Content management systems can cost you as little as free or as much as seven-figures. Learn how to figure out what you can afford and avoid setbacks caused by going for the cheapest option. Get CEO and CFO support for your CMS project.

1. Content Management Systems Where’s the return on investment? Prescott Shibles CEO

2. Return on Investment (ROI) Equation ROI = (Total Efficiencies + Total Incremental Revenues) - Total Investment Appetite may be as aggressive as less than 12 months to as much as three years, but in my experience, it’s usually 18 months. Based on working in a public company and a private company with multiple owners

3. Investment expenses Technology Servers and hardware Software and licensing fees Internal man-hours Consulting New hires Training

4. Cost efficiencies Why start with cost efficiencies More reliable than revenue projections CFO’s love efficiencies and will ask for them anyway Helps you look at your business process and evaluate what you are doing vs. what you want to do

5. Editorial efficiencies Image manipulation Video Tagging Html production Workflow management Search engine optimization

6. Technical staff efficiencies Put more power in the hands of publication staff and free developers up to do more development work More stable and current platform reduces maintenance work More time for new product development means more revenue potential and more developer salaries hitting CapEx budget instead of OpEx, improving profitability

7. A brief note on capitalized expenses Capital expenses are expenditures that create future benefits Impact cash flow but not income statement Costs are amortized over the lifespan of the product that is created Check with your CFO or CIO for requirements to qualify for capitalized expenditures

8. Audience development efficiencies Can the CMS integrate with your subscription management system Will it increase your reach and thus your potential to market subscriptions to new readers Improved marketing collateral gleaned from improved understanding of reader consumption habbits

9. Increased revenue potential New Product Launches Increased Traffic Personalization Internationalization

10. New Product Launches Reallocate time from efficiencies identified to new product launches Create a list of ideas, their revenue potential, and the estimated incremental costs (outside of the CMS investment) Indicate your confidence in the revenue projection for each product Calculate a revenue number off of the potential times the confidence

11. Increased Traffic Semantic tagging can improve seo cyberpresse.ca, monvolant.ca, and technaute.com have seen traffic increase by 30% within a year of implementing a new CMS Social media integration Revenue from Google AdSense, banner campaigns, affiliate deals

12. Better Ad Targeting Semantic technology allows you to retag thousands of articles from your archive and tie that tagging to your ad server Tim Armstrong, CEO of AOL, says that AOL is working on this very technology… betting the bank on it practically Better meta data allows for better behavioral targeting as well

13. Personalization Sites like Supply Chain Daily and Daily Candy are leveraging personalization to drive audience engagement and revenue London Telegraph has rolled out a technology where circulation, classifieds and editorial databases are combined to create a single view of a user’s preferences

14. Internationalization Automated translations Good for SEO even if the translated copy isn’t perfect

15. Putting it All Together Summary sheet Payback metrics Phase in platform benefits

16. Summary Sheet Total investment Total cost savings Total revenue increases Payback duration (how long before costs are recovered)

17. Payback Metrics Shoot for 18-months Some CFO’s will ask you to be more conservative, others more aggressive You might need to change your CMS every three to five years. So, 18 months is a good starting point

18. Phase in platform benefits Remember that roll-out will hit snags and get delayed Benefits won’t impact immediately Build out a monthly look at investment costs, cost savings, and revenue impacts to ensure that payback is trusted Spreadsheet example

19. Resources to Use Forrester CMSWatch.com CMSWire.com eMediaVitals.com opensourcecms.com Packtpub.com