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Apoorv Durga

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When vendors come up with new labels

22-Aug-2011

Tags: Digital and Media Asset Management, Document Management (ECM), Enterprise Collaboration & Social Software, Enterprise Search, Portals and Content Integration, Web Content and Experience Management, Marketplace at Large, Selecting Technology

Vendors are increasingly using more abstract labels to describe their products. For example:

• A vendor we cover in our Portals and Content Integration report for its mashup capabilities has started calling itself a provider of "Real Time Intelligence"
• In their briefings to us, many search engine vendors use terms such as Business Intelligence and eDiscovery to describe their offerings
• Similarly, many Web CMS products have been adopting monikers such as Web Experience Management or even Customer Experience Management

Doubtless all these vendors employ well-staffed marketing departments who spend a lot of time working up this sort of nomenclature.

However, there are some common underlying pressures and trends at work here. In many cases, vendors simply follow what's currently hot or in vogue, often after intense PowerPoint exchanges with industry analyst firms. In other cases, vendors attempt to target a different audience and hence try to switch from a more "techie" sounding name to a more "business" sounding name.  In still other cases, a handful of products in a category  become so dominant that other vendors need a different label just to register their presence.

Personally though, I believe when a label becomes so abstract, it becomes difficult to know what the tool actually does. It also becomes impossible to know what other products to compare it with (which is of course what every vendor wants: "we're unique!").

This is why we always recommend that you don't forget the basic reasons for buying a product when conducting an evaluation. You are probably looking to accomplish some specific goals -- say, improve your publishing, editorial efficiency, or site presentation and interactivity -- and rarely pursue something as vague as "Experience Management." Even if you want better Experience Management, make sure you break it down to more tangible functionality, such as Site Testing, Analytics, Personalization, Promotional Campaigns, Social Media Integration, and so on. Our reports can of course help because we spend a lot of time doing just this to get you the Real Story.