Gleansight Benchmark Report Web Content Management · Gleansight: Web Content Management 2 Note: This document is intended for individual use. Electronic distribution via email or

ContentPart 1: Topic OverviewPart 2: Reasons to ImplementPart 3: Value DriversPart 4: ChallengesPart 5: Performance MetricsPart 6: Success StoryPart 7: Vendor Landscape

SidebarsSurvey StatsBenchmark KPIsCore TechnologiesGleanster NumbersVendor Quick Reference Guide

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Note: This document is intended for individual use. Electronic distribution via email or by posting on a personal website is in violation of the terms of use.

2014

Gleansight Benchmark Report

In today’s “age of the consumer,” organizations are adapting to customers and prospects who demand an increasingly compelling and personalized user experience across multiple channels. Whether on the Web, mobile devices, or other channels, consumers expect organizations to present targeted content and offers that suit their specific needs and desires. At the same time, consumer thirst for new and compelling content has never been higher. Marketing and selling to today’s consumer requires a continuous stream of fresh content with an extremely short shelf life. To meet elevated consumer expectations, organizations are looking to Web Content Management (WCM) systems to deliver content that is new, unique, and optimized to the context of each specific consumer and his/her engagement channel.

To deliver content in context across channels, organizations are leveraging WCM to understand and respond to consumers based on their location, device type, influences and the type of forum in which they are engaging the organization. This places more demand on WCM systems. They must act as centralized content hubs for a wide range of sales and marketing tools, such as those for eCommerce, email marketing, analytics, and marketing automation. WCM solutions can do this in 1 of 2 ways. They can either incorporate digital sales and marketing tools within the WCM solution itself, or they can offer streamlined integrations to legacy and best-of-breed sales and marketing systems. Whichever path an organization chooses, the integration between WCM and other customer-facing tools is a must when competing for today’s digital, multi-channel consumer. This Gleansight benchmark report explores the reasons to implement the next generation of WCM solutions, the ways in which WCM helps to optimize the end-user experience across multiple channels, and the challenges associated with implementing a WCM solution.

Web Content Management

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Organizations are now commonly using WCM solutions for three major reasons ― all driven by consumer demand. First, marketers need to deliver far more content to consumers today in order to make sales and earn customer loyalty. No solution manages and controls large volumes of content better than WCM does. Second, the use of dynamic content has become commonplace as organizations attempt to deliver content in a manner most attractive to today’s fickle consumers. This means sensing and responding to the context of each consumer engagement. Third, marketing has achieved the independence from IT that it has long sought. As such, many top performing organizations now enjoy the benefits of having frontline marketing and sales staff armed with on-demand publishing capabilities.

Ironically, the increased demand to deliver relevant content in context faster and more widely than ever has led marketing professionals to re-engage with IT. This can be attributed to the need to deliver so many facets of the customer experience at once. Most leading WCM solutions offer broad capabilities but not everything a marketer needs. Many capabilities, such as eCommerce, analytics, and email marketing live within other legacy or best-of-breed tools which organizations simply will not, or cannot afford to, rip and replace. To make these tools work in unison with WCM, IT’s integration skills are needed. In fact, over half (57%) of Top Performers in our survey have launched initiatives to integrate sales and marketing tools with their WCM solution.

Survey StatsThe research findings featured in this Gleansight benchmark report are derived from the Q1 2014 Gleanster survey on SMB CRM.

• Total survey responses: 202

• Qualified survey responses: 168

• Company size: <$1M (18%); $1 - 10M (15%); $10-100M (21%); $100M - $250M 46%)

• Geography: North America (79%); Europe (10%); Other (11%)

• Industries: Higher Education (12%); Publishing (11%); Media (10%); Retail (9%); Government (6%); Food (2%); Healthcare (4%); Manufacturing (4%); Other (42%)

• Job levels: C-level (34%); SVP/ VP (24%); Director (10%); Manager & Staff (32%)

Sample survey respondents:

Steve Place, Manager, Intuit Demandforce, Software

Tim Burrell, Manager, Centaur Media, Publishing

Francios Charbonneau, CEO, Carbon Web, Telecommunication

CIO, Best Western, Travel and Hospitality

Director, Girl Scouts, Nonprofit

Director, Enqbator, Pharmaceuticals

Part 1: Topic OverviewWCM solutions continue to evolve to keep pace with enterprise demands. Initially focused on publishing content, WCM’s main value proposition was to ease Web publishing for non-technical marketing professionals. Solutions then began to address the end-user experience across multiple channels by aggregating and syndicating content, leveraging user-generated content, and analyzing end-user behavior. Some solutions even enabled publishing of dynamic content to a wide variety of device types, such as iPads and smartphones, with globalized and localized content. But for all their added functionality, WCM solutions had not yet been installed at nearly 60 percent of organizations as of Gleanster’s 2012 survey. This year’s survey results demonstrate that the number of WCM installations from 2012 to 2013 grew by a staggering 19% according to our survey respondents.





Part 2: Reasons to ImplementHow does your marketing organization determine which content and format to serve mobile customers in Western Europe? Should it be the same as the content you serve to customers and prospects in Asia? The answer most likely exists in the data from your tools that perform A/B testing and analytics. If your marketing team had that information, your organization could readily launch your new marketing campaign. But does your marketing team have the technical knowledge to access A/B testing and analytics tools, crunch the data, and obtain the right answers? Ecommerce, analytics, A/B testing and other tools are typically disconnected within organizations, and they all must integrate if you want to gain market advantage by attracting prospects and delivering user experiences in ways that surpass your competitors.

WCM solutions enable organizations to seize on opportunities quickly. With the new integrations built into leading WCM platforms today, built-in hooks and integrations exist for the most popular legacy and best-of-breed sales and marketing systems and tools. These all must work in unison to make a great user experience across channels possible and to run the most effective marketing and sales campaigns. Additionally, WCM makes content reusable across many different formats. Through content reuse, WCM delivers to organizations costs efficiencies by minimizing the need to create more versions of the same content each time a customer engages from a different channel.

Whether integrating WCM with best-of-breed or legacy sales and marketing tools, Top Performers recognize the need to bring IT and marketing together at the outset. For marketers and business leaders, this requires establishing an integration roadmap, gaining IT involvement, and setting expectations to ensure the targeted integrations succeed and deliver the right data. According to our survey results, 71% of Top Performers develop an integration roadmap and plan that involves both marketing and IT.

With tools integrated into WCM, non-technical content creators and marketing teams are empowered to creatively engage users and deliver rich, immersive experiences that win business. This is vitally important a consumer age characterized by content serving as the new digital currency. As this Gleansight benchmark report survey data demonstrates, Top Performers have high expectations for WCM-driven revenue and costs saving benefits.

Benchmark KPIs Gleanster uses 2-3 key performance indicators (KPIs) to distinguish “Top Performers” from all other companies (“Everyone Else”) within a given data set, thereby establishing a basis for benchmarking best practices. By definition, Top Performers are comprised of the top quartile of qualified survey respondents (QSRs).

The KPIs used for distinguishing Top Performers focus on performance metrics that speak to year-over-year improvement in relevant, measurable areas. Not all KPIs are weighted equally.

The KPIs used for this Gleansight are:

• Year-over-year increase in revenue

• WCM Utilization

• Year-over-year increase in time on website or mobile site

To learn more about Gleanster’s research methodology, please click here or email [email protected].

Reasons to Implement are the reasons Top Performers invested, or plan to invest, in a technology. These also represent the most common ways to justify the investment.

What are Reasons to Implement?


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Optimize the end-user experience. This year Top Performers ranked the number one reason to implement WCM as a desire to optimize the customer experience. It seems building a business case around improved customer engagement in digital channels makes it easier for Top Performers to justify the investment in WCM. The end-user experience can make or break any online campaign. Not only do speed and performance matter, but consumers now seek an immersive experience where they can form a relationship with their favorite brands and websites. Consequently, 86% of Top Performers surveyed in the 2013 State of Digital Marketing indicated the online customer experience was a top three source of competitive advantage for their brand. Optimizing the end-user experience requires organizations to think about several critical factors: how users are accessing their websites; the location of users; the on-site tools they

are using; and the external influences that brought them to the site. Marketers can obtain such insights from WCM and automate rules and workflows to respond to users according to each factor.

Reduce content management costs across channels. Content management and control mechanisms enable organizations to reduce the labor required to develop, review, publish, and distribute online content. It is very common for organizations to deploy complicated content creation production processes for developing multi-channel content. For example, some of the larger firms we surveyed had separate departments that developed copy for email and the web that were independent of copy created for print. Marketers in these organizations frequently cited challenges with redundant copy being created or worse, inconsistency in communications. Naturally, these extra

* According to Top Performers, based on 202 Qualified Survey Responses to the Q1 2014 survey on WCM.**According to Everyone Else shown only when a notable disparity occurs relative to Top Performers

88% Say:

Optimize the end-user experience.

75% Say:

Reduce content management costs.

62% Say:

Improve brand consistency.

MOST COMPELLING REASONS TO IMPLEMENT WCM FOR TOP PERFORMERS*

** versus 45% of Everyone Else





processes are costly to support and inefficient from a time-to-market on content production standpoint. Leading WCM deliver substantial cost savings via workflows, download conversions, and APIs to numerous legacy and best-of-breed marketing and sales tools. A little IT involvement early leads to massive gains and content creation independence down the road. You should be thinking about ways to re-use or convert content for use in multiple marketing channels instead of supporting fragmented production processes.

Improve brand consistency. As organizations globalize their operations and pursue new markets around the world, they frequently struggle to bring in local marketing managers who customize messages to suit their unique market needs. Even Top Performers struggle with brand consistency which is all the more reason to look at justifying the investment by mitigating some of

these challenges. Having said that, the reality is brand consistency challenges are very difficult to quantify when making a business case. So while it’s top of mind for Top Performers (and paramount to a superior customer experience, it’s not exactly how you want to lead with the business case.) Using WCM, corporate marketing can set standards and rules around content and messages so regional teams can adhere to branding while adding their own nuanced version of messaging. This is also critical when supporting globalized multi-site or multi-lingual properties.

Increase online revenue and profit. Today, successful online sales depend on presenting the right content to over a given channel at exactly the right moment in time. WCM’s ability to customize content based on a wealth of data from within WCM and other tools ― including personalized offers and value-added suggestions and

** versus 89% of Everyone Else

60% Say:

Increase online revenue and pro�t.

58% Say:

Increase marketing relevance.

50% Say:

Increase the distribution of content.

COMPELLING REASONS TO IMPLEMENT WCM FOR TOP PERFORMERS*






44% Say:

Improve customer satisfaction.

35% Say:

IT collaboration.

29% Say:

Streamline multi-channel integration.

LESS COMPELLING REASONS TO IMPLEMENT WCM FOR TOP PERFORMERS*


information ― helps organizations reap rewards from analyzing customer behavior and buying patterns. This maximizes revenue, while WCM’s automate content customization reduces the costs associated with new revenue-generating channels and initiatives. The key finding here is Top Performers are trying to justify investments in WCM with measurable increases in revenue, though it remains a challenge – probably the reason this wasn’t a top three reason to implement.

Increase marketing relevance. Customers now control the messages that many organizations and brands once controlled. Customers have considerable power and influence over a brand’s reputation and can flex their ‘sentiment muscle’ in numerous forums across several mediums simultaneously. Top Performers are finding ways to transform customers into brand advocates by making available content

that is easily consumed and shared by and among customers. Traditional market segmentations are changing in many cases, making it more important to spot trends and groupings within different online channels. That said, most WCM solutions offer dynamic content capabilities, but only 50% of Top Performers using WCM (and 23% of Everyone Else using WCM) reported actively using these capabilities. While marketers intend on increasing relevance it’s still largely achieved through segmentation on static content. But since Top Performers are 2x more likely than Everyone Else to use dynamic content, this should certainly be an area of focus.

Increase the distribution of content. WCM tools are far more than Web publishing tools, they are a hub for managing all types of digital content and intelligently distributing them to match the audience and the offer. WCM also





makes the content easily consumable and sharable by end users.

Improve Customer Satisfaction. Customers are harder to please today. They expect highly engaging experiences that also include highly specific offers that appeal to individual wants and needs. Not only do Top Performers deliver in these areas, they do so across multiple channels and device types, from iPads and smartphones, to social forums and online tradeshows. Any brand that does not do these things pays a hefty price from negative consumer sentiment that spreads fast and damages brand reputation.

New and creative marketing-IT collaboration. The market landscapes continues to shift fast due to Web 2.0, mobile and enhanced voice of the customer. But while content creators and marketers need independence to quickly publish responsive content, marketing must make the process technically possible by collaborating with IT to make the necessary integrations between legacy and best-of-breed marketing and sales tools. The latest solutions for WCM make these integrations possible, then follow on with sophisticated tools for self-service content development and distribution. Top Performers are 3

times more likely to invest in multiple technologies that integrate versus a full WCM suite offering. While that may change in the future as marketers seek more compelling ways to centralize and unify digital engagement from a single interface, most organizations still support a combination of new and legacy tools for managing the web experience.

Establish data-based metrics for Streamline multi-channel integration. Marketers can now develop content for use across different channels and manage its transmission through easily configured rules engines. The proliferation of multiple device types and the massive growth of social media has brought about a significant need for multi-channel management.

Increase traffic on owned media. Organizations constantly seek new methods for increasing visitor volume to their websites, Linkedin pages, Twitter and Facebook pages. Higher traffic typically leads to higher revenue and brand awareness. Analysis and reporting tools integrated to WCM, and in some cases within WCM, provide insights into the origins of customers. More importantly, they also provide analysis of the origins of the most profitable customers.

Keep in MindWhen evaluating WCM solutions, it’s a good idea to mitigate the risk of selecting the wrong solution by documenting your organizations business requrements before talking with vendors. Business requirements outline everything you need to accomplish with the tool. Then you can go map your functional requrements and prioritize them appropriately.

You are going to see some exciting new capabilities from vendors when you demo solutions. This can lead end-users down the wr

Also, it’s a good idea to find out if there are storage limitations or overage charges for records under management. Likewise, ask in advance if there are fees associated with getting your data out of the CRM solution should you choose to migrate to a new option in the future.


mailto:research%40gleanster.com?subject=Research%20Metholology%20Question




Part 3: Value Drivers

Value drivers are the processes, organizational strategies, and technologies that help maximize investments in WCM. WCM value drivers today come from three major areas: managing content easily in an often confusing multi-channel world, delivering a superior customer experience over the channels relevant to your organization, and leveraging a wealth of data and analytics from multiple systems to determine the optimal channels and engagement needs. The value drivers are fairly evenly split between those that contribute to attracting customers for revenue growth and those that target savings through streamlined operations. Without a doubt, the survey results reflect the recent overwhelming focus by organizations to optimize the end-user experience.

With such high demand for ever-changing content, organizations need to hone their content management processes. At the same time, they cannot lose sight of the quality of the content itself. For this reason, Top Performers target holistic integration with other systems that feed digital content. Unfortunately, many organization struggle to make multiple legacy tools work seamlessly with WCM. Vendors have heavily promoted integration capabilities or all-in-one WCM solutions, but the reality is that ripping out legacy systems is often unrealistic. Therefore, shedding insufficient processes and technologies requires a sound roadmap and careful planning to make WCM a competitive advantage.

The customer experience sits atop the list of ways to differentiate an organization’s online strategy. Consumers in all industries want fresh and up-to-date content that speaks to their latest issues. Change for the sake of change can cause unnecessary headache, but if legacy technologies are holding back your organization in competitive benchmarks, then you should consider a full WCM integration plan or implementing an all-in-one WCM solution.

It is true that new technologies and channels, such as mobile and tablets, are all the rage and likely the majority source of future business. But you should first leverage analytics to truly understand customer behaviors. Your customers may or may not be using new technologies beyond the Web in sufficient numbers to justify a WCM initiative at this time. What good is sinking costs and resources into major integrations and multi-channel content initiatives that only speak to three percent of your customer base? Your time and money could deliver much higher ROI solidifying the current Web experience for your customers and prospects.

Value Drivers represent the processes, organizational considerations, and tactics that help Top Performers maximize the return on investment in a technology initiative.

These are the things Top Performers would attribute to the successful implementation and use of a technology.

What are Value Drivers?





Improve content quality. Top Performers cited content quality as an important value driver, compared to only 67% of Everyone Else. Social media is riddled with stories of the benefits to providing relevant content to consumers at the right time. Brand reputation and sales jump markedly. By contrast, owned media assets that provide little value-added information incur high abandonment rates, low return visit rates, and sometimes even consumer wrath. Top Performers are keeping their content clean by only moving useful content into the new WCM system. In fact, Top Performers are five times more likely than Everyone Else to separate archived Web content from the new system.

Mobile optimized web presence. Digital is mobile. Customers are demanding when it comes to digital engagement and they have little patience for cumbersome interactions. Seamless engagement across the web, social, and mobile has led many

Top Performers to the realization that legacy platforms simply won’t scale in the future. For this reason a desire to optimize the mobile web presence is a key driver for new investments in WCM in 2014. Solution providers now have out-of-the box capabilities that make mobile support easier than ever for marketers to manage. Some providers even have mobile ready app configuration and publishing tools.

Personalize content for online visitors. Dynamic content and reverse IP address lookups are driving the real-time experiences that your online visitors demand. By personalizing content, marketers become revenue generators for their organizations and true partners to the sales organization. Top Performers outpace Everyone Else in this area by a significant margin, 50 percent leverage dynamic content online compared to just to 23% of Everyone Else. But as previously mentioned, dynamic content has its challenges. Not the least of which is creating the

MAXROI!

100%

Destination...

50%

Mobile optimized web presence.

89%Improve

content quality.

95%Personalize

content for online visitors.

77%

MOST IMPORTANT VALUE DRIVERS FOR WCM ROI ACCORDING TO TOP PERFORMERS*






content, which as we will see in the next section is a top concern for Top Performers.

Empower business users to manage owned media. Engaging content will win over consumers in the user experience competition. But marketing and other non-technical staff will not quickly and easily take up WCM just because they are instructed to do so. You need to empower them by layering workflows and approval processes onto digital content creation. The easier they can impact the end user experience, the more likely your non-technical users will participate in content creation.

Develop a formal training program for content creation. Some organizations have developed certification programs for social media and digital content production. These programs instruct users how to put forward their brand’s voice appropriately and without causing social backlash. Organizations that have failed to

prepare users properly have suffered brand damage. They now recognize that the flexibility and automation of a content management system must be balanced with training and controls.

Implement workflow for versioning and approval of online content. Marketing executives must be vigilant and ensure that all content aligns with approved company messaging. As new types of social sites and apps emerge, markets overlap, and consumers look for specific solutions targeted to their needs, you must continue to show your core value propositions. At stake are your branding and relevance to key target customers. WCM allows for strict and/or flexible workflows so that marketing executives can stringently or loosely oversee content publication across all online channels.

Pre-define criteria for which roles can update owned media assets. Organizations can avoid embarrassing or costly mistakes by controlling who

MAXROI!

100%

Destination...

50%

Leverage data collected to make better decisions.

67%Mobile access

to CRM.

70%Secure

executive level buy-in.

54%

IMPORTANT VALUE DRIVERS FOR WCM ROI ACCORDING TO TOP PERFORMERS*






can and cannot post content to their owned media. Your messages can go viral and spread to millions of people worldwide in a matter of hours, even minutes. By pre-defining who can post content to certain areas of your website and other owned media, organizations gain an extra level of security against damaging and costly content postings.

Integrate WCM with back-office systems. To optimize online engagement, many organizations can tap the data that resides in their back-office systems to support such

functions as product recommendation engines and self-service. Standard APIs within WCM solutions help marketers and IT extract the necessary data and enable a wealth of online functionality.

Centralize access to digital media. Marketers have traditionally viewed WCM as the best means for centralizing access to their digital media. While this has not changed, multi-channel content makes this feature even more valuable today. Content is the online currency today, but control of content is nearly as important.

MAXROI!

100%

Destination...

50%

Re-use copy and creative for

multi-channel e�orts.

38%Role based

security.

49%Centralize access to

digital media.

29%

LEAST IMPORTANT VALUE DRIVERS FOR WCM ROI ACCORDING TO TOP PERFORMERS*






Part 4: ChallengesAs our survey data shows, across all organization types, from Top Performers to Everyone Else, the benefits of implementing a WCM solution today far outweigh the challenges. That said, one significant challenge remains ― the migration of existing assets into WCM. Many organizations have installed multiple content management solutions or systems over the last decade, and changes to one do not necessarily translate across all of them. Therefore, you should gain consensus and a thorough understanding of your organization’s short- and long-term marketing goals before implementing a broad WCM solution. Those organizations that have failed at their WCM rollouts have done so because management has unrealistic expectations about progress and the time required to significantly impact the organization’s online presence.

Given the multiple websites and other owned media that marketing must manage today, broad WCM initiatives can take anywhere from six months to a year to implement. This requires joint planning with IT in which marketing and IT jointly define priorities, migrate taxonomy, migrate content, and develop a broad roadmap to orchestrate the migrations. As part of the roadmap, your organization should set specific milestones that have tangible results which management can see.

Plenty of WCM-related case studies can be found online which demonstrate the steps high-performing marketing organizations have taken to improve their online presence and engage users with an optimal experience. Nearly every case demonstrates that progress is incremental. Those organizations that take incremental steps, then measure results, establish a solid foundation for continuous improvement to their online presence. Consider a B2B company that sees a lot of its customers interacting on LinkedIn. It would be naïve to cobble together a quick LinkedIn presence and begin interacting with customers and prospects there. Careful planning must occur. What type of content resonates on LinkedIn? Can we apply analytics to what we see on LinkedIn and how do we do that? Which criteria inform new content? Can we re-use old content? Just this one owned media asset (your LinkedIn page) requires a lot of planning for what data and content to migrate as well as the integrations required to make that happen continuously.

Challenges represent the various roadblocks to watch out for before, during and after a technology implementation. These are the things that prevent Top Performers from maximizing the return on technology investments.

Challenges





Dealing with customization. While consultants and systems integrators can significantly reduce the time to value on WCM rollouts, be wary of recommendations for heavy WCM customization. Considering the number of pre-built APIs that WCM vendors deliver today, the need for customizing should be rare. When the need does exist, it should be supported by a clear and substantial business case. In the long term, customizations will cost dearly, particularly if data is to be shared across multiple tools and systems. Top Performers rank customization as a top challenge in 2014. Additional conversations with some of these firms reveal the customizations are typically not the challenge, but rather supporting them over time and excessive customization pose the biggest threat to WCM rollouts. Make sure you can link the need to customize to business outcomes. Be wary of stakeholders who merely want to support legacy processes with the new system.

Migrating old content and integrating to best-of-breed and legacy systems.

Top Performers today are all about integrating WCM to the sales and marketing tools that deliver high value. Leading WCM solutions now provide solid flexibility and APIs for obtaining data from, and integrating to, other systems and tools. A couple of WCM vendors have pursued a strategy to include all functionality within their system, but most organizations refuse to shed valuable legacy systems in favor of an all-in-one system. Assuming marketing executives must rely on integrations, they should carefully plan their online content structure to only pull data they truly need. If there is strong resistance within the organization, then teams should pursue those data migrations and integrations that will likely yield the fastest ROI and management buy-in.

Creating compelling, dynamic content. Top Performers are putting in the effort to differentiate and personalize the end user experience. Our survey data show that 65% of Top Performers have dedicated marketing staff who ensure that fresh, compelling, and dynamic content are created

100%

50%

Creating compelling,

dynamic content.

Migrating old content.Dealing with

customization.

98% 72% 63%

MOST CHALLENGING ASPECTS OF WCM FOR TOP PERFORMERS*






and distributed to the various online channels on a regular basis and as special needs arise. These may include online industry events or unique digital social gatherings. By contrast, only 33% of Everyone Else dedicates staff to this critical area of customer engagement.

Integrating legacy systems. When researching, a variety of options are available with respect to the breadth and depth of the WCM offering. Top Performers indicated a high propensity for evaluating suite offerings in the future that would allow them to divest of legacy disparate solutions. But the survey data suggest that most Top Performers actually support multiple technologies and use integration and APIs to move data and support content creation.

Ensuring consistency across online and offline channels. Can a brand mean different things to different people? Is that reflected in the audience and interaction types specific to each online channel? In today’s social and multi-channel world, you do not always control your branding once the conversations takes off and

hundreds or thousands of consumers get involved. Still, you must identify the types of message styles that work in each channel and attempt to put forth your brand’s value proposition to suit the channel. WCM enables you to adjust messages and engagement style without losing your core branding.

Change management associated with adoption. Our survey shows that 65% of organizations say that marketing manages and controls the company’s online presence. At the same time, Top Performers are getting the most from their WCM solutions, because 89% of them have non-technical staff using WCM daily. WCM technology is unique because it requires heavy involvement from IT and business users who may not share the same priorities for the new WCM solution. It’s important to develop a plan for mitigating risks during the implementation which could take months. In many cases it’s also critical to educate executives about realistic milestones for rolling out a new solution. Migrating data and customization are top of mind and for good reason, they are expensive and time consuming.

100%

50%

CHALLENGING ASPECTS OF WCM FOR TOP PERFORMERS*

Online & o�ne brand consistency.

Integrating legacy systems.

Governance on content.

57% 45% 38%






100%

50%

Ongoing training. Justifying the investment.

Change management associated with

adoption.

29% 28% 24%

LEAST CHALLENGING ASPECTS OF WCM FOR TOP PERFORMERS*


Justifying the investment. Justification for WCM has been made easier by virtue of its ability to integrate marketing and sales tools with online content distribution across channels. By engaging customers throughout the buying cycle with targeted messaging and promotions, marketing quickly becomes part of the lead generation and lead nurturing processes. In some cases this can be monetized and measured as through increases in revenue, conversion rates, and response. Ultimately, WCM investments are justified through both operational efficiencies and customer experience improvements.

Ongoing training. Training and ongoing support used to be a top challenge for extracting a return on investment in WCM five years ago. It seems the solution providers are getting increasingly savvier about creating user interfaces that is intuitive and easy for business users to embrace. Thankfully advances in digital platforms such as HTML5 are transforming on-demand offerings and providing a wealth of flexibility around solution interfaces. It’s pretty difficult to screw up an online publication with the workflows, approvals, and template configuration. So definitely develop a plan for ongoing training, but know that the solution providers have largely checked this box for you in next generation solutions.





Part 5: Performance MetricsExecutive at most companies have tempered their expectations of massive revenue growth arising purely from social media. Yes, social media can provide great engagement, but closing sales still depends heavily on visits to owned media assets. Therefore, aside from “overall company revenue,” Top Performers cite four key metrics that they measure and report when evaluating their WCM progress and the impact of WCM. These include conversion rates on the website and other owned media, unique visits to owned media sites, average page views per visitor on the website, and average time on the website per visitor (ATOS). The thing about some of the top metrics that stood out for us was the fact that even Top Performers are measuring success through soft metrics and not quantifiable metrics like conversion rates or average order value.

These represent the most common metrics Top Performers use to physically measure the success of a technology initiative before and/or after the implementation.

Performance Metrics

87% 81% 76%

Average time on sitePage views Unique visits

MOST COMMON METRICS FOR MEASURING WCM ROI ACCORDING TO TOP PERFORMERS*


Average number of page views per visitor. Average number of page views can be a tricky measure on social sites, depending on the layout of your social presence. However, page views and ATOS remain hugely important measures of how site visitors find and like an organization’s content. While these measures provide hard data, the interpretation of that data is subjective. For example, maybe visitors spend more time on your site and click through more pages not

out of interest, but because your site does not quickly present appropriate information. To understand these metrics better, marketers should gather visitor feedback to see what drives their behavior.

Unique visits to owned media assets. This metric, while important, varies in its measurability in today’s online world. Different social media sites have different reporting capabilities and own the data. Yet, it’s your WCM-generated





content that draws people to your social presence. Unique visits are still heavily measured, with 81% percent of Top Performers regarding it as an important metric. This metric remains far less accurate than conversion rates, because the unique visit volume cannot be proven objectively.

Average time on site. ATOS is a measure of engagement, but it can also be a measure of relevance. Just because users spend more time on the site doesn’t mean the customer experience is optimal. Combine ATOS with content consumption, downloads, and other engagement metrics to confirm that users are actually finding what they are looking for online.

Conversion rates on website and other owned media. Two years ago, Top Performers measured website conversion rates nearly 20% more than the next closest performance metric. What’s different today is that organizations must now measure conversion rates across multiple owned media, not just the company website. Top Performers far outpace Everyone Else when it comes to measuring conversion rates at non-website owned

media assets, 59% and 34% percent, respectively. Conversion rates are also simple to measure and tie directly to the ratio of online marketing spend to customer count.

Average number of page views per visitor. Average number of page views can be a tricky measure on social sites, depending on the layout of your social presence. However, page views and ATOS remain hugely important measures of how site visitors find and like an organization’s content. While these measures provide hard data, the interpretation of that data is subjective. For example, maybe visitors spend more time on your site and click through more pages not out of interest, but because your site does not quickly present appropriate information. To understand these metrics better, marketers should gather visitor feedback to see what drives their behavior.

Average time on site. ATOS is a measure of engagement, but it can also be a measure of relevance. Just because users spend more time on the site doesn’t mean the customer experience is optimal. Combine ATOS

71% 68% 62%

Time spent manipulating content

Average time on site (ATOS)

Conversion rates on website

COMMON METRICS FOR MEASURING WCM ROI ACCORDING TO TOP PERFORMERS*






with content consumption, downloads, and other engagement metrics to confirm that users are actually finding what they are looking for online.

Conversion rates on website and other owned media. Two years ago, Top Performers measured website conversion rates nearly 20% more than the next closest performance metric. What’s different today is that organizations must now measure conversion rates across multiple owned media, not just the company website. Top Performers far outpace Everyone Else when it comes to measuring conversion rates at non-website owned media assets, 59% and 34% percent, respectively. Conversion rates are also simple to measure and tie directly to the ratio of online marketing spend to customer count. Top Performers measure website conversion rates nearly 20% more than the next closest performance metric.

Time required to update online content. Marketers can and should use this metric to justify WCM investments in an increasingly complex and multi-channel online world. It will make WCM justification much easier, because the

need for content creation to satisfy all these channels would require far greater time without an automated content management system. This is why Top Performers now measure this metric twice as much as they did two years ago. As the number and importance of online channels grow, the WCM value for saving time and resources will continue its upward rise

Marketing cycle time. For organizations seeking to tap a global consumer base, online channels offer 24x7 engagement with target audiences. More industries are impacted by the speed of communications today than just two years ago. While this may be obvious for such industries as financial news and financial trading, examples now arise in such industries as consumer products. For example, the marriage between Twitter and television has led creative companies to measure instantaneous social interactions, analyze their meaning, and respond with instant online offers to match. Such events don’t just occur during normal business hours. WCM puts content publication in the hands of domain experts and front line people who need to make things happen in the moment.

NUMBERS

19Percentage year-over-year growth in WCM adoption from 2012 to 2013.

57Percentage of Top Performers actively working on integrating WCM and core marketing or sales technologies.

71

Percentage of Top Performers that developed a “WCM roadmap” in advance of investing in WCM.

86Percentage of Top Performers that rank the online customer experience as a top two source of competitive advantage in 2014.

8Average number of weeks organizations reported it took to implement SaaS-based WCM solutions

60Percentage of all respondents that have used, are currently using, or plan to use open source platforms with enterprise offerings.

55% 31% 12%

Bounce rates Average order value

LEAST COMMON METRICS FOR MEASURING WCM ROI ACCORDING TO TOP PERFORMERS*

Marketing cycle time






Part 6: Success StoriesMr Rental provides a one stop solution for all household needs

including whitegoods, TV’s, audio visual, furniture, fitness equipment

and computers. The company offers unique flexible rentals where

the customer can choose the various options. Mr Rental began

franchising in 2001 and the Mr Rental family has grown to 70

franchisees in Australia and 19 franchisees in New Zealand.

The Challenge

With a target demographic of mothers with multiple children — who are also heavy mobile users — it was important for Mr Rental to have a snappy and easy-to-use mobile presence. The site also had to adequately represent the more than 70 products currently available. In deciding its mobile strategy, the company had to be careful to pursue the “right” approach, or suffer a potential decrease in mobile web traffic. For example, since the majority of customers (roughly 45,000 unique visitors per month) would not be repeat website visitors, a mobile app would not be effective. Customers would not likely take the time and effort to download yet another app to evaluate and purchase items.

Mr Rental had to address the needs of its mobile users head on. Therefore, the company needed a mobile website that would carry the brand appropriately, show products in an easily consumable manner, and provide real-time ecommerce capabilities to address the immediacy mobile users were looking for. The mobile site also had to be easy-to-use and require minimal training for Mr Rental’s content editors.

The Solution

After weighing options such as mobile websites, mobile apps, and consideration for existing technology the team moved ahead with a packaged WCM solution with an open architecture that could easily integrate with existing systems. The team also used a packaged eCommerce capability to dramatically simplify checkout process from what was 15 fields to just 8.

The Results

The mobile site took approximately 2 months to create and saw an immediate uptick in traffic after launch. Prior to the mobile site launch, page views by mobile devices only accounted for around 14% of all page views. Today this figure has increased to 79%Even with the page views up, users spent 38% less time on the site, meaning they browsed 79% more pages in almost half

the time prior

Since the launch, there has been a 138% increase in inquiries from mobile

devices due, in part, to a very quick user experience that garnered a favorable response. Likewise the bounce rate decreased by 41% and mobile conversion rate was up 108%.

Note: The original version of this Success Story may have been prepared—and previously published—by an enabling solution provider. If so, it is edited and reproduced here by permission. While reasonable efforts have been made to verify the accuracy of the information contained herein through independent fact-checking, Gleanster disclaims liability for any content that was developed and submitted by third parties. Success Stories are selected based solely on the merits of the content as judged by Gleanster’s Research Oversight Committee. Vendors are not charged a fee for inclusion and no preference is given to vendors based on their ability to purchase other Gleanster products or services. Any questions or concerns regarding this particular Success Story–or Gleanster’s selection criteria or policies, in general–should be directed to [email protected]. Case studies may be submitted for publishing consideration using the Success Stories Submission Form.

Mobile customers are often more qualified, as they’re not ‘surfing the web.’

“


mailto:successstories%40gleanster.com?subject=Success%20Stories

mailto:successstories%40gleanster.com?subject=Success%20Stories

http://gleanster.limeask.com/32414/lang-en




Part 7: Vendor Landscape

The Web Content Management landscape has changed significantly over the last five years, as large vendors have acquired smaller vendors and incorporated point functionality into broader WCM suites. Despite this, the Content Management space continues to be confusing, as hundreds of vendors compete, complement, and overlap each other with functionality suited to Digital Asset Management (DAM), Enterprise Content Management (ECM), Marketing Asset Management (MAM), Marketing Automation, Email Marketing, Media Asset Management, eCommerce, and of course, Web Content Management (WCM). WCM solutions are differentiated by their ability to convert and optimize digital content for delivery across multiple online channels. Moreover, they provide integrations to most other tools listed above as well as a broad range of marketing and sales tools. WCM supports the execution of communications across the digital presentation layer and manages the production, publication, and distribution of digital assets over owned media. It’s not for managing work in progress, heavy workflows for content development, and large assets. For these reasons, WCM has become the key enabler to an optimized end user experience.

Vendor & Solution Showcases

Visit www.gleanster.com to access vendor and solution showcases for this topic area, where you’ll find:

• Vendor Descriptions

• Analyst Commentary

• Related White Papers

• Videos & Presentations

• Solution Demos

• Other Related Research

• And much more...

It’s everything you need to make smart technology decisions. All in one place.

Browse the WCM Research Portal

While marketing traditionally drives WCM initiatives based on business need, today, the pendulum is swinging back toward a joint marketing-IT collaboration to integrated WCM with other sales and marketing tools, such as analytics, A/B testing, email marketing, etc. Vendors have responded to the need for integrated functionality mostly by providing stable APIs to make integrations with other systems easy and streamlined. However, there are two major exceptions to this rule. Both Adobe, SDL, and Sitecore are attempting to incorporate both core WCM functionality and the functionality of sales and marketing tools into their proprietary platforms. It appears to be working for both companies, as they enjoy leading vendor status in the eyes of many industry watchers and among enterprise buyers of WCM solutions.

However, most organization have expressed their desire to keep legacy systems and best-of-breed solutions in place, leading most vendors to focus heavily on integration capabilities.

In 2014, integrations and enabling the digital end user experience are of paramount importance. However, ease of use counts heavily in purchase decisions. WCM technologies are delivered across a variety of platforms and licensing models: SaaS, On-Premise, Licensed, Open Source, and Hybrid. While budget is important, ease of use is critical to engaging actual end-users in the demo process. The WCM solutions that enable non-technical users to easily optimize the digital consumer experience will win out over the next several years.


http://www.gleanster.com/index.html#!/vendors


http://www.gleanster.com/topic_area/web-content-management




Adobe http://www.gleanster.com/vendor/adobe

“Adobe Experience Manager helps you create, manage, and optimize digital customer experiences across every channel, including web, mobile apps, digital forms, and social communities. With the ability to deliver next-generation experiences across both online and in-person interactions, you can increase demand and build lasting brand loyalty.”Gleanster Skinny: Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) includes five core offerings: sites (Web Content Management), assets (Digital Asset

Management), forms (formerly LiveCycle), communities (Social Communities), and apps (for mobile apps). For clarity, AEM is a solution under the Marketing Cloud suite. Adobe is well positioned as a leading enterprise platform for powering the customer experience- from both a creative and engagement standpoint. While research suggests Top Performers tend to invest in integration to power the digital experience, Adobe contradicts this trend with continued growth in customers using the AEM solution. Customers cite a desire for out of the box integration, a unified interface, and robust capabilities as top reasons to implement AEM.

Note: As with all Gleanster research findings, vendor rankings on the FLASH charts are determined by the experiences of industry practitioners and not by Gleanster’s own analyst assessment or opinion. The omission of a particular vendor name from one or more of the FLASH charts may be due to a lack of sufficient data about that vendor and may be no indication of its performance relative to other solution providers. Using a 1-5 point rating scale, survey respondents are asked to assess the solution provider(s) they are currently using, or have had the experience of using within the past two (2) years, across four (4) different dimensions: Ease of Deployment, Ease of Use, Features and Functionality, and Overall Value. To qualify for possible inclusion on one or more FLASH charts, vendors with less than $10M in annual revenue must be rated by a minimum of five (5) qualified survey responses and vendors with more than $10M in annual revenue must be rated by a minimum of eight (8) qualified survey responses. A mean class performance score is calculated for each vendor. Top-scoring vendors are then assigned to the FLASH charts on a rank-order basis. Gleanster screens all survey submissions that are used as the basis for vendor rankings and removes duplicate submissions from the same client company (factoring in only the highest scores). The final rankings are not intended to provide conclusive advice or recommendations but to merely serve as a source of directionally relevant data points. All solution providers included in the Vendor Landscape section are given an opportunity to invite their customers to participate in the survey at least six (6) weeks in advance of publication. Through no other means are solution providers allowed to influence their placement on these FLASH charts.

GOOD BETTER BEST

ALFRESCO

EKTRON

SITECORE

COREMEDIA

ELCOM

CROWNPEAK

E-SPIRIT

MAGNOLIA

ORACLE

KENTICO

TELERIK

ADOBE

MICROSOFT

WCM VENDORS RANKED BY EASE OF DEPLOYMENT

BASED ON EXPERIENCE FROM USERS

3.4 out of 5

3.4 out of 5

3.3 out of 5

3.1 out of 5

4.2 out of 5

4 out of 5

3.9 out of 5

3.8 out of 5

3.7 out of 5

4.9 out of 5

4.8 out of 5

4.7 out of 5

4.4 out of 5

* Gleanster Research 2014 Web Content Management Gleansight Benchmark Report , June 2014 Update

Vendor Rankings FLASH chart © Gleanster, August 2013. Note: Vendor rankings are determined by the experiences of industry practitioners, according to survey feedback, and not by the assessment or opinion of Gleanster analysts. The omission of a particular vendor may be due to lack of sufficient data and may be no indication of that company’s performance relative to other solution providers. Information on the research methodology used for vendor rankings is available elsewhere in this Gleansight benchmark report and also in the FAQ section of the Gleanster website.





While it’s difficult to argue with its success, perhaps the biggest challenge Adobe will have to overcome is the price tag. Adobe is largely out of reach for a material percentage of WCM buyers in the market today, most of which are small-and-midsize companies that are constrained by not just budget, but the resources to support a more comprehensive solution. That isn’t to say Adobe doesn’t have a strong story to tell around SMB and mid-size adoption- but the percentage of customers in mid-to-upper enterprise far outweigh SMB. Sometimes it’s not feasible for organizations (of any size) to fully rip, replace, and rethink the customer experience infrastructure across the full breadth of offerings Adobe brings to the table. That said, Adobe is and will continue to be a safe investment for organizations looking for a provider that will grow with the company and can support ancillary marketing technology requirements now and in the future. Buyers are also reminded that the Adobe Marketing Cloud can also be implemented in phases, which allows organizations to expand the Adobe footprint over time.

Agility http://www.gleanster.com/vendor/agility

“Agility works with big and small to help maximize the value of their digital content. The Agility CMS is a cloud-based platform that drastically reduces the time and cost of keeping text, image and video content up-to-date. Our digital framework provides the building blocks to rapidly deploy publishing solutions across web, mobile and social media.”

Gleanster Skinny: Agility CMS is a cloud-based system built on the .NET framework. It allows users to manage website content and pages and publish content to a wide range of digital channels including the web, social media, and mobile. They also provide tools for managing text, video, and image assets. Agility CMS is an ideal short-list candidate for Publishing and Media companies that need to customize online content, publish articles, and managing large volumes of daily updates. For more robust campaign measurement, Agility customers would typically have to integrate with a web analytics provider, but Agility has out of the box support for all major web analytics packages including Google Analytics, Omniture, WebTrends, and ClickTracks. The platform has native capabilities for SEO and it is eCommerce ready. There are 2 optional add-ons for extending the platform capabilities: multi-language support

and multi-channel publishing. User-generated content (UGC) management is now included in the base Agility CMS offering. The UGC add-on provides a variety of capabilities exclusively for managing profiles and publishing content to YouTube, Flickr, Facebook and other social media sites. It also enables users to add voting, liking, comments, and ratings to their sites -- features that contribute to an interactive, engaging website experience. Agility offers services like implementation planning, web development, and performance tuning. Pricing starts at $250 per month (for 2 users) and up to $1,500 (for unlimited users). Additional support offerings can be added on monthly for $100-200 per offering.

Alfresco http://www.gleanster.com/vendor/alfresco

“Alfresco helps teams share, manage and retain content across the extended enterprise with simplicity that end users love and smarts that IT can endorse. Alfresco enables organizations in more than 180 countries to collaborate more effectively, improve business process efficiency and ensure information governance. Across cloud, mobile, hybrid and on-premise environments, Alfresco is smart enterprise content made easy. Founded in 2005, Alfresco is headquartered in Maidenhead, outside of London with U.S. headquarters in San Mateo.”

Gleanster Skinny: Alfresco is one of the premier open-source alternatives to content management on the market today. Marketing buyers looking for “WCM” solutions might be a bit confused, if not turned off by the “Enterprise Content Management” positioning on the Alfresco website. Though this does align with the view of the market according to Forrester and Gartner. Truth is, Alfresco is a solid ECM offering delivering document management, workflows, metadata management, and content publication, but they still largely sell to an IT buyer and as such require alignment with IT to configure and support. The open API makes Alfresco a viable alternative to augment existing legacy tools that cannot be replaced easily, but it doesn’t offer out of the box drag-and-drop or wizard support that some end-users may find valuable. Also, marketers won’t find polls, surveys, forms, or product management capabilities in Alfresco. Alfresco is a Java based web application and is suitable for organizations running Linux. At the core Alfresco offers a solid content management platform with a wide range of delivery


http://www.gleanster.com/vendors/aimcrm




options ranging from cloud, mobile, hybrid, or on-demand. This can make Alfresco one of the more affordable offerings, and at times they will push the hosted model for freemium use so you can actually try out the platform before you invest. The platform also allows users to connect and publish content to social media channels, such as YouTube, SlideShare, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Flickr. Alfesco Enterprise 4.1 supports integrations with GoogleDocs, Microsoft Office, Quickoffice HD, and Adobe Creative Suite.

Automattic“Hassle-free blogging even with your own domain freemium model.”

Gleanster Skinny: No discussion of WCM is complete without mentioning WordPress , an open-source PHP-based blogging platform. Wordpress is available under General Public License and initially gained considerable traction in business and consumer growth as a hosted blog platform. But over the years, WordPress has expanded into a flexible and stable web content management offering boasting 20k plus

AdobeAgilityAlfrescoAutomatticAutonomyClickabilityCoreMediaCrownPeakDay SoftwareDotNetNukeEktronElcomEllisLabEMCEpiServere-SpiriteZ SystemsGx SoftwareHewlett-PackardIBM LotusIngeniuxKenticoMadCap SoftwareMagnoliaMicrosoftNetReachOpen TextOraclePaperThinPercussionQuantum ArtSDLSense/NetSiteCoreSiteExecutive (Systems Alliance)SitekitSqizTelerik

Quick Reference Guide

GOOD BETTER BEST

EKTRON

ALFRESCO

SDL

MICROSOFT

MAGNOLIA

ORACLE

CROWNPEAK

TELERIK

KENTICO

E-SPIRIT

ELCOM

ADOBE

WCM VENDORS RANKED BY EASE OF USE


2.6 out of 5

2.5 out of 5

2.5 out of 5

3 out of 5

3 out of 5

3 out of 5

2.8 out of 5

4.4 out of 5

3.9 out of 5

3.7 out of 5

3.5 out of 5

3.4 out of 5







extensions and modules. Automattic recently released a new version called WordPress.com VIP which is a SaaS hosted version of the platform targeting enterprises. WordPress is a good fit for organizations with technical resources who can customize the tool as needed, but still it’s not a robust WCM offering with out-of-the-box workflows, templates, and deep integrations with other enterprise class tools such as ecommerce or web analytics platforms. Bottom line, it’s a great alternative for small and midsize organizations looking for flexible and turnkey options for hosting a website or blog. While many midsize and enterprise

clients utilize WordPress it tends to be for more limited applications or ancillary web properties.

CoreMedia http://www.gleanster.com/vendor/coremedia

“CoreMedia is a leading provider of Web Content Management (WCM) software to organizations demanding engaging, context-driven online experiences for their customers regardless of channel or touchpoint. The company’s WCM suite offers unique business value by seamlessly integrating digital and social media assets, increasing editorial productivity and accelerating

GOOD BETTER BEST


OPENTEXT

TELERIK

ELCOM

EKTRON

ORACLE

SDL

ADOBE

SITECORE

CROWNPEAK

ALFRESCO

E-SPIRIT

WCM VENDORS RANKED BY FEATURES AND FUNCTIONALITY


2.9 out of 5

2.8 out of 5

2.7 out of 5

3.1 out of 5

3 out of 5

3 out of 5

4.8 out of 5

4.7 out of 5

4.3 out of 5

4.3 out of 5

4.0 out of 5



http://www.gleanster.com/vendors/avidian-technologies




time to market in complex environments. As a result, businesses can more effectively execute their online strategies to engage users, build customer loyalty and ultimately drive greater revenue and profitability.”

Gleanster Skinny: CoreMedia 7 is the latest iteration of the vendor’s suite of web content management solutions. CoreMedia provides a scalable platform for empowering business users in marketing with the ability to own and manage websites, campaigns, microsites, mobile engagement, and social interactions. CoreMedia offers a robust set of options designed to template how users interact with the website. Business users can modify content in a WYSIWYG editor and view content converted across different devices and formatting options such as mobile, banner ads, or the web via the dynamic web preview function. CoreMedia has out of the box integration with WebSphere Commerce and SAP Web Channel Experience Manager. In fact, CoreMedia has developed a unique blueprint methodology for implementations involving both WCM and eCommerce. Case studies refererence implementations from inception to configuration in as little as 6-8 weeks. CoreMedia has a strong foundation of customer success stories in media, telecom, finance, retail, healthcare, manufacturing, logistics, and the public sector. For organizations looking to deeply integrate social on web properties the Elastic Social capability in CoreMedia allows marketers to engage users via Twitter and Facebook and track engagement, comments, and post right from a company website. CoreMedia is a good fit for mid-to-large enterprise organizations where commerce and content management are core to go-to-market strategy.

CrownPeak http://www.gleanster.com/vendor/crownpeak

“CrownPeak is the web experience management platform for digital marketers who need to launch compelling, unified and relevant digital experiences for web and mobile fast, without IT support. As a cloud-based service, CrownPeak requires no software, hardware, IT support or capital expenses and it can be integrated with existing solutions like Adobe, SharePoint or in-house applications.”

Gleanster Skinny: CrownPeak is exclusively a SaaS multi-tenant WCM architecture designed to deliver scalability, interoperability and exceptional

customer service for the marketing business user. For the marketing users, a multi-tenant architecture means there are no platform upgrade compatibility issues to worry about, no IT support queues to wait in, and more flexibility on delivery than traditional on-premise solutions. CrownPeak offers a solid platform and has a solid book of happy enterprise customers. The platform was initially offered for SMB providers, but over the last 5-7 years CrownPeak has gained considerable traction in the enterprise – today, the entire platform is designed to support the most complex enterprise requirements. CrownPeak boasts rapid implementation times as short as 6 weeks which they credit to the SaaS delivery model and the core WCM offering which are designed exclusively to support marketers in global enterprises. For this reason, CrownPeak heavily stresses best-of-breed integration and partners with providers like Marketo, Microsoft Dynamics, and Jive (and 60 other pre-built integration’s) to close the loop on marketing process. CrownPeak also boasts a full out-of-the box integrated DAM offering.

The content management dashboard workflow is presented in a single screen, allowing users to seamlessly view, add, and share dynamic content, layouts, analytics, lead generation data, and web content optimization information, all in the same interface. The UI also supports more sophisticated tasks, as well, with advanced features for targeting, testing, integrating 3rd party analytics and customer data. That means marketers, agency partners, and development have role-based access to the same interface, which dramatically streamlines workflow and development. CrownPeak supports content delivery across Java, .NET, PHP, XML, CSV, and JSON. Annual subscriptions for Enterprise buyers begin at $75,000 to $120,000, depending on the hosting options, volume of active users, and specific platform modules selected.

DotNetNuke (DNN)http://www.gleanster.com/vendor/dotnetnuke

“DNN is the world’s leading adaptive web platform that can be quickly and affordably leveraged to keep an organization’s most important business asset relevant, up to date and in touch. DNN is the world’s leading Web Content Management System (WCMS) for the Microsoft ecosystem, powering more than 700,000 web sites globally. Whether you need a WCMS for your personal website, a business, educational institution or government agency, DotNetNuke


http://www.gleanster.com/vendors/avidian-technologies




has a solution that fits your needs.”

Gleanster Skinny: DNN is an extremely popular ASP .NET content management platform. One of the main reasons for the popularity of the platform is the flexibility of licensing options. DNN can scale for the needs of an individual (free) or expand into mid-size or large enterprise companies with the Enterprise and Elite editions. Estimates suggest DNN has over 1 million users, and that means a strong development community. DNN is considered the leading WCM Platform for Microsoft .NET.

Ektron http://www.gleanster.com/vendor/ektron

“The Ektron Web Content Management Solution provides everything you need to empower content creators and deliver a dynamic online experience to site visitors that helps you achieve your goals. Ektron’s Enterprise Web Content Management Solution is used by more than 3,800 organizations today, and provides a flexible and scalable solution for robust content management. With a best of breed approach, Ektron integrates seamlessly with CRM, Analytics, Marketing Automation Systems, ERP,

Note: While Gleanster strives to include all of the most relevant and noteworthy solution providers in the Vendor Landscape section, the list is by no means comprehensive in nature. Omissions may occur due to lack of sufficient market presence, as judged by the Gleanster research analyst team. Space constraints may necessitate some amount of paring of even those vendors that do have sufficient market presence. Simple oversights may also happen on occasion. To submit information about a solution provider, please complete the Solution Provider Information Form. To schedule a vendor briefing, please email [email protected]. Vendor descriptions are taken verbatim from company websites or from vendor-submitted profile information. Gleanster Skinny (GS) commentaries are based on vendor briefings, customer interviews and Gleansight research findings as well as on company press releases and various other information sources.

GOOD BETTER BEST


EKTRON

CLICKABILTY

COREMEDIA

TELERIK

SITECORE

ORACLE

SDL

ELCOM

ADOBE

CROWNPEAK

E-SPIRIT

ALFRESCO

WCM VENDORS RANKED BY OVERALL VALUE


2.9 out of 5

2.9 out of 5

2.8 out of 5

3.4 out of 5

3.3 out of 5

3.1 out of 5

3.1 out of 5

4.8 out of 5

4.5 out of 5

4.3 out of 5

4.1 out of 5

3.8 out of 5






SharePoint, and more to help deliver rapid ROI to your organization.”

Gleanster Skinny: Ektron offers a comprehensive .NET-based platform that combines Web Content Management, digital marketing, and community software. The solution is designed with rapid deployment and agile marketing in mind, with built-in capabilities such as experience management, video delivery, and content authoring and deployment tools. Ektron boasts over 3,700 customers. The solution was initially targeted towards small-and-midsize organizations but rapidly expanded up-market into enterprise. Ektron’s stated strategy is to focus on core WCM and integrate with best-of-breed providers. The newest offering around Digital Experience Management delivers dynamic, personalized customer experiences across all channels. Ektron recently developed strategic partnerships with Hubspot, Marketo, Microsoft Dynamics, and Salesforce.com. Ektron is a viable, and often less expensive alternative to the larger suite solutions from Adobe, Sitecore, and OpenText.”

Elcom http://www.gleanster.com/vendor/elcom

“Elcom Technology Inc. (Elcom) is a global provider of enterprise web content management solutions. We assist mid-enterprise organizations to achieve their corporate objectives for Websites, Intranets, Portals, Mobile Web, Social, eCommerce, Learning Management and Online Marketing.”

Gleanster Skinny: ElcomCMS offers both Saas and on-premise WCM. Version 9, the latest iteration of the elcomCMS, was released in November 2013. Version 9 extends the elcomCMS platform to integrations with Marketo, Salesforce.com, SugarCRM, Box, and Google Drive. As a global organization headquartered in Sydney Australia, Elcom has offices in North America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore. Elcom is positioned well to meet enterprise requirements and typically prices around functionality- not per user. Elcom maintains that this strategy helps organizations invest in functionality they will actually use and doesn’t limit active users because of pricing concerns. Elcom includes an out-of-the-box email marketing capability which might be attractive for organizations looking for light email engagement with a target audience- for more demanding email marketing requirements customers should look to packaged integrations

with email marketing providers. Elcom is a solid solution for upper small and midsize organizations. The module-based pricing is a refreshing change from traditional pricing models tiered by number of users. That also makes the solution a great option for organizations with large volumes of publishers both internal and external (agencies and channel partners).

EllisLab http://www.gleanster.com/vendor/ellislab

We’re the company behind ExpressionEngine, the most compelling content management system on the market, MojoMotor, the publishing engine that does less, and CodeIgniter, a web application framework that lets PHP developers work faster and smarter. We also provide mission-critical web hosting for people that rely on the web, through our sister company EngineHosting.

Gleanster Skinny: The philosophy behind EllisLab’s content management system, ExpressionEngine (EE), is to provide a solution that enables web professionals to build anything on the web. EE is a commercial product built on an Open Source foundation. This “Operating System” like approach serves as a key differentiator and provides users with two major benefits: strong customization and extendibility. Because the core is built on CodeIgniter, EllisLab’s Open Source PHP framework, users are able to add to, modify and create extensions for their own site. Also, EllisLab has developed a wide range of extensions of its own with the funding from the commercial pricing of its solution (a commercial license is not cheap, by the way). EE comes with 22 add-on modules and over 100 plug-ins. The vendor has built out a thriving developer community and users can find a wide range of first and third-party add-ons for EE there as well. EllisLab has a team of dedicated support staff, but keep in mind this is an open source platform that relies heavily on the support of the broader community.

EpiServer http://www.gleanster.com/vendor/episerver

“EPiServer AB is the leading supplier of solutions that enable true web engagement and drive business results for end customers. The EPiServer platform is delivered through an extensive network of over 690 partner companies in 30 countries. EPiServer combines the stability and support of a commercial product with





EPiServer World, a thriving developer community of more than 20,000 developers.”

Gleanster Skinny: EpiServer has been in the content management space for a decade and a half and is also a recognized leader in the enterprise collaboration, online community and ecommerce markets. The vendor’s .NET-based WCM offering has a modular design that allows users to customize the solution and extend its functionality beyond traditional web content management. The architecture makes it particularly easy to take advantage of EpiServer’s related social software and e-commerce solutions. EpiServer CMS comes with modules for e-commerce, community and marketing. Users can also integrate with other EpiServer solutions and with third-party products. EpiServer leadership strongly believes they are growing faster than the market suggesting they are capturing marketshare from competitive products. That said, these claims are unsubstantiated by Gleanster and short-list

EpiServer has both on-premise and Saas offerings. The bulk of their customers come from the mid-market with continued traction in enterprise. Core markets include, government, catalog & commerce, nonprofit, media, publishers, entertainment, and retail. EpiServer primarily sells through a network of 500 partners made up of IT consultants and design agencies. Pricing ranges from cloud hosted single virtual server offerings at $1,500 per month to unlimited sites and multiple servers at upwards of $200k. There’s also a one-time license fee of approximately $20,000. EpiServer includes packaged offerings around marketing, social, commerce, hosting, and an online drag-and-drop configuration user interface that links the different elements together.

e-Spirit http://www.gleanster.com/vendor/e-spirit

“e-Spirit is the manufacturer of the industry leading FirstSpirit™ Content Management System, relied on by enterprises worldwide to help them engage audiences more effectively and increase market share. FirstSpirit enables enterprises to successfully implement their digital strategy and realize a faster time to market across multiple channels including corporate websites, online stores, company intranets and portals, extranets, print and mobile devices—in other words, anywhere communication needs to take place.”

Gleanster Skinny: e-Spirit supports a global customer base from 13 offices in the USA and Europe. e-Spirit was founded in Dortmund, Germany, in 1999, and is part of the adesso Group, which is one of the largest German IT service providers. e-Spirit offers a competitive enterprise class WCM solution and boasts a strong portfolio of loyal customers such as Nintendo, Speedo, Airbus, BASF, Bosch, Dutch Government, Santander Bank, and Olympus. The WCM platform is called FirstSpirit. e-Spirit stresses a go-to-market strategy that centers around a robust WCM that can easily integrate best-of-breed solutions as needed. The have packaged e-commerce integration with Demandware, IBM WebSphere Commerce, hybris and many more that are second to none in the industry. Among FirstSpirit’s key benefits are interoperability and ease of use designed to support marketing process. The Java-based CMS integrates into complex system environments, enterprise portals – including SAP NetWeaver, IBM WebSphere, Microsoft SharePoint, JBoss and Liferay – and with other third-party solutions ranging from customer and web analytics to video management. The FirstSpirit AppCenter supports interface integration of virtually any web application directly into the CMS.

With a simple drag-and-drop interface and robust features that support the entire content value chain from creation to publication across multiple channels and formats, e-Spirit is a worthy contender to established CMS providers like Adobe,Sitecore, and OpenText. The interface is both powerful and intuitive and largely works the way marketers think – a core differentiator that simply cannot be overlooked in the evaluation process. e-Spirit is a relatively new competitor in the US market and brand recognition may work against them.

eZ Systemshttp://www.gleanster.com/vendor/ez-systems

“eZ Systems is in the business of Web Content Management Solutions and has been since 1999. We maintain a global presence in Europe, Asia and the Americas. Our large international business partner network is the foundation of our success in the market. Our team of engineers, consultants and partner managers enables successful implementations for our customers and partners.”

Gleanster Skinny: eZ Systems offers a commercial product, called ez Publish, built on





an open source framework. It’s based on the LAMP stack, which is a software bundle of free, open source software that supports application servers. The result is a highly scalable, flexible and customizable solution. However, there’s a high learning curve for non-technical users as well as users of Drupal or Joomla because the interface looks and behaves differently than a typical dashboard. The interface features a Website Toolbar that can be used to publish, move, replace and translate content directly from the browser. eZ Systems offers a wide range of built-in applications for customizing and extending the product functionality. There are also a variety of free add-ons, called “Extensions”, available for immediate download. Another major benefit is the high level of security. eZ Publish provides all of the important security features expected of a WCM solution, as well as a unique functionality that’s not typically included in other products, called Sandbox testing. Sandbox testing enables a type of revision control that protects collections of code, data and/or content from changes that could be damaging or difficult to revert.

The latest iteration of the product, eZ Publish version 5.2, was released in November 2013. It features seamless integration with marketing automation, smart analytics, personalization, recommendations and other online marketing applications. eZ offers a community and enterprise edition of the platform which are largely differentiated by maintenance, support, and service level agreements. eZ supports a variety of channels making it a viable option for organizations looking for affordable solutions to support the entire customer experience via mobile, web, eCommerce, workflows, and content delivery from a single platform.

GX Software http://www.gleanster.com/vendor/gx-software

“GX Software is a global provider of Web Content Management and Online Marketing software. The company’s innovative online marketing solutions empower organizations to engage with their online audience across all customer touch points to build valuable customer relationships. With GX Software products organizations can achieve their business goals and outperform competition by delivering best customer experiences and engagement across online channels like websites, social media, mobile and others.”

Gleanster Skinny: GX WebManager is GX

Software’s Java-based WCM system for web, mobile and social. Currently in its ninth major release, the product fundamentally delivers core WCM capabilities. GX Manager has a central content repository for storing content and publishing it to multiple locations, websites and channels directly. Digital asset management functionality is also included. The vendor makes it easy to add functionality to the platform through a feature called WebManager Component Bundles. Users can add new content types and modules to their website, and create new applications. GX Software offers an extensive components website, called WCM Exchange. Another core feature is the integrated WYSIWYG editor for inline editing. The platform provides insight into all editorial activities and allows editors to create a variety of transactional forms. GX WebManager also provides workflow, approvals and role-based access.

GX software offers both on-premise and on-demand options though historically most implementations were on-demand. Core industries include financial services, media, publishing, manufacturing, and government. The company started selling in the states just a few years ago has to a certain degree struggled to brand against larger more established players. The platform features core WCM features, built in marketing automation and lead scoring, and a very nifty system configuration and customization feature that will literally validate customizations against the code which are later supported over time by GX Software. It is in a very real sense a constantly evolving tool with new features that are largely driven by customer demand. GX software is more than core WCM, they will likely be positioned to compete with the suite digital marketing providers in the future. With built in continuous profiling, dynamic segmentation, and some nifty personalization tools the application has been designed to integrate seamlessly into the customer journey which is never a linear flow.

Hewlett-Packardgleanster.com/vendor/autonomy-an-hp-company

“Autonomy Corporation, an HP Company, is a global leader in software that processes human information, or unstructured data, including social media, email, video, audio, text, web pages and more, enabling companies to leverage their data assets.”

Gleanster Skinny: Autonomy is a relatively new player in this space. A recognized leader in meaning-based computing, it entered the





web content management arena in 2009 with its acquisition of Interwoven, a leading provider of document and content management solutions. Autonomy has since rebranded Interwoven’s Content Management Systems and related products and incorporated them into the Autonomy Web Content Management (WCM) product line. Autonomy WCM consists of the following products from Interwoven: TeamSite, LiveSite, OpenDeploy and MediaBin. TeamSite powers Autononmy WCM’s document management functionality. It supports the creation of complex intranet and Internet web applications with features for content authoring, site design and layout, multivariable testing, content targeting, advanced analytics, workflow and approval, and archiving. LiveSite enables the delivery of dynamic, targeted, and interactive content to site visitors. It offers powerful SEO optimization capabilities and social media tools for deploying micro-communities and integrating external content and social media functions into websites. Virage MediaBin (formerly Interwoven MediaBin) provides rich media management and transformation for assets such as images, audio, and video. OpenDeploy is a content syndication tool. Autonomy WCM also leverages Autonomy’s own pattern-based, language-independent platform, called IDOL (Intelligent Data Operating Layer). IDOL helps form, in real time, a conceptual and contextual understanding of all customer interactions gathered from multiple channels and sources, including websites, mobile devices, emails, tweets, blogs, audio, video, images. Autonomy primarily targets mid-to-large organizations and would be a good fit for organizations what seek to fulfill broader enterprise content management requirements from one provider.

IBMhttp://www.gleanster.com/vendor/ibm

“IBM Web Content Manager helps increase efficiency and accuracy of website deployments by placing content creation in the hands of content experts, while IT retains control. IBM Web Content Manager is a powerful solution that delivers engaging, personalized web experiences across multiple channels. It keeps content relevant, consistent, and drives higher conversion rates, improves customer loyalty, and increases user engagement.”

Gleanster Skinny: IBM Web Content Manager is a proprietary WCM application designed by the Lotus Software division at IBM. The application

available as a single product offering with multiple licensing options. IBM WCM requires WebSphere Portal and WebSphere Server to run, so the solution is ideal for organizations looking to augment the existing technology stack with additional capabilities like WCM. IBM WCM allows business users to control authoring, workflow, management, and delivery of web content.

Ingeniux http://www.gleanster.com/vendor/ingeniux

““Ingeniux is a leader in web experience management. The Ingeniux CMS and Cartella software deliver world-class websites and engaging online communities across web, mobile, and tablet platforms. Ingeniux software is available in the cloud as a hosted software service or as an on-premise application.”

Gleanster Skinny: Ingenix CMS features a web-based AJAX clients with in-context editing for XHTML and XML content, and integrated web analytics. The latest iteration, Ingeniux CMS 8, features web-based AJAX clients, in-context editing, integrated analytics, dynamic delivery options for every platform, and an in-CMS App Store for certified web solutions. Ingenix provides an agile platform for developing .NET-based websites and applications. Ingeniux software is available as a hosted software service (SaaS) or on-premise application. Ingenix’s in-CMS App Store features website applications for extending the platform’s functionality. There are apps for managing event calendars, forms, analytics, and the lead generation process – to name a few. Ingenix is positioned as a web experience management platform because the platform includes intranet and extranet editions, social collaboration for managing website membership and online content (called Cartella) and mobile website support. Ingeniux is a great fit for organizatons that lack IT support for WCM because they offer full SaaS and managed hosting services that include application management, change management, performance management, and application optimization.

Kentico http://www.gleanster.com/vendor/kentico

“Kentico Software helps clients create successful websites, online stores, community sites and intranets using Kentico CMS for ASP.NET. Kentico CMS for ASP.NET empowers marketers and developers in creating websites





without limits. It’s the ultimate solution for your website, store, community and on-line marketing initiatives. With offices in the United States, United Kingdom and Czech Republic and more than 1,200 partners in 80 countries, Kentico is one of the industry leaders worldwide.”

Gleanster Skinny: Kentico EMS is an integrated customer experience management platform designed to enable marketers to deliver and optimize real-time customer-centric marketing across multiple channels. The platform includes core WCM, e-Commerce, web analytics, online communities, A/B and multivariate testing, content personalization, lead scoring and engagement scoring, email marketing with email tracking, web analytics, contact management, and segmentation. Essentially it’s an affordably priced all-in-one solution for marketing. Kentico can be implemented on-demand or on-premise with licensing starting at $3,500 for on premise and $1,000 for on-demand. Unlike many competitors Kentico offers unlimited users under all licenses, a testament to their desire to align and empower marketing users and help IT support core marketing processes in a simple to use robust out-of-the box application.

MadCap Software http://www.gleanster.com/vendor/madcap-software

“A must-have for technical writers and documentation specialists — the MadPak Suite includes six fully integrated technical communication tools for authoring & publishing, analysis & reporting, translation management and multimedia creation. Tight integration between products, combined with MadCap Software’s industry-leading single-source and multi-channel publishing technology, provides you with a complete suite of tools for all of your technical communication needs.”

Gleanster Skinny: MadCap Flare is MadCap Software’s platform for single-source and multi-channel publishing. It allows users to create, manage, publish, and re-use content for both print and online documentation. Users can also migrate and leverage existing content in addition to content created with Flare. MadCap boasts an impressive variety of clients in Academia, CPG, Energy, Finance, Government, Healthcare, and High Tech. If you are looking for a solution for the publication of technical communications MadCap is a short-list contender. MadCap isn’t really a traditional WCM offering, but the flexibility of online publishing offerings could make it an ideal fit for companies looking for

niche requirements.

Magnolia CMShttp://www.gleanster.com/vendor/magnolia

“Magnolia powers the websites of government as well as leading Fortune 500 enterprises in more than 100 countries on all continents of the world. It is a leading Enterprise Content Management System favored for its ease-of-use and availability under an Open Source license. The page editing interface enables authors to lay out content exactly as it would appear to the website visitor. Under the hood, Magnolia contains best-of-breed Java technology based on open standards to allow for tailor-made solutions. Enterprise-grade support and services are available by the vendor and partners world-wide”

Gleanster Skinny: Magnolia is based in Switzerland, and today has well over 200 customers. Magnolia is an open-source WCM offering with a sprawling partner community. They also offer an Enterprise Edition with pricing that ranges based on single or multi-site use and service / support. Magnolia was founded in 2003 and has never taken venture funding, a feat that makes the 5,000 installed community editions, 250 enterprise editions, and 60 certified partners that much more impressive. Strengths include built in DAM, workflows, personalization, multi-channel support, touch-ready, and a flexible integration architecture. Magnolia boasts they are as “easy to use as a smartphone”, integrates anything, and works everywhere. Enterprise clients can expect to pay an annual subscription fee of $20-50k depending on the number of servers. This typically includes maintenance and support. Magnolia is a great option for organizations looking for an easy to use WCM tool that can be customized and rapidly integrated with existing systems. Magnolia stresses a very cool apps based approach to offerings whereby non-technical users can pull in the features they need easily and quickly without having to learn a new tool. That makes the platform easy to customize and ensures you only pay for what you need, but also ensures you have a tool that can meet expanding requirements in the future.

Microsoft http://www.gleanster.com/vendor/microsoft

“WCM in SharePoint Server 2013 consists of features and functionality that you use to configure, customize, optimize, and publish site collections, sites, and pages. When we talk about





publishing sites in SharePoint Server 2013, we are referring to sites that use one or more of these features to author and deploy branded artifacts, content, and configuration files to Internet, intranet, and extranet sites.”

Gleanster Skinny: Sharepoint wouldn’t traditionally be considered a WCM technology, and it certainly couldn’t stand up to the more robust solutions on this landscape. However, the 2013 SharePoint took a step in the right direction. SharePoint now features site templates, group permissions, navigation, master pages, page layouts, device specific layouts, site columns, content types, workflow and scheduling, caching, and multilingual support. All of these capabilities deliver a “WCM-esque” tool that is worthy of mention. The Sharepoint WCM capabilities might be sufficient for organizations looking for a quick and dirty intranet publishing platform – especially when Sharepoint is already a native tool in the content management stack.

OpenTexthttp://www.gleanster.com/vendor/opentext

“OpenText’s Web content management (WCM) products enable you to deliver an engaging online experience for your customers, employees, constituents, and interested visitors. Whether you’re looking for an easy-to-deploy, departmental intranet, a highly dynamic self-service Web site, or a media-rich global Web application, OpenText has the right Web content management product to meet your organization’s unique needs, on premises or in the cloud.”

Gleanster Skinny: OpenText acquired Vignette, a leading contender in the WCM space, back in 2009. Today, the Vignette products have been bifurcated into two products: Customer Experience Management and Transactional Content Management. The CEM portfolio includes WCM, Customer Communications Management, and Tempo (for social collaboration). The Transactional Content Management is designed for records management and electronic data capture in regulated environments where workflow, audit trails, and compliance can be rigidly defined in a centralized tool. As a WCM tool OpenText CEM may not demo at par with other enterprise class competitive offerings that have invested more in emerging innovation and the UI. But, OpenText has a lot to offer in the portfolio including, but not limited to, Digital Asset Management, Email, Business Process Management, Information Exchange, and Discovery. OpenText has

a strong presence in Energy, Engineering, Financial Services, Insurance, Healthcare, Life Sciences, Media, Public Sectors, and Utilities.

Oracle http://www.gleanster.com/vendor/oracle

“Oracle WebCenter is the center of engagement for business. It helps people work together more efficiently through contextual collaboration tools that optimize connections between people, information, and applications and ensures users have access to the right information in the context of the business process in which they are engaged. Oracle WebCenter can help your organization deliver contextual and targeted web experiences to users and enable employees to access information and applications through intuitive portals, composite applications, and mash-ups.”

Gleanster Skinny: Oracle WebCenter Web Experience Management is the byproduct of a 2011 acquisition of Fatwire, a leading WCM suite. WebCenter is a suite that has a portfolio of solutions including Web Experience Management, Enterprise Content Management, and Portals and Composite Applications. Under WebCenter WEM, there are four buckets of solutions WCM buyers should evaluate: WebCenter Content (for centralized management of digital content), WebCenter Sites (for business users to manage contextually relevant social and interactive online experiences across multiple channels at a global scale), and WebCenter Portal (for the creation of intranets, extranets, self-service portals). Oracle has largely adopted a buy versus build model for product innovation which is a double edged sword. While the suite of products Oracle now supports can address a wide spectrum of customer experience requirements, they at times tend to be fragmented. Naturally Oracle is a good fit for upper mid-to-large enterprise organizations that already have heavy investments in Oracle infrastructure. But despite recent acquisitions in marketing automation (Eloqua), and existing investments in eCommerce (ATG) and search (Endeca) buyers report the suite approach requires significant effort, development work, and integration over other turnkey WEM suite options in the market today. So while Oracle is waving the WEM flag, very few existing customers are jumping on the bandwagon of products that make up the full suite. That said, WebCenter has very happy customers and is designed for business demands from marketers which is critical for





ongoing adoption, especially in a complex enterprise environment. It’s worth looking at and it’s generally a safe investment that is sure to be a strategic component to Oracle’s future customer experience roadmap.

PaperThin http://www.gleanster.com/vendor/paperthin

“PaperThin’s web content management system CommonSpot is designed to specifically address the requirements of web content management, web experience management, brand management, social media management, document management, and community management, while satisfying the needs of digital marketers and business users at every technical level. CommonSpot is a complete web content management solution that helps you publish content instantly, and intelligently.”

Gleanster Skinny: : PaperThin offers an on-premise and on-demand WCM solution. The WCM system is called CommonSpot. While CommonSpot is a commercial solution, PaperThin fully embraces open source offering a hybrid approach to Web content management. CommonSpot’s ColdFusion-based application development framework (ADF) delivers open source capabilities to customers within the PaperThin community ensuring everyone benefits from the best of both worlds. CommonSpot allows users to manage and publish any type of content (text, forms, video, images, RSS, etc.) via any delivery channel (Web, streaming media, mobile phone, iPod). CommonSpot includes a robust list of features outside of core WCM including many digital marketing features such as; blogging, comments, landing pages, news, polls, forms, forums, keyword management, seo, community membership, and social. PaperThin boasts a wide range of customers form small-and-midsize to enterprise across nonprofit, education, government, and life sciences. Gleanster has not briefed with this vendor yet.

Percussion Software http://www.gleanster.com/vendor/percussion-software

“Percussion makes it easy and affordable to design and maintain an engaging and modern website. Drive change quickly to the web to increase leads and conversion rates.”

Gleanster Skinny: Percussion Software’s flagship platform was released in late 2001 under the name Rhythmyx. The vendor later developed

a productized version of its Java-based CMS, launching Percussion CMS. Percussion focuses on four main verticals—financial services, higher education, state and local government, and B2B tech. While the vendor has established a large presence in North America, it also serves customers in Europe and South America. Percussion is designed for marketers who are accountable for website effectiveness and need the ability to control content and design. With easy to edit templates, drag-and-drop navigation, and a library of built-in webpage components, buyers can expect a rapid implementation with reduced need for IT support or development. Percussion has also developed a very nifty automated LiveFirst site migration utility, so new buyers can migrate the existing websites information architecture, design, and content. Percussion stresses an iterative approach to WCM development, where users can model templates based on existing page design and add new page features as required. In addition, Percussion’s unique coaching program focuses on enabling marketers and content contributors to be self-reliant, able to make the changes to their websites, rather than rely on third parties. Percussion is a great fit for small-to-midsize organizations looking for an easy-to-use WCM system designed to empower marketing users.

Quantum Art http://www.gleanster.com/vendor/quantum-art

“Quantum Art is an established Web Content Management System (WCMS) provider working with commercial enterprises, governments, and non-profit organizations for more than a decade. We license software and customize solutions that help our clients meet business objectives and achieve immediate ROI by maximizing the quality, timeliness, and relevance of their online content publishing activities.”

Gleanster Skinny: Quantum Art is delivered in both a SaaS and on-premise CMS platform. Quantum Art supports a wide range of business solutions, from simple websites to e-commerce microsites to multi-channel social networks to secure extranet portals to internal-facing custom CRMs to e-learning sites. It’s built on top of Microsoft SQL, Windows IIS, and .NET to provide a modular framework that is differentiated by its combination of ease of use and flexible template development. It might be a good fit for small to midsize organizations looking to expand their WCM footprint. The framework is designed to make it easy to share data across





other web applications as well as provide simple plug-ins and API-level integration for third-party software tools. Gleanster has never run into respondents short-listing QuantumArt and therefore believes that the solution may not be at par with other WCM offerings in the landscape or the marketing effort behind the platform lacs sufficient investment to elevate the brand. All of these are indications that Quantum Art is a great option for small and midsize organizations with light CMS requirements, but buyers should remain cautious of the longevity of the solution as well as the investment in innovation.

SDLhttp://www.gleanster.com/vendor/sdl

“SDL is the leader in Global Information Management. Global Information Management enables companies to engage with their customers throughout the customer journey –from brand awareness, to sales and after-sales support– and across languages, cultures and channels. SDL’s best-of-breed Web Content Management, eCommerce, Structured Content and Language Technologies, combined with its Language Services drive down the cost of content creation, management, translation and publishing.”

Gleanster Skinny: SDL has made powerful inroads to devlop a comprehensive suite of customer experience products designed for marketers. After acquiring Tridion in 2007, SDL continued to innovate Tridion for enterprise-level requirements. In 2012 SDL also acquired Alterian which brought enterprise class campaign management, marketing analytics, and social media capabilities into the portfolio allowing SDL to put some meat behind a core position in Customer Experience Management which they refer to as the Customer Experience Cloud (CXC). While these acquisitions and the roadmap demonstrate long-term commitment to supporting the borad customer experience for large enterprise, (particularly in industries such as automotive, financial services, high tech, government, life sciences, manufacturing, media, publishing, retail, travel and Hospitality) SDL hasn’t done a great job gaining traction against suite competitors. Again, it’s a big vision that requires a fairly sizable investment and a willingness to divest of legacy solutions and processes. All of these challenges indicate SDL is certainly positioned as an innovator and will need to drive home a modular approach to customer experience management whereby

buyers invest in products that can be expanded over time. That said, SDL hasn’t done a tremendous amount of work to integrate Tridion and Alterian from a UI standpoint, leaving users evaluating separate systems despite core messaging around a CXM suite. SDL is a .NET platform making it a great fit for enterprise companies looking to extend SharePoint capabilities.

Sense/Net http://www.gleanster.com/vendor/sense-net

“Sense/Net develops open-source content management systems on the .NET platform. In October 2008, the company launched Sense/Net 6.0, the only enterprise-grade open-source portal builder available on .NET. Sense/Net was founded in Hungary in 1995 with a vision to create friendly and accessible website-building tools for businesses.”

Gleanster Skinny: Hungary-based Sense/Net describes its enterprise content management solution as the industry’s first open source Microsoft SharePoint alternative for the .NET platform. Sense/Net offers the following features and capabilities: Web 2.0 style document management with workspaces, collaboration tools (event calendar, lists and tasks), drag-and-drop editing, business process management, Web content management, and a development platform. Sense/Net comes with a graphical user interface that floats on top of pages and allows users to modify web pages directly from their browser. It also includes templates that define and maintain the layout of pages; users can create and modify different aspects of the same content item or page simultaneously without altering the formatted layout. There’s also a version of Sense/Net specifically for WCM. It offers advanced tools for building, managing and maintaining websites and intranets. Its search and query features are particularly helpful when it comes to managing large, data-intensive portals. The modular framework is also helpful for creating advanced and scalable web apps. Another core feature of Sense/Net WCM is the content repository, which allows users to store, track and archive any type of content throughout its entire lifecycle. All managed content has metadata, permission-based access, workflow, and versioning capabilities. Other key differentiators include the WYSIWYG editor with full cross-browser support, and the Smart Application Model, which assigns custom URL-driven actions to each content item to


http://www.gleanster.com/vendors/workbooks-com




make it easy for portal builders and developers to display, edit, set permissions, and approve content.

Sitecore http://www.gleanster.com/vendor/sitecore

“Delivering unparalleled ease of use, total flexibility, and enterprise-grade capabilities, Sitecore CMS is the platform of choice for leading companies around the world, powering more than 32,000 websites.”

Gleanster Skinny: Sitecore continues to be one of the industry darlings in terms of adoption, vision, and breadth of functionality. Sitecore was the early innovator in the WCM space and one of the first to start building out core marketing capabilities such as lead scoring, forms, and unified search. Today, Sitecore offers a .NET WCM system under a portfolio of offerings they call the Customer Engagement Platform (CEP). Sitecore CEP includes WCM, Digital Marketing, Solution Accelerators, and the App Center (made up of modular offerings around email and site management). For the most part, the Sitecore integrated WCM and Digital Marketing offering was built from the ground up (not through acquisitions) which led to a true integrated suite both in terms of data flow and the user interface. Sitecore offers an “Office-like” editing capability designed exclusively for marketers and the robust set of features can be configured by role to meet the needs of the most sophisticated users down to newbies. Sitecore also developed a marketing optimization capability they call AIDA, which uses customer data, online behavior, and other attributes across digital channels to inform users of key areas of optimization across the web, email, mobile, and social channels. Sitecore also offers a packaged e-commerce tool, email marketing, lead nurturing, mobile marketing, and social media capabilities. Like many of the comparable suite solutions in the market buyers quibble about the cost of full-featured implementations leaving Sitecore CEP focused on large enterprise / large vision projects. SiteCore is by all means an innovator with respect to the packaged WCM and digital marketing capabilities, but the market remains cautious with respect to large scale implementations. Buyers report SiteCore remains bullish on the offering and is generally unwilling to move on price. We say, good for SiteCore, because the all-in cost of implementing separate best-of-breed solutions around marketing automation, WCM and social and the

time to value is significantly higher in the long run. SiteCore would remind us that the portfolio of products can be implemented in phases whereby additional features can be incrementally added as needed. The problem is, after a buyer configures separate solutions, establishes processes, and trains on a technology- the decision to rip and replace in lieu of a suite gets much harder.

SiteExecutive (Systems Alliance) http://www.gleanster.com/vendor/systems-alliance

“Some content management systems are designed with developers in mind; others are built on a bare-bones platform that non-technical users can’t mess up. For organizations whose web presence is influenced by multiple contributors with varying skill sets, SiteExecutive provides the ideal solution – a flexible, capability-rich CMS that’s also intuitive and easy to manage.”

Gleanster Skinny: SiteExecutive differs from competing CMS applications in one important way – it’s sold as part of an overall “Web Effectiveness” solution. In addition to licensing CMS software (SaaS or perpetual license), with SiteExecutive, clients can get Web consulting services, encompassing Web strategy, user experience, visual design, accessibility, mobile optimization and site build-out. Clients can also receive training for using the solution and guidance for optimizing Web content management processes. Systems Alliance has core industry expertise in higher education, high tech, retail workforce management, and public sectors. The WCM platform is SaaS-based. Pricing is subscription based for 1-3 year terms and fees cover the license and hosting. Systems Alliance also has service offerings. It’s a great fit for higher education and public sector buyers looking for affordable and low maintenance WCM solutions.

Sitekit http://www.gleanster.com/vendor/sitekit

“To say Sitekit CMS is tried and tested is an understatement – we’ve been in business for twenty years, and grown with the internet. Customers who trust us to power their websites include global media brands, NHS Trusts, blue chip corporations and many small and medium-sized enterprises.”

Gleanster Skinny: There are 2 versions of





the vendor’s web-based content management system: Sitekit CMS Corporate, for dynamic website management, and Sitekit CMS Advanced, for managing multiple sites, portals and intranets. Its WYSIWYG text editor and intuitive interface have both been noted for their ease of use. Sitekit also offers good interoperability and extensibility. The solution is built on a modular design and offers a software development kit as a standard feature for Sitekit CMS Advanced (Corporate-users must pay extra). The Sitekit Software Development Kit includes APIs for such functions as forms, e-commerce, feedback, and various types of searches. The solution also comes with a variety of dynamic features users can add to their website to improve targeting and foster engagement (sharing, email marketing, FAQ, personalization), as well as a range of features for building online communities. Other capabilities include resource management, strong natural SEO optimization, and support for mobile web design. While Sitekit has customers from a range of sectors, its high levels of compliance, stability and security have helped to attract National Health Service trusts and health care organizations, primarily based in the UK. Sitekit’s 24/7 support is a major benefit, but the fact its support is UK-based further suggests there’s a need for Sitekit to strengthen its international presence.

Sqiz http://www.gleanster.com/vendor/squiz

“Squiz create web solutions which enable organizations to manage and optimize online engagement with their users. The solutions are built with the Squiz Suite, a powerful web experience management platform which incorporates CMS, search, analytics and integration tools. The Squiz team provides consulting, design, development, implementation, training and global 24/7 support services to supplement the Suite and to ensure clients achieve their business objectives.”

Gleanster Skinny: Squiz is an Australian based provider of a suite of digital publishing tools. The company also has offices in New York but is by all accounts a new entrant in the US market. As an open source provider of the Squiz Matrix (available for GPL Version 2 and commercial license) Squiz primarily generates revenue from service, support, and implementation of the platform. Squiz Matrix utilizes industry standard protocols like REST, SOAP, JSON and PEARL.

The platform contains all the traditional WCM capabilities (create and publish content) along with API integration, social network support, governance, and configuration logic. Squiz is a great fit for small to midsize organizations and government. In 2009 Squiz acquired another Australian based search technology provider called Funnelback. Funnelback continues to be sold under traditional software licensing fees (not open source). Funnelback is a stand-alone search tool with faceted navigation, contextual search, and hosted or SaaS delivery.

Telerik Sitefinity http://www.gleanster.com/vendor/telerik-sitefinity

“Sitefinity is a web content management and collaboration platform developed by Telerik – market-leading provider of end-to-end solutions for application development, automated software testing, agile project management, reporting, and content management across all major Microsoft development platforms. We are trusted by over 100,000 customers worldwide for our innovation and industry-best technical support.”

Gleanster Skinny: Sitefinity is an ASP .NET CMS platform designed for the ease-of-use demands of the marketing business user. Sitefinity includes a built in Digital Asset Management capability as well as pre-configured Intranet portal tools. The system includes an impressive set of features for the price: core WCM, email marketing, eCommerce, social media, SEO, and mobile (including mobile app development). Sitefinity also has packaged integrations for Sharepoint, Marketo, and Salesforce.com. Like all WCM providers, Sitefinity stresses ease of use as a core differentiator, but this is backed up by customer feedback. Templates and page building capabilities are drag-and-drop, the system dynamically adjusts for user roles and behavior to display the most relevant content and capabilities in the user interface. Sitefinity also has a packaged DAM desktop client to simplify content uploads to drag-and-drop for marketing users. While many WCM providers still lack robust mobile capabilities, Sitefinity alson includes a packaged responsive website engine and a packaged mobile app development feature which gives users 80% of what they need in a mobile app within a few minutes of configuration. According to Sitefinity they have over 10,000 customers, many of which are the who’s who of globally known enterprise brands in high tech, food and beverage, automotive, and retail.





Pricing starts at $2,999 (one-time license fee) for 5 users and 1 domain and moves to upwards of $400k for large enterprise implementations. The solution has strong adoption in the mid-market and is working to develop capabilities that would bring them to par with shortlist suite providers for enterprise levels. Sitefinity has a strong presence in North America and EMEA, with growth in Asia Pacific.

Upland / Clickability gleanster.com/vendors/upland-software

“Clickability is the premier Software-as-a-Services Web Content Management (WCM) offering. The WCM solution tightly couples web content management with website delivery to enable truly affordable dynamic content and website personalization for businesses. Serving the website needs of organizations across a broad range of industries, including high-tech, finance, manufacturing, and publishing, we help customers build their brands and foster deeper customer relationships while simultaneously reducing IT overhead and improving ROI.”

Gleanster Skinny: Ready to untangle this little mess. In May 2011, Limelight Networks acquired content management platform provider Clickability. The name was changed to Orchestrate TM Content Management under Limelight Networks management. Then in

December 2013, Limelight sold Clickability to Upland Software which promptly reinstated the Clickability brand. On the surface the move seems to be a huge plus for Upland, which supports a family o fbest-of-breed cloud products. Clickability is 100% software-as-a-service which makes it a minority in the WCM space. Clickability is a solid platform largely targeting enterprise organizations in online publishing, financial services, telecommunications, and Healthcare. The platform delivers on-demand access to create, manage, and publish content to any device. The latest release includes a customer facing portal with social networking, customer documentation, and support ticket management. Upland maintains a commitment to continue investing in development as well as support existing and future service level agreements. Gleanster has not briefed with Upland yet to ascertain the details behind the move. More than likely this will benefit Upland more than anything, but one has to wonder how the WCM integration with Limelights video platform, web acceleration, and mobility offerings would end in a sale. For now, it seems like the practical recommendation would be to enter relationships with caution- at least until a future roadmap is announced from Upland. Though one thing Clickabiliyt has always had going for it is the fact that it’s 100% SaaS; that means rapid implementation and upgrades.


http://www.gleanster.com/vendors/zoho-corporation




Lead Authors

John TenoreResearch Analyst

Ian MichielsPrincipal Analyst

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Related ResearchRecently published Gleanster reports that may be of interest to senior industry practitioners include:

Web Content Management Research Portal

Key Considerations for Selecting the Perfect CMS

The Marketer’s Guide to Content Management Technologies

The Customer Experience Elevated

The 3 Pillars of Customer Experience Excellence

Customer Journey Mapping CheatSheet

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http://www.gleanster.com/topic_area/web-content-management

http://www.gleanster.com/report/key-considerations-for-selecting-the-perfect-cms

http://www.gleanster.com/report/the-marketer-s-guide-to-content-management-technologies

http://www.gleanster.com/report/the-customer-experience-elevated

http://www.gleanster.com/report/the-3-pillars-of-customer-experience-excellence

http://www.gleanster.com/report/customer-journey-mapping-cjm




Documents

Gleansight Benchmark Report Web Content Management · Gleansight: Web Content Management 2 Note: This document is intended for individual use. Electronic distribution via email or