TechBytes with Stefan Schinkel, Chief Sales Officer, dotCMS

Stefan Schinkel
Chief Sales Officer, dotCMS

There are various areas where AI can offload human labor at scale and support human-machine alliances to drive business outcomes. In this context, we spoke to Stefan Schinkel, Chief Sales Officer, dotCMS, to understand the importance of the role of Artificial Intelligence in the CMS domain.

Tell us about your role at dotCMS and the team/technology you handle?

At dotCMS, my primary focus is on net new license revenue, both direct and with our channel partners. In that role, I’m also responsible to further expand our global partner network and execute go-to market plans with them. Our key territories are North America, UK/Ire, Benelux, and DACH. But we see a growing customer base and interest in APAC where we go to market with local partners.

What is the overall state of CMS in the content marketing industry?

The CMS as a tool is foundational to content marketing. Without a CMS you can’t create content and compose digital experiences that you need to create an emotional bond between your brand and your audiences. Period. (unless you want to go back to Frontpage) The CMS industry is a saturated market with a lot of players in many shapes and forms and very few newcomers. It’s a highly competitive market, consolidated by mergers and acquisitions, yet it has a very healthy CAGR of around 15%, which will push its market cap to $15 billion by 2023. The CMS, as a tool, has been commoditized pretty much, which is a good thing in my opinion. Non-tech CMS users are much more self-sufficient than let’s say 10-15 years ago and have a faster time-to-value at a lower Total Cost of Ownership.

As a consequence, technology teams can focus on innovation and extending the platform, instead of day-to-day operations. And there is so much technology the industry can (and will) capitalize on IoT, AI/Machine Learning, Containerization and Cloud. But these are only a few. I can’t wait to see what companies such as Inrupt will bring and how they will disrupt the internet as a whole. I’m sure this will impact the CMS industry.

Tell us more about dotCMS’ technology and your target audience?

dotCMS is a 100% Java and open-source CMS, based on frameworks in the Apache Software Foundation. Our platform is API-driven, de-coupled (separating content from presentation) and serves as the content foundation or infrastructure for digital experience platforms that our customers build. We aim at mid-market and enterprise customers around the globe and across all industries, who are building digital experience applications and platforms to manage customer experience full circle (entire customer lifecycle).

How well do dotCMS’ products integrate with third-party APIs?

Extremely well. Our platform is API-first, has a plugin architecture (OSGi) and allows for extremely fast integration with adjacent technologies. All relevant attributes are content types in dotCMS and available via REST APIs. Our clients build integrations without touching Java code and use us as a best-of-breed CMS.

What is the best way to optimize dotCMS’ CMS?

If marketing agility and drive on business outcomes are prime, dotCMS is the core content foundation for your digital experience platform. The NoCode authoring environment along with the mature content management capability set will drive the marketing agility and business outcomes. The platform adoption (business & IT), licensing model and our global partner network will help to drive Total Cost of Ownership and Return of Investment.

How important is the role of Artificial Intelligence in the CMS domain?

Very important. Currently, it’s in an early phase. There are various areas where AI can offload human labor at scale and support human-machine alliances to drive business outcomes. Most notably in my opinion are search, personalization and predictive analytics (also supporting predictive personalization). Already, our customers are able to leverage third-party AI in the core CMS process: Amazon Rekognition (to auto-classify and tag images and videos at scale) and Acrolinx (AI-driven content curation). In the short-term, we focus on predictive analytics as a primer for predictive content targeting, personalization and site search.

What sales and marketing technology tools does dotCMS currently use?

We currently use dotCMS, HubSpot, Salesforce, Leadfeeder and Discovery.org.

What apps/software/tools can’t you live without?

Slack, Salesforce, Google Apps and WhatsApp is all I need.

What is the best piece of professional advice that you have received?

Focus on the things you can influence, ignore the rest, and everything is possible.

Thanks for chatting with us, Stefan.

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