Analyst

Scott Liewehr emailed me today announcing that Digital Clarity Group and Constellation Research, Inc. are forming a strategic alliance to better serve their clients. Scott is CEO of Digital Clarity Group and it's no secret CMS Report is an admirer of both him and his company. Yet Scott's email still surprised me. Why would DCG, rising among the ranks among analyst firms, strike an alliance with Constellation?

The nice thing with friends in high places is the ability to see advanced copies of guides and books before they hit the public. Digital Clarity Group (DCG) has announced the immediate availability of an update to the North American edition of its popular Guide to Service Providers for Web Content and Customer Experience Management. Over the past few days, I've combed through the pages and remain as impressed with the guide as I was with its original release.

I've been a big fan of Digital Clarity Group ever since they formed. There are some amazing people working for DCG and the work they put out is quite frankly spectacular. Last year they put out their 2013 North America Guide to Service Providers for Web Content and Customer Experience Management and I was blown away. Many of the answers to the questions I'm often asked about various agencies and integrators are in this guide.

A constant worry of mine as CMS Report's editor is that we won't have enough articles to publish and give you reason to visit this little site of ours. Luckily, authors and contributors with interest in content management systems constantly prove that such my worries are unnecessary. This year almost 900 articles were submitted to CMS Report. I can't tell you how grateful I am for every article that was submitted to our site. Of those 900 submissions, we deemed only 300 of those articles worthy to publish based on quality of the writing and whether we felt the story was of interest to our readers.

Those of you who have been in the content management industry a while will remember the CMS Watch report. I’m not sure when I first heard of it, but I think it was at an AIIM conference in 2005. I remember thinking that if we could just get Agility into that report, we would have it made. Looking back, it’s amazing to see how many of the systems that ranked well in 2005 are either gone or no longer relevant.

A few years later, I saw an article on CMS Wire that Ektron had made it into the Gartner Magic Quadrant. I realized that it was going to be hard to complete with this level of recognition, no matter how superior Agility is.

NEW YORK, June 12, 2012- Engagement and control are two words driving conversations across the enterprise in 2012 and beyond. As the CIO grapples for technology governance, the CMO struggles to keep up with the chaotic changes in marketing.  Both are challenged with leveraging technology to engage, collaborate, socialize, and measure the more empowered consumer and the ever-more virtual workforce.  To meet this challenge – some clarity is needed. 

Digital Clarity Group (DCG), a new research-driven advisory firm focused on helping leaders navigate the digital transformation, is celebrating its launch today by identifying several seismic trends affecting the enterprise.

Technology industry veteran Scott Liewehr is President and Principal Analyst of DCG and has assembled an extraordinary “all-star team” of experts to focus on working with business leaders on all aspects of digital transformation.  This includes advising technology vendors on how to approach this market, as well as the buyers on how to better navigate the changes. As Scott stated; “Consumers and knowledge workers alike are grabbing control of the reigns and not letting go. The combination of the social web, open standards, the cloud, and ubiquitous mobility to name just a few, represent a field of dreams for empowered audiences to both collaborate and self-satisfy. For organizations, these represent an opportunity to transform, innovate, engage and develop loyal customers and employees like never before.” 

The transformation that DCG addresses is the overlap of where Innovative Change meets the Social Enterprise and Consumer Engagement, and is facilitated with Adaptive Technology.  And as part of the inaugural launch of DCG’s practice, the team has identified several seismic trends impacting leaders across these four themes.  

"The most important thing to remember is that outside some very basic functionality, SharePoint is a platform. With enough time, money, and painkillers, you can get it to do almost anything. But then you or your integrator fall into the business of software development (and maintenance)."

-Tony Byrne, Avoid the Enterprise SharePoint Surprise, Real Story Group, February 14, 2012.

Nice reminder from The Content Wrangler on where the money:

Are you looking to drum up some new business? Want to get more dollars from existing clients? Are you a starving writer?

White paper expert Michael A. Stelzner, author of Writing White Papers: How to Capture Readers and Keep Them Engaged, provides the following reasons white papers could dramatically increase your writing revenue...

Over the past couple years, I've been asked by a few if I would be willing to write a white paper recommending a content management system. information system, or specific product.  For the most part, those opportunities always seem to arrive when I'm busy with other projects so I declined. When I wasn't busy, I was asked to write positively about a product I knew nothing about (I declined) as well as a specific information system which I believed could be better written within the company (the potential client had smarter people than me and they agreed).

A couple days ago my jaw dropped when I read CMS Watch's article, "Do you need an ECMS, WCMS, or Portal?".   Last week, Deane Barker of Blend Interactive and Gadgetopia had mentioned how he was uncomfortable seeing enterprise content management systems and Web content management systems lumped together in the same comparison article.  I responded to him that the boundaries between the two information systems do seem to get blurrier and blurrier all the time.  In the CMS Watch