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Customer Data Platforms Web Content Management

November Updates

MACH and J. Boye social night in Toronto – November 21st. I will be in Toronto on November 21st. to attend a J. Boye CMS Experts group in person. It has been quite some time since I’ve been to one, so I’m looking forward to seeing Janus and friends. Following this event, we’ll be at […]

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Web Content Management

Adobe Franklin – What is a CMS exactly, anyway?

I finally got around to playing with Adobe Franklin – down to getting the sample configs into GitHub, content into Google Docs and starting to understand how blocks and styles work. (My version of this blog post hosted via Adobe Franklin can be found on my personal test site here: https://main–adobe-franklin–mdemeny.hlx.live/adobe-franklin) At its core, the key value proposition […]

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Customer Data Platforms Customer Experience Web Content Management

2020 Year in review (Part 1)

Clearly, 2020 has been a year unlike any other (at least in my working lifetime). Interestingly, while the “real world” has been turned upside down by the covid-19 pandemic, much of the marketing technology landscape remains either unchanged, or accelerated. Let’s start by looking back… 2020 predictions revisited In September 2019, I wrote a post […]

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Web Content Management

The “moats” in WCM are drying up

Warren Buffet famously spoke of “economic moats” when investing in companies. The idea being there are “defensible” competitive advantages to that company which make it difficult for newer players to compete. An example would be the massive network effects of Facebook, or the warehousing, delivery and logistical capabilities of Amazon. Morningstar, the stock rating agency, […]

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Web Content Management

The three types of SaaS vendors in WCM*

Everyone should be familiar with this slide – it is used by almost every vendor to compare different offerings (either within their own offerings, or as a way to differentiate from competitors). I happen to be using a version from BMC software, but any search for “SaaS vs. IaaS vs. PaaS” would pull up hundreds […]

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Web Content Management

Inherent conflicts in Web Content Management – Part 1: Visual design vs. Structured content

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single user in possession of a good CMS must be in want of a better CMS. (Yours truly – with apologies to Charlotte Brontë) I wrote last week on the topic of user satisfaction in WCM and how complicated it is to categorize and evaluate underlying data […]

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Web Content Management

Should “Web Content Management” even exist as a category anymore?

One of the challenges facing customers and analysts (and vendors!) is the ever-changing definition of what a Web Content Management system even is. Tony Byrne has discussed this fragmentation in some detail. In particular, I like his characterization of “products” (which often do one thing well) vs. “platforms” (which often don’t do a single task […]

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Customer Data Platforms

Vertical acquisition and integration is the new martech play

Earlier this year, McDonalds paid $300 million dollars for Dynamic Yield, a somewhat surprising fit for a fast-food giant and a tech company known for dynamic pricing and personalization. Just this week, MasterCard acquired SessionM, a Customer Data Platform (CDP)/loyalty program vendor (value disclosed, but based on $100 million in investment rounds and some industry […]

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Web Content Management

WCM systems are the hot new billionaire status symbol of 2019

Marc Benioff personally owns Time Magazine and via Salesforce Ventures, has a few million dollars invested in various WCM companies, including Bloomreach, Contentful and now $12 million in Automattic (Benioff owns 4% of Salesforce shares and they made a $300 million investment in Automattic). That may seem like a lot, but it pales in comparison […]

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Web Content Management

Revisiting the Hertz $32-million dollar website disaster

At the time this news broke, myself (and every other WCM vendor that wasn’t Adobe) were inhaling sharply, thanking our lucky stars it wasn’t our software or client. Now, to be fair, Adobe AEM is a well-regarded platform. Was it right for this client? Maybe. But far too often the technology is thought to have […]