Case study from the University of Maryland Medical System

1. Selecting The Right
Web Content Management System
An Overview and Case Study
Healthcare Marketing and Physician Strategies Summit
May 1, 2014

2. Selecting The Right Content Management System
Web marketing and development since 1994
15 years with the University of
Maryland Medical System
Early adopter and proponent of:
• Search engine optimization
• Content marketing
• Hospital social media
• Mobile applications
• Employee access to web services
Ed Bennett John Berndt
Web marketing and development since 1993
23 years as CEO of The Berndt Group, Ltd. (TBG)
National Web Developer specializing in Healthcase
Focused on the areas of:
• Holistic web strategy
• CMS/WCM best practices
• Multi-Channel Digital Marketing
• Responsive Web Design
• Content Personalization
• Theory of Large Web Sites

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What is a Web CMS?
…a software system that provides
website authoring, collaboration, and
administration tools designed to allow users
with little knowledge of web programming
manage website content with relative ease.

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A Crucial Choice
A CMS is the heart of your digital
marketing and communications
infrastructure

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What People Think
Actual
Importance
Perceived
Importance
Feature / Value
1 6 Structure content for long-term use
2 5 Automate related links & page structure
3 2 Control presentation
4 3 Audit trails, backups, and deployment control
5 1 Distribute authoring (workflow, permissions)
6 4 Personalization

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How a Real CMS Fixes Things
• Separate presentation from content—means “structuring content”
• Create automated relationships among content (related links,
etc.)
• Automation of layout inheritance—having it both ways.
• Ability to mass-manipulate content.
• Preserving URLS for SEO.
• Re-use of components and code.
• “Web Site” in a box.

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CMS: Real World ROI
• Only way to sustainably provide a high quality mobile experience.
• “Future proof” the site against high costs of design and
presentation changes.
• Leverage the content across multiple sites and channels, getting
more marketing impact with a small staff.
• Generate more high-value at a lower cost by leveraging more
staff (without losing control).
• (In some systems) personalize content and target it based on
user profiling and behavior.

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The Project: Heavy Lifting
1. Template Development—ASP.NET programming!
2. Content Object Modeling
3. Portlet Modeling
4. Metadata Taxonomy (related links)
5. Syndicated Content
6. Search Implementation
7. Permissions
8. Responsive Web Design—a retrofit.
9. Training
10. Content targeting and personalization

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Customer Engagement:
Visitors
Digital Experiences
(web, email, social)
User Data
Content

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Overview of CMS Products

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The CMS Landscape:

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How to Find a Good CMS
1. Understand not just your requirement of today, but general leading
requirements for web sites
(Responsive, Personalization, etc.)
2. Fully understand Open Source vs. The Mid Market.
3. Research leading products within a narrow range that seems right.
4. Don’t trust salespeople who will say “sure” to everyone. Push for details
and referenceable contacts. Many CMS products are sold on half-truths.
5. Value things like company stability, technical roadmap, developer
community, quality of documentation, and partnerships.

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Considerations for Open Source
1. Approach to structured content and multi-site is ultimately
insufficient to larger web strategies. Back-end usability is an
issue—even though the features exist on paper.
2. Upkeep/stability is an issue. A matter of degree. We don’t
consider it to be at the right level for mission-critical, multi-site
implementations. Informal development culture. Rampant support
issues. Incomplete product core.
3. No real personalization and advanced engagement culture.
We don’t consider the Aquent Drupal plug-in to be sufficient, for
instance. These are crucial next-generation features.
4. Roadmap and development culture is commonly insufficient.

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The Problems of Plug-Ins/Modules
1. Not a problem on the first day, week, month…
2. Lack of codebase oversight, permutational testing—leads to
instability and support.
3. Consequently, real developers have a very narrow range of plug-
ins they actual recommend.
4. Secondary issues with customization, presentation: Example of
Ektron Modules for embedded presentation code.
5. Presentation issues are multiplied in Responsive Web Design.

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Case Study:
The University of Maryland
Medical System

18. Selecting The Right Content Management System
The long CMS History of UMM.EDU
1996: Manual updating of HTML, no automation
2000: Home-built CMS - no appropriate commercial apps
2005: Serena Collage - discontinued by vendor in 2008
2012: Sitecore CMS

19. Selecting The Right Content Management System
Business Drivers and Opportunities
• Expanded Web responsibilities – System not Center
• 13 Hospital Sites, 50+ micro-sites with no oversight
• Primitive (or missing) Intranets
• Maintain SEO rankings (80% of the 2.5 million monthly sessions)
• Establish central control of all web properties
• Rapid shifts in user preferences – 50% on Mobile or Tablet
• Personalization and targeted content
Unify all Web properties into a single design and structure

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UMMS CMS Selection Process
1.Brought in outside consultants to narrow choices
(Realstorygroup.com — Tony Byrne)
2.RFI & RFP = A year+ process
3.Selected CMS first, development partner second
4.Budgeting “process” - some bumps in the road.
5.Leading concerns in the process:
• Retain high SEO
• Large site automation
• Reusability of content
• Reusability of development

30. Selecting The Right Content Management System
Why We Picked Sitecore
• Excellent technical & ethical reputation
• Support any user experience - efficiently.
• Usability of back-end for structured content, content re-
use across multiple sites.
• Developer availability & stability of the CMS codebase.
• Easy integration with third parties (Video, CRM)
• Extended capability features for personalization, A/B
testing, social features, etc.

31. Selecting The Right Content Management System
Before: After:
• 13 Public sites
• 8 Intranets
• 50+ Microsites
Spread across:
• 9 CMS’s
• 6 Vendors
• 8 Hosting services
Central Management:
• 1 Sitecore CMS
• 1 Dataset
• 1 Admin tool
• 1 Hosting service
...With shared content
across Intranet and public
sites
• 13 Public Sites
• 1 System Intranet
• 0 Microsites

32. Selecting The Right Content Management System
Implementation Process
1. Picked Implementation Partner (TBG)
2. Major content housekeeping
3. Solving the major problems:
• Preserving URLs for SEO
• Architecture for related content
• Automation to support “deep” site structure
• Multi-site re-use
4. New Disciplines
• Site directory structure
• Structured content
• Metadata (Tagging)
5. Rolling out new CMS Sites

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Launched on May 2013

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Our R.O.I.
1. Centralized control
2. Dramatic re-use of content and code
3. Path to quickly absorb other hospital web sites
4. Leveraging small web team to do much more
5. Support Responsive Web Design (RWD) for Tablet, Smartphone
6. Path to education in population health, “Meaningful Use”

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Other Outcomes
1. Preservation of Search Engine Optimization value (SEO)
2. Change in developer approach / culture
3. Process for absorbing System sites
4. Ongoing personalization work

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Final Thoughts

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What Makes A Great CMS
Implementation?
1. Structured content for re-usage and full Responsive Web Design.
Without this, you will be in a world of hurt.
2. Normalized tagging driving thoughtful, user-centric related
content strategies.
3. Flexible, abstracted templates that handle a broad range of
cases.
4. Careful use of personalization, with an eye towards operational
sustainability and available content.
5. Tight integrations with 3rd
party silos and SEO issues.

38. Selecting The Right Content Management System
If we leave you with anything…
• Do spend the time to understand the options, business opportunities and
challenges.
• Neither I.T. nor Marketing are likely to provide the best council; each has a
partial view of the subject, and CMS salespeople are not entirely to be
trusted.
• Its realistic to think this will all cost a lot and take a long time. (but not as
long as an EHR takes)
You are building infrastructure for 5-10 year lifespan
• Be very careful with Open Source—there really is not free lunch.
• Responsive Web Design (RWD) is the new standard for users; you can’t
do RWD without a high quality, full structured CMS implementation.
• Expect to change operations around content, developers, to be able to get
the value out of your new platform. A new CMS usually implies some
cultural, skill & staffing change.

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Discussion
Ed Bennett
Director, Web & Communications Technology
University of Maryland Medical System
www.umm.edu
ebennett@umm.edu
410-328-0771
John Berndt
CEO and Chief Strategist
The Berndt Group
www.berndtgroup.net
john.berndt@berndtgroup.net
410-889.5854