Forrester Says WCM is the Backbone of Digital Experience. Surprised?

Everyone is talking about the latest . By now you should have seen all the press releases come out from the happy vendors. It’s important to be recognized by one of the leading analyst firms and this report puts pretty much all the vendors listed – Adobe, Sitecore, Acquia, IBM, HP, OpenText, Oracle, SDL, Ektron/EPiServer in good light. No vendor has it all figured out, but that’s part of the forward strategy each one is working on.

WCM is the Backbone of Digital Experience

The biggest point made in this report by analyst Ted Schadler is that everyone should have a web content management system/platform. Why? Because it’s the backbone of digital experience. It doesn’t matter what channel you are aiming for, in the end it’s about managing and delivering content and that’s what a WCM was built for.

My initial response to this was “no kidding”, isn’t this something we have known for a few years now? We started with basic web content management, then we started calling it “web experience”, but it was still driven by web content management. Now we call it digital experience or customer experience, and still we understand that under it all, regardless of what strategy/approach is used, WCM is there supporting not only the development and management of content, but also the delivery in many cases.

The report notes that WCM isn’t the only technology in a digital experience strategy. There’s also marketing software (from marketing clouds to marketing automation to email marketing and etc..), commerce systems, social media solutions, customer service systems and much more. In some cases these technologies are found within the WCM, others are anchored by it.

I think the important point to make is that what we have called WCM 101 has changed. What 101 meant a couple of years ago, is not what 101 means today, and that’s what organizations need to understand. Yes it’s about content authoring, rich media, workflows, taxonomy, segmentation, but that’s just the start. If all you have is a basic WCM install, it’s just not enough to compete today.

The Forrester report notes the other things you need to be thinking about – mobile web/apps, mobile SDKs, content APIs, test and target tools, personalization , analytics and so on. When you look at how each of these traditional WCM vendors has grown their platforms, you see these additional technologies, and as the reports says, there are mixed results. The big things missing, according to Forrester?

• SaaS, or Software as a Service, has not been deployed across all vendors.
• All have a mobile strategy, but not all have strategy to support mobile apps
• There are mixed reviews on customizing solutions with software development (consider APIs, component marketplaces, developer networks, etc…)

Another great point the Forrester report makes is that WCM is not just for the customer’s experience, but it’s also beneficial to the employee experience. It seems like that’s something we haven’t spoken about in the last couple of years, instead focusing on collaboration technologies and social software that do not have WCM at the core. But employee experiences are changing and WCM can provide experiences that combine collaboration/social capabilities and personalized, content-rich experiences.

All the vendors listed in this report are worth looking if you are in need of a new WCM “backbone”, or a full digital experience platform (with or without additional add-ons). Yes, there are leaders like Adobe and Sitecore, but there are also strong performers like Acquia and IBM, more strong performers like HP, OpenText, and SDL, and contenders like Ektron and EPiServer – which are now essentially one offering, and there are many others who didn’t make this report most likely because of revenues/client install base.

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