The decision has been made: It’s time for a new content management system (CMS). But before you start sending out RFPs, do you know exactly what you’re looking for? And who in your organization should be included in the selection process?

A CMS is a major purchase for any organization in terms of financial outlay as well as its impact once it’s implemented. Thus, it behooves the organization to plan carefully prior to talking with potential CMS vendors. We reached out to some experts in the field for their thoughts on who should be included among the decision-makers. Our appreciation goes out to Melissa Tait and Andy Berling at The Primacy; Ben Dillon at Geonetric; and Brian Bierbaum at Bluespire Marketing for sharing their perspectives.

Across the board, our experts agree that it is vitally important to include all key stakeholders. It will be up to you to determine who those stakeholders are for your organization. Melissa and Andy told us that to ensure a successful implementation, both the Marketing and IT teams should contribute to the selection process as both business and functional goals are considered. If a client is hosting the CMS platform, it’s essential for IT to be a part of the decision making process. Be sure to leverage your agency’s CMS and development expertise as they’ve been through implementations many times before and can help guide you through considerations that you may not have considered. Ben says that when it comes to buy-in, it’s important to get input from all key executive stakeholders. Remember, each stakeholder has a different agenda. Try to get input from marketing, public relations, I.T., key service lines, human resources (for most sites, “careers” is a top-visited section) and other important stakeholders in your organization. If the stakeholders are involved in the development of the site and understand the value, they are more likely to support the rollout of the features. But when it comes to making the final decision, Ben adds, you have to ask yourself: Do all stakeholders have an equal vote or not? His group always recommends that the business representatives (people responsible for the websites) maintain decision authority. Brian’s perspective is that selection of a CMS is often (or should be) part of a broader discussion around the organization's enterprise marketing management stack of technology. The last thing you want to do is to purchase marketing software in a silo and neglect integration considerations with the rest of the enterprise. Marketing and IT/IS should be key stakeholders in the selection process and will know of other departments that may be leveraging a CMS in another capacity. Marketing is typically the "power user" of the CMS and as such, should lead a cross-department requirement gathering exercise to identify needs. If you’re having trouble getting started on the CMS selection process, Greystone.Net can help! Our Vendor Selection Process can help to ensure that you find the best CMS platform and implementation vendor for your organization’s goals with an aligned corporate culture. For more information about CMS and your organization, contact Greystone.Net at 770-407-7670, email us at info@greystone.net or fill out our online information request.