Customer Segmentation & Key Needs
We presented participants with a possible audience segmentation for Plone:
*Education
*Government
*Nonprofits
*Large Enterprise
*Small/Medium Business
We asked them to think about how to define each of these broad segments more precisely, and then to consider what each of these customer segments wants from Plone, and to write ideas on flipcharts. We then used sticky dots to identify the features/qualities/capabilities that we thought were most important to each customer segment.
In addition, we identified another major customer segment: media/broadcast
Note: this is not the only possible way to "slice" Plone's audience/customer/user-base. In the future, we think it would be interesting to approach this exercise from a user-skill angle. e.g. site editors; site administrators; IT support; non-technical decisionmaker; integtrator; core developer, etc.
EDUCATION
---------
*Definitions*
Higher education (+2)
Institution-wide (+1)
Departmental groups (+2)
Faculty and students
Research institutions
K-12
*Needs*
Simple content sites (+2)
Collaborative workspaces (+5)
Permissions important (+3)
Some want social networking features (+2)
Some want e-learning features
Some want integration with other e-learning systems/LMSes (+2)
Single-sign-on or centralized ID management (+3)
Marketing of Python to "suits" (non-technical decisionmakers) (+4)
"Crossing the chasm" marketing / "show me who else has done this"
Accessibility (+2)
Portal/integration with a messy technology landscape (+4)
Tracking and auditing (who did what, when) (+1)
Hierarchical organizations means workflow is important
GOVERNMENT
-------------
*Definition*
Local government web presence (PloneGov project targets this)
State/Federal agencies
*Needs*
Accessibility and standards compliance (+10)
Multilingual support (Europe, obviously; in the US, Spanish is increasingly important in many jurisdictions) (+13)
Workflow (+3)
Business process automation/management
Security (+3)
Rapid prototyping (+1)
Processes for helping adoption
NONPROFITS
------------
*Definition*
Large, enterprise-class nonprofits (e.g. Oxfam)
Smaller/midsized nonprofits (3-30 staff)
Also professional associations (similar needs, but different culture)
*Needs*
User feedback on content (comments, etc.)
Collaboration (+10)
CRM integration (+1)
Affordable hosting (+2)
Lack of centralized management needs (+1)
Online donations
Email blasting
Support for integrators and beginning developers
Mailing lists
Wikis
Collaborative workspaces
LARGE ENTERPRISE
---------------
*Definition*
Media & Entertainment
High-tech industry
(Higher ed?)
Individuals in large corporations trying to do small, quick projects with few resources and under pressure (+1)
*Needs*
References/case studies
Clustering/high availability solutions (+1)
.NET, Java integration stories
External storage, scalable to terabytes of data, millions of docs (+3)
Integration (+2)
Web Services support (SOA) (+3)
RDBMS interoperability (+5)
Rapid project turnaround (esp. compared to Oracle, Microsoft solutions) (+1)
Support
Big outsourcing contracts can limit choices (+2)
Plone needs to fit with overall IT strategy (+3)
SMALL/MEDIUM BUSINESS
-----------------
*Definition*
Media & publishing house
High-tech companies
B2C & Commerce shops
Startups
*Needs*
Web publishing (+11)
Easy UI themeing (+6)
Strong publishing (WCM) engine
Performance
Scalable storage (+1)
Ecommerce
Support
Upgrade path
Single sign-on (+2)
Simple brochure sites (counterpoint: there is no such thing as "brochureware", e.g. simple static sites, anymore)
Intranets (+8)
Simple, cheap deployment story (+13)
Service providers to mitigate limited in-house technical skill (+2)
Custom business applications
MEDIA/BROADCAST
------------------
*Definition*
Public radio
Commercial broadcasting
*Needs*
Turnkey solution
Rapid publishing, frequent updates
Playlists
Archiving multimedia content (+5)
Media management (+5)