The real cost becomes apparent in everyday work

When evaluating a CMS, the focus is often on features, technical capabilities and licensing costs. These are tangible, comparable factors that are relatively easy to assess. The same applies to the costs of support and ongoing maintenance.

What can be harder to identify are the costs that arise when the platform no longer supports the way the organisation needs to work.

A marketing team needs to create a landing page for an upcoming campaign. In principle, this should be a straightforward task. But getting it done may require help from external developers. The work needs to be prioritised alongside other development tasks, publication may be delayed, and the marketing team becomes dependent on others having the time to help.

One campaign can probably be managed without much difficulty or significant additional cost. But when the same dependency occurs across multiple campaigns and other website changes, the accumulated cost starts to add up.

Similar challenges can arise when a website needs to support multiple markets and languages, large volumes of product information, or integrations with a CRM and other business systems.

Custom development and manual processes are costs that rarely appear as a single item in the website budget. Yet they have a direct impact on what it actually costs to operate and develop the website.

When the old becomes more expensive than the new

A platform chosen several years ago was based on the needs, ways of working and technical requirements that existed at the time. Since then, the organisation and its expectations of the website have likely changed.

Meeting those changing needs can require further customisation and an increasing number of workarounds. Marketing budgets may end up being spent on maintaining and extending the CMS rather than on the activities they were originally intended to support.

This does not mean that every older CMS needs to be replaced. In some cases, improving the existing solution is enough. But when the technology and ways of working no longer support the needs of the business, moving to a more modern platform may be worth prioritising.

If the result is less need for custom development, simpler day-to-day work and greater flexibility to make changes, there is potential to save both time and money.

That is when a platform migration should be seen as an investment in the business, rather than simply the cost of implementing new technology.

Four perspectives to consider

A new CMS typically involves a larger upfront investment. At the same time, ongoing development and maintenance costs may decrease, or the organisation may gain the ability to make changes independently. Conversely, a low licence fee can conceal significant costs for customisation and internal resources.

A meaningful comparison should therefore consider several different perspectives:

• Direct costs: licensing, support, maintenance and development, as well as migration and implementation costs when switching platforms.

• Internal resources: time spent on manual tasks, coordination and recurring issues.

• The cost of change: what it takes to develop new functionality, adapt content and meet changing requirements and needs.

• Business impact: how platform limitations affect ways of working and the ability to deliver planned activities.

Not everything can be measured in monetary terms. But the more internal effort and recurring costs that can be estimated, the stronger the basis for making a decision. The comparison should also cover several years.

The deciding factor is not which option is cheapest to implement, but which one gives the organisation the best conditions for achieving its desired results.

Questions to ask before making a decision

To make a fair comparison, it is important to understand what the platform needs to support. Not just in terms of functionality, but also how well it fits the organisation's ways of working and existing processes.

Otherwise, there is a risk that the evaluation focuses too heavily on licence fees and feature lists, without considering how each option affects day-to-day work.

Here are some questions worth asking:

• Where are unnecessary amounts of time and money currently being spent on manual tasks? What development dependencies or other limitations exist?

• What does the existing solution actually cost, including licensing, maintenance and development? And what about the time and resources required internally?

• What potential changes in the business will the platform need to accommodate over the next three to five years?

• Which option provides the best conditions for the organisation, when considered against the total cost?

The answers should help determine whether the existing platform is still the right choice, what a potential migration would involve, and which costs need to be factored into the decision.

Have you inherited your CMS?

Many organisations work with a platform that was chosen based on needs and circumstances that may look quite different today. That does not necessarily mean the platform is the wrong choice. But it is worth examining whether it is still the best option and what it costs to keep things as they are.

We help organisations evaluate their CMS needs. We look at how the existing solution works, where costs and limitations arise, and what the business needs the platform to support in the future. This includes:

• Understanding your needs: We build a picture of how you work today, where the limitations lie, and what the website and platform need to support going forward.

• Evaluating the options: We review relevant platforms based on your needs and identify which alternatives are worth exploring further.

• Defining requirements: You get a practical decision-making framework, with clear requirements against which to evaluate the different options.

The outcome does not have to be a recommendation to migrate to a new platform. The goal is to give you the insight needed to make informed decisions, with a clearer understanding of what you need, what the alternatives cost, and how the choice will affect your organisation over time.

Get in touch to find out more.

This article was translated from Swedish with the assistance of AI.