Investing in DXP - An interview with Progress Sitefinity

HJ Research published their latest report about the global Web Content Management (WCM) system market in March 2020, where they forecast there will be massive growth in the next few years. A new market research report, "Web Content Management" released by Solution examined the factors behind this enormous growth. They forecasted the global Web Content Management (WCM) Market will reach USD 13.6 billion in 2025. The increasing need for companies to reach targeted customers, enhance their digital experiences and increase revenues boosted the increased use of a WCM solution.

We wanted to get insights into DXP/CMS industry in Europe and Ireland, as the speed of digital adoption has changed significantly with the spread of COVID-19, so we sat down with J.D. Little, Senior CMS Strategist at Progress Sitefinity and asked him a couple of questions about CMS market tendencies in Ireland and Europe.

What is the tendency for the CMS/DXP marketing in Europe?

Globally, the market is expected to grow by about 12% CAGR between 2019 and 2024. The report shows European counties growing CMS/WCM slightly faster than North America. I suspect the growth will accelerate post-COVID-19, because trends seem to favor a continuation of remote work driven by digital experience.

Do you think it is important to invest in web content management platform, why?

The short answer is “yes” although there are lots of choices of where to invest. Many DXP buyers choose platform that promise integrated features (email, commerce, form creation, etc.) that aren’t enterprise-ready or are never implemented. The message I promote is that Sitefinity is a great choice for most DXP customers with an attractive price point and verifiable ease of use.

Oftentimes companies deprioritise their digital investments and say “it is not a right time”. Does the “perfect timing” exist? And if it does - When would be the “perfect timing” for a large enterprise to invest in a DXP?

You would expect me to say now is the perfect time, but that may not be the truth for every enterprise. Digital maturity needs to be considered. We like to point to historical data of technology investment during economic downturns acting as an accelerator to a company’s growth and success over the long term. If you look at the last two recessions, you’ll see examples of companies (Amazon, Google, Facebook, Uber, Instagram, etc.) that invested and experience amazing growth. The bottom line is that those who were prepared (the digitally mature) were poised to take advantage in difficult times that buried others.

What are the biggest fears of Irish companies investing in DXP, and how can we resolve them with Sitefinity?

That answer can be a bit subjective, but I believe most companies that invest in DXP fear they will be unable to upgrade easily or affordably when the time comes. Too many buyers end up with systems that are out of support, because they did not keep up with regular upgrades as they were offered. Progress Sitefinity is relatively easy to install compared to other prominent platforms. Additionally, Sitefinity’s ease of use aids in adoption for business users while developers enjoy the .NET Framework, .NET Core capabilities and a robust API.

Lack of support can be another fear, but Sitefinity’s strong partner channel and easy access to documentation and support should calm any fears about this.

Finally, the viability of the vendor can be a concern. Progress is an established, decades-old company that has a diverse line of products. Few CMS/DXP vendors can point to that level of stability.

What did you learn from COVID-19? What lessons can we (and companies) take out of COVID-19 pandemic? How can we use these learnings for future planning?

We saw that companies who focused on digital maturity prior to the pandemic were positioned to move to a remote workforce quickly and seamlessly. Digital portals will be essentially moving forward and a CMS like Sitefinity is ideal for this purpose. We need to be ready to promote digital maturity as a survival tactic, as well as emphasizing the opportunities that emerge during times of economic crisis.

Why should you choose Sitefinity?

These are the highlights I like to emphasize. Firstly, ease of use – every vendor claims their product is easy to use, but sometimes that means the product can be made easy to use after many dedicated developer hours and months of testing. Sitefinity’s ease-of-use claims are true and easily substantiated.

Secondly, intuitive user tools – business users create and curate content independent of the development team and extensible developer tools – Sitefinity has a rich API and an active marketplace with many widgets, plugins and extensions.

The features we are very proud of are:

• Productivity for the Business User
• Drag-and-Drop capabilities – for easy building and editing web pages
• On-page Editing Experience – WYSIWYG on-page view so users know what results look like in real-time
• Duplicating/reusing items on page – saving time and effort and reducing errors
• Dynamic modules – easy and quick way to address specific business needs with no coding
• Personaliation/Optimisation – Sitefinity Insight, a component already built into Sitefinity, can easily find metrics on content performance & audience segments and then build better content based off of those insights
• Auto-generated SEO-friendly URLs, automatically populated SEO and social sharing fields, and auto-generated sitemaps

Our clients also commend Progress Sitefinity for the following features:

• Designed with DevOps in mind
• Development with .Net Core, MVC, and other modern tools
• Full access to work with HTML, CSS and JavaScript standards
• Integration with AngularJS or any other framework of choice
• Multiple application programming interfaces (API)
• Complimentary Progress Kendo UI Toolkit
• Sitefinity Module Builder generates code you can easily modify if needed
• Custom content module autogenerates the correlating widget and backend screens
• And more - a development community and a marketplace full of ideas

If you are curious to learn more about how digital is evolving in Ireland, download our latest report “10 Opinions for 2021”, where 10 digital leaders of Ireland’s biggest companies share their 2020 learnings and 2021 goals.

Get in touch if you would like to begin your Sitefinity journey today.