A Content Management System (CMS) is software that enables an organisation to take control of its own website.

Even more importantly, it allows that same organisation to take control of most of the rest of its business process documentation.

A CMS is an income generator

A CMS can be cheaper to build than a traditional website. A CMS can save time; and save money. In the medium to long term, a well thought out CMS is potentially an income generator.

A CMS increases efficiency in identifying opportunities

A CMS allows information to be stored more quickly, at less cost in paid staff time; and it also ensures that existing information can be located more quickly. $ savings are made at each end. That increase in efficiency creates the potential for appropriate decisions to be made more quickly. It also creates the potential for opportunities to be identified as they are arising, and responded to more quickly.

A CMS turns an organisation into a real-time enterprise

A CMS gives an organisation a competitive advantage over similar organisations using older technology. Although a CMS is software, it is not entirely software. A CMS generates a business process that is new and efficient. We might call the business model that evolves out of a CMS a Real-Time Enterprise model. A Real-Time Enterprise is an organisation that has the ability to react and respond almost instantly as opportunities or problems present themselves. The days of a CEO commisioning a report and then waiting days or weeks or months for the end-result are drawing to a close. A CMS encourages a business process model where information is available as it is entered into the system. If a need to respond arises, a decision maker can draw on the information that exists to that point in time, and base decisions accordingly. Some organisations are already crossing that very significant thresh-hold. Most are as yet still to understand the true competitive advantage that a CMS generates.

A CMS enables people

The core of a CMS is people. People build it; people decide what to include in it and people decide what NOT to include in it. A good CMS software platform will ensure that people retain the choice, and the responsibility, of assuring appropriate access to information, data, and records. Any CMS that does not ensure that people without appropriate authorisation do not gain access to sensitive information is not really a CMS at all. Privacy considerations are one of the main topics of discussion in professional CMS development circles.

In fact it may be true that the need for control over access to documentation was, and is, one of the main driving forces that brought the state of development in the CMS field to the high level of trustworthiness and sophistication that is evident today.

A CMS brings people together

A CMS brings people together in ways that grow support, co-operation and synergy.

A CMS not only allows results of business processes to be presented well; it also allows the actual process to occur in a more fluid and accessible way.

By 'fluid' is meant the idea that people enjoy to make the contributions that come naturally to them.

By 'accessible' is meant the idea that all stakeholders of a process are 'kept in the loop' by default, as a naturally occurring effect of the way people work together once a CMS is operational and understood and supported by appropriate policies and procedures. It has been suggested that being kept in the loop is a primary means for people feeling valued in an organisation.

A CMS brings value

The end result of a well designed and implemented and managed CMS is Value.

• Value brought to people.
• Value brought to organisations.
• Value brought to the clients, customers or funding bodies of organisations.

It's an easy decision

The decision to adopt a CMS is in fact a 'no brainer'.

The Real-Time Enterprise, being more able to respond, take opportunities, react to problems, and keep its people informed and happy is an enterprise that will expand.

An organisation that utilises its CMS fully becomes a Real-Time Enterprise.

A CMS based organisation expands, filling the gaps where other slower organisations have not even identified a possibility.

Trust

The prediction is that more and more trust will be granted to organisations that display a deep understanding of the role of a CMS.

Trust breeds commitment. Commitment from clients as expressed in the purchase of productes and services; and commitment from funding bodies in maintaining the life-blood of chosen supported organisations.

The prediction is that in a relatively short period of time being able to display and prove that workflow is embedded in a sound Information Management strategy will be high on the criteria funding bodies impose on their applicants.

Organisations that respond quickest, most visibly, and most exactingly will receive the lions share of support. But that has always been the case. Nothing has changed in that respect. It is just that the means of standing out is now within the reach of many more individuals and organisations than ever before.

That is because some of the best CMS's are in fact Open Source Software, and thus freely available.

More Online CMS Introductory Material

"A content management system (CMS) supports the creation, management, distribution, publishing, and discovery of corporate information."

From So, what is a content management system? by Step Two Designs Pty Ltd. This article is well worth reading to gain a quick overview of what a CMS is.

Drupal

This article was written and published utilising the Drupal Content Management System. The pages you are viewing are generated by Drupal in order to present the material that I send to it. I write the content into Drupal, and I trust Drupal to appropriately manage that content. With Drupal an administrator sets up a configuration for a particular organisation. That configuration is meant to ensure that whatever content is sent to Drupal is displayed appropriately and accessed appropriately. If you are reading this and have some sort of competency with software like Microsoft Word, then it is likely you can learn to send content to Drupal. You can update your own personal website yourself. And as a member of an organisation you can update the organisation's website. Of course the Drupal administrator would first have to have given you the appropriate permissions. Updating websites with Drupal is much easier than updating websites the old way. The old way was to send your content to a webmaster, who invariably complained that your content was in the wrong format. The webmaster then sent your content to the web. Now you can get your content onto the web in around the time it used to take you to get it to the webmaster. Will webmasters be redundant when organisations migrate their websites to CMS's? No, not really. For one thing Drupal does need an administrator in the background ensuring that the flow of information into the system is being processed by Drupal appropriately.

A CMS is a resource base for decision making.

It is also a repository for documentation about past decision making processes.

 

© 2005 John Saward