DrupalCon Munich 2012: Selling Drupal & Web Experience Management to Large Enterprises
In many large enterprises, Drupal is becoming a bigger threat to legacy enterprise content management systems. When approaching these enterprises to suggest Drupal projects, development teams often face an unfair fight. In one corner are the large, enterprise CMS players and their dedicated, expensive, powerful selling teams, and in the other corner is the development team shouting over the noise to promote the benefits of Drupal.
The CMS players have their arguments fully mapped out. A development team promoting Drupal must be prepared to hear arguments against its security, support and performance, most of which are just plain false.
Drupal developers are unique in their view of content as a strategic asset, and by promoting how the team helps clients optimize their content into a Web Experience Management (WEM) strategy shared by marketing and IT, this argument can put Drupal ahead of the pack. Moving to the next step, if Drupal development is combined with a high-performance team that is constantly reevaluating the project and communicating with the client, then the WEM strategy can be maximized to provide the greatest benefit to the client and their target audiences, giving the Drupal argument another advantage over legacy CMS.
If a development team sticks to the "Drupal facts" when promoting the platform and highlights the WEM benefits that the client can expect, this will help the growing Drupal community be heard even louder than before.
However, not every battle has a winning outcome. There is no silver bullet and not every enterprise will be willing to rise above the legacy CMS noise. A development team must know when current Drupal limitations will keep a specific enterprise from achieving its goals and move along to another company whose project can benefit from Drupal and the support of its growing community.
In this session, I'll share experiences as part of a Drupal development team. I'll discuss how Drupal can help optimize a client's WEM strategy, arguments against Drupal that development teams can expect to hear, points development teams can highlight as they promote Drupal to new customers and how to know when the team should cut their losses and move on to another company that will profit from Drupal's benefits.
The CMS players have their arguments fully mapped out. A development team promoting Drupal must be prepared to hear arguments against its security, support and performance, most of which are just plain false.
Drupal developers are unique in their view of content as a strategic asset, and by promoting how the team helps clients optimize their content into a Web Experience Management (WEM) strategy shared by marketing and IT, this argument can put Drupal ahead of the pack. Moving to the next step, if Drupal development is combined with a high-performance team that is constantly reevaluating the project and communicating with the client, then the WEM strategy can be maximized to provide the greatest benefit to the client and their target audiences, giving the Drupal argument another advantage over legacy CMS.
If a development team sticks to the "Drupal facts" when promoting the platform and highlights the WEM benefits that the client can expect, this will help the growing Drupal community be heard even louder than before.
However, not every battle has a winning outcome. There is no silver bullet and not every enterprise will be willing to rise above the legacy CMS noise. A development team must know when current Drupal limitations will keep a specific enterprise from achieving its goals and move along to another company whose project can benefit from Drupal and the support of its growing community.
In this session, I'll share experiences as part of a Drupal development team. I'll discuss how Drupal can help optimize a client's WEM strategy, arguments against Drupal that development teams can expect to hear, points development teams can highlight as they promote Drupal to new customers and how to know when the team should cut their losses and move on to another company that will profit from Drupal's benefits.