Professional Services
Identifying the Right Implementation Partner
by Janus Boye
26-May-2005
Many organizations invest tremendous time and resources undertaking a thorough analysis to identify and select the right CMS. Unfortunately the same due diligence rarely happens when an implementation partner is selected -- even though implementation costs typically exceed licensing fees by orders of magnitude, and a rational buyer would assign their attention accordingly. Too often a vendor choice is made and only then an implementation partner gets involved.
This tendency makes CMS projects unnecessarily risky. Even with the ideal system, many things can and will go wrong during the implementation that follows, and your ability to overcome those obstacles will depend on the quality of your relationship with the implementation team. With a less-than-ideal system, a project can fail, but much could be done to avoid this, if more care is given to selecting the right implementation team with the right experience, skills, and inter-organizational chemistry.
Even before selecting a software vendor it is important to assess the following key issues:
- What is the scope and planned duration of the project?
- Who will be responsible for project management (internal/external)?
- What is the realistic availability and relevant experience level of our internal IT resources?
- What are the evaluation criteria to select an implementation partner?
The last question is crucial, but oftentimes very hard to answer. There are many ways to structure an implementation.
Many types of partners
Today it is estimated that more than 1,000 vendors world-wide claim to offer a CMS (more than 700 can be found in DMOZ alone). The professional services marketplace, while not formally measured, is surely larger by several orders of magnitude. In other words, the market for implementation firms is an even worse jungle than the CMS market.
I divide implementation partners into 5 high-level categories:
Management consultancies vary greatly in size from Big 5 companies to much smaller. But generally they focus on executive level management consulting, with CMS being only one of many topics addressed. These companies lead with strategic analysis and not technology pitches at first. This is useful for clients still trying to work through strategic rationales. Typically the consultancy's level of IT understanding will be fairly high-level and Web content management may be treated as a step-child to what they consider larger and more important topics such as ERP, Compliance, and CRM. This does not mean that a management consultancy will not take on the CMS project that their strategist recommended to client executives. In fact, they often aggressively seek high-margin implementation work -- although they may quietly outsource it to another firm or contingent contractors.
System integrators or "SIs," also vary greatly in size, but they all focus on the implementation of the system, including development and integration. A trusted SI partner will ideally already know and possibly has implemented your other IT systems, and should understand the "big picture" of your technical architecture. However, their level of content management understanding may not be a strong point, and like management consulting firms, they may outsource some specialized skills and serve as a general contractor.
Boutiques are small and focused consulting shops. Some are vendor-neutral, but for good and practical reasons, most can boast true competency in only a handful of CMS products. Some work exclusively on strategy and requirements; others are more technically-oriented and are essentially small, CMS-specialized SIs. If you have already settled on a tool, they can often bring in generalized CMS expertise as well as specific product expertise, but may not be as skilled in integrating the solution with your other business systems, and they may have less capacity to staff up for very large projects.
Vendor PSO means consultants from the vendor's professional services organization. From the top vendors, these consultants will be expensive and the best ones often hard to get on a project. Before signing a contract for services work, check that experienced consultants are assigned to your project and no matter the size of your engagement, do not blindly assume that you will be treated as a "key account" during the implementation phase. Consultants from the vendor usually (but not always) know the system well, but can be incented to "stand up" an implementation quickly and leave, pending re-assignment to a fire fighting mission somewhere else in the world. Although some fine analysts can be found in these ranks, most vendor PSO consultants tend to be workaday developers -- more expert in their company's product than content management more generally.
Your In-house IT organization is likely to be at least part of the implementation picture one way or another, although they may not have the specific skills and available resources to drive it. Using internal IT resources can become very similar to outsourcing, particularly if the IT organization is not particularly close to the CMS or Web team and incremental IT costs must be charged back internally. On the other hand, in more intimate settings where IT knows the business very well, they can smooth over many rough bumps in a CMS implementation and provide a useful layer of translation with any outside partners. When working with internal developers, it is essential that they receive proper training, but also ensure that any resources are blocked off for the project and not subject to other major internal projects fighting for attention.
We are still in the early days of the CMS market, but in many ways the market is growing up. Most of the partners that you will be in touch with, from Big 5, to small local integrator, will by now have more than a few projects under their belt. Properly managed and applied each of the above can add tremendous value to your project. So the question is:
Which one?
To find out which type would fit a project best, start off with a realistic evaluation the amount of internal resources -- developer, PM, analyst, QA, etc. -- that will be dedicated to the project, as well as the experience level and desired roles that your colleagues will fill.
For a company that has a large IT organization and wishes to use some of these resources to develop templates, write code, customize, and integrate, it might very much make sense to find a local expert in the selected system, and then focus on building the relevant IT skills internally. But it pays to be brutally honest here. If your company does not have much experience as an organization with the impact and changes brought by introducing a CMS, consider enlisting a management consulting company or boutique consultancy to assist with content management strategy and jump starting an internal center of excellence.
Alternatively, you may have a large, multi-skilled IT organization, but they are presently pre-occupied with major data-driven projects (e.g., ERP and CRM) or regulatory compliance efforts. In this case, you might want to outsource to a skilled and experienced systems integrator who would be able to execute. You might still want to take on project management, but then have the rest be done by partners.
The ecosystem: CMS vendor and implementation partner
The relationship between services firm and software vendor can be a complex one, but it forms an important axis for your project. Most CMS vendors do seek to work with outside partners -- mainly since these provide them with extended and cheap project delivery capabilities as well as a channel for new customers. Be aware that many partners receive commission or fees from the vendor when licenses are sold (see, for example, Matthew Clapp's experience at a Big 5 firm). This may not necessarily be a bad thing for the project, but surely good to know to better understand the reasoning and motivation driving their choices.
It is important for the success of the project that the vendor and implementation partner(s) can work together, and also ideally have proven experience in doing so. Both vendor and partner play a key role in the project outcome, and there are many examples of detrimental conflicts between them. Remember that the vendor's financial agenda is to sell licenses. This may drive the vendor to recommend a new partner, or at least try to sell vendor PSO, consequently taking billable hours from the partner. The local partner will often keep a powerful hand, particularly within countries without direct vendor representation -- where language, culture and local relationships become important.
As the customer, be sure to maintain relationships with both companies. Do not let vendor contact only happen through the partner, even if the vendor is a foreign company and the partner is a local one. Direct channels to the vendor can be very beneficial. In case of major problems it can be handy to know whom to contact for escalation, but good vendor relations will also generally result in the customer being a known name inside the vendor organization, with all the benefits that come from this (e.g impact on roadmap, visits/contact with executive management, and so forth).
In many cases the customer acquires a CMS and then lets the local partner take care of the rest. Two of the typical problems that come from removing the vendor from the project include:
- Best practices are not followed; the partner might go off in a direction and customize the CMS without following established best practices. As a result future upgrades may become difficult or even impossible
- The blame game; it becomes too easy for the partner to blame problems on the CMS and try to use this tactic to sell more hours. Involving the vendor can provide a more balanced picture.
Conversely, you should understand that the vendor has interests here too. After working with one sales manager or country manager (a "bear hunter") during the sales process, you will likely be handed off to a key account manager (a "farmer") once a contract is signed. The bear hunter typically only wants to sell licenses -- as much as possible in a given quarter -- and in fact is often not compensated on professional services work, and therefore may have a complicated relationship with his or her own PSO. The farmer, by contrast, may be incented to introduce vendor consultants into projects, possibly to expose the customer to additional software modules. When this happens, the blame game can escalate. Notice that neither the hunter nor farmer is typically incented financially to introduce a 3rd-party implementation partner to an existing deal, so if that's in your best interest, you may need to push for it.
Choreographing multiple parties
Multiple firms can become involved fairly quickly, even in a mid-sized project. Consider that you might have selected Interwoven's Teamsite product, but your current SI has no CMS experience, let alone Teamsite skills. You could then turn to a great Interwoven boutique, but they have never integrated the CMS with the other systems that you require, so you quite reasonably want to involve senior staff from your trusted SI. Together with training and other background support from Interwoven's PSO, you are now working with 4 suppliers.
In these cases, someone has to choreograph it all very carefully. You should assume, for example, that conflicts will occur, in particular since there is an inherent tension between the vendor's common perception of problems as resolvable with more software and the implementation team's viewpoint that hurdles can be overcome with more labor. In some cases, this coordination role can be outsourced to a trusted 3rd party, but the important thing to remember is that -- on large projects -- you will have to deal with it one way or another, even if you make a single partner accountable for the success of the overall effort.
What to look for in implementation partners
The process for selecting one or more partners is often based on evaluation criteria, similar to the vendor selection process. Some of the more meaningful criteria to use are:
- Quality and Experience. Does the implementation partner have references in the same industry as yours? Experience with companies of similar size and complexity? Happy references that use the same vendor tools? Take the time to invest in the same series of reference calls, customer visits, and prototyping that you would undertake in selecting the tool itself.
- Certification. Is your system integrator partner a certified partner of the vendor? Will any of the certified resources be allocated to the project? Are they certified on the same version of the CMS that the project plans to use?
- Company focus. What is the focus of the partner? Do they take content management as seriously as you do?
- Chemistry. CMS projects take time, create change, and inevitably lead to frustrations little and large. At the end of the day, people are the most important factor. Can you work effectively with the implementation team? How do you know? Have you met them?
- Size. Does your partner have the size to support a project of your scope? Do you want a partner with offices around the world, an internationally renowned partner, or a regional/local partner? Are you a big fish or small fry to them?
- Trust. Have you worked with the implementation company before? How well do they know your business objectives and cultural /organizational quirks?
Too often the implementation side of CMS projects are underestimated. Partners are supposed to be the trusted advisor, but for many, content management remains a new discipline. Ensure to have somebody experienced involved. Spending a little more time evaluating the right partner(s) will mean a large difference for your project outcome.