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SiteCore DMS - looking for unbiased perspective on what works well... and not so well?
Written 22 Oct, 2013
http://www.quora.com/SiteCore-DMS-looking-for-unbiased-perspective-on-what-works-well-and-not-so-well
Andrew Blackmore, Director of Analytics and Optimization, MBA/MS Candidate
Sitecore DMS is really a collection of tools rather than a single, individual tool. The toolset has the potential to
be extremely powerful in helping marketers create highly customized, effective, personalized websites from
within the same system they author content, but per your question, there are some current question marks
surrounding completeness of functionality. As someone who works with Sitecore on a daily basis, I would agree
with that skepticism but argue that DMS still has a lot to offer in its current state. I'll break DMS down by the
tools involved. Some of these aren't technically pieces of DMS, but rather complementary pieces of the Sitecore
platform that add, or detract, from the overall DMS experience.
Content Personalization
Rules-based content personalization is one of the more effective functionalities of the platform. The Sitecore
rules editor allows business users to select from a set of pre-defined rules, as well as custom developer-built
rules to change the display, content, visibility or order of content on a given page. The rules engine provides a
robust set of generic rules by default and can also be added to in order to tailor the ruleset to your
organization's specific needs. The part of the system scores points due to ease of use, coordination with Design
Importer (see below) and MaxMind (see below) and the ability to be further extended by developers. Developer
extension could include decisions based on data from third-party systems that have been effectively integrated
with Sitecore and other information stored in the User Profile (potentially from a web form). There are short-
comings with the audience identification and behavioral grouping that is discussed below that detract from the
overall experience but on the whole, content personalization should be viewed as a major win. Marketers don't
need extensive HTML or technical skills in order to use this feature and should be very happy with the outcome.
Audience Identification/Behavioral Grouping
Sitecore allows content to be categorized using Profile Cards. These profile cards containt a set of scored profile
keys which are used to build out a radar graph to represent the current content. A simple example on an airline
site is a profile card for a business travelor. The profile keys could be efficiency, cost, comfort with each key
being scored on a 1-10 scale. The scale is arbitrary but relative. After viewing a pre-defined amount of content,
Sitecore assigns users a persona based on the one that most closely matches their behavior thus far. Personas
are built out in the same way as profile cards and are assigned based on the lowest euclidian distance from their
average visited page profiles. This sounds complicated, but is relatively simple and effective. This information
can be personalized on and sounds very effective.

The major short-coming of this feature is the lack of ability to tie a persona to a user across sessions. This was a
conscious decision made in order to increase the confidence of the persona assignment. For instance, a husband
and wife share a computer. By preventing personas from carrying over across sessions, the husband has not
been mistakenly assigned to a persona based upon his wife's browsing behaviors. While I can understand the
thought process behind this, I don't agree and I think it handicaps this functionality within DMS. I hope that
Sitecore reconsiders this decision for future releases, and I believe that they will. For this reason, I would group
this feature into the "Has Potential" group rather than giving it a failing grade.
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Multivariate Testing
Multivariate testing is a feature that many of the clients I work with are the most excited about and its been the
area where we have seen the greatest letdowns so far. The setup behind MV testing is fantastic and is very
similar to setting up versions of personalized content. While there are a few quirks, components can be quickly
optimized for both content and layout. The major shortcoming has been in the reporting that supports this
testing. Sitecore has chosen to only report on a proprietary metric called Engagement Value. While I am an
advocate for Engagement Value in many circumstances, having this be the only reportable metric for MV testing
is a miss. The thought process behind this is that MV tests should be judged less on simple click-throughs and
more on ultimately converting sessions. While again, I support the thought process, each MV testing campaign
likely seeks to optimize for different micro and macro conversions. The reporting should support a robust set of
metrics that allows the appropriate conversion to be measured as the site owner sees fit.

The company I work for, Velir, has built a shared source module (Sitecore-Analytics) that, with some work, can at
least allow site admin to view the number of goals completed as opposed to simply engagement value. I think
this presents an opportunity for a temporary workaround. This feature is definitely the most lacking of the
bunch and should likely be supplemented with other tools until Sitecore releases an update.
Reporting & Measurement
This is an area that I am most excited about in the coming releases. Sitecore has the ability to deliver in ways
that traditional web analytics have not by tightly integrating the reporting of web analytics and data stored in
the content databases. That said, they haven't done this yet. I expect this to be an upcoming capability.
However, even without this feature there are some serious bright sports in the ability to report within DMS.
Engagement Value is one of the first areas that excites me within DMS reporting. Engagement Value allows
organizations, especially those who don't sell products on their website, to quantify conversions and continue
quantifying the engagement of individual users across sessions. Coupled with MaxMind (see below), the
engagement value and execution of goals can be viewed based on organization/company associated with the
user. This is exetremely valuable when the appropriate time is taken to set up an engagement value scale that is
meaningful on the website.

There are other metrics such as Page Potential that Sitecore has delivered and enhanced the overall value of its
measurement system. That said, the ability to track individual user behavior at the session and cross-session
level trumps the importance of even Engagement Value. While many companies are still figuring out how to use
this information, the information generated by these tools is difficult to replicate across other platforms. Tools
like Marketo, Hubspot and Eloqua come very close, but Sitecore provides a pretty powerful mix of functionality
that I believe can be more useful to marketers in the long run.
Email Campaign Manager/Engagement Automation
ECM and Engagement automation provide basic campaign management coupled with powerful automation
tools. ECM is relatively basic in terms of a list and campaign manager when compared to the heavy hitters such
as Exact Target. That being said, the Engagement Automation built into Sitecore is a major win of DMS's to this
point. The ability to use ECM to get users into engagement plans and then build detailed plans integrating site
content as well as ECM is pretty slick. The functionality of the engagement plan builder is one of the better ones
contained within Sitecore and ECM is also the first major Sitecore feature to use the new Speak interface. The
area I would look for continued improvement is around the segmentation of lists. This is absolutely a servicable
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tool but it should be known that it will have to be integrated with some sort of mailing service. Look for an
inexpensive provider that simply sends the mail from a server with a good reputation. Potentially look for a
dedicated IP address as well to help maintain the sender reputation of your domain. Something like a Mandrill
or Sendgrid should do just fine.
Webforms for Marketers
WFFM is a relatively advanced form-builder that integrates with many of the aforementioned tools. It allows for
form-building as well as actions that are based on the contents of the form. Very few actions are provided out of
the box, but as usual, more can be built and the framework is pretty extensible. This is a relatively no-frills tools
and won't compare to something like WooForms in terms of total control over the form itself but is a nice-to-
have based on its built-in integrations with the tools above.
Design Importer
This is a lightweight tool for importing existing HTML/CSS assets and creating on-the-fly landing pages and
components. These landing pages and components are imported and exist as template/layout combinations
within Sitecore. This tool is extremely useful for creating variantes for MV testing. The components that are
created likely won't be components that live long on your site and may be a little sloppy on the back end but
they allow marketers and semi-technical folks to quickly iterate during testing and personalization. This is also a
great way to create proof of concepts prior to investing time/dollars in creating more robust, dynamic
components on your site.
MaxMind (not a Sitecore tool, an integration)
MaxMind is a GeoIP service that provides a seamless integration with Sitecore. It provides information down to
the known-organization level. This integration combined with the DMS ability to track individual user sessions is
where DMS reporting excels. The integration should require little to no development effort but there is an on-
going cost associated with MaxMind's web services.
In conclusion
DMS is maturing. There are areas where I feel confident it can deliver when placed in the right situation and
other areas where it will be at least one major revision before the tool competes with current leaders. That said,
DMS provides a LOT of functionality, so while each may not posses best-in-class functionality yet, the entire
suite brings a lot to the table for an organization who already has, or is looking to make an investment in an
enterprise-level CMS. The organization retains ownership over all of the data captured with any of these tools
and that alone is worth something. For organizations serious about data and analysis of that data, the ownership
and easy access through SQL is a major benefit. Exporting data to SAS, SPSS, STATA, etc can be made very easy
with the right approach.

DMS will not be a perfect fit in all scenarios, there is a level of overhead for IT departments to deal with this
data, certains features are still maturing and the solution can be heavy but there is a lot to like and the product
is rapidly maturing. If what you saw above isn't quite what you need, keep an eye out and see where the
product goes.