more expensive as time goes on.

Look for a solution that provides usability for all stakeholders; built-in support for mobility and

cross-channel publishing; extensibility; ease of integration; and integrated digital marketing tools.

Talk to vendors about their vision for digital experience management to ensure alignment with your

current and future needs.

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