Comments on: Part 2: $100,000 for a CMS?

By: Chris Tingom

Chris Tingom — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 06:26:35 +0000

Thanks, Josh. Those are some good comments.

By: Josh

Josh — Sat, 09 Jul 2005 02:14:44 +0000

Yeah, I think these big corporations have already decided that they need to spend $50,000 and any solution that costs only $10,000 simply must not be powerful enough.

I don’t blame the Midwest company for taking on the CMS job in the first place. They probably figured they could first sell the client and then figure it all out. In some cases that is true, but it sounds like in this case they had never done *any* of this before.

If I were a VP at the Midwest company and I had just been told that we sold a $50,000 CMS and had no idea how to build one, I would advise that we go out and research small web firms and offer them $20,000 to build the system and to teach us. It sounds like it’s inefficient, but it would have been a lot more efficient than what actually happened and they would have delivered on their promises!

Good posting, Superman; I like these; post more like this!

By: Superman

Superman — Thu, 07 Jul 2005 01:11:16 +0000

I think some of that is right, but part of it is that these companies shouldn’t always even have content management systems.

The amount that content really changes on sites like the one I’m talking about is laughable, and you could argue that for $100,000 a year they should just hire a web designer and make him ultimately responsible for the things that happen with the web site.

Of course, if I really recommended that to my client they’d do it and we wouldn’t have a chance to work with them.

There are obvious benefits on both sides of the place. By not having a person be in house they don’t have to employe that person, buy them software, computers, etc… and they get the benefit of being able to work with more people, less.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Wed, 06 Jul 2005 15:10:43 +0000

I think (probably) some of the cause for the huge decision blunders with the big corporations is that the people making the decisions know nothing about CMS’s, or web design in general. If they had someone making decisions who was knowledgeable about the internet, and also concerned about making the right decision (instead of climbing corporate ladders), we might not have this type of problem.

By: Superman

Superman — Wed, 06 Jul 2005 12:59:22 +0000

I personally think some of these major firms would be better off hiring a small team for full time employment. Of course, if they make decisions as bad as this then that’s probably not a good idea either.

Way to go Mark, looks like you have a thing going there.

By: mark rush

mark rush — Wed, 06 Jul 2005 08:09:04 +0000

yeah weve been contacted by a sizeable company in south yorkshire who’re in the same situation being quoted £10k for a CMS – our in house system sells off the shelf for £2k which they LOVE so i guess we’ll be getting more business from them