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Knowing When You Need a CMS

By Rob Prideaux, TechSoup

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So Do I Need a CMS or Not?

At this point, you should have a good idea of what your content is, who's dealing with it, and the problems you're having.

With this information, you can try to answer the question: Do we need a CMS at this point? On the surface, it's easy to say, "Of course, look at all these problems I've identified." But the real question is whether or not a CMS will help you solve them. Take a close look at those problems.

It's easy to find problems, but more difficult to see how they came to be and harder still to solve them. How did your problems come about? Usually, they're a result of moving quickly and cutting corners. Often what's lost is process management and oversight. Do people in your organisation avoid looking at the way they work because they already have more work than they can do? Have they been unable to take the time to address these problems because of deadline pressures? Perhaps it's just that no one's ever taken the time to examine it at a high level as you've just done, so the problems never surfaced in a cohesive way.

Identifying the source of problems is a good way to start fixing them. But before you decide on a CMS as your solution, see if you can address some of these problems through better management. If you have too many people involved in approvals, can you remove some? If it takes too long to get an article published, do you need to make a new position that deals with that task only? If there are too many steps involved in some task, how can you streamline it? If you make a real attempt to solve these problems with what you have at your disposal today and find that the problems still exist, then you may need a CMS.

Consider again your organisation's readiness. You may need to address problems with the way you use technology, your publication process, or your organisation's commitment to content before you can really address the nitty-gritty of how a CMS might help.

Conclusion

Only you and your organisation can determine whether or not you need a CMS, although there are consultants available to help you with that process. A consultant is likely to walk you through the steps outlined in this article. You need to understand your content, the people that work on it, the way they work on it, where the problems are, and what your organisation is ready for. Finally, you need to have realistic expectations about what a CMS can do. It's not going to solve your problems; it's going to provide a mechanism for you to solve your problems. If you can solve your problems without a CMS, then avoid all the hassle and just solve those problems. If you can't, then by all means, look into getting a CMS.

For more on CMS see the articles What does a Content Management System Do?.