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Mature Content Management
What could consulting companies specifically do to mature the market?
Overall consulting companies needs to acknowledge content management as a discipline. It is tempting to focus on the delivery side, e.g. a shiny new Web site or new intranet, but the CMS inside, is the solution that will deliver long-term results.
The difference between content management and CMS is an important one. Consultants could mature the market by using clear terminology.
Creating realistic business requirements is where you start, when you want to work hard to reduce project cycles.
Traditionally consultants have been good at managing client relationships and expectations, consultants should take a step forward to insist on also keeping the vendor involved in the process.
Both management consultants and IT consultants would be wise not to underestimate content management. It is business critical, even though it might be disguised as a portal or self-service initiative.
Increasingly consultants should focus more on the business requirements, organizational impact, strategy and roadmap, and less on the technical requirements.
What could analysts specifically do to mature the market?
Compared with more mature markets analysts have so far done a poor job at developing solutions for content management. Some deliver reports, mostly mentioning only US vendors, or vendors willing to pay for inclusion.
Analysts could raise the bar by doing a better job at benchmarking the entire industry. Scorecards exist for other markets, and makes sense for content management. There is a market for high quality reports, in particular with information about market share.
Lately many CMS vendors have undertaken a series of acquisitions. Analysts have required vendors to deliver a complete end-to-end solution and as a result, CMS vendors have acquired several records management (RM) and digital asset management (DAM) companies.
With immature products that lacks ease of use and are hard to implement, this is a step in the wrong direction. Analysts could mature the market by not requiring vendors to offer their own RM and DAM solutions. Instead, analysts should focus more on successful implementation rates, quality of service and core content management competences.
What could academia specifically do to mature the market?
The market would mature faster if academic institutions were also involved.
Unfortunately, content management and CMS are almost entirely untapped fields from a research point of view.
Today business schools and universities may consider ERP or CRM more research ready, but as content management becomes increasingly business critical, academia needs to get started.
Many questions are unanswered and many academic papers are needed on content management and CMS.
Academia is a main talent pool for all other market actors. Increased academic focus on content management would in effect over the long-term raise the bar across the board. Read the next chapter | | | more |  |
09/2004, Janus Boye
As a content management specialist, Janus Boye has created two enterprise content management start-ups during the last 2 years. In 2003, he created Boye IT, a content management consulting company.
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