German CMS vendor e-Spirit may be largely unknown outside their German-speaking home market, but have quietly grown to become one of the significant European CMS vendors. With major competitors in the difficult German market distracted by acquisitions or management changes, e-Spirit does seem to represent a lower risk option at the moment for potential CMS buyers.
e-Spirit did not make it oton the J. Boye Web CMS Shortlist 2009 as more than 90% of their revenue is still from the home market. Still, e-Spirit is rapidly approaching 100 employees and is planning a North American launch in 2010. According to Robert Bredlau, Director of International Business Development at e-Spirit, most of the recent hires are in sales and marketing and only a few in engineering and support. To customers, this might translate to hungry sales people willing to give discounts, but don’t expect a leap in product development from the new hires.
In September, e-Spirit CEO Jörn Bodemann publicly commented that former strong local competitor RedDot might be riding into the sunset and that Vignette customers also face uncertainty after the acquisition by OpenText. I’ll add that an additional local opportunity for e-Spirit is the recent management shake-up at CoreMedia, another German CMS vendor, which seemed to have caused CoreMedia to lose momentum.
It may be a question of style whether you like a vendor that publicly points fingers at their competitors and uses the old tactic of spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD). e-Spirit has been known as a conservative German company closely guarding their secrets and prospective buyers will find that e-Spirit may have changed their marketing tactics, but remain tightly-lipped about their financial numbers. e-Spirit may or may not be doing financially, so do inquire about their financial viability.
Usability has not been a key strength for e-Spirit, which showed a very technical demo at the 2008 Web Idol. A major new version with many user interface improvements is due out later this month. e-Spirit plan demo it as their 2009 Web Idol pitch. As with any major new release, we advice that you do a thorough test before implementation.
If you are considering e-Spirit, you might want to also take a closer look at Day Software and FatWire, which share a similar Java-based architecture. e-Spirit also often competes with open source alternatives, in particular Typo3, which is widely adopted in Germany.
Do you think e-Spirit will be successful in gaining further market share in the German market? Is there room for yet another European vendor in North America or will it simply become a distraction for e-Spirit?
Oliver Jaeger October 15th, 2009 10:24
Just wanted to add something to your comment about the financial viability of e-Spirit.
The company has been growing its revenues consistently every year over the last five years and has a solid financial track record. As part of the adesso group e-Spirit and its customers also enjoy the additional security of a group that had sales revenues grow 46 % to EUR 66.8 million in 2008 from 45.6 million EUR in 2007. Consolidated profit grew by 76 % to EUR 4.3 million. Detailed numbers for e-Spirit are not released but will be disclosed to prospective customers.
Oliver Jäger, Director Marketing & Communications @ e-Spirit
Markus Giesen October 16th, 2009 10:24
As far as I can say there is less distraction now amongst clients, partners and developers on the OpenText side.
We posted questions on RedDot and Vignettes future here:
http://www.reddotcmsblog.com/is-the-reddot-cms-dead-no-its-not-but-whats-next-open-text
and they have been heard and answered by OpenText.
But still hesitation and unclear statements in the first state led to some turbulences and gave competitors a great opportunity to jump on the band waggon. Well done guys
Markus
Toby Baier October 16th, 2009 10:24
I especially like the context of paragraphs 3 and 4. The non-subtle self criticism of first pointing out the “weaknesses” of your competition and then claiming that some people might not like fingerpointing or FUD tactics… quite charming!
Scott Abel October 16th, 2009 10:24
I think that the e-Spirit approach is totally brilliant. After all, they are getting all of us — and many others — including competitors and most notably, OpenText to address the RedDot issues e-Spirit CEO Jörn Bodemann brought up in his post.
But, that’s not the most important thing about this approach. I believe the real value is that e-Spirit understands the power of social media and of producing engaging content. So much of what CMS vendors publish is a bunch of marketing drivel — vendors talking about themselves. The rest is carefully placed (and paid for) content in “trade magazines” and “analysts reports”. Consumers are starting to see that the trade press and so-called analysts are nothing more than defacto marketing agents and that “pay for play” doesn’t equate to a good company with great products and service.
What’s happening in the world today is a revolution in marketing. Smart vendors are producing believable content (like opinion pieces/editorials) users actually want to read and engage with. These companies ought to be complimented on their efforts and applauded for stepping outside the traditional box. If they can lead the way in starting value-added conversations, e-Spirit can get the attention they need to get noticed in the North American marketplace, which is overrun with vendors who just don’t get it.
And, if they listen to the comments from readers and act upon the information they garner from their social media efforts, they may be able to find ways to improve their products and services and differentiate themselves from the competition.
All too often, EU vendors announce “We’re coming to North America” as if the citizens of Canada, Mexico and the US have just been sitting here waiting for their arrival. The biggest firms in the EU are often the ones who least understand the mentality differences one finds when you cross the Big Pond. They assume — quiet incorrectly — that we give a shit about their entry into our markets. We don’t. We just want to find products that do what we need them to that are priced affordably. We are often most loyal to brands that we see as “authentic” something one can hardly say of a company whose opening line in a press release is that they are the “world leader in blah, blah, blah”…. It’s just not believable, relevant or interesting.
This is likely true of North American firms attempting to enter into other markets (EU, Far East, South America).
But, social networks and video sharing sites are changing the marketing landscape. It won’t be long before the CMS vendors start learning how powerful these new communication channels are. And, if they are smart, they’ll watch companies like e-Spirit and learn how to engage an audience and get them talking about their brands.
One word of advice for would be social media marketers: Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin are not giant fax machines. Don’t send the same press release crap to these services as you do elsewhere. Instead, try writing an article about something your potential customers actually care about.
Markus Giesen October 17th, 2009 10:24
Have to agree with Toby, that’s really rich.
Hans October 19th, 2009 10:24
Hello,
I am user of e-spirit’s CMS system for 4 years now and can say that is a really great system.