Content Management Systems

Software solutions for CMS (content management system) can seem like a daunting and highly confusing selection process, but examining what you need, what’s offered, the ease of use, overall performance, and customer support quality can help narrow down the options tremendously.

There are two broad categories for business CMS. The first provides services for website content publishing. The second provides an infrastructure to organize business documents. Of course, there’s also an array of specialized workflow software to consider, and vendors are constantly tweaking and updating their products - sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse.

This CMS guide will walk buyer through everything they need to know and consider to make the best possible selection for their business needs.

Content Management System: What Is It?

By content, the system can be designed to manage a plethora of items, including service invoices; record documents, such as birth certificates and medical records; office documents, such as spreadsheets; multimedia files; website copy; and social media content.

The actual system consists of software solutions to store, organize, and or create such content for you, the buyer.

When searching for a CMS product, buyers will find two main groupings, one for web content management and one for document management.

Document management systems, or DMS, mainly deals in printed or electronic content that’s for a business’s internal usage. In other words, this content isn’t distributed externally to the public. Contracts, invoices, company reports and so forth would be examples of the documents this type of system manages. Virtual data rooms are often used to securely serve and store such internal documents.

Web-CMS, or W-CMS, is CMS designed for company websites. These systems help to create content within a website that is intended for public distribution, such as blog content or building an online store front.

Common Features of Content Management Systems

Think of CMS products as the difference between a high-end, specialty knife and a good-functioning multitool. Some products are single applications that excel in a speciality service. Other products offer a more integrated suite of services that’s geared to cover many bases and offer multiple applications under a single roof.

Each DMS or W-CMS application is designed to manage a certain type(s) of content, with some applications being offered solo and some as part of a bundled suite.

Publishing has creating features like text editing, blogging modules, web page creation, and workflow management.

E-commerce assists in online store creation and maintenance. E-forms helps to create client-completed forms. Intranet is used to distribute content to employees through an internal website. Social networking allows readers to interact with social media content, share it, and comment on it.

As far as DMS goes, document capture and image processing is used to convert print to digital copy. Digital asset management uploads, stores, and organizes digital media. Case management creates business process documents and automates the workflow process. Contract management tracks and automates transaction documents throughout their need to exist. Records management stores, organizes, archives, and retrieves company records. Business process management is for more large-scale, advanced document tracking and workflow management. Reporting and analytics assists in compliance issues.

What Does Enterprise Content Management Mean?

Enterprise content management, or ECM, is a term often seen within CMS offerings. ECM has multiple products that fall under its umbrella, but the key distinguishing feature of this type of content management is that the solutions are all designed for a business’s large-scale content needs.

However, large-scale doesn’t imply that the business must be some mass conglomerate to need/use ECM. What makes a CMS be subcategorized as a ECM is based on size, scale and affiliation in relative terms.

EMS is associated with document management products more so than W-CMS. As such, it’s affiliation is often interchangeably used within the broader category.

Enterprise is also a term reflective of the size of the company employing it. The natural functioning of larger companies is that they simply produce more content volume and require a larger scale and higher functioning system to meet that demand. So, enterprise vendors specifically have the expertise and systems to meet those high-volume content demands. That’s not to say small to midsize businesses can’t benefit from EMS, especially if the have a business model highly reliant upon content in their primary business functions.

Lastly is scale, which is indicative of a multi-department business model working together for central, cohesive objectives. So, ECM is used to meet unified company-wide document solutions and strategies verses software needs that vary across the individual multi-departmental units within a company.

CMS Case Management Application

Let’s take a case of a chain business distributing company content throughout its locations to individual workers via electronic records on company servers and a CRM system.

A customer previously called to make a complaint. Under the above system, management of this complaint may be in an employee’s human memory alone, on a slip of paper in a landfill, or lost in the email abyss. If the complaint is unresolved and the customer calls back, then the chances are that the complaint process will start at ground zero again and only further delay or incapacitate a resolve. The customer is likely lost.

CMS software for document management solutions enables the same scenario to go much differently. The second call from the customer would involve the employee being able to pull up the customer’s account to view every interaction involved and any standardized informational guidelines to help the employee assess the subsequent steps to be taken.

Determine The Type Of CMS A Business Needs

There are a lot of CMS products to choose from on the market, making it difficult for businesses to determine exactly which type best meets their needs. It helps to identify yourself within a buyer profile common to the CMS marketplace.

Is your website considered novice? Buyers implementing their first website or undergoing their initial functionality assessments often look to CMS for help in either creating or revamping under-leveraged aspects in marketing and business operations. A user-friendly W-CMS solution can help website owners find the tools they need to better engage users.

You want to upgrade from print-documents? Most first-time buyers of CMS are small business owners evaluating initiating CMS as a way to digitize and modernize from their current desktop applications like Microsoft Word. Their files are being stored on desktops and copies are simply click and print, an outdated process by any standard. A starter to mid-range document solution would enable you to digitize storage, organization, and processing of your company’s documents.

You need a content management solution for only a specific department within your business? You’re called a departmental buyer. Take a Human Resources department as an example; you may need a specific system to organize existing employee records and introduce new employee records.

You need multiple software systems interacting with the CMS? You need a universal CMS solution to replace the various departmental CMS solutions existing throughout your various departments. These are large enterprise needs, requiring extensive customization to achieve security, create consistency, or initiate an in-depth analysis to improve business operations and processes. Enterprise content management solutions would meet this buyer’s needs.

Your industry is highly regulated? You have very strict guidelines to follow in order to comply with protecting sensitive documents and records and/or stringent requirements for reporting? Such entities exist throughout government bodies, the health care industry, and financial institutions. Specialized CMS products are a market niche that serve compliance, audit, and reporting needs of such regulated industries.

CMS Benefits

There are innumerable benefits to implementing the right CMS software for your business, no matter its size or niche. However, it’s imperative to ensure you’ve implemented the appropriate document solution, the appropriate way. Otherwise, you’re setting yourself up for unwarranted failure.

Most companies failing to reap the rewards of CMS experience this failure for one, if not all, of three reasons. First, they’ve failed to first research how their users create, share, and store content in relation to current practices. Second, they neglect to properly train and transition their staff toward the newly applied document solution. Third, as it relates to other operational caveats of their business, they haven’t invested in the right integrations and customizations to streamline the document solution into these other processes that remain at work.

If properly integrated, however, CMS has the potential for invaluable benefits. It helps to maintain a secure documentation, reporting, and compliance system for highly regulated operations. Scanning and uploading documents improves appropriate accessibility, record-keeping, and efficiency. Streamlining is improved with automation and workflow software.

An interactive website helps attract and retain users, engaging them in high-quality, easy to navigate content.

Ensure You Understand CMS Market Trends

Again, buyers are faced with innumerable offerings for content management software. As you complete your due-diligence, you’ll want to keep some CMS industry trends in mind, such as cloud-based CMS, if the CMS involves collaboration, and compliance needs.

One of the biggest moving trends in both document and website content management is cloud-based CMS. Traditional content management involves an on-site intranet. This new trend is an alternative storage solution using cloud-based subscriptions. It’s offered by innovative companies like Acquia, M-files, and SpringCM.

Content is rarely created by just one individual within a company or contract agency. Many hands and eyes are involved in collaborating to author and create the totality of a business’s documents. To be efficient and accurate, the process requires tools for these individuals and groups to share and discuss amongst themselves as they work. If you doubt these collaboration tools are needed, demanded, essential, then just look at the 55% subscription growth Yammer experienced in the first year the chat tool was acquired by Microsoft Sharepoint as proof.

In 2012, the Managing Government Records Directive was signed into law. It focused in on financial, government, and health industry applications in relation to records regulations. Digital record keeping, audits, and security have some strict regulations and heavy penalties for lack of compliance. Any regulated industry needs document management solutions to not only comply with existing laws... but to stay on-task with the ever-evolving criteria and standards being set forth at any given time.

Stick To Tried And True Selection Tactics For New Software Vendors

Variables, variables, and more variables. The amount to consider when selecting a new software vendor is mind numbing. You want the due diligence of the selection process to be as thorough as it is expedient. Here is a user-proven tactic strategy to help you along. Make sure you check each off the list before you proceed to signing on the dotted line.

Complete a request for proposal. Check your vendor’s references. Always allow your business attorney to review agreements and contracts. Assess the financial viability of any potential vendor.

CMS Pricing Options

Basically CMS software is priced one of two ways. You’ll need to determine which best suits your needs based on your business model and budget.

Subscription-based pricing is a monthly or annual fee rate. SaaS, or Software-as-a-Service, is based around how many users will access the system. It may alternatively (or in addition) be based on usage of storage space.

The other option is a one-time/one-user/one-computer rate. This varies in conditions. Some require licenses for each user and some allow multiple users on one license. Services like support and training may require additional fees.