WEM Perspectives: Who Are the Leaders in Web Engagement Management?

The re-emerging area of Web Engagement Management (WEM) has taken the web content management spotlight of late. Many a vendor is clamoring for a leading role. But who are the real leaders and the coming challengers? Let's have a look.

Web Engagement Management (WEM) is not new. Rather, it is a new term for a collection of product feature-functionality that existed within Web Content Management (WCM), portal, personalization, and enterprise search applications for years. Updated semantics neither add to nor detract from the value of WEM. That is, demand for the technology has been around for quite some time, and I see only increased demand over the next few years.

So what exactly is WEM? Briefly put, it is the symbiotic integration of advanced personalization — including elements of interactive search, sophisticated multimedia management, robust social computing/networking features, and marketing campaign management tools.

For details, see: What is Web Engagement Management?

The Market Loves WEM (Again)

So if WEM is not really new, why all the hype? In part, the excitement stems from vendors’ excitement over new terminology for their products — and analysts certainly don’t mind having a new, broader coverage area after years of writing about WEM’s individual components. Nonetheless, WEM, in everything but name only, has been around for about ten years.

By 2001, vendors such as ATG and BroadVision had quite sophisticated e-commerce applications that did WEM quite well. Then came the 2001 dot.com crash, and within two years, the disappearance of the e-commerce application market. By now, the WEM leaders of that time have nearly disappeared (ATG is still nominally alive, while BroadVision is definitely dead.).

Before the crash, other extant vendors, such as Interwoven (now part of Autonomy) and Vignette (now part of Open Text), also competed effectively in the WEM/e-commerce market through tight integrations with e-commerce products (Interwoven-ATG, for example) and partnerships with application server vendors such as IBM and BEA.

Since about 2006, other vendors have been assiduously developing the personalization, marketing campaign management, and cross-channel components of their products to surpass the leaders in the “original” e-commerce/WEM market. We will discuss them shortly.

So here we are in 2010, and WEM is quickly becoming all the rage. I, for one, am happy to see its resurgence — it really does represent the most logical collection of functionality for improving website visitors’ online experience. And how better to increase online revenues than by being able to influence how long visitors stay on your website, how frequently they return, how interactive they are with other visitors? With control of such factors come increased numbers of transactions, higher average sales prices, and improved brand loyalty.

Current WEM Market Leaders

So who are the leaders in the WEM market? Simply put, they are the vendors with most experience in, and dedication to, personalization technologies, marketing campaign modules, analytics-focused application development methods, and the smooth integration of all three. I rank the five leaders in the WEM market as:

comments

Useful article?

 Email It      

Follow @cmswire

Related Articles:

The re-emerging area of Web Engagement Management (WEM) has taken the web content management spotlight of late. Many a vendor is clamoring for a leading role. But who are the real leaders and the coming challengers? Let's have a look.