Why the CMS industry needs a fundamental rethink

At T3Con 2014, which took place last week, I had the pleasure of giving a talk entitled: “Why CMS needs a fundamental shift!”. Below is a short abstract of the thesis I put forward.

(4 minutes reading time – video of the talk at the end of the post)

The CMS industry is facing the biggest challenge in its history.

At the beginning of the web industry, a CMS solved a fundamental problem for companies: Managing content on websites. While websites had to be maintained manually in a laborious way before CMSs were used, companies were suddenly able to update their offers independently and quickly. I designed a small straightforward system for the entire development:

The green curve shows the progression of end user requirements for the website. The gray straight line shows the ability of the CMS industry to provide solutions for these end user requirements. The orange curve, on the other hand, shows the benefits for companies resulting from the use of the latest content management solution. The sudden rise in the green curve can be explained by the boost triggered by the spread of high-speed Internet connections. The new market presence of CMS met demand and solved a fundamental problem for companies. What followed was a period of prosperity for all participants in the industry that lasted several years.

The advent of the first smartphones ushered in a new era of digital transformation and increased end users’ demands on web solutions at an unprecedented speed. Most companies, and with them the CMS industry, have been taken completely by surprise by this rapid development. Other topics that continue to build up pressure:

• – Wearables
• – Internet of Things
• – Big Data

As an industry, we have not yet developed any concepts to meet these requirements. Instead, we concentrate on details that are easy to sell. For example, responsive web design or the complete usability of a backend using tablets. Meanwhile, our customers are once again facing the same challenge as shortly after the turn of the millennium, just a much, much bigger one.

This looks as follows on our straight line system:

We see that there is a bigger gap than ever between the expectations and requirements of end users and the ability of the CMS industry to meet these requirements. Our industry is therefore called upon to develop and deliver fundamental solutions. Otherwise, companies will look elsewhere for solutions.

In my talk, I made a few basic recommendations, but they are not really tangible and simple solutions at all. They are more directives for action than solutions. The most important recommendation is to change our attitude to the market. We really should have the courage to develop fundamentally new solutions for our customers.

You can watch the full talk here:

The slides can be found here: