The rise of digital technology and the proliferation of Web sites have brought content management to the mainstream. All organizations, from large businesses with thousands of digital documents to small organizations with simple Web sites, find themselves having to deal with ever increasing amounts of information.

Within the field of content management, more specific terms have evolved. Enterprise content management or ECM encompasses all the information of an organization and may include print documents, records, computer applications, images, multimedia files, etc.  Web content management or WCM refers just to that information that is made available via the Internet. In this piece, we will focus on WCM.

As it became easier to publish content on the Web, many organizations discovered the need for a system to consistently manage content. A content management system or CMS is usually computer- or Web-based software that helps organizations manage their content collaboratively and efficiently.

So how do you know if your organization is having a problem with content management? Nathan Rawlins of Serena Software, Inc., describes these symptoms:

    * Updating critical Web content takes too long
    * The IT staff is overwhelmed by requests to make changes to the Web site
    * People responsible for creating Web content donít have access to make changes
    * The Web site lacks consistent branding, look and feel, or navigation
    * There is no record of who changed what and when
    * Finally, changes to the site can only be made every week or so

If any of those problems sound familiar, your organization may benefit from some help with content management. Before diving into a content management project, it’s best to determine why managing content is important to your organization. Knowing what your organization needs from its Web site will have a big impact on the CMS tools you choose, the priorities for your project and the time line to implementation.

Read more