What is the Sitecore? Sitecore is a software platform that is good for making and updating full featured and dynamic websites of every possible type(Implemented in various industry domains and vertical). It has the advantages of scaling, flexibility and can very well integrate in third party systems, marketing platforms, overall giving the visitors a very dynamic user experience.
What is the purpose to use a CMS? This is not a hard question, but we don’t have to focus on managing web content as the strength of a CMS because this is not the entire picture. Content Management Systems give us much more than content management, like giving us the possibility to get the content ownership outside of the subject matter experts. This thing is known to have impact on all CMS platforms like Sitecore, Umbraco, Interwoven, Drupal, Ektron, WordPress or others. Why Should we implement Sitecore (Business Driver)? Sitecore CMS uses the .NET technology, so if our company is a Microsoft shop, Sitecore will fit great. Sitecore is better than many other platforms based on .NET like SharePoint or Opentext. Apart from this CTO kind of reason there could be more business drivers like online marketing approach, personalized experience for you visitor or if you host eCommerce based website etc.,
Can you divide phase of Sitecore implementation ? Implementing Sitecore is an Investment and Strategic move towards being digital. It involves following phases: Pre-implementation / Analysis Before we choose Sitecore or any CMS we have to consider our processes and workflows. We must to see where we will put our content and how will we publish it, what strategy and what architecture do we have for our business entities, what needs to be changed, what is down the line marketing policy online, do we need personalization, what kind of engagement you need for your visitors etc. After we get answers to these questions (which were not really easy). You need to figure out the broad objective you want to accomplish from Sitecore. Time spent on Analysis should be enough and some time more then build. Implementation After pre-implementation we have to implement our Sitecore CMS platform. The first phase is gathering our appropriate staff and make some training to get certified them. Being more than a simple paper, the certification helps our team to be more in the know of the Sitecore terminology. If this phase is skipped we will have to do it anyway later at a higher cost so it’s better to save money now. Of course implementation consist build and deploy too. Sitecore Implementation is not a one step implementation rather it is journey of your corporate towards the Digital platform.
Development: Is the slightly same as other Web Application .NET based development, it is not hard but we must focus on the platform architecture, the IT infrastructure, Team environment and build deployment practices etc., Content: Now that we have a Content Management System we can begin the content architecture implementation and putting sample content in the Sitecore content tree. This job has to be done by developers/content team and not by the content owners. Later onward Sitecore Authors can put the content in separate instance while build team is focused on the building dynamic part of the project. User Training: Not only that we have to make the website, content and applications, but we must also begin the introduction of the Sitecore CMS to the users of the company. This implies having a lot of meetings, training and talking about the purpose and the advantages of CMS. We also have to see end-user training are very important.