Nick Garner's Blog

Nick's Technology Charter

I’ve been working on a code of practice when it comes to marketing and technology. It’s just a personal thing that ive been thinking about for a while, so I thought it would be helpful (to me at least) to write this out.

The idea is to have a simple charter, so when suppliers offer marketing technology services, the purchaser has a core set of principals to work by.

For instance, if you want to reduce the cost of your IT marketing spend, a good way would be to :
-????????? never be dependent on a any supplier,
-????????? use open source code so you don?t get tied into expensive licensing agreements
-????????? reuse code to reduce the security and cost overhead.

My personal charter for technology in outgoing marketing.

Strategy
-????????? Low coss
-????????? Secure
-????????? Reliable
-????????? Flexible
-????????? Easy for end users to use

Supplier / vendor
-????????? Non dependence on any supplier
-????????? Never be taken advantage over, through licence cost escalation
-????????? Own the source code / have the right to use the code in perpetuity

Characteristics of Software
-????????? 100% open to code level inspection i.e. open source code
-????????? Commonly used
-????????? Secure
-????????? Flexible
-????????? Understood by the business
-????????? Inexpensive to implement

Technical development infrastructure
-????????? Version controlled where possible
-????????? Reusable i.e. build a library of code
-????????? Standardised i.e. work to a set of agreed coding standards
-????????? Interoperable code where possible i.e. coded in a modular way, so chunks of code can be reused

Visuals
-????????? Working to brand guidelines
-????????? Fulfils usability guidelines

Process optimisation
-????????? Multi streaming of projects i.e. High / Med / Low : Security Risk, Complexity, Degree of Integration

Simple!

The clever part is building up a standard framework, so as the diverse parts of a company do their thing, each new piece of technology can then be potentially reused on some other part within marketing.

In practice, this means separating the content management system from the dynamic elements of a site. Making those dynamic parts modular and easily reusable on any part of the content management system so you get the benefit of accumulated libraries of code. The other thing (for most marketing) is that the content management system should not be the expensive bit. Open source CMS’s are getting better and better and cheaper to roll out.

A good place to look at open source software ‘out of the packet’ is http://www.opensourcecms.com

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