The main reason for choosing a new technology is to reap its benefits. But the processes that organisations follow can obscure these benefits rather than unearth what’s feasible. So let me add a few points that may help to steer you in a direction where you can get the most from a new CMS selection exercise.

1. Accept that different technologies will make a difference
Your organisation has to understand that different technologies will provide different benefits. There will inevitably be people who tell you that it’s just technology and which one you choose won’t make that much difference; they all perform the same basic function after all.

There is an element of truth in this argument, but there are some very significant differences between WCM software and their suppliers, notably:

• financial stability, product maturity and the number of service partners in your geography;
• delivery mechanisms (static or dynamic) and product scalability;
• integration capabilities and an open API;
• user management, persistence and personalisation options;
• classification management;
• community and marketing features;

2. You will need a spreadsheet
Technology selection is not about scoring matrices, with coefficients for requirements and complex calculations. However, if you are going to satisfy the finance director you will need to prove that the technology you’ve selected does meet the requirements set out in the business case. Moreover, you will certainly need a check-list of technical prerequisites that any software should adhere to in order to make a shortlist. Don’t forget to tell the vendors which email clients your editors will be using and which operating systems and versions of Office their tool should integrate with.

3. You will need scenarios
No matter how command-and-control the culture within your organisation, if you enforce a technology that’s meant to be devolved to lots of users — particularly if they’re in multiple locations— that is difficult to use, you will be in for a lot of trouble. You’ll have to expect increased training and support costs as well as brooding resentment about the new technology. People will find workarounds to the very processes you were looking to instill.

Engage the people who are actually going to use the CMS and get them to help you to articulate the main issues they have with managing publishing content. Then invite the vendors to demonstrate these tasks to this audience. A few key points on these demonstrations:

• Don’t tell the vendors how you want things to work. Explain the problem and ask them to demonstrate a solution.
• Create scenarios for the tasks you perform the most frequently. If you only create a new workflow once every six months, the fact that you can do this in Visio is pretty irrelevant. Concentrate on content creation, review and relationships.
• Think about how the content is managed rather than its delivery. In the end, any product can be made to generate accessible HTML, provide streaming media and publish printer-friendly views. Concentrate on short and long documents, content sharing and classification and take a hard look at the authoring interfaces which your teams will be using every day.

4. Allow the vendors to impress you
Always give the vendors twenty minutes to show them what else their product can do that you haven’t asked for. It’s the opportunity for the sales team to show off why the product inspires them and to show you why you want to work with their product rather than someone else’s. A content management system is not only supposed to enforce your editorial processes; it should inform them too. If you’ve been struggling with a technology for a number of years it may be hard for you to see what’s possible, but some new product feature may resolve a problem that you previously thought intractable.

Take a look at what the product has to offer and see if you have any business problems now that the tool can resolve that may have been out of scope. Don’t get hung up on features for their own sake, but if the product rings a bell and the sales team have done their job, you’ll be well on the way to picking the right piece of software.