Introducing our latest web site to go live on Percussion web content management: Mass.gov! You can read the press release here.
This was a massive undertaking on the part of the Commonwealth. Their goal with the new site and new infrastructure is to increase usability for the citizens of Massachusetts and drive deeper engagement. Read the full story here.
From the Mass.gov site
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Mass.Gov Improves Usability
Sleek look, improved navigation, better organization enhances usability for customers of the Commonwealth’s website, Mass.Gov. The redesigned website promises to improve the customer experience when interacting with Massachusetts’ government online.
- Each page presents a cleaner, more stream-lined look, making pages more readable and easier to scan.
- New navigation displays information more effectively so that you can find what you need more quickly and easily.
- Information is better organized requiring fewer clicks and less scrolling.
Agencies throughout the Commonwealth continually strive to improve the online experience of Mass.Gov customers. The new site is a significant advancement designed to meet the expectations of customers for a quality online experience.
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The first 10 of the Commonwealth’s sites went up in October which included the Governor’s site, and sites for the Attorney General, Treasury Department, Veterans Affairs among others. The rest of the agencies and operating divisions that make up the Mass.gov family of web sites rolled out over the next several weeks, wrapping up in December. In all, more than 250,000 pages and 400,000 content items are managed by Percussion’s technology.
The rigorous testing the Commonwealth’s team required in the selection process was impressive. We were required to show that we could publish as much as 10% of the entire site (40,000 pages) to the site in under 30 minutes. I believe we got our peak throughput all the way down to 22 minutes. That kind of throughput and scale is extraordinary of course, but the breakthroughs that make it possible are now available to everyone, even our smallest customers with just 100s of pages.
This has been a fantastic project to be part, particularly as a Massachusetts based company. Our entire team put a lot of hard work into this one, it’s gratifying to see it come to fruition. WELL DONE!
Update: CMS Report wrote up this article on the launch: Mass.gov redesigned state portal using Percussion WCM Software
One of the first questions I asked when I joined Percussion a couple of months ago was “Who buys our software?” Are they in marketing, IT, both, or some other organization? I have a long list of content to develop, and that is a fundamental question that I need to answer in order to provide the content our customers and sales team need
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Recently I listened to a Gartner webinar titled “By 2017 the CMO will Spend More on IT than the CIO” which directly addressed all of those questions. Presented by Laura McClellan, Gartner’s VP of Marketing Strategy, the webinar was an overview of the current landscape for marketing-related technology and services, and the “buying center” shift from IT to Marketing.
According to McLellan, marketing is firmly in control of the selection and management of marketing technology, from the initial “Determining if you have a need” through evaluation and selection. She shared some interesting data that lays it out pretty clearly.
The other question that immediately follows “Who is the buyer?” is “Who controls the budget?” In the past, technology was installed and run on company-owned servers, with IT responsible for management, support, and maintenance, so it logically followed that it was funded out of IT budgets. McLellan’s data shows that this is still the case today for “behind the firewall” or on-premise technology, but the growing number of SaaS and cloud based marketing technology apps has shifted the budget ownership to marketing.
This trend will continue as the number of hosted/cloud based applications grows. Marketing has always funded its own outsourced projects, such as PR, design, and advertising, so it makes sense that they will take advantage of hosted technology to by-pass IT and manage their own tools, using their budget to buy the technology they need.
Key points:
- The strategy, sourcing, evaluation and selection of marketing technology is predominately led by marketing organizations
- Marketing budgets control close to half the marketing technology purchases - as opposed to the It budgets of the past - and that percentage is expected to increase over the next 5 years
- Availability of SaaS and cloud-based technology is enabling marketing to by-pass IT and acquire and manage the tools they need
This data gels with what we are finding at Percussion – in the past few years we have seen a dramatic shift in the role of marketing in the buying cycle. With that shift, comes a change in the buyer’s product requirements and expectations. Not surprisingly then, they are not as technical, and don’t really want to be technical. This means that if marketing places a higher priority on usability and easy-to-use functionality that is available right “out of the box” our challenge is to deliver a user experience that matches that expectation.
It will be interesting to see how this trend plays out in 2012, and if IT is really ready to give up control over the application infrastructure. Stay tuned!
