A Content Management System (CMS) is a system used to manage the content of a Website. Typically, a CMS consists of two elements: the content management application (CMA) and the content delivery application (CDA). The CMA element allows the content manager or author, who may not know Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), to manage the creation, modification, and removal of content from a Web site without needing the expertise of a Webmaster. The CDA element uses and compiles that information to update the Website. The features of a CMS system vary, but most include Web-based publishing, format management, revision control, and indexing, search, and retrieval.
Two factors must be considered before an organization decides to invest in a CMS. First, an organization's size and geographic dispersion must be considered especially if an organization is spread out over several countries. For these organizations, the transition to CMS is more difficult. Secondly, the diversity of the electronic data forms used within an organization must be considered. If an organization uses text documents, graphics, video, audio, and diagrams to convey information, the content will be more difficult to manage.
Main Features :
1. Using Velocty Templating Language (VTL)
2. Manage the creation, modification, and removal of content;
3. CMS consists of two elements: the content management application (CMA) and the content delivery application (CDA).
Benefits :
1. No more accidents
With a CMS, it becomes very difficult for content assets to be on the site accidentally. Any updates must pass through commissioning, creation and one or more predefined signoff steps before the system will publish it. The resulting audit trail provides accountability for each action.
2. Job sharing
Many sites are operated by a team distributed between offices, companies or even countries and notifying a participant of an assigned task becomes more complicated than calling across the room. Because all the major tools have a web interface, participants can perform their task and view its results from anywhere with web access. And with a sensible CMS security model, you can be sure that only authorized people can perform authorized tasks.
3. Advance and refresh
You can specify dates and times for the content to go live and be archived or removed, along with the contents target audience segments. You can also impose review dates to ensure that information is not simply left on the site to rot until a new product replaces it. The responsible area will need to rubberstamp the content as still valid, commission a replacement or archive/delete it. If content is removed or archived, the CMS will ensure that the remaining content is still structurally consistent, without leaving orphaned links to the deleted asset.
4. Speed to market
When you have a CMS, you suddenly have a tremendous advantage in the time it takes to react to market intelligence. You can write, edit and publish updates in a matter of minutes without suffering from "WebMaster Bottleneck". If your product globally propagates a virus, updates at this pace could be essential. Similarly, you can restructure a site, merging and splitting areas, without substantial manual intervention, as this layer is also maintained separately.
5. Reduced maintenance costs
By automating the building of pages on your site, you will cut substantial sums from the site's maintenance costs. A reasonably content rich site could need 250 or more updates a day, each averaging around 2 man-hours to produce and test.
6. Simplified CRM
Implementation In many traditional Direct Marketing scenarios, an audience may be segmented into a dozen segments. In the online environment, where all user interactions are mediated by IT systems, users may be segmented into unique individuals. Managing many thousands of individually customized sites is no simple job.
Campaign Management tools will manage the users' preferences and behaviors, while Content Management tools will manage content that they will access.
7. Reduced risk of litigation and adverse customer reaction
Publishing the wrong price or availability information on your site can bring strongly negative PR and classaction lawsuits, and hit your margins. By systemising the publishing of your content through automated workflows, you can ensure that all content is checked and signed off before it is publicly exposed.