Building A Career in CMS

We recently caught up with Zoran Nikolovski; he’s currently the Lead Software Engineer (AEM) at Odecee.

Zoran started his career working with Content Management Systems (CMS) back in 2004 when building your own was the hip and cool thing to do for a company.

“I was a Junior Developer back then; What amazed me about CMS’ was that you could just drag and drop things around, save, publish and have a website up and running.”

On reflection he remembers this as a pretty successful time, using the system for clients before deciding to take a break from CMS to jump into more service led, back end traditional Java development – mainly in the cryptography and security arena.

Four years ago he took the next step and joined Isobar, a digital agency where CMS is bread and butter – he was back in the field.

Being Introduced to Adobe CQ5

Isobar were one of the first companies that Adobe reached out to in the Australian market, looking for early partners for their shiny new CMS.

“It was a pretty exciting time” recalls Zoran, “We had the opportunity to look at what was then known as CQ5.5 – it was quite obvious that it was a far superior product than what we were currently using.”

“The group I was in, was one of the first in Australia that ever saw it in action. There were a lot of exciting conversations around that time about how we can use it for our clients.”

Zoran and the team were trained in CQ5.5, before launching with 5.6 – the pace moved so fast, he never got to use the version he was trained on.

“Fast forward a couple of years and the narrative changed with the introduction of the concept of a marketing cloud. Having a successful digital presence was no longer just a case of creating a well-designed, responsive site. It was time to start looking at how we serve the right content at the right time.”

Moving to Strategy

Interest was sparked for Zoran who started focusing on the content and digital strategy side of things, leading him to be very active in the space.

“It just didn’t seem like a thing people were doing particularly well (in Australia). So I just started to talk about it and share ideas on my blog. It was amazing to be recognised by Adobe, being quoted in their presentations – I’m also speaking at their upcoming Source event.

Opportunities for Adobe Experience Manager

Despite year over year growth, and AEM growing to a point where it’s well known across pretty much every Tier 1 or Tier 2 organisations, Zoran believes there’s still an area that’s relatively new in the market that provides big opportunity:

“There’s a lot of talk around optimisation and measurement” with big data and machine learning playing a big part in business’ ability to zero-in on a particular type of customer and interact with them.

“People are starting to be less concerned about creating a website with great pictures and bold headlines, and just hoping the user will land in the shopping cart. Instead, they’re now investing in tools, process and people that help them to understand their customers better and create opportunities and capabilities to have a meaningful conversation with them throughout their journey.

“There’s a lot of learnings and insights coming out of UX, Design, analytics and campaign management – collecting that information and distilling it into something meaningful is the next “holy grail” of the marketing strategy of today’s successful businesses.

“The whole field still needs to grow around reaching a certain level of personalization and how businesses have conversations with the customer, both at the front end with UX and Design providing the narrative, vision and objectives but also being able to back that up with technical capability to deliver on it successfully.

It’s my job to make sure the right structure and pieces of the puzzle to have those conversations are in place.

How to Decide on that Next Career Move

After Isobar, Zoran joined Odecee. Working in a high demand area, he shared his advice when looking at the next move:

1. The People Factor

A lot of the achievements we’ve made in AEM are because of the strong and passionate team we have at Odecee. One of the key factors for me is to be able to surround myself with people that I can have an engaging conversation with – there’s nothing better than stimulating conversations where you can voice new ideas and see them come to life through the great work you do as a team.

You’re looking for people that you can rely on; that make the job more interesting, fun and easier – you need to be able to rely and lean on your team and they on you.

2. Where You Can Play Out Your Passions

I’m fortunate to work for a company that nurtures innovation – it’s important to me to have a little leeway to explore certain technologies that keep me driven. We have a couple of Amazon Echo’s that some of my colleagues are prototyping on which I’m very excited about!

From people playing with making music using iOS devices to 3d printing to IoT and Virtual Reality – having a culture of exploration is something not to be overlooked.

Are you looking for a career change or looking at potential CMS jobs? Join the marketplace today and check out 50+ of Australia’s hottest organisations doing innovative things with technology.