5 basic strategies for CMS manufacturers!

At the TYPO3 Camp in Venlo two weeks ago, I gave a talk on “State of the CMS Industry – Where is the journey going?”. In a way, this was a continuation of the talk I gave at T3Con last fall. At that time, I assessed the development of the CMS industry and its players and came to the conclusion that things are unlikely to continue as they are. I didn’t have any real recommendations for action back then. More like general, vague directives. In Venlo, I followed on from this and explained 5 basic possible strategies for CMS vendors.

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None of these strategies are new or groundbreaking. But there is always a lot of confusion in the discussion about leading content management systems. In some cases, I think the strategies are also far too complex. So here are a few simple strategies with examples.

“Big Fish in a Small Pond”

The concept is by no means new and has been successfully applied many times in the software industry. Instead of looking for a huge market, you concentrate on a niche and try to serve the requirements of this niche as well as possible. Typical examples are providers who only focus on one industry. On the global stage, there are few providers who do this, and I don’t really know why exactly (please enlighten me). In Switzerland, there is a good example of a company that specializes only in the public sector(www.i-web.ch). Their CMS, which is tailored to public administrations, optimally covers these specific requirements. The software products scale well with the increasing number of customers and it is often difficult for more generalist agencies to keep up in terms of price/performance. With this strategy, you can become so good in a niche that other, broad-based providers do not pose any major competition.

“Swiss Army Knife”

The Swiss Army Knife strategy assumes that you have a product that can cover all the requirements that arise as well as possible. There are not that many candidates in this area. They tend to be veterans of the industry.

We consider the product to be feature-complete!

Mathias Schreiber, Product Owner TYPO3

A good example of this is TYPO3 CMS. Having grown over the years, it now offers an almost unmanageable number of functions that support small to very large customers. In order to compete with such systems, enormous investments in the product are necessary. On the one hand, this increases the hurdle for new competitors. On the other hand, it also leads to a “heavy” product that certain customers do not even need in this form.

Platform Provider

A promising strategy that has emerged in recent years is the platform provider strategy. In this strategy, the CMS acts as a foundation on which other applications and adaptations can be run. The trick and the abstraction to the Swiss Army Knife is that individual functional areas are offered as products. A good example of this strategy is Drupal/Acquia. Dries writes about this:

We’re going after a big dream to become the preferred platform for what has been called the “pivot point of many enterprise tech stacks” — the technologies that permit organizations to deliver on the promises of exceptional digital customer experiences from an agile, open, resilient platform.

This requires a solid foundation, a core and various additional elements. Drupal/Acquia’s trick is that this foundation is open source (Drupal) and the additional products are open core. The market figures prove this strategy right. This is one of the reasons why Drupal/Acquia has made it to the top in recent years.

Depend on Tech Stack

Another great example of a good strategic focus is the “Depend on Tech Stack” strategy. This means that the vendor consistently relies on one technology and thereby sets itself apart from the competition. A very good example is Magnolia, an up-and-coming CMS manufacturer from Basel (Switzerland). They combine open source with Java. This is not completely unique, but it is also not really widespread. Especially in relation to competitors such as HippoCMS or Adobe Experience Manager, which are also based on the Java stack, this is a major advantage. In large companies, for example in the banking and insurance sector, Java is the standard. However, these companies also want to rely more on open source/open core and a provider like this is just what they need. I have often discussed such decisions in favor of Magnolia with interested parties from this sector and the Java/OpenSource aspect was always a major factor in the product decision.

Of course, such positioning is no guarantee for market success, but you also have to be able to convince in terms of requirements and user experience. Magnolia is also involved here, otherwise they would not be successful.

“Feature Excellence”

This strategy relies on being extraordinarily good in one area of the application. There are many examples of this. One obvious example is Neos, which sets new standards with its authoring experience. Vendors who implement these strategies also look for a niche, similar to the “big fish small pond” representatives, but instead of going into an industry niche, they choose the feature niche. This is very clever in the sense that you can solve typical problems and requirements without being burdened with all the rest of the functionality. Using Neos as an example, this means that anyone who wants to edit and trade content as simply and easily as possible will evaluate Neos. The broader the need in the market, the more you can achieve in the market.

There are certainly other strategies and the list is by no means exhaustive. And CMS creates new ones every day. Unfortunately, often without any strategic approach. The strategy for a product is not solely responsible for its success, but today it is no longer possible without it. Because the times when you could simply grow into the market are definitely over. And that’s a good thing.