[Sigia-l] "Study: Content Management Tools Fail"

[Peter Merholz]

> a) "It is impossible for a vendor to know YOUR requirements."
>
> With proper product management (talking to customers, reading the market),
the vendor >should< know your requirements and built a
> product or platform that meets those requirements.

Hogwash.

In fact, I would argue that the main reason that CM tools fail is not
because of some inherent problem with content management, but because
businesses do a poor job of understanding their own requirements.

So the vendors sell to the business' poorly understood requirements, and the
whole endeavor fails.

You could blame the vendor for the failing ("You should have known we didn't
know what we were talking about!"), but that's foolish. If you expect the
vendor's sales force to do anything other than the minimum to sell the
product, well, I've got a very nice bridge I'd like to sell you.

This is something that enterprises are simply going to have to face --
they'll have to do a little bit of the upfront legwork to understand just
what it is they need, and how a technological solution will 'fit' within
their current work processes. With that understanding in hand, they can
intelligently approach vendors, and more easily weed out mismatches.

I wrote about this here:
http://peterme.com/archives/00000346.html

--peter