Daniel Davies

A Content Management System was a buzz word a few years ago, and quite rightly so. But what amazes me, time after time, is the number of companies paying less than £3000 for their website development who aren't getting one.

• Are the developers charging less than this lacking the talent to produce a CMS? Surely not, with Wordpress, Joomla and Drupal being prime examples of their ease.
• Are they trying to recoup development through maintenance contracts which their clients are trapped by?

I'm working on a project at the moment exactly like this. At the moment I'm charging my hourly rate to provide the maintenance for an outdated site, but at what point will my maintenance costs exceed the cost of simply having me build a new CMS?

And so this is what I've been investigating lately, and I've made a very interesting discovery. I've been talking a lot to the organisation, meeting its membership, talking to their publicity team and really scratching beyond just the surface to find out what they can really gain from the web. And time and time again, the membership are responding with the same kinds of thing. To provide some context, the client is a national organisation representing some 7000 individuals in the work place.

• "This is my first port of call for industry news, I need to know what the jargon means to me"
• "I want to know when the next events are being held"
• "I want the national organisation to be publishing what's happening in my branch, I want to provide this information too, and have a part of the site I can update"
• "I wish all the local branches had an easy way to talk and share ideas"
• "I want to be able to give my feedback about the national conference"

But can a plain old Content Management System really satisfy this? Sure, it will reduce the costs for the national office, and it will make it easier for them to put their content online on a regular basis. However, each of the points I made are to do with communication, and they are coming directly from the membership itself.

Content is one way, its placed on the web and its read. A CMS is great for helping you put your content out there, but it needs to go further to allow you to manage your communication. Communication is two way, it allows for discussion of the content, and for those who the content is being provided for to steer it.

These are just my ramblings at the moment. But what I already know is that I need to formulate these ideas and when I put the formal proposal together to be describing a Communication Management System. But most importantly, I need to explain to my very traditional client the benefits of this without simply saying, "just trust me, I'm a professional"; this I fear is the trickiest bit.