2012 may indeed be the “Year of Web Content.” Actually, so was 2011, 2010, 2009… But this article on the Forbes Marketwatch blog describes how some big brands are attacking content marketing and content curation to help fulfill their brand promise.
Amongst content management insiders, there has been an ongoing acronym war over what the technology systems should be called that help companies manage their content online -- which quite frankly, end users care very little about.
At the end of the day, the companies mentioned in the Forbes article, and countless others, want to use content to engage with their customers and prospects to drive their business goals. And they want their content technologies to help them achieve those goals, not get in the way--regardless of what it’s called.
However there’s a growing disconnect between what’s expected and what’s actually being delivered when it comes to implementing those content systems and the associated costs. Increasingly, companies are questioning what capabilities (or lack of) they’re receiving from their web content systems investments. As well as, what additional costs of services they’ll need to incur to support, maintain and upgrade what becomes a very complex, highly customized system.
According to a post by The Real Story Group this past spring, web content management system implementation costs have risen to 7-8 times the cost of software licensing. Perhaps most galling to buyers, the increased ratios are simply stipulated as a fact that buyers should just prepare for. We have heard some form of the following countless times:
Systems are becoming more complex, and to deploy complex systems, it takes time, and your services dollars, and that’s ok.
