The Future of the Web: Detangling the Complexity of Digital Experiences

Transcription

1 1 The Future of the Web: Detangling the Complexity of Digital Experiences Issue 1 Welcome The Future of the Web: Detangling the Complexity of Digital Experiences Research from Gartner: Critical Capabilities for Web Content Management SDL Web: Accelerating Digital Experiences Designed to Simplify Marketing Tasks; Architected to Provide IT Flexibility

2 2 Welcome Dear Reader Thank you for your time and shared interest in developing compelling web experiences that are a fit for the future and stand up to the expectations of digital consumers today. We will take you through the way we see the digital experience landscape unfolding at a rapid rate of change and how we position ourselves to support this change and enable you, the brand, to support your customers. At SDL we understand the value of the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Web Content Management (WCM) and know it forms a critical destination point on the path to purchase for WCM solutions, as does the Gartner Critical Capabilities for WCM. This is why we also value the support and appraisal given by our existing clients and partners as part of the thorough assessment process. If you are making a large technology investment, we propose 3 pillars where you need to focus that are business critical to ensure success. SDL Web has been architected with these in mind as recognized in the most recent Gartner Magic Quadrant for WCM and the Critical Capabilities for WCM. We encourage you to engage with our assessment of current, emerging and unknown needs for digital marketers and IT professionals looking to provide the best in class digital experiences. We outline below how agile SDL technology can form the foundation of your IT environment and unravel the complexity of marketing consistently delivering benefits back to your business. Thank you and happy reading, The SDL Team

3 3 The Future of the Web: Detangling the Complexity of Digital Experiences The digital economy has transformed the way customers evaluate goods and services, make purchases and communicate with businesses. It s all about the all-encompassing digital experience. Every customer experience begins with a person who has a need, problem or desire to resolve. Whether or not they are able to solve their need is their ultimate measure of success. Whether or not you help them solve that need is your brand s measure of success. That s where your focus should be. From product design to marketing, from operations to staffing decisions everything you do should be about solving your customers needs better than anyone else and the web experience is a cornerstone for the modern consumer. Making the right technical decisions is even more critical and involves deep collaboration between IT, digital and marketing departments. While the number of options available for managing a single site now exceeds 600 different CMS products, there are a lot fewer options available for properly managing multiple sites, and the choices shrink even further when the number of sites, channels and languages grow exponentially. 3 factors to future-proofing your digital experience SDL recognizes that organizations want to drive captivating interactive brand experiences that are optimized and contextually relevant for any channel and device. However, challenges associated with managing rapid change, increased complexity and growing scale are standing in the way of delivering the best interactive experiences. To tackle these challenges, SDL has architected its web experience management solutions around three main pillars, ensuring the digital experiences you deliver will ultimately drive your bottom-line results. 1: Content All digital interactions are based on some sort of digital content. A text, image, video, blog post or product catalog item all form the currency of digital value exchange. A future-proof digital experience requires proper management of content with the right processes and policies, authorizations and compliance considerations in place, particularly when delivering content in multiple languages for multiple channels and suitable for an ever growing range of devices and form factors. 2: Channel Where marketing traditionally operated in silos, split between offline and online, and further dissected into web, campaigns, ecommerce, support and other disciplines, it is critical for organizations to now integrate these channels in a way that makes sense to the customer from localized versions of your websites to a specific delivery format such as desktop versus mobile, or another channel such as a kiosk at the airport. 3: Context Any digital interaction happens for a reason. Someone is trying to accomplish a task in a particular setting, whether at work, at home, on a PC or mobile device, at a specific date and time. These elements make up the context in which the interaction happens, and must be considered when delivering the right digital experience. The SDL solution SDL Web Having a great legacy as a leading web content management provider under the SDL Tridion product has enabled SDL to evolve to our fully integrated SDL Web solution that brings together WCM, Digital Media Management, Targeting, Testing & Personalization and Localization capabilities. The solution to managing content, channel and context in a sustainable way and in a device and channel agnostic format, is to break it up into smaller components at a level of granularity that enables: More effective reuse in a single channel and across multiple channels Overall consistency and quality Traceability of content Cheaper translations and the application of translation memory

4 4 Taking these components and applying SDL Web s patented BluePrinting technology gives you the framework to assemble relevant content assets and deliver a contextually relevant experience. It provides you with a clever, scalable way to manage the complexity of content distribution across multiple channels and devices, while preserving operational simplicity for the marketer and security and confidence for IT. Using SDL Web to future-proofing the digital experience In light of the findings of the latest Critical Capabilities for WCM, the 3 pillars of Content, Channel and Context are crucial. The following touches the core benefits SDL Web and BluePrinting deliver for each pillar, and highlights a related customer case study. Content Revolutionize the way you manage content for all sites, channels and languages Manage content on a granular level to achieve operational gains and support contextualization as the next stage of digital business Improve efficiency, eliminate content duplication, streamline translations, and reduce costs Speed up time to market and enable synchronized global launches Increase employee satisfaction by making sophisticated tasks simple to execute SDL Web client case: Emirates chooses SDL to deliver content for its global presence Emirates needed to develop more than 30 regional multilingual sites for emirates.com including double-byte characters in Arabic and Japanese. The company s big challenge was keeping the content updated and the branding consistent. SDL Web has helped Emirates achieve its goals with its unique BluePrinting technology. The company has created enterprise-wide processes for the creation, management, distribution and delivery of business critical content across multiple Websites, portals, e-applications and paper-based publications. Regional offices worldwide are able to update their own content while simultaneously maintaining a level of centralized control over the content and publishing process and nontechnical and business users are able to take ownership of their content. SDL Web was selected based on total cost of ownership (TCO) and return on investment (ROI) for the group and its quick implementation. Emirates has now created nearly 60 regional emirates. com sites including Chinese, Japanese and Arabic. After the successful implementation of the public sites, Emirates also decided to use SDL Web for its intranet site. Channels SDL Web creates impact by driving consistency across channels and devices Reuse content across channels to ensure consistency, improved long-term quality and manageability Create seamless omnichannel communications to ensure an uninterrupted customer journey that converts Create an engaging experience that converts by blending content with commerce Optimize communications for high mobile impact and move beyond Responsive Design SDL Web client case: ADAMA unveils a new global brand and launches 50 multichannel sites in 9 months As part of a global rebrand, ADAMA Agricultural Solutions wanted a complete overhaul of over 40 brands in as many countries. Many of the current sites did not convey the basic information about the company, and it wasn t possible to share content to make communication faster and easily bring fresh information to local markets. ADAMA needed to launch a master corporate site as well as local websites in each country, across various channels. Taking a mobile first approach with the site design, ADAMA designed the new web experience for mobile screens, then tablets, and finally, large PC screens. This ensured it would be fully optimized for each target channel, particularly farmers accessing the site from a mobile device in the field. SDL Web capabilities, including its unique BluePrinting technology,

5 5 enabled the ADAMA to deliver a total of 50 sites in just 9 months, doubling traffic on its sites and gaining clear insight into all web-related costs. Context Optimize content for the delivery channel based on customer s preferences and current context Consolidate customer information records for better explicit personalization and targeting on the Web Capture in-the-moment attributes of your visitors to align the experience that you offer with their current context and task at hand, in real-time Increase response rates and conversion by blending ecommerce with your website content Provide personal and contextualized interactive brand experiences across every touch, channel and device throughout an individual journey using SDL Web context brokering SDL Web client case: SapientNitro and Denver International Airport engage travelers in context, on the go Denver International Airport (DIA) is consistently recognized as a leader internationally when it comes to world class customer service, airport amenities and traveler-friendly features, but they were often ignored by travelers. Using SDL technology, a joint SapientNitro, SH&E and DIA team implemented a combined web and mobile solution to provide travelers with a much needed sense of control during their journey, as well as give marketers a communication platform suited to an airport environment. Individual travelers now receive all the information in real time that they need to create a seamless and pleasurable airport experience from airport parking, flight and gate information to security wait times, dining, shopping and entertainment options, targeted promotions and user-generated ratings and reviews of airport concessionaires and facilities. Equipped with all of this information at their fingertips, travelers are now in full control of their time at the airport and DIA knows when a traveler should arrive, where they will go and when they are going to leave, which provides marketers with the opportunity to precisely target individual travelers while delivering a range of valuable information. The consumer holds the power and that s OK... if your Web solution provides an engaging digital experience While it is increasingly apparent that the form the content takes is driven by the channel the creator of content has in mind, it is the third factor of context that perhaps is an after-thought in the content creation process. It forms the pivotal part in turning a Web experience into a dynamic, personalized and fully engaging customer experience that can be repeated at scale and ultimately will convert a consumer at a most critical point of their non-linear customer journey. A successful digital marketing strategy calls for you to deliver personalized content to any variety of devices, manage video assets and maintain consistency across your global web presence and all while allowing for cultural and regional site variations. Most CMS systems available today simply are not up to the task. Modern organizations realize the digital disruption of today s empowered connected consumer is not a threat, but an opportunity for them to understand and to engage their customers like never before. Does your WCM system enable you to detangle content complexity, master omnichannel delivery and provide meaningful context to both empower the consumer and drive opportunities for revenue? Source: SDL

6 6 Research from Gartner Critical Capabilities for Web Content Management The maturity of the Web content management market makes it extremely hard for IT application leaders to differentiate between offerings. Understanding the organization s goals and the desired pace of achievement are critical to choosing the most suitable WCM offering for a particular use case. Key Findings The Web content management (WCM) market is mature with many good, sophisticated WCM platforms. This causes IT application leaders to spend time trying to find the best in the market, rather than the best match for their specific contexts and objectives. IT application leaders are more confused than ever about WCM offerings. Leading-edge organizations bemoan a lack of innovation, while most enterprises invest in advanced capabilities they rarely use. Categorizing objectives and dividing associated business outcomes into use cases is the most efficient and successful way of clarifying and expediting the selection process. Recommendations IT application leaders must: Document the business goals and associated outcomes that will constitute success for the solution that requires the WCM offering. What You Need to Know It s a tough time to be an IT application leader responsible for supporting WCMrelated initiatives. Your peers often tell us they invested heavily in capabilities they found attractive during initial selection but, for various reasons, have been unable to use. Others tell us they underestimated the important role that WCM plays in their overall digital strategy. As a result, they chose offerings that failed to anticipate emerging demand and continual evolution of digital business. You should use this document to help identify the use cases for which you need WCM. Also use it to pinpoint areas of primary, secondary and tertiary differentiation that will help you decide the type of WCM offering you need. You will then be able to build a shortlist of vendors that can help you achieve your objectives. View the scoring in this research in terms of whether or not the featured products meet the requirements of the leading edge of the demand side of the market. If your organization has such leading-edge requirements, focus first on products that score 3.0 or higher in the respective area of interest. If you consider other products, you may need to seek assurances from the appropriate vendor that it can fill any important requirements gap quickly enough to enable it to support the required pace of solution development. Prioritize your use cases in line with the business goals you have identified. This will ensure you focus on and choose from the class of offering best suited to your context. Regard a score of 3.0 in this research as meeting the leading-edge requirements in the current WCM market. The same applies to the scoring for the individual sets of critical capabilities and for the use cases to which they relate.

7 7 Analysis Critical Capabilities Use-Case Graphics FIGURE 1 Vendors Product Scores for Digital Marketing Effectiveness Use Case Source: Gartner (July 2015)

8 8 FIGURE 2 Vendors Product Scores for Contextualization of Delivered Experiences Use Case Source: Gartner (July 2015)

9 9 FIGURE 3 Vendors Product Scores for Digital Commerce Use Case Source: Gartner (July 2015)

10 10 FIGURE 4 Vendors Product Scores for Digital Workplace Initiatives Use Case Source: Gartner (July 2015) Note: The digital workplace is a business strategy for promoting employee effectiveness and engagement through a more consumer-like computing environment.

11 11 FIGURE 5 Vendors Product Scores for Composite Content Applications Use Case Source: Gartner (July 2015)

12 12 Vendors Acquia Acquia offers products and cloud services based on the highly popular Drupal platform. Acquia s WCM capability centers on digital experience solutions and is geared toward WCM, commerce and community scenarios. Customers hold Acquia in high regard for platform stability and flexibility. Acquia also offers innovative features and services. For example, Acquia s cloud-based ContextDB enables organizations to identify known customers among anonymous site visitors, supporting the business s need for a single view of the customer. Acquia meets all requirements of the five use cases we examined. It is well suited to organizations with advanced digital marketing, commerce and social Web initiatives, and has a level of comfort with open-source and LAMP-based offerings. Adobe Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) is part of the Adobe Marketing Cloud. Experience Manager, which includes digital asset management (DAM), is closely integrated with Adobe s analytics capabilities as well as the other solutions in the Adobe Marketing Cloud making it attractive to organizations that want a closely integrated set of marketing-related technologies from one vendor. Its WCM offering has the best user interface in the market. AEM enables rich, digital experiences that can be highly contextualized and engaging. Adobe s mobile capabilities offer an effective complement to native and hybrid applications as part of a strong digital strategy. Adobe meets or exceeds all requirements of the five use cases, scoring particularly well for digital marketing effectiveness and providing very good interoperability with digital commerce platforms. Organizations with high demands on leading-edge capabilities should include AEM in their shortlist. Automattic Automattic is the vendor responsible for the popular WordPress.com blogging platform and WordPress.com VIP, the cloud-based WCM offering targeted at enterprises. WordPress.com VIP is a good WCM option for midmarket and larger organizations that are used to open-source communities and ready-to-use components, themes, modules, and applications provided by an ecosystem of third parties. Navigating this ecosystem, as well as dealing with numerous vendors, has sometimes proved burdensome for large organizations. Organizations often require third-party vendor support to help with advanced capabilities for contextualization and integration with third-party systems. Automattic comfortably meets the requirements for digital commerce and composite content applications use cases, and only narrowly misses meeting those of the remaining three. Its proven cloud foundation and WordPress s popularity give it momentum and critical mass that bode well for the future. CoreMedia CoreMedia 8, CoreMedia Adaptive Personalization and CoreMedia LiveContext 2.0 are good choices for organizations seeking a richly featured, wellarchitected, Java-based offering with a delivery tier that permits highly contextualized, digital experiences. Its authoring environment, CoreMedia Studio, is well designed and easy to use. Its CoreMedia Blueprint rapid development toolset and other implementation accelerators are particularly attractive to organizations that need to shorten their time to market as part of a more agile approach to solution development. Although its feature set is not as broad as that of some of its competitors, CoreMedia 8 is still an excellent offering. Organizations can use it as a dedicated platform or as an integral component of broader digital solutions that encompass additional technologies, such as digital commerce, CRM and marketing automation. CoreMedia meets the requirements of all five of our use cases. It is particularly popular with publishers and broadcasters, but organizations in a range of sectors should consider it if their pace of solution development is moderate to advanced. CrownPeak CrownPeak Web Experience Management is ahead of the WCM market in exploiting the cloud s potential for larger Web and digital marketing efforts. Other established WCM vendors still need to redesign their platforms for multitenancy, while rolling out simple cloud deployment options. CrownPeak s customers have benefited from elasticity and shorter time to market for their Web initiatives. Although CrownPeak has significant experience in an area that most other vendors are only just entering, its brand remains less well-known when compared with those of the WCM leaders. However, CrownPeak s offering is well positioned to exploit the big data analytics and contextualization that will characterize innovation in the next phase of the Web. CrownPeak meets the requirements of all five of our use cases, achieving its highest score for composite content applications.

13 13 EPiServer The EPiServer Digital Experience Cloud addresses WCM, digital marketing and digital commerce initiatives on a common.net-based cloud platform. Customers characterize it as easy to deploy, interoperable, and readily customizable to suit various business purposes. EPiServer merged with Ektron early in Many of the challenges reported by customers involve individual features of Ektron WCM requiring attention or updates. EPiServer s plans to converge the EPiServer and Ektron offerings are aggressive and thorough, a welcome contrast to vendors who have divided resources to keep acquired WCM products separate and generating individual revenue streams. EPiServer expects to complete the convergence by the end of It comfortably meets all the requirements of our five use cases. EPiServer is a compelling offering for WCM initiatives involving e-commerce, digital marketing and employee scenarios, comparing favorably with some of the other leaders in the market. e-spirit FirstSpirit is a well-designed, feature-rich, Javabased product from e-spirit that fits well into digital solutions being developed in many sectors. Its authoring environment is easy to use. Its AppCenter appeals to content authors who wish to interact with third-party Web applications without having to involve IT deeply. FirstSpirit integrates well with front-end technologies, such as portal and e-commerce platforms, marketing automation and CRM. FirstSpirit lacks some of the marketingfriendly usability features of some other products, but it is a worthy complement to marketing, e-commerce and portal offerings adjacent to WCM. FirstSpirit is a solid choice where the main focus is on core content management, or for use in more advanced digital solutions to augment adjacent technologies. ez Systems The vendor s ez Publish is a LAMP-based offering that uses the Symfony framework for application development. It is available in two main versions: as a community download, and as a more advanced option available on subscription from ez Systems. Although the ez Publish roadmap is well aligned with trends in the WCM market, it does not meet some of the requirements of our five use cases. It is most suited to organizations whose current WCM needs may be modest, but whose future plans include requirements for more advanced enterprise capabilities. Offpremises options for ez Publish are available through ez Systems partner ecosystem, and some community-developed extensions to the platform are available from the vendor. Organizations with very content-centric business models, such as publishing houses, tend to consider ez Publish. GX Software GX Software s XperienCentral is a Java-based WCM offering that is best combined with the analytical capabilities of BlueConic to drive better-contextualized experiences. XperienCentral is most popular in Western Europe. Although it does not meet the requirements of all five of our use cases, its solid architecture and easy-to-use interface still make it a good choice. Marketers will find some other products more attractive, and even easier to use, but XperienCentral is popular among specialists with a greater focus on content production and editing. The product s high interoperability enables organizations to use it in combination with more leading-edge capabilities from additional components. XperienCentral is a good choice for more traditional content management and as a complement to best-ofbreed, dedicated third-party solution components in digital strategies. Hippo Hippo CMS uses the Apache Jackrabbit Content Repository API for Java platform to provide a well-designed, feature-rich option for all of our use cases and in many sectors. The WCM offering is available as a community download, but organizations should use the supported enterprise version for solutions where the platform constitutes a mission-critical part of the overall strategy. It is easy to use, has promising analytics capabilities, and its basic cloud offering is on a par with many of the competitors featured in this research. It has a high level of interoperability and is suitable for complex environments where coupling with many additional components is a requirement. Organizations should consider it for digital solutions with modest to advanced objectives, and where more leading-edge requirements can be addressed, in part, through interoperability with adjacent technologies. HP HP offers an impressive array of technologies needed to drive advanced digital strategies. In some advanced scenarios, the content delivered can be determined using search and through the advanced analytics provided by HP s information and data analytics platform, IDOL. Organizations often couple TeamSite with HP LiveSite and

14 14 HP Optimost to drive contextualized digital experiences. Gartner rarely sees high investments in TeamSite for digital workplace initiatives, but it does meet the requirements of all of the use cases featured in this report. Version 8 of TeamSite (forthcoming at the time of publication) and its promised usability enhancements should improve its ability further to drive digital marketing effectiveness. TeamSite is a good option for organizations that need a broader digital solution and prefer to rely on a very reputable vendor to provide multiple elements of that solution. IBM Customers regard IBM Web Content Manager highly for its versatility, scalability and interoperability. The platform integrates readily with third-party offerings, such as Media Beacon for DAM. It also integrates well with its own complementary offerings such as SPSS for predictive analytics to form a cohesive and comprehensive solution suitable for a variety of use cases. Usability issues have hampered IBM s appeal and progress with some organizations, but the company continues to make progress in addressing any shortcomings that accompany the offering s sophistication. For example, IBM Digital Experience on Cloud is intended to ease implementation and deployment issues, and hasten time to market. IBM comfortably meets all requirements of our five use cases. IBM Web Content Manager is a good option for organizations requiring versatility and interoperability. Microsoft Microsoft SharePoint remains the centerpiece of Microsoft s WCM strategy, and is best suited to employee-facing scenarios. SharePoint 2013 brought some advancements, including better support for HTML/Cascading Style Sheets/ JavaScript site designs and content scheduling. We expect more improvements in SharePoint 2016, as well as in SharePoint Online as part of Office 365, including much easier site creation. In general, Microsoft has made a shift toward a searchdriven experience. In the long run, this may prove more scalable and dynamic than its mostly static approach, but Microsoft s customers must adapt to the largely unproven model. Microsoft fails to meet some of the requirements for our digital commerce and composite content applications use cases, and fails to meet most or all of the requirements of the other three use cases. For now, SharePoint is best used for simple static intranets and websites. OpenText OpenText Web Experience Management is one of the more proven products in the WCM market. Recent innovations center on supporting marketing, merchandising and e-commerce scenarios. Improvements use analytics and recommendations to create sites, enabling an interplay between content- and product-centric experiences. Some customers have expressed some challenges with a shortage of native functions, necessitating custom development and integration. OpenText essentially meets the requirements of all five of our use cases. OpenText Web Experience Management is best suited to organizations looking for a flexible, extensible platform on which to build unique digital experiences. Oracle Oracle s WCM offering, Oracle WebCenter Sites, plays a key role in the broad portal strategy of Oracle WebCenter. Combine this with the analytics/recommendation engine Real Time Decisions and the recently acquired BlueKai, and it is clear that Oracle is emphasizing big data s role in delivering highly contextualized digital experiences. Overall, the combination of Oracle WebCenter and the Oracle Marketing Cloud offers a compelling range of capabilities covering multiple facets of a solution for an advanced digital strategy. Oracle comfortably meets all the requirements of all five of our use cases. Oracle WebCenter Sites is an appropriate choice for enterprises that have already invested heavily with Oracle and want to enhance their digital strategy at a reasonable pace. Given the pedigree of the original product that Oracle acquired, organizations looking for a Javabased offering with rich functions and excellent delivery capabilities should also consider the product. Progress Progress s Telerik Sitefinity offers a good set of WCM capabilities in a readily consumable package. Whereas some higher-priced, elite WCM products offer cutting-edge capabilities that customers rarely use, Sitefinity s customers use more of the offering s practical WCM, DAM, forms management, search engine optimization and analytics features. Some customers report problems with setup, tuning and performance management. Progress meets the requirements for all five of our use cases. The Progress acquisition of Telerik is already making Sitefinity even more appealing to Web, mobile and app developers.

15 15 Sitefinity is a good option for developer-centric organizations wanting to create and enable digital environments for a wide range of purposes and audiences. SDL SDL Web is well designed for the Web s next phase. The product s established blueprinting and building-block architecture is more important than ever as it applies not only to globalized/localized Web presence, but also to the multichannel and multidevice nature of the modern Web. It strikes the delicate balance of sophistication and ease of use that has proved elusive for most WCM systems. This is a valuable attribute when WCM systems must be usable by, and accessible to, a widening range of IT and business personnel. Some customers have reported difficult and time-consuming implementation and upgrade cycles. However, SDL meets all the requirements of all of our use cases and is a worthy choice for organizations with complex customer Web initiatives. Sitecore The Sitecore Experience Platform is a.net-based, rich WCM platform that is popular with both IT and business professionals. It is extremely easy to use, which makes it suitable for all of the use cases considered in this research. In particular, it is a good choice for high-end, leading-edge, demanding scenarios, such as those related to digital marketing and delivering contextualized experiences. In Version 8.x of its platform, Sitecore has incorporated engagement analytics to an even greater extent. This has added an important dimension to the offering, as business professionals seek to gain more actionable insights from ongoing interactions. While competitive offerings often interoperate with technologies that provide additional analytics and multivariate testing, version 8.x of Sitecore s platform also provides a more cohesive experience through native capabilities. Sitecore meets the requirements of digital commerce and composite content applications, and often exceeds the requirements of the other three use cases. Organizations with ambitious longer-term digital strategies should consider Sitecore if they want the flexibility to start small and scale at their own pace. Squiz SquizPlatform comprises the SquizMatrix WCM offering and Funnelback search. Customers can use SquizPlatform to deliver search-driven, highly contextualized content over multiple channels. This LAMP-based offering is available as: Open source direct from the Squiz community An on-premises, subscription-based offering A cloud offering direct from the vendor Squiz complements its WCM capabilities with a content delivery network and connectors to adjacent technologies, such as CRM and marketing automation. It meets the requirements of all five use cases. SquizMatrix is popular in government, higher education and financial services, but the range of capabilities it provides makes it suitable for multiple solution types in all sectors. Organizations should consider Squiz in combination with adjacent technologies to provide additional capabilities for customer analytics and to drive contextualization. Context The WCM market s high level of maturity can be both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, hundreds of products are available spanning a range of technologies and business models, so organizations have a broad choice of generally good, easy-to-use, scalable offerings. On the other hand, it has become more difficult for organizations to distinguish between these, and even more difficult for them to find the right match for their needs. This means organizations are prioritizing immediate-, near- and medium-term requirements, which many products can address. To simplify selection, and help ensure they make the right choice, organizations should consider their longer-term objectives and the pace at which they want to achieve them. This will help narrow the selection and home in on those vendors that can provide the technology to support the associated solution. Organizations should focus not only on what is extremely important, but also on what is differentiating, to narrow their selection further. The critical capabilities featured in this research reflect such areas, while the use cases represent scenarios in which such areas of primary and secondary differentiation play a critical role.

16 16 Product/Service Class Definition Gartner defines WCM as the process of controlling the content to be consumed over one or more digital channels through the use of specific management tools based on a core repository. These tools may be commercial products, opensource tools, or hosted service offerings. Critical Capabilities Definition Each critical capability consists of two parts. There is an overview section, which is limited to 300 characters or fewer, and a general section, which can be as long as the author wishes. The overview section must be one paragraph, no bullets or numbered lists. This overview is what will appear when the reader hovers over each critical capability on the interactive display; remember, each critical capability name cannot be more than 35 characters, including spaces. Usability The degree to which capabilities are easy for people including non-it professionals to use. This term is often used synonymously with ease of use, but there is an important distinction. Ease of use measures the time and effort required to become familiar with the software. Usability measures the level of democratized capability made readily available to business users. This distinction provides the agility currently in such high demand by the business side. Interoperability The ability and ease with which the WCM offering can loosely and effectively couple with adjacent technologies, services and information sources. Although all the products are sufficiently mature to enable integrations with third-party products, some of the customization and development required for those integrations can be costly and onerous. This customization and development work can also lead to high solution rigidity. Interoperability allows for a greater level of orchestration of multiple, adjacent technologies. It provides an architectural environment that readily supports experimentation and the evolution of the solution containing the WCM product. Engagement Analytics The provision or in-context surfacing of analytics relating to the effectiveness of the digital channels of interest. The importance of this area of differentiation reflects the broadening of emphasis from efficiency alone to the impact of the content and the overall digital presence. Users of the WCM product need in-line access to readily consumable intelligence that will guide their ongoing efforts to focus on that impact and optimize changes accordingly. Mobility/Multichannel The set of capabilities to support multichannel publishing and cross-channel optimization. This includes features that support ongoing interactions with multiple target audiences and individuals while they are mobile. This area covers not just typical mobile devices. such as smartphone and tablets, but also digital signage and in-store screens that support the continuation of the customer journey. Content Delivery The set of features that helps to establish an interactive runtime environment (not a content delivery network). Personalization The ease with which content can be tailored to targeted individuals and personas. Architecture The fundamental architectural design and attributes of the WCM offering and associated modules and APIs/connectors. Cloud Capabilities The set of attributes that enables full exploitation of cloud benefits.

17 17 Use Cases Each use case consists of two parts. There is an overview section, which is limited to 175 characters or fewer, and a general section, which can be as long as the author wishes. The overview section must be one paragraph, no bullets or numbered lists. This overview is what will appear on each use-case tab on the interactive display; remember, each use case name cannot be more than 50 characters, including spaces. Digital Marketing Effectiveness WCM capabilities to support marketers in expanding and improving their success with their digital marketing strategy. Contextualization of Delivered Experiences WCM capabilities to support the preparation, management and delivery of contextualized, engaging experiences. Digital Commerce WCM capabilities to support multiple digital commerce scenarios. Digital Workplace Initiatives WCM capabilities to support digital workplace initiatives, including intranets, extranets and other collaborative efforts. Composite Content Applications WCM capabilities to enable third-party and custom-made applications to interact with and consume content in the WCM repository. Vendors Added and Dropped This is the first time we have published Critical Capabilities research on WCM. Inclusion Criteria We used these inclusion criteria: Total WCM software revenue: The total WCM software revenue for 2014 must exceed $15 million. Total WCM software revenue includes the revenue generated by sales of WCM software and software maintenance and support services. Total WCM software revenue includes: License revenue: Revenue from licenses that give the right to use the software based on contract type (perpetual or term license). Cloud revenue: Revenue from cloud services, including: Business process as a service Infrastructure as a service Back end as a service Software as a service Subscription revenue (excluding cloud revenue): Annual fees for licensed, onpremises software, as well as license revenue for single-tenant managed services (such as hosting). Technical support and maintenance revenue: Contract fees for support services (excluding training), new versions, updates and upgrades Total WCM software revenue excludes revenue from professional services and the sale of products manufactured by other vendors. It also excludes revenue arising from customer requests for software changes, even if such changes are subsequently incorporated into the core WCM offering. However, it includes increases in software license charges as a result of such changes. Geographic presence: The vendor must have been in business for more than five years, with a multigeographic presence for at least a year, and a strategy that supports further geographic expansion. It must actively market its WCM offering in at least two of the following regions: North America Europe, the Middle East and Africa Asia/Pacific

18 18 Vertical and horizontal capabilities: The vendor must actively market its products in more than two major vertical markets, and in more than one horizontal application category (such as e-commerce and customer selfservice). Ecosystem activity and market interest: We measure this by assessing: The market, including community forums, books, seminars, and client, partner and channel activity (IT services firms, system integrators, distributors, Web interactive agencies and advisory firms). The level of interest Gartner end-user clients have shown in the vendor, based on the number of inquiries to analysts via the Gartner call center or during one-on-ones at Gartner conferences. References: The vendor must have WCM software commercially available and active reference customers that use the product in production scenarios. Some of these reference customers should be of enterprise scale, with more than 50 contributing authors and an average monthly number of page views comfortably exceeding 500,000, though deployments supporting even larger numbers of users are preferable. The vendors must offer at least the following functions: WCM as a stand-alone product or suite of products A content repository with basic library services, such as check-in/check-out and versioning Authentication of users (authors, editors and reviewers) and assignment of permissions Content authoring, through browser-based templates or via conversion from a wordprocessing application Workflow sufficient for content review and approval Conversion to HTML or XML and support of templates for Web rendering Support for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Managed delivery of content to Web servers or site management systems Capabilities for multisite and multilanguage management Web analytics and reporting capabilities What you see is what you get (WYSIWYG) design capabilities with the ability to modify and customize the look, feel and behavior independent of content Support for multiple roles (including developer, administrator, editor, marketer and author roles) in a distributed contribution environment Support for content aggregation and syndication (via APIs, REST interfaces, RSS or similar) Ability to manage rich media in the context of Web efforts Ability to support interaction with target audiences using various devices (such as tablets, smartphones and smart TVs) over multiple channels (such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn)

19 19 Table 1. Weighting for Critical Capabilities in Use Cases Critical Capabilities Digital Marketing Effectiveness Contextualization of Delivered Experiences Digital Commerce Digital Workplace Initiatives Usability 30% 15% 20% 25% 5% Interoperability 10% 15% 35% 20% 40% Engagement Analytics 20% 10% 5% 5% 10% Mobility/Multichannel 15% 15% 10% 10% 10% Content Delivery 5% 15% 5% 10% 5% Personalization 10% 20% 5% 15% 5% Architecture 5% 5% 10% 5% 15% Cloud Capabilities 5% 5% 10% 10% 10% Total 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% Source: Gartner (July 2015) Composite Content Applications As of July 2015 This methodology requires analysts to identify the critical capabilities for a class of products/services. Each capability is then weighed in terms of its relative importance for specific product/service use cases. Critical Capabilities Rating Each of the products/services has been evaluated on the critical capabilities on a scale of 1 to 5; a score of 1 = Poor (most or all defined requirements are not achieved), while 5 = Outstanding (significantly exceeds requirements). Table 2. Product/Service Rating on Critical Capabilities Critical Capabilities Acquia Adobe Automattic CoreMedia CrownPeak EPiServer e-spirit ez Systems GX Software Hippo HP IBM Microsoft OpenText Oracle Progress SDL Sitecore Squiz Usability Interoperability Engagement Analytics Mobility/ Multichannel Content Delivery Personalization Architecture Cloud Capabilities As of July 2015 Source: Gartner (July 2015)

20 20 Table 3 shows the product/service scores for each use case. The scores, which are generated by multiplying the use case weightings by the product/service ratings, summarize how well the critical capabilities are met for each use case. Table 3. Product Score in Use Cases Use Cases Acquia Adobe Automattic CoreMedia CrownPeak EPiServer e-spirit ez Systems GX Software Hippo HP IBM Microsoft OpenText Oracle Progress SDL Sitecore Squiz Digital Marketing Effectiveness Contextualization of Delivered Experiences Digital Commerce Digital Workplace Initiatives Composite Content Applications As of July 2015 Source: Gartner (July 2015) To determine an overall score for each product/service in the use cases, multiply the ratings in Table 2 by the weightings shown in Table 1. Evidence This research is based on: Extensive data on functional capabilities, customer-base demographics, financial status, pricing and other quantitative attributes gained via an RFI process engaging vendors in this market Interactive briefings in which the vendors provided Gartner with insight on their product capabilities A Web-based survey of reference customers provided by each vendor, which captured data on: Usage patterns Levels of satisfaction with major product function categories Various nontechnology vendor attributes (such as pricing, product support and overall service delivery) Feedback about tools and vendors captured during conversations with users of Gartner s client inquiry service

21 21 Critical Capabilities Methodology This methodology requires analysts to identify the critical capabilities for a class of products or services. Each capability is then weighted in terms of its relative importance for specific product or service use cases. Next, products/ services are rated in terms of how well they achieve each of the critical capabilities. A score that summarizes how well they meet the critical capabilities for each use case is then calculated for each product/service. Critical capabilities are attributes that differentiate products/services in a class in terms of their quality and performance. Gartner recommends that users consider the set of critical capabilities as some of the most important criteria for acquisition decisions. In defining the product/service category for evaluation, the analyst first identifies the leading uses for the products/services in this market. What needs are end-users looking to fulfill, when considering products/services in this market? Use cases should match common client deployment scenarios. These distinct client scenarios define the Use Cases. The analyst then identifies the critical capabilities. These capabilities are generalized groups of features commonly required by this class of products/services. Each capability is assigned a level of importance in fulfilling that particular need; some sets of features are more important than others, depending on the use case being evaluated. Each vendor s product or service is evaluated in terms of how well it delivers each capability, on a five-point scale. These ratings are displayed sideby-side for all vendors, allowing easy comparisons between the different sets of features. Ratings and summary scores range from 1.0 to 5.0: 1 = Poor or Absent: most or all defined requirements for a capability are not achieved 2 = Fair: some requirements are not achieved 3 = Good: meets requirements 4 = Excellent: meets or exceeds some requirements 5 = Outstanding: significantly exceeds requirements To determine an overall score for each product in the use cases, the product ratings are multiplied by the weightings to come up with the product score in use cases. The critical capabilities Gartner has selected do not represent all capabilities for any product; therefore, may not represent those most important for a specific use situation or business objective. Clients should use a critical capabilities analysis as one of several sources of input about a product before making a product/service decision. Source: Gartner Core Research Note G , Mick MacComascaigh, Jim Murphy, 30 July 2015

22 22 SDL Web: Accelerating Digital Experiences As you will understand from Gartner s own Critical Capabilities for WCM assessment, building a digital experience strategy that meets today s requirements and will stand the test of time can be difficult due to changing market circumstances, rapidly changing business requirements, company politics, competing objectives, budgets and many more factors. As a result, technology is becoming incapable of delivering compelling digital experiences that meet business requirements and exceed customer expectations. Consequently, IT is seen as slowing down innovation, rather than being an enabler. To solve this dilemma, look for a future-proof, robust and agile platform serving as the backbone for your digital marketing ecosystem. The SDL Web approach SDL Web, based on the market-leading SDL Tridion Web Content Management product, combines WCM with capabilities for rich media and video, real-time targeting & personalization, testing and localization of digital customer experiences. Offering various deployment options in SDL s Cloud, on-premise, hosted or any mix, SDL Web technology is flexible to fit your business needs, offering a fast track implementation with easy and rapid development through the use of open standards. SDL Web supports new and adapts to changing business requirements with: The Digital Experience Accelerator, an out-ofthe-box adaptive design framework and website implementation to deliver, dynamic, deviceindependent web experiences Separation of implementation concerns between IT, design and editorial tasks to speed up development and lower costs A modular architecture that simplifies integration within your existing digital marketing ecosystem and lowers your overall TCO Easy integration to 3rd party solutions via a modern Services Oriented Architecture, Web services and API s Both Java and.net support and hybrids to ensure you can use the technology stack of your choice BluePrinting unravelling complexity, innovating simplicity in content control The agility of SDL Web comes through SDL s innovative BluePrinting architecture. This unique intellectual property represents a way to define the structure of your channels, their interdependencies and the hierarchy in which they operate. Gartner s Critical capabilities for WCM highlights the following: The product s established blueprinting and building-block architecture is more important than ever as it applies not only to globalized/ localized Web presence, but also to the multichannel and multidevice nature of the modern Web. BluePrinting architecture helps your organization to create rich web experiences across channels, brands and languages with efficiency, consistency and full traceability. Unfortunately, most organizations still rely on content copying and cloning which comes with associated problems down the line in terms of skyrocketing cost to maintain quality, consistency and compliance. SDL Web s BluePrinting enables the definition of dependencies associated with localization of not just content but also design, website functionality, personas and other critical information types that jointly define a web experience. Differentiator focus: BluePrinting a market leading content architecture Consider an English language corporate website, and local versions in Spanish and French for instance. You can imagine how the Spanish and French content are both localized versions of the English master content, so they would depend on the master content. A French website, again would depend on the localized French content being available. A bilingual Canadian website though would depend on the same French content, and it would depend on the English master content. This is a typical example of the hierarchy and dependencies that you define in a BluePrint. Once set up, BluePrinting automatically manages the relationship between content and channels, without the editors having to do this manually. This ensures all your content across channels has long term efficiency, consistency, quality and traceability.

23 23 While other major web content platforms provide localization support that will typically only help you while publishing the very first iteration of your content, SDL s BluePrinting technology enables a far more sophisticated and effective way that addresses the challenge of managing your content over a longer period of time. BluePrinting enables curation of components; central control is combined with local market flexibility. Translation of the exact component you need localizing enables greater control and accuracy of copy. Through clear business unit ownership it is possible to easily assemble building blocks for a specific channel. Clever reuse of components eliminates duplication and enables a frictionless customer experience for the end user. BluePrinting typical use cases are: Website creation Omnichannel distribution Content translation Country website rollout Campaign site creation Localization Rebranding Multibrand management Website whitelabeling Global reuse of local campaigns and assets Crisis response The major benefits of BluePrinting and our innovative building block architecture are evident in results we see from our clients. Managing complexity and yet shortening the time to market, in itself, reduces development and maintenance costs. Centralized control and clever reuse of content components increases the quality and relevancy, even when translating across multiple languages and all without any degradation of the brand and an increase in the end user customer experience. Ricardo Oliver, Head of Internet BBVA said: The reuse of components is the philosophy that drives our costs down and our speed up. With the first website we saw a 10% saving, for the second site, we saved 40%, for the third site 60%, and with the fourth it was more or less an instantaneous procedure to publish through component reuse. BluePrinting a differentiator use case: SKF presents one face to the customer with digital ecosystem powered by SDL Leading manufacturer SKF was looking to establish a single, global online presence as well as deliver relevant local experiences across 60 regional sites. The company s main focus is to reduce both its customers and its own environmental impact through innovative technology. With 140 manufacturing and operational sites and a truly impressive global footprint spanning 32 countries, SKF is well poised to achieve this goal. The company uses its website as a core channel to support customers on their journey with the brand, so SKF needs to help visitors get to the right content as quickly as possible. But owing to a recent number of acquisitions and organic global growth, SKF was running 10 company websites and content management systems representing different business divisions and product lines, as well as many disjointed country sites around the world. For the customer, this meant a disjointed online experience users struggled to find the product and contact information they needed in their own language across the 300,000+ product range. In just 18 months, SKF was able to efficiently consolidate 10 websites into a single master company site. Considering the complexity of our setup, all the backend integrations we had to do with our multiple systems and the new processes we had to set up with our translation provider and all the English master content development and migrations, we were pleasantly surprised at the speed of the implementation, says Gerard Schram, Web Strategy and Operations Manager for SKF Group. As a next phase, SKF then launched 60 localized sites, representing 37 languages, in just 12 months six months faster than expected. Using SDL Web, SKF s 300 content managers now work from a centralized web content master SKF is now generating 15% more customer inquiries. Presenting one face to our customers within a solid digital ecosystem has made a big impact. All site visits and customer inquiries are now automatically routed into our CRM system via SDL Web so they re easily followed up, concludes Schram. Source: SDL

24 24 Designed to Simplify Marketing Tasks; Architected to Provide IT Flexibility With SDL Web, business users are offered: The ability to perform sophisticated tasks fast and easily without IT intervention, such as launching brand new websites Defined user roles with set permissions and authorization levels the system prevents users from making mistakes, intuitively assisting them to better perform their jobs Alignment to the business user s context: you can rebrand the user interface, extend it with specific features and localize it into the user s native language Agility is not just the remit of initially deploying your compelling web experience. Agility needs to be at the heart of the product itself during its entire life span so that you can easily adjust and course correct when business requirements dictate. SDL Web has been designed to accomplish just that. The need to fulfill and even exceed Service Level Agreements for uptime and external visitors is another key facet and so high uptime and performance coupled with security, scalability, compliance and accessibility feed into the overall design and functionality of SDL Web. As identified in Gartner s Critical Capabilities for Web Content Management report published in July 2015, it is clear there is frustration at a lack of innovation, while leading-edge organizations regularly invest in features that never get deployed. There simply isn t time or business sense for this method of web content management to continue against the rapidly changing consumer landscape. With SDL Web, the time to focus, accelerate and benefit from industry and analyst recognized innovation is now. Differentiator focus: SDL s Digital Experience Accelerator Most competitive enterprise-wide web content management solutions are associated with long and costly implementations, difficult and expensive upgrade paths and complex deployment scenarios. In order to transcend technical hurdles and increase IT agility as a means of empowering the business, SDL Web offers a rapid deployment solution that draws on industry best practices to get you to market faster. SDL s Digital Experience Accelerator is designed to reduce website implementation time from weeks to days, drastically reducing operating costs. Enable adaptive and mobile-friendly sites from day one and tap into a wealth of SDL Web features: In-context editing, rich media, targeting, personalization, localization and e-commerce integration. Available in both.net and Java versions, the Apache 2.0 license open-source based Digital Experience Accelerator can be easily extended with other capabilities by both SDL and its partners, enabling organizations to deliver powerful customer experience solutions quicker than ever before. SDL s Digital Experience Accelerator delivers customers a fast return on their SDL Web investment while driving continuous innovation in web development and is provided at no cost.

25 25 The Digital Experience Accelerator is a leap forward compared to the small steps that HP is making with Teamsite or Adobe is making with Experience Manager, said Frank Taylor, Senior Front End Developer at Tahzoo and SDL Web MVP. This isn t just a sample site for a faster time-to-market. This is a full implementation that will make it easier for SDL clients to deliver high-quality, standards-driven websites to endusers. Any SDL client that is struggling to keep up with the web s best practices and leadingedge technologies will benefit from the Digital Experience Accelerator. A masterpiece the art and the science of digital experiences As we have covered in this piece there are challenges for marketers and IT but all are unified by a common goal to deliver an exceptional customer experience through web properties. We understand your customers expect you to master the Art of web content management by orchestrating digital experiences that are seamless, proactive and intelligent. A seamless digital experience across the complete customer journey is informed by insights that drive intelligent and hyper-relevant decision-making. This rich digital experience that you seek to deliver to your customers goes above and beyond a vanilla, one-size fits all approach and will reap the rewards of increased conversions and better margins that impact your return on investment and the business bottom-line. To make these experiences happen, SDL Web powers the Science behind the Art through technology that accelerates and automates the process of managing content, channels and context on your digital properties. And through industry and analyst recognized agility and innovation, delivering on a range of Critical Capabilities for WCM a Gartner report we encourage you to take advantage of now. Are you ready to seize the opportunity to deliver digital experiences of the future today with SDL Web? Source: SDL SDL (LSE: SDL) is the leader in global customer experience. With a completely integrated cloud solution for content management, analytics, language and documentation, SDL solves the complexity of managing your brand s digital footprint as it grows across multiple languages, cultures, websites, devices and channels. Seventy-nine of the top 100 global companies trust SDL to help them create authentic, in-context customer experiences that drive demand and loyalty. SDL brings your brand to the world, and the world to your brand. Learn more at SDL.com. Follow SDL on Facebook and Twitter. The Future of the Web: Detangling the Complexity of Digital Experiences is published by SDL. Editorial content supplied by SDL is independent of Gartner analysis. All Gartner research is used with Gartner s permission, and was originally published as part of Gartner s syndicated research service available to all entitled Gartner clients Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. The use of Gartner research in this publication does not indicate Gartner s endorsement of SDL s products and/or strategies. Reproduction or distribution of this publication in any form without Gartner s prior written permission is forbidden. The information contained herein has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. Gartner disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. The opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice. Although Gartner research may include a discussion of related legal issues, Gartner does not provide legal advice or services and its research should not be construed or used as such. Gartner is a public company, and its shareholders may include firms and funds that have financial interests in entities covered in Gartner research. Gartner s Board of Directors may include senior managers of these firms or funds. Gartner research is produced independently by its research organization without input or influence from these firms, funds or their managers. For further information on the independence and integrity of Gartner research, see Guiding Principles on Independence and Objectivity on its website,