Decision Making for Content Management Systems: Criteria Identification and Categorisation

Transcription

1 th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences Decision Making for Content Management Systems: Criteria Identification and Categorisation Spyros Angelopoulos Horizon Digital Economy Research Institute School of Computer Science University of Nottingham Fotis Kitsios School of Information Sciences Department of Applied Informatics University of Macedonia Abstract The use of content management systems (CMS) has radically changed the way that web sites are deployed. The plethora of such systems however, makes the decision-making process a challenging task since there is no available classification for CMS. Our study attempts to identify distinctive characteristics of CMS in order to classify them in performance categories. The analysis of our study incorporates both quantitative and qualitative research methods for the successful triangulation of the identified results. For the needs of the study we explored 570 CMS and identified 51 criteria, which we ranked into six distinctive categories that describe clearly the issue of CMS selection. The results of our study can represent an invaluable asset for the successful outcome of decision-making regarding CMS selection from an organization or individuals, and a competitive advantage for the use of innovation toolkits such as benchmarking. 1. Introduction The competitive advantage of organizations in every sector depends inter alia on their ability to respond to challenges occurring in both their internal and external environments. Decision-making, thus, is tightly intertwined with organizational change through effective information and knowledge management, and with the overall technological capabilities of the organization, in order to provide such competitive advantage. A series of challenges are posed, however, on account of the numerous factors that need to be taken into consideration when designing, implementing, and managing Information or Knowledge Management Systems. Despite the fact that research to date has shown their influence in the decision-making processes in an organization [1]-[4], further research is needed to elucidate how such challenges can be eventually operationalized. Everyday, in every organization around the world, executives of all levels face the challenge of decision-making, which involves the management of information and knowledge through the design and implementation of various models and management systems. Such models and systems enable, inter alia, effective decision making; they catalyse changes in the knowledge of individuals and groups associated with the change; and they help them understand highly complex change situations, as well as the interactions between multiple stakeholders with often conflicting and competing views, who discuss, negotiate changes, and use modelling techniques to deal with the complexities of their different interpretations. According to Harper [6] [a]n organization s ability to evaluate its practices against specific business strategies and objectives is critical to leveraging its knowledge capital. One of the most crucial aspects of decision-making is the assessment of the possible solutions for each case. Such assessment can have many different forms according to the needed outcome; it can either be the need for an optimal solution, the description of the partial solutions according to their specifications, or the ranking of the partial solutions. Ranking the potential solutions represents an approach of increasing importance in decisionmaking, and its objective is the segmentation of possible solutions in homogeneous categories, for the easiest use of the solution and the better understanding of their relevance and performance according to the problem that decision-makers need to solve. By segmenting and ranking the potential solutions, decision-makers can eventually identify the solutions that excel in each category, and lead their way to an optimal solution according to their needs. Apart from their use as tools for the identification of an optimal solution however, ranking tables can also be used to provide decisionmakers with a list of competitive choices that they can benchmark their decision against. Benchmarking has been extensively used in several fields of business studies, and Information Systems (IS) could not constitute an exception, since there are already several studies of IS benchmarking [7]-[10]. Benchmarking is the process of comparing the performance metrics of an individual, against the processes and performance metrics of a better /15 $ IEEE DOI /HICSS

2 performing competitor in an industry. Boxwell [11] argues that there are three main reasons why benchmarking is becoming a prominent tool, and namely these are: the fact that it is an efficient way to make improvements, it speeds up the processes for such improvements, and also brings performance up in a sector as a whole. Benchmarking involves identifying the best candidates in the industry, and comparing the results and processes of those studied to results and processes of an individual to learn how well the targets perform. Although it may be a oneoff event, is often treated as a process, in which organizations seek to improve their practices [11]. What is missing from the relevant literature is a study on Content Management Systems (CMS). A CMS simplifies the publication of content on web sites, allowing content submission without requiring special technical knowledge [12]-[14]. In order to be able to benchmark CMS, however, we need to properly identify the leader in the market, and rank appropriately the rest of the competitors. Hence, there is a need for a study that will provide the foundations for such a process, by thoroughly and extensively exploring the distinctive characteristics of CMS, and rank such systems according to how they perform on the identified characteristics. Our study is a first attempt to fill this gap, and it is mainly focused on identifying the potential features of CMS, and segmenting the identified features into categories for successful ranking of the systems. In order to achieve this, 570 CMS were examined over a period of two years, and their characteristics were recorded in a binary format, and 51 characteristics were identified that were separated into six distinctive categories. Our main theoretical contribution in this paper is delivered in the form of tables that present the identified features and categories from our study, and can become a blueprint for the successful selection of a CMS. The rest of this paper is structured as follows: after a brief introduction on the importance of decision-making and benchmarking in the fields of IS, we discuss CMS in the following section, and ranking in the third section of the paper. In the fourth section the outcomes of the research are presented, whilst the fifth part presents the discussion of the results, as well as ideas for future research. 2. Content Management Systems The acronym CMS has become a buzzword among CIOs over the last few years, since such systems allow them to come up with fully functional IS platforms in a faster and -most importantlycheaper way. Their main objective is the easiest information management from the end users to the content creators and website administrators. CMS play an important role in the enterprise level, as an IS which is implemented for use on both the internet and on corporate intranets, and as such the term has rapidly intruded the boardrooms of organizations, and the keywords of the relevant academic literature. The need to manage content in an easy and fast way became apparent from the early days of the internet, and the increasing need of dynamic web pages made such a need even more prominent. The fast diffusion of information on the World Wide Web attracted many related services, such as news providers. They were soon, however, faced with the problem of continuous updating of the content, since static web pages needed a lot of work in order to be promptly and continuously updated with news, while most journalists have had no relevant technical skills to maintain web sites. The outcome of this was badly designed web pages that most of the times were also overpriced. Hence, along with the emergence of the first dynamic web pages, there was a need for a system that would help in managing the content of the web page and offer the ability to non-specialised users to update their content fast and with ease. CMS equipped information providers around the world with a tool that required almost no additional skills in order to successfully publish new content, and update a webpage. Software giants such as Microsoft and IBM early enough covered the gap that appeared in the market due to the increasing need for CMS. Their inability, however, to rule the market was mainly caused by the wealth of free open source CMS that soon appeared, and they were built around open, non-proprietary standards. Open standards allow interoperability of the application, and dependent services. There are a number of benefits inherent in the use of most opensource applications. Open-source systems are typically developed using open tools, such as PHP, Perl, Python and many more. Working with such tools, reduces lock-in with specific vendors or software packages [15]. The code of open-source applications can be obtained for free, and any commercial support associated with the product is typically comparable or cheaper to other products [16]. Moreover, active communities of developers support the most popular open-source solutions. The combination of open platforms and the simplicity of customization make integrating open-source CMS with other software considerably easier, while many open-source solutions are also built with newer technology. Thus, the market experiences a blooming of CMS solutions that stand out due to their quality, specifications as well as ease of use. Content management is a process that involves several tasks such as the collection, import, organization, categorization, structure, editing as well as publishing of a large variety of content types. Every CMS is an IS that can execute such processes. In a logical level, CMS include a set of taxonomies for the classification of the different content types. In 1234

3 a physical level, information is stored in most cases in a database or, in some rare cases, in a text file [17]. A CMS can be used for the management of the workflow in a collaborative environment. It enables large groups of people to collaborate and contribute content creation, by providing them with control access to data, based on user roles. In a CMS, content can be defined as nearly anything such as documents, videos, images, or any data format. Such systems are frequently used for storing, controlling, revising, enriching, and publishing documentation. Serving as a central repository, they increase the version level of new updates to an already existing file, while version control is one of their primary advantages. Ultimately, a CMS is used for the collection, management and publishing of content. According to Boiko [17], a CMS can break down to three subsystems, namely the collection subsystem, the core management subsystem, which handles the storage, editing and workflow of content, as well as the publishing subsystem. The analysis of the aforementioned subsystems, however, is beyond the scope of our paper. The functionality of a CMS is parted by a set of operational characteristics. The identification of such characteristics, as well as their classification in categories is our main concern. In the following section we present the data collection and analysis process that lead to our findings. 3. Data Collection and Analysis Decision-making within organizations is always to the fore as an agent and means of securing that intervention and change is effective and successful [18]. In order to support this very notion, we examined the maximum number of the available CMS in order to be able to come up with trustworthy outcomes. The CMS under study were examined in detail, enabling us to extensively record the specific features of each CMS, and come up eventually with a general list of characteristics as well as categories for their segmentation. More specifically, 570 CMS were examined, and their characteristics were recorded in a binary format. When a characteristic was identified, it was being imported in the general list of characteristics and when a CMS satisfied that characteristic, then it was getting the value 1 for it, else if it did not, it was getting the value 0. The framework we followed is graphically represented in Figure 1. After the examination of all collected CMS, a total of 51 characteristics were identified, which were needed for the successful final general ranking of all CMS, as well as the final ranking within categories. As a result, each examined CMS could potentially achieve a score of 51 in the theoretical case that would include all the identified features. Our study however, was not limited in the quantitative perspective of the research, since a documentary analysis of manuals and support web pages took place as well. The documentary analysis enabled us to identify the functions of each CMS and to build the initial database of characteristics. The qualitative perspective complemented the selected method harmonically, and the results represent the outcome of the triangulation process we followed. 4. Results The 51 characteristics were divided into six categories. The categories were created in such a way to reflect the nature of characteristics, and namely they are: security, usability, management, performance, interoperability, and flexibility. The collected data were analysed, and the results of the analysis are presented in tables in the appendix. More extensively, during the study several interesting aspects of the CMS market were identified. As regards the cost of CMS, it appears that 58.2% are provided for free, while the other 41.8% are provided for a fee. The list of all 51 characteristics, segmented into six categories is presented in the Tables 1-6 in the appendix, while in the same tables the result of the analysis are next to each feature, along with the identification number of the feature. In detail, the six categories are: Performance: The need to describe those characteristics that refer to the overall performance of a CMS led to the creation of this category. Within the performance category, four characteristics where identified, namely: database replication, load balancing, page caching and the ability of the system to serve static content. Our analysis showed that almost two out of three CMS offer the ability to serve cached content. Such ability can enhance the user experience and improve the overall performance. Table 1 presents the four characteristics under performance category next to the percentage of the CMS in the study that offer such characteristics. Interoperability: The interconnection represents a distinctive category. Within the interoperability category, six characteristics where identified, as presented in the Table 2. Our analysis showed that the three most important features are content syndication in the form of RSS feed syndication, which was identified in 64,04% of the CMS, the support of UTF-8, which enables the content to appear flawlessly in all browsers regardless the language it has been written, and finally, compliance with the XHTML format, which enables extensive interoperability with other data formats. XHTML provides the system with better accessibility, faster browser rendering speed, diversity of user agents as well as with better search engine optimization capabilities. Table 2 presents the six characteristics under the interoperability category next to the percentage of the CMS that offer such characteristics. 1235

4 Flexibility: This category includes characteristics that were identified as linked to the expansion abilities of a CMS. Within the flexibility category, seven characteristics where identified, as presented in the Table 3 in the appendix. Metadata capabilities are provided by 67.54% of the systems and enable the administrator to use other forms of data in order to describe content. Table 3 presents the seven characteristics under flexibility category next to the percentage of the CMS that offer such characteristics. Security: This category lists the features that are directly linked to the security of the system. Eleven characteristics where identified, which are present in a high percentage of the studied CMS. The presence of granular privileges in 84,91% of the CMS under study, makes it the most popular characteristic. Such a feature enables the content administrators to organise the workflow of the publishing process, and distribute access rights to content editors accordingly. Content approval is also a popular characteristic with a percentage of 75,26%. Such a feature enables content administrators to control the content before it gets published. Audit trail is the third more popular security-related characteristic, with a percentage of 70,53%. Audit trail enables content administrators to know who accessed the admin panel and when. Table 4 presents the eleven characteristics under security category next to the percentage of the CMS under study that offer such characteristics. Management: The management of such systems represent a distinctive category for the identified features. Within the management category, eleven characteristics where identified, as presented in table 5 in the appendix. On the table, online administration is presented as the most popular feature since nine out of ten CMS provides such a feature. Asset management is the second most popular feature with percentage of 80%, while the ability to customise the layout of the website with themes is the third most popular feature with percentage of 73,51%. In table 5 we present the eleven characteristics under management category next to the percentage of the CMS under study that offered such a characteristic. Usability: This category includes characteristics related to functions of a CMS that enable rapid import, management and deletion of content. Within the usability category, twelve characteristics where identified, as presented in Table 6. WYSIWYG stands for What You See Is What You Get and it appears to be the second most popular feature among the studied CMS. The finding is not surprising, since the use of WYSIWYG editors is one of the features that has made CMS popular among users who are not familiar with web programming, and need a tool for quick and easy web publishing. Such editors bring the usability of a word processor within the publishing interface of the CMS and enable their use from less experienced users. Hence, its popularity is reflected by the fact that more than 90% of the CMS in our study offer such a feature. Table 6 presents the twelve characteristics under usability category next to the percentage of the studied CMS that offered it. 5. Conclusion The classification of such a large number of CMS, and the identification of a significant number of characteristics could be considered better than a good start, as each authority has been particularly difficult. This principle, however, opens up many new particularly interesting horizons for further research. Some potential areas for future research would be: The updating of data: The development of CMS is fast enough to result in our study being soon outdated. The update of the records produced during the research could lead to new conclusions, and eventually the study of the evolution of CMS. The study of new CMS: New CMS packages become available almost every day. The new CMS should be considered as candidates for future studies, and lead to reclassification of the list of evaluation. The data analysis with the use of other methods: The collected data could be used by various methods, such as the multicriteria analysis, methods of fuzzy logic, neural networks, and many others. Certainly the results obtained will be of particular interest. The classification: The categorization of the studied CMS according to the number of their characteristics would have special interest, as well as the kind of the overall characteristics they have. The case studies: Such studies would certainly need to examine the specific features of CMS that make them ideal for specific applications. The benchmarking: The implementation of the five steps of the benchmarking process could shed more light upon the reasons that make the prominent CMS to stand out against the competition. The behaviour of end users: Future research is worth exploring -from both a qualitative as well as quantitative perspective- the behaviour of end users during the use of the selection criteria identified in our study, and their hierarchical categorization according to their significance for every decision. The satisfaction of end users: Future research endeavours should measure and analyse end users satisfaction to identify preferences and perceptions based on a preference-disaggregation approach. 1236

5 Ranking with different scale: The ranking of the CMS in our study was based on a binary scale. Whilst this study is a first attempt to explore the subject, we do acknowledge that this represents a limitation, and hence we call for future studies to address this issue by using more complex scales. The transformation that the IT industry has undergone the last decade through the use of CMS is pervasive in all sectors. CMS have given great impetus to the development of IS platforms, and have led to the reduced cost for their implementation within organizations. Our study is an introduction to the new and rapidly emerging within the IS literature concept of CMS. The findings of our study can become an invaluable asset for decisionmakers, and a competitive advantage for the use of innovation toolkits such as benchmarking. We argue that the topic covered in this paper requires greater attention from researchers, and we thus call for more studies that will focus on the research questions that have emerged from our exploration of the concept. 6. References [1] M. Bourne, J. Mills, M. Wilcox, A. Neely, and K. Platts, K. Designing, implementing and updating performance measurement systems, International Journal of Operations & Production Management, 2000, 20(7), pp [2] M.L. Markus, and M. Keil, If we build it, they will come: Designing information systems that people want to use, Sloan Management Review, 1994, pp [3] P. Poon, and C. Wagner, Critical success factors revisited: success and failure cases of information systems for senior executives, Decision Support Systems, 2001, 30(4), pp [4] K.Y. Wong, Critical success factors for implementing knowledge management in small and medium enterprises, Industrial Management & Data Systems, 2005, 105(3), pp [5] J.S. Edwards, B. Ababneh, M. Hall, and D. Shaw, Knowledge management: a review of the field and of OR s contribution, Journal of the Operational Research Society, 2009, 60, pp. S114-S125. [6] K. Harper, Benchmarking: International Clearinghouse Plays Matchmaker for Companies That Want to Improve, Arkansas Business, 1996, 9. [7] B.L. Myers, L.A. Kappelman, and V.R. Prybutok, A comprehensive model for assessing the quality and productivity of the information systems function: toward a theory for information systems assessment, Information Resources Management Journal, 1997, 10(1), pp [8] M. Martinsons, R. Davison, and D. Tse, The balanced scorecard: a foundation for the strategic management of information systems, Decision Support Systems, 1999, 25(1), pp [9] M.G. Martinsons, Benchmarking human resource information systems in Canada and Hong Kong, Information & Management, 1994, 26(6), pp [10] H.J. Escalante, C.A. Hernandez, J.A. Gonzalez, A. Lopez-Lopez, M. Montes, E.F. Morales, L.E. Sucar, L. Villasenor, and M. Grubinger, The segmented and annotated IAPR TC-12 benchmark, Computer Vision and Image Understanding, 2010, 114(4), pp [11] Boxwell, R.J. Benchmarking for Competitive Advantage. New York: McGraw-Hill, [12] S. Angelopoulos, A. Riggas, and F. Kitsios, Developing a virtual enterprise that constructs electronic public services using Content Management Systems, in Proceedings of 5 th International HSSS Conference, [13] S. Angelopoulos, T. Papadopoulos, and A. Riggas, Developing a Virtual Enterprise using Open Source Content Management System, in Proceedings of Young OR 16 Conference, [14] N. Assimakopoulos, A. Riggas, and S. Angelopoulos, Development and analysis of a Virtual Enterprise that constructs Wireless Payment Mechanisms using open source content management system, Proceedings of International Conference on Managing Global Trends and Challenges in a Turbulent Economy, [15] S. Angelopoulos, F. Kitsios, P. Kofakis, and T. Papadopoulos, Emerging Barriers in E-Government Implementation, EGOV 2010, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2010, 6228/2010, pp [16] Robertson, J. Deploying Open source Content Management systems, 2004, Available from Internet: KM Column at [17] Boiko, B. Content Management Bible, Wiley, [18] J.H. Klein, N.A.D. Connell, and E. Meyer, Operational research practice as storytelling, Journal of the Operational Research Society, 2007, 58, pp Acknowledgement: The authors would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers of this paper, as well as the organizers of the Minitrack for their remarks, suggestions, and constructive comments. This work was supported by the Horizon Digital Economy Research, RCUK grant EP/G065802/1; and by CREATe, the Centre for Copyright and New Business Models, RCUK grant AH/K000179/

6 APPENDIX Install New CMS Check Characteristics Compare with Database Characteristic in the Database not present in CMS? Add it to the Database? No Characteristic in the Database? Yes Mark it with 1 Mark it with 0 Figure 1: Framework for the analysis of CMS Table 1: Characteristics in Performance category 1 Database Replication % 2 Load Balancing % 3 Page Caching % 4 Serve Static Content % Table 2: Characteristics in Interoperability category 5 Content Syndication % 6 FTP Support % 7 UTF-8 Support % 8 WAI Compliant % 9 WebDAV Support % 10 XHTML Compliant % Table 3: Characteristics in Flexibility category 11 Content Reuse % 12 User Profiles % 13 Localization % 14 Metadata % 15 Multi-lingual Content % 16 Multi-Site Deployment % 17 URL Rewriting % 1238

7 Table 4: Characteristics in Security category 18 Audit Trail % 19 Content Approval % 20 Verification % 21 Granular Privileges % 22 Login History % 23 Pluggable % 24 Problem Notification % 25 Sandbox % 26 Session Management % 27 SSL Compatible % 28 Versioning % Table 5: Characteristics in Management category 29 Advertising Management % 30 Asset Management % 31 Clipboard % 32 Content Scheduling % 33 Content Staging % 34 Online Administration % 35 Package Deployment % 36 Sub-sites % 37 Trash % 38 Statistics % 39 Themes % Table 6: Characteristics in Usability category 40 Drag-N-Drop Content % 41 Friendly URLs % 42 Image Resizing % 43 Macro Language % 44 Mass Upload % 45 Server Page Language % 46 Spell Checker % 47 Subscriptions % 48 Template Language % 49 User Interface Levels % 50 Undo % 51 WYSIWYG Editor % 1239