The Hidden Costs of Choosing the Wrong CMS

Choosing a CMS will have long-term implications for your business, so weigh the decision carefully.

Selecting a content management system is often viewed as being purely an IT decision. As is the case with so many other IT purchases, however, your CMS is a long-term business investment that deserves careful consideration. A good content management system can streamline operations and simplify workflows. Conversely, a poorly chosen CMS can become a financial and logistical burden to the organization, even if it doesn’t seem that way in the beginning.

Fortunately, you don’t have to just roll the dice and hope that you pick the right system. By understanding the hidden costs that can come into play over time, you will be better able to make an informed decision as to which CMS is right for your organization.

Hidden Costs of the Wrong CMS

Initially, hidden costs may come into play as a result of overly complex migrations. Likewise, there may be training costs to consider if the software’s interface is not as intuitive as it should be. While these types of costs are certainly worthy of consideration, they are normally temporary in nature, and go away once the new CMS is fully operational. However, there are other types of costs that tend to be more long term.

Workflow bottlenecks tend to be one of the more obvious sources of ongoing costs. As an example, a CMS might include an inefficient user interface that requires users to waste time completing seemingly unnecessary or redundant steps. When you consider a user’s hourly pay, it becomes easy to see how seemingly minor inefficiencies can translate into large costs over time. Such costs can be further exasperated if the software requires IT to do the actual content publishing rather than empowering authorized users to publish content themselves.

Integration complexities can be another source of hidden costs. For example, you may find that a content management system does not mesh well with other related systems such as your CRM, analytics or marketing tools. Conversely, there are some CMSs that are widely extensible through the use of plugins. While this extensibility is generally a good thing, plugin sprawl can become an issue over time, particularly if the plugins are open source or developed by the community. This can have a literal cost, as there can be costs associated with acquiring and managing these plugins, and potential hidden costs, as having an excessive number of plugins can lead to instability and may introduce security vulnerabilities.

Long-term costs can also creep in as a result of an organization outgrowing its CMS. A platform that initially seemed like a bargain might eventually prove to be unable to handle multiple sites, multiple languages or even something as simple as mobile first content delivery. An organization may end up missing out on business opportunities simply because its CMS is inflexible or overworked.

If a content management system lacks the ability to scale effectively, then that inability to scale can become problematic and costly. Unlike the other issues that only impact internal users, scalability problems can directly affect your customers.

When a CMS isn’t designed to handle growth, content delivery performance will degrade as the site expands. As an example, a platform that is having trouble scaling to meet demand might also have difficulty delivering personalized experiences or recommendations. Even if a CMS is just slow, that too can be a problem. Generally, customers show little patience for poorly performing sites and will likely move on after a few seconds of waiting. In other words, sluggish performance practically guarantees lost traffic and sales. If left unchecked, this can lead to reputational damage and lost customers.

Best Practices for Choosing a CMS

There are some best practices that you can adopt as a way of helping to prevent you from choosing a CMS that will cost you in the long run.

Involve Stakeholders in the Selection Process

One such best practice is to avoid making the content management system selection process solely an IT decision. Instead, try to involve all the key stakeholders in the selection process. Each of the stakeholders will likely have their own unique priorities and the stakeholders might collectively make a better decision than IT could have made on its own.

Look at Full Cost of Ownership

Another best practice is to evaluate the total cost of ownership, not just the licensing costs. As you do, take into account the money that will need to be spent on things such as end user training, product support, customizations and extensibility.

If the CMS provider uses a subscription-based licensing model, then it may be beneficial to look at how licensing cost has changed in recent years. Some providers have adopted annual price increases as part of their own business model. Knowing that up front can help you to better anticipate the platform’s ongoing costs.

Be Future-Ready

Yet another best practice is to prioritize scalability and compliance, even if you don’t need it. Just because your organization is not subject to any regulatory requirements today doesn’t mean that will still be the case in five years. You don’t want to have to endure another CMS migration in a few years, just because your organization grew more than you expected it to.

Test-Run Your Options

One more best practice is to take the time to perform a pilot deployment for any content management systems that you might be considering. While not all vendors offer a free trial, if a particular platform is a serious contender, purchasing a few licenses to test the product before committing to a full migration is worthwhile. The cost of a few trial licenses is trivial compared to the long-term cost of choosing the wrong CMS.

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