Three months. Three different prospects. The same problem.

We have site(s) that are part of our Global CMS Platform, but we cannot make changes without working with global. We have been put in the content contributor box but are really content owners and need the associated tools to deliver our messages to our target audience. This centralised model of content management just doesn’t work for us. Can you help?

The is not an uncommon problem. If you invest in something big, you want something bigger. So for large organisations, an enterprise CMS is a strategic piece of kit. However, depending on whether you’re on the inside or outside, your view on whether this is a good and bad thing can differ widely.

View from the Inside

For large organisations it makes perfect sense to standardise on a technology stack and leverage your company’s collective commercial weight to broker the best licensing deal possible with your suppliers/vendors. Imagine, one content management system that can scale to meet the content needs for all your countries and/or business units globally.

Now we’ve bought into the dream, lets establish a central intelligence agency to create the generic designs, templates and components that all the satellite outfits within the organisation can (re)use. No pressure. We come bearing gifts. One platform, multiple players. Everyone’s a winner.

View from the Outside

Funny, I never get calls for help from inside. I always get calls from those on the outside that want to get things done. They get the theory from central but it just isn’t working from them in practice. It’s the usual stuff:

• We would like to change the look and feel on these pages, but the estimate from central means it’ll take them months before we get it.
• All we want is a twitter component, but it requires a template change, and that is going to hurt us financially.
• Our local market is different and we can never get the features we need from central within our timescales.
• Our standards and requirements for things like accessiblity and colours are different to those at central.
• We need to improve performance and search but its all hosted remotely out of central. Can we localise / improve this?

What to do?

These are largely organisational issues and their approach to content management. However, it’s not long before you the words:

We hate the CMS. It’s crap!

Maybe, just maybe, if we can start again things will be different. But will they?

9 / 10 you don’t have a CMS problem!

I totally buy into the theory of centralised technology stacks. Truth be told, I buy part way into the practice. But when you start being pulled into a more and more discussions from disgruntled outsiders, its time to stop, look and listen to them. Something is broken!

There are many ways to do this and politics aside, all of the discussions I’ve had to date have proven that their problems are not intractable. But largely this is a political battle fought by an incumbent system integrator/vendor/business unit at central against numerous guerilla outfits wishing to do more stuff with diminishing budgets in these challenging times.

My advice is to always try and work with central. Small wins. Tactical plays. These tend to demonstrate capability, highlight benefits, but more importantly send the message that you want to play ball. Slowly but surely the strategic wheels will start to turn in your favour. Trust me. I’ve never seen a successful go it alone and/or full on assault on central bring anything of value to the global table that tastes any good.

I just sat through Cisco’s Media Solutions Groups (CMSG) video promoting the EOS Platform and it looks great!

So I kept on digging and stumbled across a talk John Chambers, CEO of Cisco gave at MIT back in October. It’s about an hour in length and very interesting. For me the key part is around Cisco’s take up of social collab and Enterprise 2.0.

So Sun would have us believe that the Network is the Computer, and Cisco that the Network is the Platform. So I dug a little bit deeper to see John Chambers deliver Cisco’s Q1 2009 vision. It was a bit unfortunate that the only point in the presentatin that he stumbled on was when he spoke about Enterprise 2.0.

No matter, I still think EOS looks interesting. And Dan Scheinman, Senior VP for CMSG gives us a taster for how Content Finds You and The Story behind the Story for EOS. However, can you find any details around EOS platform beyond sales and marketing speak at the website. I think not. Shame, because this is what people want to know. Unfortunately, you’re going to have to find engage to get more details.