Choosing a CMS

Part 3 of 3

See Part 1: Knowing When You Need CMS and Part 2: What Does a Content Management System Do?

You've decided that your organization needs a content management system ( CMS), but what's the best way to find the right system among the many out there? In this, the last part of our three-part series on content management systems, we'll discuss strategies for choosing the best one for your type of organization and walk you through the selection process.

In Part 1, Knowing When You Need CMS, we look at some types of CMS (WCMS, ECMS, etc.), as well as some styles (Commercial, Open Source, etc.). In Part 2, , we outline the basic abilities of a content management system to help you understand what a CMS can do.

A CMS is a set of processes, applications, and databases that help an organization create, store, coordinate, and publish information in a useful format, a timely fashion, and with a consistent method. "Content" refers to any meaningful information (data) formatted for consumption by an audience.

If you followed the guidelines in the Evaluating Your Needs section of Part 1, you have a good idea of what your current circumstances are, what problems you have, and your level of sophistication. This information is the basis for your CMS requirements, a list you will use to communicate with a CMS provider.

What are the Requirements?

"Requirements elicitation and documentation" is a project-management discipline that simply means the creation of a comprehensive set of documents that help you communicate your needs to a technology provider. The documents will help you understand and communicate exactly what you need a system to do and what problems you want the CMS to solve. The process can be loose or very formal. Your completed requirements documents, regardless of formality, will allow you to communicate your needs (or "requirements") to a CMS provider.

A few pointers:

• It's important to keep your requirements firmly in the realm of what you want the CMS to do, and clearly out of the realm of how it will do it. You just need to state your needs, not design the CMS.
• Don't get too attached to any particular requirement, unless it's extremely core to your success (and be realistic about that). If you insist that a system meet every single one of your requirements perfectly, you'll either never find one, or spend huge amounts of money on customizations. Follow the 80/20 rule.
• Be flexible in your requirements. If you develop content in an atypical way for some reason, and you find that many CMS fall short of your requirements, consider revamping the way you work to match the way the CMS does it. Many of the CMS out there have sensible, well-established workflow systems, and truthfully, content management isn't a new field any more. If you're working differently from most people in your field, perhaps you should look at why that is.
• Consider your entire organization and all its systems (infrastructure, other applications, organizations, etc.) when you determine the requirements for your CMS. It's not going to be working in isolation, so it ought not to be defined in isolation.
• Remember that the point of building these requirements is to inform your acquisition decision. If you find yourself getting wrapped up in too much detail, check to see if you have a good sense of what you need from a CMS. If you have that, and someone else can understand it, your requirements are done.
• Finalize your requirements at some point. For real. If you change requirements during the conversation with a vendor, your project's chance of failure increases exponentially. You can make changes, but understand that every change is going to result in higher costs and a longer schedule.

During TechSoup's requirements-building process for our own CMS, we discovered Step Two Design's Content Management System Requirements Toolkit (CMRTK). It's expensive, but it contains pretty much every requirement you can think of. It probably saved us about 120 hours of work. For TechSoup, it was worth it. Starting with the CMRTK, we needed to add a few things, take some things out, and adjust some others, but it was much faster than starting from scratch. Again, this is probably only applies to a mid-tier CMS and above. In fact, Step Two has a very good whitepaper, How to Evaluate a CMS .

If you'd prefer to handle it on your own, we recommend picking up a copy of the CMS Bible . This book will guide not only your requirements gathering, but your entire acquisition process (in much more detail than we can provide here.)

Finally, if you think you're going to need a lot of help, you can find a consultant that specialize in CMS projects. You might start looking for such help in TechFinder .

Where to Start Looking?

The CMS industrial landscape is large, and congested. Considering the entire range of products, there may be as many as 1,500 CMSs. It's helpful to understand this landscape so you can figure out where to start looking.

You may want to brush up on the types and styles of CMS, as outlined in part two of this series. There are other things about the industry to consider, as well, outlined in the chart below. These tiers are the basic areas in which you might begin your search.

CMS Industry Tier	Price Range(in $)	Target Market	Additional Costs
Enterprise	$250 K to multimillion	Giant organizations	Heavy integration required (1.5x-2x Price)
Upper-Tier	$100-200K	Large organizations	Medium integration required (1x-1.5x Price)
Departmental	$40-80K	Small- to medium-size organizations; departments in companies	Light integration required (.5x-1x Price)
Low Cost	$1,000-10K	Small organizations, individuals	Usually used "out-of-the-box"
Nonprofit	$1,000-10K	Nonprofits	Light integration required (.5x-1x Price)
Open Source	Zero	Full spectrum, weighted toward smaller end of scale	Light to heavy integration required (unknown cost)
Hosted	( ASPs) $1,000-10K/mo	Full spectrum, sometimes temporary	From $0 to $75K initial setup costs

Where to Begin?

You know the size of your organization and how much you want to spend. These factors are good indicators of where to start, and usually, as size increases, so does budget. So, if yours is a small organization with $5,000 in your budget, you ought to start looking in the Low-Cost, Nonprofit, or Open-Source tiers.

Are there resources, good starting places for each of these areas? The fact is there's no single place to get all the information you need. The list below has some good starting points within each of the tiers. You're going to have to jump around, so move quickly, collect products that strike your fancy, and don't get too attached to any single one. Just note the name and the Web site so you can come back later for more information.

If you are looking for a CMS in one of the following tiers, Enterprise, Upper Tier, or Departmental, check CMS Watch, CMS Forum, thetheGoogle Directory, and the Yahoo Directory .

If you are looking for a CMS in the Low Cost tier, check Open Directory Project for Content Management, the CMS Directory, the CMS Matrix, thetheGoogle Directory, and the Yahoo Directory .

If you are looking for a CMS in the Open Source tier, check the Open Source CMS List, the OSCOM list of Open Source CMS, and CMS Info .

If you want to just search the Internet for CMS, here are a few pointers:

• Just because the vendor calls it a CMS, doesn't mean it is. Look carefully at the features the vendor talks about. If you don't see what you need right away, pass.
• When you find a CMS Web site, try to assess promptly the tier in which the vendor is operating. If it's out of your range, move on.
• Of course, just because a vendor has a slick site does not mean it has a high-quality CMS. Check features and if they're not what you need, keep looking.
• If you find a really handy white paper, take note of the author. Often, white papers are written by CMS vendors, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but you need to know.

How to Find Your CMS

So, now that you have a good idea of what you need and where to start looking, how do you go about looking? There are many different ways:

• Word of mouth. Ask friends and peers what they think might work. This technique should supplement your other methods.
• Monkey see, monkey do. Find out what system an organization just like yours uses, and get that one.
• Pick one with a name you like. This might work, but may be difficult to justify to a board.
• Respond to an aggressive sales call. This might work, too, if you want to let a salesperson decide what's best for you.
• Hire a consultant. If you're short on time and long on funds, this may work well.
• Figure it out for yourself. We're going to make some suggestions about this approach, since the others are fairly self-explanatory.

The process of finding a CMS is best approached in an iterative fashion: Start with a list of 20-30 products, quickly (within a day or two) compare them to your requirements, and rapidly remove the 75 percent you can immediately see aren't going to work. Review the vendor's Web site, read reviews about its product, and otherwise use the Internet to get a sense of how the product fits your requirements. It's important to work quickly at this point. Even if it's only intuition that tells you the CMS might be wrong for you, cut it.

Once that's done, your list will be shorter, with perhaps five to ten candidates. Take a deeper look at the remaining systems. Download white papers, product information sheets, and whatever else is available. Take a longer look (perhaps a week for all of them together) at how these systems' features compare to your requirements. During this phase, you should still be looking to remove candidates, but you should take a little more time and effort before you bump it off the list. You should end up with three or four finalists.

The final round should be quite detailed. At this point, you can contact the vendors (see "Working with vendors" below), sending them an explanation of your project, your requirements document, and any other information you think might be important to them. Strongly encourage the vendors to indicate how their product meets each of your requirements. Understand that for commercial organizations, this is going to begin a sales cycle -- if you're looking for a donation, send your development person in before you make any other type of contact.

Here's a list of documents you can request:

• White papers they've published
• Technical specifications
• Case studies
• Sample documentation
• Information about online demos
• System overview diagrams
• Technical requirements
• Industry analyses
• Pricing sheets

Note that the tiers nearer the top are likely to supply most or all of these items. The further down the scale you go, the less you'll see this stuff. Nevertheless, at minimum, you need to find a way to feel confident that the CMS will meet most of your important needs. If they don't provide this material, ask for demos, in-house presentations, or whatever it takes.

Vendors can take anywhere from a day to a month to respond. If a vendor response does not include a believable description of how their product can meet your requirements, either drop the vendor, or send their response back and ask them to do it again. You really need them to meet your requirements, and if they can't, they're wasting your time.

While you wait for the vendors to respond, you can prepare a chart like the one below. It lists your requirements, your weight for each requirement, and a space for the vendor's response. Review each vendor's response when it comes in and apply a subjective rating to it on the chart. Here's an example:

Requirement	Weight	Vendor A Score	Weighted Scored	Vendor B Score	Weighted Score
Supports role-based user management	3	2	6	3	9
Allows XML authoring	1	3	3	2	2
Integrates with such and such forums system	3	1	3	3	9
Installs on Linux	2	1	2	2	4
Total	9	7	14	10	24

Such a chart, while easily abused ("This one has the highest number! Let's get it!"), is helpful in supporting your decision, not making it. It helps to keep track of generally how well a product meets your needs overall, factoring in the relative importance of each of those requirements. But don't get carried away. There many other things to keep in mind, including technological fit, company reputation, the vendor's willingness to work with and support you, and so on.

Working With Vendors

Vendors in different tiers operate in different ways.

• Enterprise, Upper, and Departmental vendors all rely on internal sales teams, lots of documentation, and are accustomed to working with formal software selection processes.
• Open-source "vendors" are loosely organized, probably short on documentation, and are probably not used to much formality. Note that many professional services organizations have sprung up around open-source products, and these organizations will operate more like the upper tiers.
• Products in the Low-Cost tier are usually boxed software, and are usually sold that way -- much as you'd buy a utility like Norton Anti-Virus.
• The Nonprofit tier spans all these ways of working.

Companies in each tier may define and emphasize the following steps in different ways, but they'll all happen to some degree.

The sales call

Once they've completed your requirements document, a salesperson will meet with you to review it, further describe the product, ask questions, answer questions, and get to know you.

Upper Tiers:

You can expect to deal with sales teams armed with extensive documentation and impressive sales skills. The best of them will ensure that their product is actually right for you while the worst will assure you that their product does everything you need it to do. They will usually travel to you.

Remember that if you're planning to pursue a donation from a vendor in the upper tiers, get your development person in there first so they can start the relationship correctly. If you start with the sales team, you will greatly diminish your chance of getting a donation or discount of substance.

Open-Source Tier:

If the product has a professional services organization, they will probably behave much like companies in the upper tier. If not, then your "salesperson" might be a descriptive download page, or a knowledgeable member of the community who is willing to answer your questions.

Low-Cost Tier:

Unlikely to have sales reps. You may be able to ask their customer service staff questions.

Nonprofit Tier:

Vendors in this tier are likely to have one sales rep with good documentation. That person will probably resist traveling until they're sure you're serious.

The demonstration

The vendor makes a demo available to you. This can take many forms: online, onsite, vendor-guided, self-guided, interactive, non-interactive. Some vendors can quickly do a version of your existing site in their CMS.

Upper Tiers:

Likely to come to your site to do the demo, and walk you through all the features. Ask tough questions during this session. They will also probably have regularly scheduled online demos. Use them.

Open-Source Tier:

If they have a demo, it will be online. More likely, they will encourage you to set up the software on your server and let you see how it works for yourself.

Low-Cost Tier:

A demo is unlikely. Ask anyway.

Nonprofit Tier:

May offer an onsite demo. We haven't seen too many online demos, but you might be able to arrange a Web-based seminar.

Technical meetings

Your technical staff and the vendor's staff meet to get to the nitty-gritty on how their product works, how it would work within your infrastructure, and if they'd do anything special to meet your needs.

Upper Tiers:

They'll expect you to have a lot of questions, and they should patiently answer them to your satisfaction regardless of how many times you ask. Because of the complexity of systems in this tier, you may have several of these meetings.

Open-Source Tier:

Of all the steps, this is probably the most important, and most difficult in this tier. If you can't find someone experienced with this system (including a professional services organization), then you're probably going to have to look in the community forums, or at the software itself, to get technical answers.

Low-Cost Tier:

The vendors are unlikely to have technical people available for you to meet. If you're in this tier, however, you're probably going to use it "out of the box," so technical concerns become less relevant.

Nonprofit Tier:

The vendor will probably have technical staff for you to talk to, and will work to get your questions answered. They may be somewhat less willing to customize their product for you, but they probably won't promise you the world, either.

Internal negotiations

Now it's time to select a finalist in consultation with your staff. Ideally, you will consolidate all the information you've collected, summarize it, and make a report to your decision makers. They will review it and decide on a finalist. Since this is an internal process, it's the same for all tiers. The only difference is that that the variables are larger (e.g., the higher tiers will have higher costs).

External negotiations

Of course, you've been negotiating with the CMS provider all along. This is just the final part of it, where you finalize the price, the delivery schedule, the customizations that will occur, support packages, and so on.

Upper Tiers:

There will be some pretty involved contractual stuff to go over, so you'll want to secure legal counsel. Remember that corporations start offering greater discounts at the end of their fiscal quarters. Be firm about what you want and need, and don't get stuck with something that won't work for you.

Open-Source Tier:

Any negotiations will be between you and a professional services organization. You'd work out the details of what they're going to do for you, when, and how. Be sure this stuff is fairly detailed, and matched by firm commitments.

Low-Cost Tier:

There's not much to negotiate here. You buy the box; they take your money.

Nonprofit Tier:

Much like the upper tier, but the process is lighter and faster.

Conclusion

The actual search for the right CMS for your organization can be daunting. It helps if you have a clear idea of what you are looking for. Prepare your requirements documents. Start your search by quickly weeding out the products that won't fit your needs. Then look more closely at the products and vendors that remain. By using the steps outlined in this article you are well on your way to selecting the right CMS for your organization.