News broke in January that Gartner, one of the world’s leading analysts of technology trends, was going to discontinue it’s famous Magic Quadrant report for Web Content Management software. The report was widely recognized as the industry’s best guide to the evolving category of software that allows marketers and businesses to create, publish and manage their web sites. What does the discontinuation of this famous report mean to the web content industry? Is this the end of web sites as we’ve come to know them?
Thankfully, no. The news is really just the latest harbinger that the idea of web content management is increasingly morphing into something fundamentally larger and more powerful: the idea of a digital experience platform. In the mid-90s, the idea that every company needed a web site was just starting to take hold, requiring that marketers and business leaders partner internally with IT organizations to create web sites. Businesspeople would create content, often as MS Word documents, and then hand the content to their internal IT department, who would manually code web pages and web sites and make them available to the web surfing public.
This process quickly became tedious and time consuming and as a result, web content management (WCM) software was created to bridge the gap between technical and non-technical users. Instead of working with IT resources, marketers and business people created content directly within the WCM platform, speeding up the publish cycle and reducing IT costs in the process.
A dizzying array of WCM vendors sprung up and it quickly became very challenging to select the right WCM tool. As the value of web sites became more and more apparent, the need to create and update multiple web sites became more important. The choice of WCM platform became that much more important because organizations were making larger and larger investments on the web. Choosing the wrong WCM platform would be an expensive and limiting process, frustrating marketers, customers and IT organizations. The stakes for selecting the right WCM became critical.
That’s why the Gartner Magic Quadrant report on WCM became so valuable: it’s frequent updates provided a detailed examination of the top WCM platforms and tools, providing summary recommendations on where to invest. It detailed specific strengths and weaknesses of each platform, along with recommendations for ongoing support, the partner network and longer-term predictions around the viability of the specific software tool. In short, it quickly became the go-to source to consult when trying to determine the best WCM platform for an organization.
Over time, expectations of web site visitors elevated beyond simple web page experiences. Increasingly, customers and site visitors wanted to access functionality online; the ability to pay their bills online, to research, compare and shop online and the ability to have an increasingly personalized experience all drove the need to evolve beyond basic web sites. WCM platforms initially tried to morph into web content tools that also did e-commerce or extended into blogging and social features. This resulted in a fragmenting of the WCM marketplace; some WCM tools were better at commerce or personalization or supporting multiple web sites with one toolset. Again, Gartner’s Magic Quadrant report on WCM became invaluable for organizations seeking clarity on making the right choice.
Ironically, WCM has evolved today into a completely new paradigm: Digital Experience. Today’s platforms are expected to offer comprehensive web page management, but also B2B and B2C commerce, support all forms of internationalization, deliver persuasive personalization technologies, manage email and related campaigns, automate and drive both CRM and marketing automation tools, collect and predict actions based on analytics and to deliver experiences outside of the web (including mobile applications, augmented reality and virtual reality). It’s this expansion in focus that has caused Gartner to recognize that WCM is but a small component of what Digital Experience platforms are expected to deliver.
Gartner’s new focus, and report, is just that: Digital Experience (DX), and with good reason. The stakes have never been higher because the decision of a DX platform is so much more than just any of the underlying components. Different organizations have different priorities. For some, baseline marketing content with personalization is the major focus. For others, powering multiple experiences is a priority (think of an airline who has to run a web site, a mobile app and kiosks inside an airport from the same platform). Still others are focused on international commerce, delivering across multiple geographies, rules and regulatory requirements.
In each example, a DX platform is the answer, but defining which DX platform is the best suited toward a specific organization’s unique needs is still challenging. Rest assured that Gartner’s upcoming Magic Quadrant on Digital Experience will continue to be a trustworthy guide to making those important decisions.
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At Artech, we have specific experience with the industry’s leading DX platforms, including Adobe, Sitecore and Episerver. We partner with organizations to craft and deliver persuasive digital experiences that move the needle for business today. To learn more about Artech’s ability to help you better leverage DX platforms and tools, contact us today.