From WCM to WEM and CEM - a change of heart?

Those of you under the impression that Web Engagement Management (WEM) and Customer Experience Management (CEM) are mere buzzwords may want to pause and observe. I am not saying that I am in favor of creating more acronyms -- we have more than enough of those in the industry already, and you'd need a huge glossary to cover them all. But it is important not to turn a blind eye to the changes and evolution happening in the Web Content Management market, as organizational needs and technologies to support customer needs evolve.

Just a few observations from the recent past.

VYRE -- one of the very few vendors that does a combo of WCM + DAM -- recently changed its orientation from WCM to "marketing automation". In addition, they're putting more focus on marketing resource management. Does that mean they've stopped doing WCM? No. However, the majority of VYRE implementations tend to fall on the Digital Asset Management side, whereby brand asset managers look to provide better marketing capabilities and brand distribution channels for themselves and their clients. One of those channels is always, inevitably, the web - so VYRE won't be cutting out their WCM capabilities anytime soon. 

Sitecore recently announced they're now a "Customer Engagement Management" platform. The repositioning actually comes with some new engagement-y functionality (e.g., engagement automation, adaptive segmentation) -- though not to be fully revealed until perhaps early Q3 in the 6.5 release.

Upon the acquisition by Adobe, Day CQ5 is raving about Customer Experience Management - from physical kiosks to mobile delivery, where CQ5 is the proposed foundation for content management, CRX is application central, Omniture for analytics, and LiveCycle is the RIA and toolset layer.

Messaging, marketing, and positioning changes orchestrated by WCM vendors are not always indicative of the actual market trends. Buyers should be aware of that, should you want to escape any achy, breakin' WCM hearts.

The bottom line: it doesn't really matter what's happening in the vendor's marketing department or which kool-aid the CMO is drinking. If you're buying a CMS, you should be buying it for what's under covers, for the core of technology, for what it can do for you, and not necessarily for the marketing labels attached to it.


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Gil, Partner, Cancentric Solutions Inc.
iStudio Canada Inc.

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