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Kas Thomas

Survey on university CMS adoption

7-Nov-2007

Tags: Web Content and Experience Management, Building Business Case, Higher Ed

A Web CMS survey conducted by the University of California at Davis (preliminary results of which were released October 22, 2007) made official what many of us suspected all along: Even the best minds in the world can't agree on how to do content management. Of the 81 (out of 129) respondents who are currently using a Web CMS, roughly 20% (18 respondents) have rolled their own solution. The other 63 institutions are using 39 different branded solutions. The fragmentation of this market is really quite stunning. Can you imagine 63 colleges using 39 different word processor programs?

Quantitatively, the UCD numbers are a bit on the thin side. What survey lacks in statistical significance, however, it makes up for in qualitative poignancy. The comments page makes interesting reading. The usual themes emerge: Know your requirements up front. Get buy-in from all constituencies, not just IT. Budget for training. Expect things to take longer than you thought.

An interesting bit of subtext that seems to weave together many of the survey respondents' comments is that when rolling out a Web CMS, the cost of failure is often better-defined than the cost of success. If a system rolls out within budget and fails due to (say) poor adoption, the cost of the exercise is well known. If, on the other hand, a system rolls out to great fanfare, unanticipated costs can surface.

"Adding a CMS changes how people think about the web," one survey respondent said, pointing out that when authors are able to post content in real- or near-real-time, it gives them a new sense of what's possible. "In the days when you needed a programmer to do just about anything in a site, people settled for getting very little done. Now they may assume they can have a lot for very little cost, so expectations management becomes a real educational endeavor."

One survey respondent said: "Be very conscious that if you do succeed with a vision of centralized management of a decentralized publishing system . . . the infrastructure (server and database) may not be able to handle the load of success, even with a scalable system."

Several of those surveyed warned against buying more functionality than needed, lest users add unexpected administrative (or other) burdens. This corroborates our research suggesting that most Web CMS customers face a greater risk of over-buying than under-buying. As one person said: "Getting the right system to meet your needs is the trick, not getting a great system."