So you want to take a look at a real Web Content Management (WCM) product. How do you go about evaluating all the different products and vendors? What should you be looking for in a WCM package? Is it better to build your own, buy or use Open Source?
The best way to answer this question is to compare the products on an apples to apples basis. You can do this objectively by building a product evaluation matrix based upon your specific needs. The first column can list out the functionality categories (e.g. Security). The second column can be the specific needs (e.g. integrates with Active Directory for roles and authorization) under each of the categories. The next columns would be your products, one per column for each product you want to consider. For each product then you would give a rating (1 to 10 scale) on each specific need.
You can then add a column for weighting each specific need, or do this at the topic level. For example, flexible workflow may be much more important to you than your ability to customize the presentation. You can then add some more columns to calculate the weighting against the rating to arrive at a realistic assessment number for each product on each of your organization's specific needs. Sum these all up per product to arrive at a total product assessment score.
Of course, you can't forget to check customer references, or if it's an open source product, go dig around some sites which are using the tool already.
Below is a list of some topics/specific needs which may apply for you. At a minimum, these should provoke some thought on your part as far as what you are looking for in a WCM product and give you a good start on your product evaluation matrix.
Workflow
Security
Content submission
Presentation customization
Integration with search
Common document management functionality
Architecture
Cost
Administration interface
About the author
Bryan Mjaanes is the creator/editor of Intranet101.com a community-based forum for Intranet Portal professionals.
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