The topic of CMS selection never gets old. This is partly due to the sheer complexity of selecting and procuring enterprise technology.

However, SaaS and Cloud CMS vendors will sometimes sing such praise to their ease of use as to suggest you really don’t need any IT involvement if you go their route. Is it really advisable to ignore your IT department if you’re choosing among SaaS and cloud WCM offerings?

Of course, the idea of making enterprise-grade software easier to use is a commendable one in the world of Web CMS.  That said, I’ve never seen a successful CMS project where either IT or Marketing/Business were left out of the decision making process.

Imagine your better half buying a new family car without consulting with you. That’s gonna spur a reaction! Major household purchases are not that much different from major enterprise software purchases in the sense that all affected parties need to be able to provide input and have a say in the decision.

With SaaS/cloud WCM solutions, you might appear to gain some independence from IT, since they'll no longer manage the infrastructure. However, chances are your IT team will still have to support it – at least in terms of the help desk staffing for any technical issues. Even more  importantly, your IT department may need to create and support integration services with other enterprise systems. This is hard enough to begin with, so don’t make your developers’ jobs harder by excluding them from the CMS selection process. At a minimum, they’ll want to compare APIs, REST services, and other integration dimensions.

I can pretty much guarantee you that the content management system is one of many pieces of technology you have in your technical stack. Therefore, make sure to look at it from many different angles.