Comments Becoming a “Leader” in WCM
On July 13, Forrester Research Inc. provided us with well-timed recognition as a Leader in “The Forrester Wave™: Web Content Management For Online Customer Experience, Q3 ’11” report. From an Adobe perspective, the report centers on CQ5, which is now part of our recently updated Web Experience Management Solution. See the press release we issued about the report here. This independent report evaluated the current wave of 10 Web Content Management (WCM) products across approximately 115 comprehensive criteria such as overall strength of vendors’ current offerings, a clear product strategy and vendor market presence.
There are several notable elements of the report that make it a must-read for any business or technology leader faced with the tough decision of selecting a vendor-of-record to transform web initiatives into customer engagement and experience platforms. At minimum, this speaks to the incredible opportunity unlocked when a web-savvy customer base helps you move your business and brand experience online. In a recent post on Customer Experience Management and our own Adobe Digital Enterprise Platform launch I wrote about the strength of that brand being critical to helping any company achieve higher rates of revenue growth by entering new markets, innovating new products, acquiring new customers, or in-selling products to an existing loyal base. The web, and the customer experience there, is a fundamental part of this – but it is not the whole story.
In the report, Forrester defines the category CXM (Customer Experience Management, which has also been shortened to CEM elsewhere) as having WCM as a cornerstone with many other technologies playing a critical supporting role. Using survey data gathered from 218 WCM decision makers, Forrester was able to forecast the prioritized integration points that are fundamental to making WCM a key component of CXM success, which also points to the importance of working within an established ecosystem of technology and service providers to ease these integrations.
Adobe Recognized as Leader in WCM
The following excerpt from the report explains the positioning of our leadership and gives well-deserved recognition to our Adobe Solution Provider Partners who are instrumental in our success with the many deployments we have successfully launched over the past year:
“Adobe’s WCM is especially strong on enabling business users to manage presentation as well as content via slick user interfaces, and benefits from a rich media product that was built on the same architecture as its WCM product, a differentiator in this evaluation… The vendor is early in its integration plans. But it has great potential, and implementation firms report a good deal of success behind Adobe’s offering.”
The positioning is also attributed to our “excellent offering in terms of technology and features.” The report added, “Its integration with other Adobe-owned CXM components shows potential.” Adobe received high scores across a broad range of criteria such as authoring tools, customer experience management, library services, presentation management and product strategy. Adobe also received a 5-out-of-5 rating in product architecture and the highest rating for content publishing and deployment in the report. I would like to return to that 5-out-of-5 rating and the depth of understanding that went into their assessment of our technology and offerings.
This would not have been possible without the cast of hundreds that have contributed to our success behind the scenes at Adobe, working tirelessly to perfect the platform and its various integration points, the many late nights to meet the release milestones and the supporting teams that ensured our customers and partners would be able to succeed each and every time. A heartfelt thank you to everyone who helped us achieve this milestone is warranted – you know who you are. We’re not done by any means, but we have been able to keep our promises and deliver what our customers want time and time again.
For our customers, I’ll close by saying simply that the Forrester Research report is timely and shows how critical WCM is to a great customer experience.
-Kevin Cochrane, vice president, Enterprise Marketing, Adobe