Forrester Report Finds Enterprise Embracing Open Source WCM

Cloud services provider Acquia has commissioned a Forrester report on open source WCM, and while the results are not overwhelming, it does show more enterprise companies are employing open source systems.

Nearly 60 percent of the 160 companies surveyed said they had at least considered open source for their WCM programs. The report also found that executives who make these kind of decisions are also the ones who are least likely to be very satisfied with their choice. 

Open Source Successes

Acquia certainly has a stake in the findings in this report. As a cloud services provider specifically for the open source Drupal ecosystem, Acquia would love to see more large companies adopt the open source ethos. Forrester found several large vendors who have successfully adopted open source CMSs, and there were a few reasons why those companies enjoyed that success.

Company infighting seems to be what is holding enterprises back when it comes to successful WCM implementation.

Company culture and classic marketing versus IT fighting may be the biggest reasons businesses failed to implement a new Web CMS, but let's look more closely at the number two reason: lack of a company wide strategy. This obviously goes hand in hand with number one, but at least Forrester has some recommendations for how to build that strategy. They are, in order:

• Required a solution that allowed for more customization and flexibility.
• Prioritized integration between WCM and other solutions to support digital customer experiences.
• Focused on more than just cost reduction.
• Made specific plans for supporting the open source WCM deployment.
• Understood the myths and reality surrounding open source security concerns.

First, most companies agreed that open source allowed for more flexibility and customization. One survey respondant, a UK educational institution, told Forrester that when using a proprietary system, it took nine to 10 months to add a new feature. With open source, they were able to add functionality within days.

As for combining systems, the all-in-one solutions often offered by vendors does not seem to fit with those companies who had adopted open source. These companies preferred a best of breed approach, and often realized the power of the developer community to assemble system components.

How to Choose an Open Source Web CMS

If you've been skeptical of open source in the past, you have nothing to fear from what Forrester says:

Open source has by and large achieved a higher level of technology maturity over the past several years and have demonstrated some success in large-scale web deployments."

It's not just entertainment, media and traditional education that are finding success with open source, the report reads. Governments, pharma and retail are having success with it as well, a sure sign it should not be excluded when evaluating Web CMSs.

Because open source allows for downloading entire systems for test driving, this is a decided advantage when doing an evaluation. Be sure to try out those prospective systems and contact the developer community for extra insight and validation.

Open source is not perfect, of course, so areas like support and implementation should be explored carefully. There are developers and system experts out there who have built networks on top of open source software. That way, many IT aspects can be outsourced including core platform support, module support, module creation and enhancement, system upgrades, integrations and 24 x 7 x 365 infrastructure and uptime.

Acquia, of course, offers just these kinds of services for the Drupal-based platform. The company has even begun diving into digital marketing with its latest release, called OpenWEM. Tell us in the comments if you've had reservations about open source in the past or if there are some concrete reasons it simply won't work for your purposes.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Forrester Business Process & Architecture Forum Focuses on Digital Disruption #ForrForum

At its 2012 Business Process & Architecture Forum, which will be held October 18-19 in Orlando, FL, Forrester Research is focusing squarely on effectively managing digital disruption in the enterprise. In an interview with CMSWire, Forrester Research Director Steve Powers explained the philosophy on digital disruption attendees can expect to learn about.

Customer Experience Evolution Creates Disruption

“We’re seeing the whole idea of customer experience changing very quickly,” said Powers. “There is a customer inflection point where the customer will either continue to work with you or try someone else. Customer experience is a huge factor in influencing the outcome of that inflection point.”

Powers said the rapid evolution of multichannel and cross-channel customer interaction, as well as increased expectations for personalized service, present a serious technological challenge. “Traditional IT teams can’t keep up,” he said.

Agile Response Combats Disruption

As a result, Powers said marketing teams often outsource or subsource their technology needs.

“What do you, as an IT department, have to do to get marketing to work with you and not around you?” he asked.

The answer, according to Powers, is a dismantling of the traditional silos separating IT and marketing. He gave the example of one Forrester client who embedded the IT and marketing departments into a “digital experience group." This got IT involved in developing marketing tools during the initial design process, instead of serving as a “black box” at the end of the project. He also mentioned that some companies maintain a traditional IT department but divide it into a front office group responsible for designing and delivering customer experience, and a back office group responsible for functions such as ERP and HR.

Powers also advised companies to consider a best-of-breed approach when implementing customer experience technologies — but cautioned against using too many different point solutions. “No one vendor can provide all the right components,” he said. “You should use solution sets from different vendors and see how to tie them together.”

For example, Powers said an organization might use marketing automation and testing/optimization tools from one vendor and then integrate them with e-commerce and analytics tools from another.

Key Sessions on 'Disrupting' Disruption

Several key sessions during the Forrester conference will focus specifically on how companies can disrupt disruption, so to speak, by using technology and business process to turn digital customer experience trends to their advantage. They include:

• Thursday, Oct. 18, 8:45-9:15 AM - The Disruptor's Handbook: How To Make The Most Of Digital Disruption: This keynote from James L. McQuivey, Ph.D., Vice President, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research will help attendees understand the transformative effect of digitally empowered customers, assess their company's readiness for digital disruption internally and externally, and adopt the skills and policies that accelerate their organization's embrace of digital disruption.
• Thursday, Oct. 18, 11:25 AM - 12:10 PM - Implementing The Different In The Age of Digital Disruption: Craig Le Clair, Vice President, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research will explain how to make the shift from analog to digital business processes and use mobile as a catalyst for driving digital process transformation.
• Thursday, Oct. 18, 4:05 PM - 04:35 PM - Don’t Let Digital Disruption Cause Information Corruption: Michele Goetz, Senior Analyst, Forrester Research will discuss a framework for data quality to ensure that customers can rely on the information they use on any device from laptops to mobile.
• Friday, Oct. 19, 1:15 – 1:45 PM – Innovating for Disruption: Nigel Fenwick, Vice President, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research will explain how business architecture can help integrate innovation into existing planning processes.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Forrester Wave: IBM, Microsoft, Salesforce Build Online Collaboration Lead

Yesterday we took a look at the first part of the Forrester Wave: Cloud Strategies Of Online Collaboration Software Vendors, Q3 2012, report where we saw that many enterprises are concerned about the feasibility of using online collaboration services, Today, we will take a brief look at the companies and products that made it into the this Wave.

Leading Trends

The interesting thing about this Forrester report is that despite all the talk in the market place about collaboration and even online collaboration there are only eight vendors that made it into the Wave, of which five made it into the Leaders segment: Box, Cisco Systems, Citrix Online, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Salesforce.com and Yammer.

It is hardly surprising, then, that this market displays all the hallmarks of one that is only starting to evolve. It is currently in a state of flux where vendors are still refining, tweaking and improving their offerings with a number of clear leaders and the rest following in their wake.

IBM, Microsoft, and Salesforce.com

IBM, Microsoft, and Salesforce.com are leading the field, using their previous experience in the enterprise collaboration space to develop strong strategies for their online collaboration offerings. Both Microsoft and IBM have long histories in collaboration, while Salesforce is the pioneer in SaaS enterprise-grade collaboration, building on top of its customer relationship management and PaaS offerings.

Box, Yammer, Google

All three bring consumer experience to the enterprise with many collaboration service providers finding their way into the enterprise through knowledge workers who were adopting the tools to solve very specific problems. All three rode this wave with tools that were easy to use. Box and Yammer help potential customers to adapt to this kind of collaboration by providing easy integration into on-premises systems, while Google is making it easy to drop on-premises systems completely.

Cisco Systems and Citrix Online

These final two both possess collaboration portfolio’s that are still evolving. Both have evolved and are moving from purely conferencing services to fully fledged collaboration services. This has required a change in the way they think about collaboration and issues like integration, customization, access controls and encryption. Cisco is dealing with this under the WebEx brand while Citrix is beginning the collaboration journey as it integrates its recent ShareFile and Podio acquisitions.

Before diving into the report, Forrester recommends that potential customers look at all offerings and not just those that are in the Leaders segment. It is often the case that specific functionality will be found in the portfolio of vendors that fall outside the Leaders category.

Forrester Wave: Online Collaboration scores

Online Collaboration Leaders

IBM

IBM has been working for some time on integrating internal and external collaboration and appears to have found the right mix with the rebranded SmartCloud for Social Business offering. With it users can choose between a multitenant, and dedicated offering from a globally distributed data center. A significant part of its functionality can be accessed through most mobile devices and platforms, including iOS, Android and BlackBerry. Its Social Business Toolkit can both customized and extend its online portfolio.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

Forrester Wave: Enterprises Concerned Over Cloud-Based Collaboration Feasibility

There are a number of surprising takeaways from a new Forrester Wave report that should force many collaboration vendors to think through their development strategies twice. Not least of these is that despite all the progress that has been made, many IT leaders are still questioning the feasibility of cloud-based collaboration tools.

Cloud-based Online Collaboration

The report, Forrester Wave: Cloud Strategies Of Online Collaboration Software Vendors, Q3 2012, is based on research compiled by TJ Keitt and is the result of surveys sent to 2,438 IT executives and technology decision-makers located in Canada, France, Germany, the UK and the US working in everything from SMBs to large enterprises.

It identified what Forrester describes as eight significant collaboration services providers — Box, Cisco Systems, Citrix Online, Google, IBM, Microsoft, salesforce.com, and Yammer — that were scored on over 38 criteria.

Today we will look at some of the issues that this evaluation raised, while tomorrow we will look at the five companies that made it into the Leader’s segment of the Wave.

Forrester Wave Online Collaboration: Vendors included in the Wave
 

Before looking at it in detail, there are three main takeaways from the study that put the entire body of research in perspective. They include:

1. Business Agility

To address business problems enterprises must partner with a number of external groups outside the firewall. Cloud-based collaboration tools can be delivered to both PCs and mobile devices and enables the free flow of information.

2. Cloud-based Collaboration Feasibility

Despite the massive strides in security and compliance and the fact that more than half plan to use online collaboration tools in the next two years, many IT leaders still don’t trust online services.

3. Vendors Reassure IT leaders

Following on from this, then, it makes sense that successful vendors in this space are those that can reassure businesses around these issues. Successful vendors in this space will be able to provide the flexibility enterprises require to achieve business goals.

Online Collaboration Appeals

While there is considerable competition in the online collaboration market, Forrester says that the rush to get products to the market is not vendors trying to one-up each other, but reflects a very real and expanded demand for products. More than half of enterprises survey said that they are or will be using SaaS collaboration technologies in the next two years. Business leaders believe SaaS offerings will offer them the following advantages:

Responsiveness

Customers that are increasingly informed and empowered can force an enterprise to change its strategy to suit. Business leaders believe that they will be able to respond to this with technologies that enable easy information flow, and a space outside the firewall where the enterprise can collaborate effectively with clients.

Feature Upgrades

Traditional on-premises software that depends on a three-to-five year refresh cycle prevents enterprises from changing and upgrading outdated software. Online services update themselves, a factor that was mentioned by 60% of those in the survey.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

Forrester Report Says Think Customer Engagement Not Marketing Campaigns

Multichannel marketing has now become common. That’s one of the conclusions of a new report from Forrester, about marketing in the age of multiple ways to reach the customer.

The report, entitled The Multichannel Maturity Mandate, was commissioned by Sitecore, a provider of software for web content management and customer engagement.

Mature Practitioners in Multichannel Marketing

It found that 40 percent of survey respondents assessed themselves as being “mature practitioners” of marketing for multiple channels, and another 40 percent self-described as transitional. About 5 percent reported they had no plans to undertake multichannel marketing.

Mature multichannel marketers reported that they aggressively adopted new technologies, are more inclined to work with IT, and work more collaboratively with sales departments in setting goals.

The report recommends that companies “create a culture that worships customer knowledge,” and that marketers stop thinking about campaigns and start thinking about customer engagement. Toward that end, Forrester suggests a company’s website be transformed into a “pervasive customer engagement hub,” and that a company’s technical infrastructure be developed, alongside a trusted IT advisor.

Finally, the report said, companies need to embrace change management and choose outside technology partners who can immediately help deliver short-term gains.

Key Impediments to Multichannel Marketing

The study found that key impediments toward making multichannel marketing a greater priority included a lack of knowledge and skills, and a dependence on the skills of external marketing partners. For mature practitioners, the key areas for improvement were a greater integration between various marketing processes, often supported by new technologies.

The report found that a multichannel approach was needed to reach most customers at the touchpoints when they are open to marketing. These include discovering, searching, researching, sharing, getting help, evangelizing, using, deciding, suggesting to a friend, and, of course, purchasing.

Several benefits were cited as resulting from multichannel marketing. These include a 15 percent increase in impressions for 48 percent of respondents, and a 15 percent increase in customer satisfaction for 43 percent. Twenty-four percent found that sales cycle times were reduced by more than 15 percent.

Another benefit was in the performance of digital marketing campaigns by such metrics as improved clicks, conversion rates and customer engagement.

A revenue increase of more than 15 percent was reported by forty percent of mature multichannel marketers, and 60 percent said they had an increase of more than 10 percent in return-on-marketing investment. Other benefits include increased alignment between sales and marketing.

The study utilized an online survey of 226 organizations in the U.S., Canada, Germany, Scandinavian countries, Singapore, and the U.K., and was conducted in December, 2011.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com