The Business Case for a Web Content Management System

Clearly, a CMS is necessary to address these issues. The projected benefits of CMS implementation are easy to see – but will the application you finally implement deliver on those promises? Will it adapt and mold itself to your organization, and conform to your unique business environment? And will it do all these things at the right price point – not just in terms of purchase, but it terms of long-term maintenance?
These questions underline the importance of following the right process in choosing a CMS.
The Right Process: Choosing the Appropriate Solution
Requirements Analysis
Like any other software project, implementing a CMS requires a detailed requirement analysis of the existing system. Evaluate your organization’s needs first, and then map them to choose the right CMS. Without this clear vision of business goals, CMS implementations can overshoot budgets, and in the long run, fail to deliver returns that justify the investment.
Understanding the content landscape
A CMS cannot be chosen with only technology in mind; if you have difficulties with ensuring consistent content quality, even the most advanced CMS cannot improve the situation. In this case the need for flexible workflow processes in place to require approval and easy editing of content becomes very important.
Involving all key stakeholders
The success of a CMS depends largely on adoption by the end-user community. Non-technical subject matter experts (SMEs) must be able to easily and intuitively use the system to achieve the exact presentation of content they want. Feedback from content owners will also help in building and customizing the system. Involving these stakeholders right from the outset also reduces reluctance to use the new system.
Understanding the services aspect
Your CMS needs to be as flexible as your organization, accommodating everything from simple template changes to an entire site redesign. Some level of service will be required - be it from your internal IT department, your Web agency, or your software vendor.
On top of ongoing support and management, you also need basic application and infrastructure support specifically for installed, open source or custom built software. This requires the efforts of a dedicated team,responsible for managing hardware, software, and the network. Without this dedicated team, small businesses often outsource these ‘services’ to a third party vendor, adding to incrementally to ongoing maintenance and support costs.
The right metrics
Metrics allow for a precise way to define what a content management project will accomplish. For effectiveness, metrics should be (wherever possible) quantitative rather than qualitative. For example, instead of having a broad metric such as ‘Achieve significant reduction in IT costs’, organizations could instead have defined metrics such as ‘Achieve 20% reduction in IT costs in the first year’. Also be aware that just because you can measure something doesn’t necessarily mean you should measure it. Choose what is most important to your business objectives and stick with those. As your site evolves, so will your metrics criteria.