Ask HN: Thoughts on involving marketing and sales depart. when choosing a CMS?

As others have posted, involving (potential) users and key decision makers - such as sales/marketing, etc. - is ALWAYS a good idea. The key here is that you don't want to pose open-ended questions, because that doesn't help. You need to corral these folks. Asking a sales/marketing person what they think of this platform or that in such a generic fashion, will no doubt lead to general comments such as "oh, it seems to be a user friendly system" (according to or against what measurement?)...or comments like, the "UI and/or buttons seem good", etc. Nope. Instead, what you want is to very concisely drive these stakeholders down a very specific path to extract very specific feedback, in a quantifiable manner from them. You want feedback that is actionable when making your decisions. To be able to think of ways of corralling these folks is a skill; don't be fooled into thinking this is so easy. But you should definitely give it a try. Good luck!

The purpose of software is to serve its users. Choosing software without involving the end users seems like a bad idea, no?

Are the sales and marketing departments using the CMS?

Talk to the content managers and people that will be using it every day. Ease of use is key in a CMS. Most enterprise CMS will have functional parity but vastly different UX/UI.

I'm in marketing and do most of my work in a proprietary CMS.

1. See if it has to integrate with any software. Find out what marketing really really needs to still have, and what they could switch out if necessary.

2. See what they do. What kind of changes they need to make and how often. Find out what sorts of changes cannot wait weeks for an IT ticket.

This could narrow it down, and then you can get input from the other departments and iterate toward a decision.

Then have them play with it. They'll probably say oh shit, why can't I just do _____.

I've rarely worked on a project where this wasn't mandatory. In fact, marketing frequently owns the budget for our projects and for software licenses. They are easily swayed by savvy sales teams that show off a smoke and mirrors demo so make sure you explain the actual cost involved of customizing a system because it's usually more than the cost of licenses.

At a company I previously worked we tested three different options before settling into one. Yes it takes longer but everyone involved had hands-on experience and could give real insights based on their usage.

In the end, the company is now using several: SugarCRM enterprise, Alfresco, Target Process, Github, etc., based on solving different needs and goals.

That's a pretty good idea, actually. Especially if you're working in a big company. It might take a while to get things off the ground, but selecting a CMS should not be JUST a technical problem; it should be an organizational "problem".

Drupal is opensource and doesn't require a licence. It can also be hosted on premise or in cloud. My org uses a multisite setup of Drupal. https://www.drupal.com/

See also CMS Critic (https://www.cmscritic.com/).

That said, everybody seems to move to Wordpress these days. It’s not nearly as diverse as it used to be.

Given that they are ultimately the end-users, you'll want to involve them. Spend some time going through their process. Job shadow them and see what they do. A lot of times, things that they say may not be what they do.

As long as you're only involving the key decision makers, I don't see it being a problem. Might actually help the IT guys in the long-run as they know what to expect from the marketing and sales departments.

There's a reason the most popular products are popular. Really consider Salesforce.