To Build or Buy a Content Management System? That Is The Question

by Barry Bealer

Apr 2003

From PrintMedia Magazine, March/April 2003

Yogi Berra once said, "When you come to a fork in the road, take it." We all know you can't go down two paths at once, but choosing can be hard, especially if you're a publisher talking about whether to buy or to build a content management system. Most of the publishers who end up building a solution say to themselves more than once, "I know other publishers have done this before, why do we have to build from the ground up?" And most publishers that buy a product at some point say, "We're doing so much customization, we may as well have started from scratch—and we still won't be able to do everything we wanted to do!"

But, there's no avoiding it, you have to choose. And when you (or your boss) inevitably question the path you went down, you want to have some good answers. In our experience, many of those answers lay as much in the characteristics of your organization as in the nature of your content management needs. So, when choosing your approach, don't limit your thinking to a review of whether the available products meet your requirements. You also need to weigh whether you as a business are better equipped to build or buy.

For publishers, the buy or build conundrum is more crucial for content management projects than for many other system development projects. A content management system strongly influences how quickly and how well a publisher is able to react to market pressures. Picking the wrong approach not only determines the ease which your system is developed or deployed, but could positively or negatively affect your revenue stream for years to come.

To Build or Not to Build?

So, could you be successful in building a content management system? Answer: It depends. Deciding whether you should build a content management solution in-house is as much about how projects get done in your organization as it is about the system itself. If an organization has the discipline of established project management and a clear vision of how the system supports business objectives, then overcoming other areas of weakness (e.g., not having enough in-house technical staff) can be overcome.

If you don't have those two factors working in your favor, then if at all possible you should buy a solution rather than build one. This is not to say that managing a vendor's implementation is easy, but it is often usually easier to put pressure on an external company to perform than on internal staff with multiple responsibilities.

Finally, publishers with complex and rapidly evolving requirements often prefer a custom solution because they feel it is easier to incorporate new functionality needed for new product development. For such publishers, the certainty of knowing they have almost limitless flexibility to extend their system—which is not the case with purchased solutions—is worth the extra effort and staff required to maintain the system. They tend to view such flexibility as a competitive advantage.

To Buy or Not to Buy?

So, are you more likely to be successful if you buy a content management system? See the answer under the previous section—it depends. The key success factor for building a solution—experience in software development—is much less important if you buy, because today most of the product vendors (or their recommended integrators) are able to bring that discipline and knowledge to the table.

Organizations frequently spend a lot of effort evaluating their requirements, but spend limited time evaluating the product's vendor or integrator. This is an enormous mistake. None of the product's capabilities matter until they have been successfully deployed in your environment. We highly recommend completing a pilot project with a few of the short-list vendors to prove out their capabilities prior to making your final selection.

It's Déjà vu All Over Again

If you feel like your organization has been through the build or buy decision several times, you are not alone. Many projects—whether for a content management system, a financial system, a fulfillment system, or so on—fail in their first incarnation. Understanding the impact of your organization's characteristics on build or buy scenarios is an important step in avoiding repeated failures.