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October 30, 2000

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Web Content Management
Unified Theory Of Content Management Targets Users

Rich selection of tools evolve to address e-commerce capabilities

By Kelley West, Rich Huff, and Pat Turocy

More on content management:

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ew companies question the need for Web content management--not when faced with Web sites that double and triple in size every six months. Nor do companies question that people most familiar with the content should control publishing it on the Web. The challenge is finding a Web content-management product that lets business users not only take control of Web content, but achieve their business goals while doing so.

Reducing the Webmaster bottleneck has long been the mantra of the Web content-management market. This alone isn't a strong argument for implementing a high-end Web content-management product. Rather, companies should seek products that let them make the content-creation process more productive, reduce time to market, improve communications, and enforce brand identity. Some tools even integrate with personalization engines and E-commerce systems to help build customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Because Web content-management products manage the content with which customers interact, they control customers' impression of a business. Therefore, Web content management is key technology for any company with a significant Web presence.

Many Web content-management products have capabilities for letting nontechnical business users control content, but the approaches to this challenge differ dramatically. For example, BroadVision, Documentum, and Interwoven are all recognized as major Web content-management players. BroadVision is known more for its E-commerce and personalization capabilities (see story, p. 83); Documentum for its success in the document-management market; and Interwoven simply as a Web content-management vendor.

The fact that these vendors often show up on shortlists together is an indication that people are confused about all the differing approaches to Web content management. Vendors that take an E-commerce approach to Web content management typically provide the entire platform for a Web site, including E-commerce and transaction capabilities, content management, and personalization. For these vendors, Web content management is just one component of the product. Document-management vendors are adept at managing a company's information within robust repositories. However, they must integrate with publishing or presentation tools to deliver Web content management.

Companies must build or integrate with publishing or presentation tools that are designed solely for the Web aspect of content management. Although they excel at their chief aim, these tools support only one aspect of a complete E-business product.

To help businesses make content-management decisions, the state of the market must be analyzed to provide the necessary criteria to choose a Web content-management product, and the vendors reviewed for the key capabilities of different products. In the next few months, InformationWeek will publish Doculabs' benchmark-based assessment of Web content-management products, including offerings from BroadVision, Documentum, eBusiness Technologies, Eprise, FileNet, Interwoven, IntraNet Solutions, NCompass Labs, Open Market, and Six Open Systems.

In an ideal world, Web content management would be at the core of an E-business infrastructure, coordinating the assembly, publication, and expiration of content across all business systems. Much like a switchboard operator, the content-management system should be able to piece together content from disparate systems and applications into meaningful documents based on unique requests.

Each system or department would generate the type of content core to its function, such as graphics, text, pricing data, logos, ad copy, and legal disclaimers, without worrying about how it will be combined with content from other systems into a Web page, product catalog, or promotion. The Web content-management system should be able to manage the content from these systems, assemble it based on the needs of the content recipient, and publish the information in the required format.

However, since companies' systems existed long before Web content management, it's not so easy to slip a Web content-management system into the center of a legacy infrastructure and have the system seamlessly control all content. It's a Catch-22 because to support complex and dynamically generated sites, the content-management system must be tightly integrated with any back-end system that produces content.

Most companies begin with one department or process that needs content management and choose a product to meet the requirements of that problem. Then they expand the product throughout, integrating it with necessary systems along the way.

Document-management systems have a long history of being implemented at department levels and then expanded across the enterprise, making them well-suited for this approach. Web content-management products, on the other hand, are relatively new, and it remains to be seen whether they can scale to support an entire company.

Vendors taking the E-commerce approach to content management are well-positioned for implementation at a companywide level. Vendors claim their products are designed to integrate with multiple back-end systems to deliver transaction capabilities, order management, personalization, and content management. For this reason, such products are attractive to companies that want to roll out content management on a grand scale, as opposed to doing so on a departmental basis. These systems are too costly and complex for most companies to implement within a single department.

The Web content-management market has matured significantly over the past year, with most products expected to achieve functional parity in the next 12 to 18 months. For example, most content-management products will integrate with a content repository or provide workflow approval and personalization as part of a complete product. However, the market remains highly fragmented.

Although different vendors' products offer similar capabilities, the approach that they take to Web content management affects the overall product. Selecting a tool designed for the skill sets of your business users will have a tremendous impact on the success of your content-management initiative.

Documentum, FileNet, and IntraNet Solutions all made names for themselves in the document-management industry and have extended their capabilities to the Web content-management market in recent years. These vendors bring much-needed expertise in managing large repositories of information to the Web arena. In addition, because they have a history with documents, these vendors typically support content management across several types of media.