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

[Ann Rockley]

>My two cents on the topic

I help organizations to implement enterprise content management systems. 
Their are jobs for consultants like me because vendors do not know how to 
effectively discover customer needs and customers don't know how to 
discover their own real need. In my experience CMS implementations fail for 
the following reasons:

-Customers pick the tool before they know their needs
-Up until 2 years ago CMS was a really hot market so customers made fast 
decisions without due consideration and vendors have been able to sell them 
"anything"
-Customers are not good at determining their detailed needs. They may have 
a top level understanding, but do not know what they need to know in order 
to make informed decisions
-Vendors, particularly typical sales people, do not know how to discover a 
customer's needs. This is a time consuming in-depth process that can take 
weeks or months.
-Vendors do not always have a clear understanding of what a customer would 
want to do with the product so they do not provide the required 
functionality. They don't seem to spend enough time in discovering this 
even after the tool is sold
-Customers don't know what they need to do in the context of the tool so 
they are unable to communicate their needs
-Customers make decisions based on a single narrow focus, eg don't plan for 
future use or broader based use
-Customers don't treat a CMS implementation like any other type of 
enterprise software implementation so they don't follow good software 
implementation practices (eg prototype, pilot, implement, change management)

This is not unique to CMS. Look at how many ERP system implementations have 
failed. Since the economic slowdown, I have noticed a marked change in the 
way companies are implementing a CMS. They are taking up to a year to make 
a purchase decision. Partly this is due to lack of budget, but it means 
there is a lot of time to determine real requirements and evaluate a number 
of systems. Companies are taking the time to analyze their content and 
model it for the way they want to use and manage it and they are taking a 
hard look at their processes so they can implement effective workflow. They 
are also taking a slow prototype, pilot, then implement route instead of 
"implement and run".


_____________________________

"Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy" (ISBN 0735713065)
by Ann Rockley with Pamela Kostur and Steve Manning is now available from 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0735713065/therockleygro-20>amazon.<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0735713065/therockleygro-20>com 
or 
<http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/0735713065/therockleyg08-20>amazon.ca. 
For more information visit www.managingenterprisecontent.com.

Ann Rockley
The Rockley Group Inc.
905-415-1885
rockley at rockley.com
Web: www.rockley.com