To Drupal, or Not to Drupal: Part 4

This is the conundrum some may be facing when moving away from Drupal 7.

If you or others in your organization are battling with this question, there are several considerations you should make before choosing to move away from the Drupal platform. We'll cover them in 5 short reads:

• Part 1: Coming to grips with the task
• Part 2: Comparing apples to apples
• Part 3: Better, or just different?
• Part 4: How much are you really outsourcing?
• Part 5: Knowledge attrition

How much are you really outsourcing?

As part of its licensing fees, the vendor of a proprietary system will likely provide regular training, resources and support for your editors. On the surface, this sounds fantastic. The vendor is going to liberate you from the daunting responsibility of documentation and training! Or will it? 

There are two aspects to using any CMS platform: Individual and Institutional.

The Individual aspect—how do I create an event for the calendar—is something the vendor can provide resources for.

The Institutional aspect covers:

• how do we tag events for proper categorization;
• prevent the creation of duplicates;
• share access with other departments

Topics like these can only be conceived, documented and trained by the institution itself. When it comes to using the platform as part of your organization, the vendor is likely to have little more than suggestions.

This is because the procedures for managing and sharing assets across departments will be different for every organization even if they’re all using the same platform. If you expect everyone to follow a uniform procedure, that procedure will have to be documented and people will have to be trained, but it will not be part of anything provided by your vendor. 

This is especially important if the majority of editors in your organization are transient workers such as student employees and interns. While the vendor’s training resources will indeed be valuable in keeping high-turnover positions up to speed, they won’t be enough to completely replace the knowledge lost when transient employees leave for other opportunities.

Speaking of lost knowledge, consider the knowledge you lose when more permanent employees find the exit door. Could moving away from Drupal cause you to lose regular employees?