Content Management

System Survey
IMI WHITE PAPER SERIES
 Contents

About The Survey 2

Executive Summary 2

Key Survey Findings 3

Summary 6

About Information Mapping, Inc. 6

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About the Survey
Information Mapping conducted a Content Management System (CMS) survey in January 2005
with results tabulated and analyzed in April 2005. The survey was conducted to understand how
organizations have prepared to implement CMS, the extent to which XML strategies are utilized,
and the decision process for doing so.

Although full demographic information on respondents is not available, the results are inclusive
of 380 complete responses from a diverse set of industries, job titles, and size of companies.

Executive Summary
The vast majority of respondents to our survey (69% of total respondents) have no plans to
execute an XML strategy.

Exhibit One: Is your company committed to an XML strategy for your CMS initiative?

0.8
0.7
0.6
0.5 Yes
0.4
0.3 No
0.2
0.1
0
XML

The implication of these findings may have some relation to the drop off in IT spending over the
past five years while users rationalize further IT spending more closely. Specific to content
management, the slow adoption of XML is likely the result of organizations that have realized
information is a key asset, but are struggling to find a solution that optimizes the creation and
retrieval of information, is interoperable with other systems, but does not require major
customization.

Issues that currently prevent organizations from utilizing XML to bridge the gap between their
current information systems and implementing an XML CMS include:

• lack of an abundant pool of XML talent

• immature XML and authoring tools that are geared to technologists
• lack of standards, evolving standards
• level of customization required, and
• reduced IT budgets focused more on maintenance than buying or building new systems

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The current state of XML adaptation in CMS is very similar to the status of PointCast when it
was introduced as a push technology news tool. It was a new tool, based on a new technology
platform that was not widely used but was later modified and retooled and has become the basis
of the technology we widely use today, portals. Our belief is that the adaptation of XML within
CMS will similarly go through a variety of modifications and retooling along with standards
built in, and in five years XML will be ubiquitous in CMS.

An interesting finding and analysis relates to the third of respondents that do have XML CMS
implementations in place. Why are they the contrarians? Despite the obstacles to adoption,
companies are adding XML to their IT options for several reasons including:

• Early adopters are focused on regulatory and compliance issues, or are

• Highly structural/procedure/process-driven organizations

Key Survey Findings

Nearly one third of the survey respondents have committed to an XML strategy for their CMS
initiatives. The majority of those that responded saying they are involved with XML strategies
have deployments currently in progress.

As mentioned above, organizations that have XML plans in progress are either highly regulated
or compliance driven businesses. Others have been early adopters because they came to the
realization that in order for the true potential of their information assets to be utilized as a key
asset they needed a fully defined Information Architecture strategy. XML is the backbone to
that strategy because it lends itself to

• support of Information Architecture initiatives

• promote structured content
• easily adapts to corporate classifications
• easy to retrieval
• allows for easy packaging and syndication, and
• can be deployed across multiple departments and mediums from the same source.

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Exhibit Two: Company Committed to an XML strategy for CMS – Timeline in months

Current
3-6 mo's
6-12 mo's
12+ m o's
No plans

Further analysis shows that of those current projects, 44% of the respondents, indicated that
regulatory and compliance issues were extremely important to their CMS implementations.
These respondents were primarily in highly regulated industries such as pharmaceuticals,
healthcare and communications.

The first exhibit above includes a majority of our respondents with no plans to implement XML.
It is therefore interesting to tabulate that finding with the next question in the survey (How will
you manage your CMS?) and find a possible reason for this. The majority of those surveyed
(70%) indicated that their in-house resources would manage the CMS systems and 26% would
utilize a combination of in-house and outsourced services. Since the talent pool of XML
programmers is low and the available tools complex, it is reasonable to collate these responses
into the opinion that organizations that are not adopting CMS and XML may be doing so in
order to wait out the market until complexity is reduced and talent is available.

Exhibit Three: How Will You Manage Your CMS?

In house
Outsource
Combination

When asked what was or will be the biggest obstacle to achieving success with an enterprise
CMS, 30% of those surveyed said that justification of the cost of the CMS to senior management
followed by a concern for a rapid deployment throughout the organization were the main
concerns. Developing a strong ROI case is a major factor and can be a major obstacle to CMS
implementations.

Factors that were less potent obstacles were document conversion, integration with other
corporate CMS products and the cost of XML programmers or authors.

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Exhibit Four: Major obstacles to achieve success with an enterprise CMS?

100%

80% Integration w/other CMS

Cost of XMLprogram mers
60%
Rapid deploy
40% ROI to senior mgt.
Doc Conversion
20%
Info. Architecture
0%
Smallest More Medium Large Greatest

The primary applications for CMS projects were regulatory and compliance documents and
corporate policies and procedures followed by Web, intranet and portal content and knowledge
management/collaboration. Heavily regulated and compliance centric organizations were the
leading and the earliest adopters of CMS that incorporated XML. Other organizations that did
not have significant external bodies breathing down their neck with regulations were less likely
to be in the process of implementing XML.

Exhibit Five: Primary application for a CMS pilot?

Graph represents the actual number of responses per application, rating the relative importance
of each application from not important to very important.

100%
Knowledge Management
80%
Product/Corp Literature
60%
Policy, Proceduces
40% Regulatory, com pliance

20% Web, Intranet, Portal

Docum ent Archival
0%
Not Very Enterprise Publishing
important im portant

The internal and external groups that had the most influence on recommending a CMS product
were:

• IT, CIO, CTO

• Operations
• Audit and Compliance

The most important attributes of a CMS vendor were:

• Flexibility and ease of publishing options

• Ability to import legacy documents
• Technical support
• Company reputation

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Summary
There is a dichotomy of organizations that have deployed XML solutions to their CMS and
others that are on the sidelines, waiting for XML standards and authoring tools to evolve more
fully. Those that have adopted XML solutions have done so because their business processes
lend themselves to this solution. Many others remain on the fence as to whether XML, as it
exists today, is the optimal answer.

As XML standards evolve, and the pool of XML programmers expands, the adoption of XML in
CMS will increase.

Published April 2005

About Information Mapping, Inc.

Information Mapping, Inc. is the leader in Information Life Cycle Solutions, delivering
Information Mapping® learning programs, consulting services and technology solutions to
organizations worldwide. For over four decades, the company’s structuring, creating, and
managing of business communications has helped organizations bring order to the complexity of
corporate information.

For more information, go to www.infomap.com or call 800-INFOMAP (800-463-6627).

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