Isaac, Content Management, like Customer Relationship Management, tends to be used to mean different things to different people and many clients don't understand which aspect is important to them and why.
When I was at GE Information Services, they had two issues. First was balancing local control / divisional control of content to corporate branding and quality standards and the second was a usability issue with delivering the right content to the right employees and customers. While they were somewhat aware of the issues, I had to clarify it for them and make the business case for what should come first and second. As it turned out, managing the content creation process was the first issue they had to solve. Cleaning up old and conflicting pages and presentation styles was a huge issue. This had to be accomplished keeping in mind what was likely to be a significant move to dynamic content next. Another client, a large insurance company, had focused on relatively fixed content versus transactional information matched to dynamic content. I helped them understand the interdependencies and created the need for an entirely different infrastructure to support the new integration requirements. Bottom line, they need you to help them articulate their issues first, then help them solve them with the appropriate solutions. If you wait for them to deliver clearly defined requirements (which never really happens) you end up being looked at as a commodity versus a value added partner. Andy -----Original Message----- From: S. Isaac Dealey [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, June 14, 2002 10:29 PM To: CF-Talk Subject: Content Management Hello all, I'm new to the cf-talk list although I've been working with ColdFusion for 5 years. I got started on a "mission critical" intranet app at MCI / Worldcom where I worked for about 6 months before they finalized the merger and the job evaporated. That was CF 3.0 just before Allaire's second wind. :) I'm curious to know what members of the list think about the subject of content management or CMS. Do your clients often ask for tools to allow their not-so-technical staff to update their own websites? and if so, how do you address the issue? Do you build something for them in-house, figure out what their requirements are and offer them a list of existing solutions or just tell them their best bet is to hire more web staff? ... Do you have a preferred package and if so which and why? How many of you still have active client sites on Spectra? Admittedly I have an ulterior motive. :) Over the past 3 years I developed a content management system myself which you can see at http://products.turnkey.to and I'm now trying to make a serious effort at marketing, so any feedback is greatly appreciated. Isaac Dealey new epoch www.turnkey.to 954-776-0046 ______________________________________________________________________ Signup for the Fusion Authority news alert and keep up with the latest news in ColdFusion and related topics. http://www.fusionauthority.com/signup.cfm FAQ: http://www.thenetprofits.co.uk/coldfusion/faq Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/cf-talk@houseoffusion.com/ Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/index.cfm?sidebar=lists
