Finding the ROI in Web Content Management

By David Roe (@druadh20) Apr 23, 2009 Comments

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How many reports does it take before Web Content Management vendors change their errant ways and start listening to customers?

If you were to look at the recommendations from The Gilbane Group (news, site) and their Justifying Web Content Management: The Business Case and ROI report, then there is still a sharp learning curve ahead of many.

A simple four-word summary of the report, sponsored by SDL Tridion (news, site), might as well go “Keep it simple, stupid”. While that could be a tad simplistic — and we’ll be looking at why — it is a conclusion that keeps hitting the reader smack-bang in the face.

Economize With WCM

Here are some interesting nuggets from the report:

The highest ROI on Web CMS investment tends to happen where development and user training costs have been slashed.
High ROIs also tend to take place when Web CMS development is done easily, with content rather than technical considerations being the primary driver.
Another scenario for a high ROI is when the CMS user experience and that on the public-facing website is of high-quality.

In this respect, it is interesting that only earlier this week WCM vendor Ingeniux reported its biggest first quarter in the company’s history with a 65% year-on-year growth compared to 2008.

Asked what it was that they were doing to produce the results, Ingeniux CEO Jim Edmunds said that they had learned some hard lessons from the last recession: “Stay close to your customers and focus on building what they need, not what we think they need."

Amongst other things, what this report does is identifies possible areas where companies can achieve cost savings and efficiencies. In a depressed economy, that translates into considerable ROI.

WCM as a Revenue Driver

Stating from the outset that the way different businesses generate revenue only differs really in the product they are selling, the report points out that the principle is the same for the public-facing user interface — interact with clients.

With the purpose of engaging new customers, or servicing established customers, quality web content and a rich interactive experience between user and the web is the basic driver of business.

Common to all these experiences on successful websites is the development of high-quality global content accessible to all users and generated by "expert" content providers centrally.

Really successful companies will facilitate the customization of this content based on these localized differences:

Consumer profiles based on geographical differences
Localized applications to manage these profiles
Language considerations
Branding and marketing needs

In this respect, while this may appear obvious, what may not be so obvious is the fact that content quality deteriorates when the need to synchronize content, geographies, languages and cross-branding is ignored.

The bottom line is that WCM systems that allow content providers to retain control of centralized content quality and automate changes across global websites often increase online revenue.

In particular, the presence of tools that allow easy page creation, high-level user interactivity through blogs and wikis and other digital asset manipulation enhances user experience and revenue streams.

Decreasing Costs

So how do cut costs? There is a number of ways to do this. High on the list of "must-do" things is to buy a commercial Web CMS. But this may not always seem practical, and some businesses choose to build those systems in-house.

The problem, the report says, is that in the vast majority of cases where enterprises develop their own systems, they underestimate: