Content Management Software CMS

A content management software, also known as content management system (CMS), is a program used to create and manage digital content. The software is typically employed for ECM (enterprise content management) and WCM (web content management). An ECM facilitates collaboration in the workplace by adding together digital asset management, document management, and records retention features, and offers end users with role-based access to the company’s digital assets. A WCM facilitates common authoring for websites. ECM tools often include a WCM publishing feature, but ECM webpages normally remain behind the company’s firewall.

Both web content management and enterprise content management systems have two elements: a CMA (content management application) and a CDA (content delivery application). The CMA is a GUI (graphical user interface) that lets the consumer to control the creation, design, removal, and modification of content from a website without HTML programming. The CDA element offers the back-end services that support delivery and management of the content once it has been generated in the CMA.

It is necessary for any SME to start using a CMS right at the beginning. They can use the software, permitting the firm to use the perfect features as per their needs. This will scale the company website, thereby leading to company growth and quick adoption of new trends and technologies. Here are some features that an ideal CMS software should have:

• High Performance: Caching is one of the major factors essential for enhancing the performance of your website. An ideal content management system must provide different levels of caching and every level must be fully and easily customizable. If you want to have more performance available on request, you must look for a CMS that is capable of running in a cloud environment. In any case, you can ask your vendor to offer you not only with a performance report, but also with some real-time examples of high performance sites.
• Integration: An ideal content management application must be compatible with other platforms and technology as various ERPs, CRM systems, Mobile Applications, and Social Networks. Ready-to-use connectors for most common platforms are an advantage and significantly reduce development prices.
• Stability: This feature is only assessable via prolonged employment of the product via different scenarios. But you can verify the list of quality-assurance operations that your CMS vendor has undertaken and go through the reviews of their present customers which will provide a user perspective.
• Easy to Use: You might consider “ease of use” to be a commonly-needed feature for any company and hence should not be in this list. But the larger the firm is, the more the important is this feature. Hence, the system must not just be simple to use, but also intuitive, with all components easy to find.
• Enhanced Security Management: With the rising number of content providers to your website, an enhanced security management should be in place. This can be attained by fully customizable module permissions, content permissions, and user roles. Ideal content management software tools must also offer different prebuilt authentication features.
• Advanced Workflow: Your content management software must provide a completely customizable workflow process with configurable scopes for the processes. Workflow must be followed with ability to edit documents and allowing you to revert to earlier versions of the document.
• Online Marketing Tools: A wide range of integrated online marketing features must be offered to you, and they must be integrated to optimize and deliver real-time user-centric marketing across different channels.
• Multisite Support: Until a few years back, companies believed in having a single website, and they used it for information sharing. However, with the increase in digitalization, businesses are now using more than one website. Apart from the corporate website, companies now also have community websites, on-line stores, intranets, blogs, and at least a few microsites to target a wide audience and support their primary website with extra traffic and links. The main benefit of using multisite support is in sharing the users/content across different sites and handling content from a sole point.
• Multilingual Support: You can rarely find a language-homogenous market or country, so having the capability of speaking to your website visitors in their mother tongue is a must. While different CMS tools are not capable of offering multiple languages, an exceptional few are even capable of working with right-to-left languages, such as Hebrew or Arabic or Eastern languages, such as Japanese or Chinese. Fewer still have enhanced multilingual features such as Automatic Time Conversion, Translation Management, or Side-by-Side Translation Comparison.
• Support for Mobile Devices: Whether you wish to go with a separate mobile website or a mobile responsive Web design, your content management system must be capable of supporting both approaches. A flexible CMS must be capable of holding different mobile applications or websites.
• 24/7 Support: Mission-critical websites must be supported by available resources at anytime from anywhere. Continuous support may be standard for most CMS vendors, but it mentions absolutely nothing about the quality of support provided. An ideal CMS must offer free support even to evaluators or free users.
• Easy Updating: New technologies and features require to be adopted as soon as possible, because they bring you a competitive advantage. So, it is important to update your systems to meet the changing technology requirements. Although some major CMS vendors have rolled out new editions of their software, their customers were not able to update owing to lack of continuity, leaving those customers tagging along behind their competitors who had a seamless update from different vendor. Hence, look for a CMS that is easily upgradable.

Knowing the different kinds of content management application solutions is an essential step in selecting the best option for your company. Basically, CMS software is divided based on two categories:

• Source
• Content

Let us see about these segments in brief.

Source

Based on sources, the content management software tools are divided as follows:

• Proprietary CMS: Also known as commercial CMS, proprietary CMS tools are developed and managed by a single vendor. Using such software normally involves purchasing the application and paying annual or monthly fees for support or updates. You may also require paying extra fees for upgrades and customization, as well as for ongoing user or technical support and training. Usually, you can customize such CMS tools with in-built features, even though this might come at extra price. If you are using a proprietary CMS with a back-end system or existing website, be aware that this might need extensive development work.
• Open source CMS: These types of CMS tools can be downloaded from the Internet at no initial cost. There are no upgrade or license fees, or contracts. On the other hand, you may have to pay for different things while using open source CMS tools. Some of these payable features may include technical help at the time of set up and installation; compatible add-ons, templates, and plugins; customization to extend the software beyond the core offering; support, including regularly updating the application; and staff training. In addition to this, users can also manage and install open source CMS on a web server. While most applications work out of the box, different customizations are available to suffice the different business requirements, such as tools to help you optimize content for search engines, plugins for eCommerce websites, or customize your design layouts and themes.
• Software as a Service (SaaS) CMS: SaaS CMS programs usually comprise web hosting, web content management software, and technical support with a single vendor. These are virtual solutions based on a subscription model and hosted in the cloud. They are usually priced on a per-site or per-user basis. The costing is normally based on storage for your content and data, amount of data transfer, and ongoing support. There are two kinds of cloud content management systems:
  • Fully cloud CMS: This type of program often comes as part of a service or package. Usually, these are proprietary systems controlled by the supplier, so it is not always possible to alter or customize their features to as per your requirements.
  • Partial cloud CMS: This type of application is stored on your own cloud web-server. It offers greater flexibility since you can alter the features, either by changing the source code or using add-on modules.

Content

On the basis of content, content management system can be divided into following:

• Document Management System (DMS): Using paper for content management is an ancient thing. Keeping track of business files on paper is outdated. A DMS provides a paperless solution to store, manage, and track documents in a cloud. It offers an automated solution for processing, uploading, and sharing business documents without the trouble of copying, printing, or scanning. In addition to this, you can organize your content digitally as well as save paper. Moreover, a DMS provides different levels of security which helps ensure that confidential content is rightly handled. Furthermore, you can also access and edit documents remotely with document management system.
• Component Content Management System (CCMS): A CCMS is used to organize content at a granular level. Rather than managing content page by page, it takes phrases, words, photos, or paragraphs (also dubbed as “components”) and locates them in a central repository. These content management software tools are developed for maximum content reuse, where components are only stored once. CCMS acts as a dependable trusted source that publishes content across different platforms, comprising PDF, mobile, and print. In addition to this, a CCMS allows you for detailed content tracking. You can view who did what, where, and when. You can push content to different channels, comprising mobile, print, embedded help, chatbots, web, and more. Moreover, reusing content within a CCMS saves time while editing, writing, and publishing phase, and lowers the translation costs significantly.
• Web Content Management System (WCMS): A WCMS allows users manage digital elements of a website without previous knowledge of web programming or markup languages. The system offers authoring, collaboration, and administration tools to assist manage digital content. Unlike other CMS tools, which mange content destined for both the print and web, a WCMS exclusively manages web content. This type of software allows users personalize a webpage with customized content and design. A WCMS saves time and enhances workflow management by automatically publishing the content. In addition to this, WCMS allows organizations to grow exponentially without being tensed about surpassing their website limits.
• Enterprise Content Management System (ECM): An ECM system gathers, organizes, and delivers a firm’s documentation, guaranteeing critical data is delivered to the right audience (customers, employees, business stakeholders, etc.). The software offers all members of a firm easy access to the content they require to make important decisions and complete projects. Moreover, an ECM gets rid of files after a specific retention period, making sure that unnecessary content does notclaim the storage space. The software also allows you capture any file type from any location, and have it automatically stored and processed. With ECM, you can be more productive in your activities since documentation is taken care of automatically.
• Digital Asset Management System (DAM): With a DAM system, users can organize, store, and share digital content easily. This type of software provides a centralized, simple library where employees, clients, or contractors can access digital content. They can also access assets such as creative files, audio, documents, video, and presentations. Since DAM is cloud-based, users can access content remotely and from anywhere.

Even though content management software tools are important for growth of an organization, people can face many challenges while implementing the software. Here are few issues that users face while using CMS software:

• Migration: Shifting all the current data of a firm into a new format needs huge amount of time and labor. Some CMS tools are more adept at letting users to import content in the most popular formats, and quickly. However, successful migration includes different factors, particularly the formatting of the original content. Vendors who do not have technologically enhanced migration features might very well propose that a firm simply create all new content. Many firms have already spent a huge amount for their content. Hence, vendors charge extra fees to provide migration assistance. This is one of the major issues that companies need to undergo.
• Skilled Labor: Many CMS tools possess a complex structure and need time to get acquainted. These tools can only be managed by people with a strong technical acumen or background. Hence, it is very difficult to find skilled staff who are well trained to use content management application. In addition to this, if you opt to train your own employees, chances are high that you may up losing them to another employer.
• Lack of Security: If you do not have skilled employees, security might be another reason for you to worry. Security of a CMS tool plays an essential role since it has all the essential and sensitive data of a company. Hence, a company must invest and look after installing updates and patches, evaluating security threats, and keeping the public web presence and data safe. Failing to do so will leave the software exposed, thereby leaving you and your firm vulnerable.
• 24x7 Support: Finding solutions to problems with CMS can be difficult for users if proper and continuous support is not offered. Even though some issues can be solved by users with a bit of research, but the lack of support can sometimes cause a great damage. Especially if working on a tight timeline. It is not always practical to solve the issues with research on your own. This might sometimes create a new problem, or worse lead to data loss.
• Human Error: Even though a CMS software manages the content perfectly, it is managed by humans. If the person using such tools have no proper editing and writing skills, what’s the purpose of using such effective tools in the first place? Even though it is true that the human error cannot be eliminated completely, in the end it is one of the major issues that needs to be dealt with while using content management system.

Below are some of the notable benefits of content management software tools:

• Easy Updating of Content on Website: Usually, modifying content on a webpage needs deep understanding of the web design. With the help of CMS, which normally comes with an easy UI, you can change the website content without any effort using a single dashboard. You can also easily publish fresh content, replicate changes across all pages, or delete old content.
• Easy Collaboration and Access: Content management application allows different users to not only have access to your website, but also collaborate easily on multiple projects. With separate accounts, different people can edit, add, or update content on the website right from their own devices and computers. Content management tools also store all online content in one place. Also, this data is available to anyone within the team having access to the website, meaning the issue to send different files to different people is solved.
• Cost Effective: Maintaining a website can be very costly if you have a static website. Calling a web developer or designer to make frequent alterations can add to the cost. Not only is price a factor, but you will most likely have to wait a few days to see the changes go live on your website. Investing in a CMS can save you both money and time. With a content management program, you no longer have to depend on a web developer to make usual website modification. You can immediately make these alterations yourself whenever you want to.
• No Technical Background Required: Content management applications were developed for users with no or little programming knowledge. Once your website is completely designed by a web designer, managing content on your website is easy and simple to learn. Your web content, such as text and images, can be added and uploaded easily onto particular pages, and styled in a content editor, which is similar to Microsoft Word.
• Enhanced SEO Plugins and Tools: Content management systems provide different tools and plugins that can assist your website rank better in search engines. This does not mean you may not need the support of an in-house or offshore online marketing team, but these plugins can assist implement a basic SEO approach to elevate online traffic. These plugins directly give you the options to include meta descriptions, alt tags, web page titles, and all the other elements required to best optimize your site for major search engines. They will also notify you when these factors are not properly addressed. In addition to this, these plugins are updated regularly to adapt to any modifications in search engines that can impact your ranking. Hence, your website will stay optimized despite any changes or updates. Basically, content management software tools are the only options that let you to optimize your website easily for search engines with user-friendly tools and plugins within the UI itself.
• Streamlined Processes: Content managers need to look after different processes such as content creation, ideation, editing, approvals, promotion, and publishing, each comprising a different team. CMS offers a platform where managers can track the status of all content and implement content processes easily. The platform also allows users to easily route documents and comment on them.

As technology changes, so does the approach towards content management. Here are some trends related to content management software that will be seen emerging in the future.

• Artificial intelligence (AI): The rise of voice search, chatbots, and other forms of AI are becoming mainstream in our daily lives, and they are advancing in their flexibility and availability to suffice our requirements. As per a study by Gartner, almost 50% of companies will be spending specifically in chatbots by end of 2020. These user experiences still need the expertise of content writers, strategists, and web developers to make sure that the chatbots use a welcoming, friendly tone and language that aligns with brand. In addition to this, AI is presently helping businesses optimize visitor engagement and personalize content by analyzing the visitor behavior. It also assists users organize content by offering better content tags with the help of "text clustering" algorithms. Therefore, we expect to see more usage of AI over the coming years for content management.
• Image Recognition: This technology is used by businesses to streamline data that might include various types of files including audio, text, images, and video. This streamlining is done by tagging them accurately and automatically creating a huge database. Hence, usage of different visual content and images in increasing quickly. In fact, content with images leads to a 650% higher rate of engagement versus content with no visual material. Image recognition and meta-tagging make image search more thorough. With the help of image recognition, companies can search their repository for pictures without entering the exact keyword. As the requirement for visual content keeps elevating, we hope to see a rise in the usage of this technology over the coming few years.

Well, the pricing model of any content management software is based on two methods. To begin with, like other software solutions, most of the CMS tools are cloud-based and follow a subscription model. Here, you need to pay a monthly or annual fee based on the features you need and the storage space. If your content management application is installed on your system and does not support cloud, you will need to pay a one-time license fee. In addition to this, a number of vendors have started issuing freemium pricing model, where you only pay for the features that you need.

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How does content management software work?

A content management system is a software used to manage a website. It lets users to add, manage, and edit content in a simple manner. The controls of content management software can be set to allow different contributors to create, publish, and edit, each having specific administrative privileges.

Why do I need a content management software?

Content management software is used to relieve a website owner from all the technical aspects of running and creating a website. If you are an expert at writing code you might not essentially need to use a content management software, but having one lets the user to spend more time on the vital aspects of content creation and strategy.

Why is content management software important?

The reason content management software solutions are important is simple, since it takes away all the difficult technical stuff of running and creating a website. You hereby get more time to focus on the editing, creating, and managing the pages of your website, all through an easy-to-use and simple interface.

What is the difference between a content management software and a website?

A content management software is used to manage and create websites through a relatively simple user interface. On the other hand, websites are collections of pages that may have been created manually, by a website builder platform, or by a content management software.

What is cloud content management?

Cloud content management (CCM) is an aspect of information technology (IT) management that looks after the management of information within a cloud-based hosting environment. CCM is a secure and easy method for teams to collaborate and work together.

Why use a content management software for your website?

By handling all the technical problems of web page management and creation, a content management software lets the owner of the site to concentrate on content creation. This allows them to work on the important aspects of improving SEO, increasing website traffic, and converting customers.