Content Management System
A CMS (Content Management System) has more of a hub and spoke model. One person puts the information (usually in the form of a document) into the repository. Others can go get it. I call it a 1:portal:1 model. Can it be collaborative? With some pains, yes. It isn’t quite real time, but can approach it. One person owns the document, even though many may have some input. The focus, of course, is on the document and the user usually cannot customize what they want to see.
An organization typically requires a CMS when it creates and publishes large volumes of content, or the publishing process is too time consuming and inefficient, or if there are so many publishers that the existing system has no standardized approach to efficiently publish, store and organize content for user consumption. Many problems including "information overload" and search engine ineffectiveness explain why content management continues to be one of the most pressing and important issues facing Internet and intranet site managers.
In many cases, in most organizations, content management can combat these challenges and significantly improve the content publishing, storage and retrieval process. Specifically, a CMS can offer many benefits and tools including:
- User-friendly, web-based access and use
- Decentralized authoring allowing many authors, in multiple locations
- Document version and time controls
- Content approval workflow
- Database and template creation
- Dynamic page generation
- Link management
- Document conversion
- Personalization
- Access control and built-in security
- Usage analysis
- Template and design standardization
Not all tools offer these benefits, and some offer more or different benefits. Therefore, determining which systems and tools will best benefit your organization depends on the specific requirements of your organization. A content management system’s future performance and success is determined before its birth with the identification and documentation of business requirements including:
- Defining the users
- Number of users
- Speed of publishing
- Language requirements
- Page and document limits
- Approval and work flow processes
- Number and type of templates
- Use of multimedia