I’m really pleased when I come across a new idea that can help people select a content management system more effectively. Now, the key challenge when choosing a CMS is building sufficient confidence that it’s the right tool for the job. In most cases, you would use approaches such as:

• written vendor responses to tender, RFI documents, etc
• vendor demonstrations
• visits to reference sites
• trial periods
• demo copies

Often though, what you are most interested in is not the functionality of the product, but its usability, particularly for novice users. One very interesting way of assessing this is to get the vendor to run a normal end-user training session with some representative staff, as part of the evaluation process. (In other words, get each of the short-listed vendors to run training before you have chosen the final product.)

This should only take 1-2 hours of the vendors’ time, and will greatly help you to work out whether the product really can be understood and used the staff who will actually be using the CMS.

A simple idea, but a good one. (All credit must go to Sonia Carter for this idea.)