Forrester put the X in Web Engagement
Recently Forrester released their latest analysis of the WCM market with the publication of “The Forrester Wave™: Web Content Management for Online Customer Experience, Q3 2011”.
This wave represents a slight shift from previous reports that were primarily focused on publishing external websites and places more emphasis on engaging the visitor, through social/community functionality, globally over multiple digital channels and wrapped up with a level of orchestration and measurement.
This isn't new territory for the WCM folks at Forrester, it's really an extension of their "Persuasive Content" research that I think started around 2005.
This is something we at SDL have been describing as Pervasive Engagement Management, as part of our corporate Global Information Management strategy (in my recent past as an analyst I tend to have describe this as Web Engagement Management). Forrester have coined a new acronym to describe managing the on-line customer experience; CXM – Customer eXperience Management which they describe as:
A set of solutions which enable the management and delivery of dynamic, targeted, consistent content, offers, products, and service interactions across digitally enabled consumer touchpoints.
This change in focus in the criteria has shaken out the scoring and the ultimate position of all the vendors on the wave, with significant changes in position for many and the entrance of new vendors. Although, one thing that has not changed in the criteria is a core focus on good quality content management or as Forrester describe it “..a critical cornerstone in a CXM foundation”.
Something else that has not changed, as you have probably already read on our website or industry commentary (such as this article written by CMSWire) we are proud to say that SDL were identified as the leader in the report (as we were in the previous report in 2009).
Aside from the recognition of our talented folks, our investment in Tridion 2011 and our core focus on "the multi's" (multi-channel, multi-language, multi-context), Forrester in particular highlighted the strength of our strategy. I think it’s safe for me to say that we are keeping some great company in this report and our continued leadership in these changing and engaging times is also testament to that strategy and our agility.
Enough with the horn tootin' - as I have been here for roughly ten minutes (OK.. 5 months) I can take no credit for our fine standing here. But, as someone that has been banging on about this engagement thing for a while, it’s great to see that this isn’t just a marketing pipe dream, it's maturing as a business practice that has been reflected in the requirements of Forrester’s customers and the survey data in the report.
One of the things I’ve enjoyed over the years when dealing with Forrester is that they ‘show their work’ (as my kid’s teachers are always telling them). In the report you can see the high level criteria and rankings that I have been discussing here and they share (with their customers) a detailed spreadsheet that shows an additional level of detail of how they came to their conclusions.
Take a look, you can download a free copy of the report here.
Enjoy!
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