Is It Time For a Content Management System

So now you have decided to take your company in the direction of social media.  Now what?  Organizations must find a way to effectively manage the content explosion happening in today’s industry.    Below is a list of questions that may face your organization today with advent of unstructured content explosion.

1. Do you have a platform to administer the this new functionality
2. Do you have storage capacity
3. Do you capture any of the information generated now both internal and external
4. Do you have  trouble finding the correct documents you need now
5. Are things misfiled and not in a logical order by customer, by topic, etc.
6. What degree will you allow from customer interaction and internally
7. What security precautions must be taken
8. Will there extra hosting charges from your ISP
9. What integration is required from your other systems
10. Will it be easy to use
11. Are you loosing valuable IP
12. Are you capturing fleeting knowledge from older workers
13. How much will this cost
14. Cloud or on-premises
15. Do you need a social media policy for employees to govern use and regulations
16. Will this be subject to government regulations, can this system help manage compliance
17. Do you have a social media strategy or will you hope for the best when you begin
18. How much administration will this add to my IT

These are some basic questions that will have to be answered before you start to even evaluate which social media strategy you pursue. If you answered yes to more than one of these questions it may be time to evaluate and select a CMS system.

As far customer interaction is concerned, how have you decided to engage them?  New content will be created from internal and external sources including collaboration from within and external partners.    The importance of intellectual property in a knowledge based society becomes increasingly important acting as a thought leadership, innovation and differentiating factors from your competitors.   The explosion of content be it written or multimedia type can cripple an organization’s ability to stay organized, capture and manage the content created.  It can easily get to the point where the organization is not aware of the information it has and cannot harness the power of the newly created content.

Enter a content management system. This system can not only manage the information but can harness the power of the newly created unstructured data/content and be able to file, store and retrieve effectively the data created.   Even everyday tasks such as workflows can be defined and executed with in the CMS.   The CMS may also be  extended to manage the data and web site content thus simplifying things a little further for the organization.  In precedents being set today by judges ordering old email correspondence it has become extremely important for an organization to be able to archive and retrieve old email and content information.  This can make the difference to retain the rights of your innovation or whether the rights or patents generated can be granted to your competitors.

The media created such as documents, emails, multimedia content ca contain valuable insights, thought leadership and should stored and easily retrievable.  Especially in the cases of customer interactions where you may need a repeatable process to send out customer information, sign up information gathered and set a follow up date is required.  The right CMS can streamline publishing processes, boost infrastructure architecture, allow no technical users to edit and create their own easily, metadata can easily be tagged and retrieved and even provide a knowledge base for FAQ about your organization and can even be used to create, store and disseminate training material.  Another useful application of a CMS is multiple collaboration and globalization.  If your organization has several worldwide locations collaboration can be simplified and can be monitored as to who creates what content and how often can prove very valuable as security can easily be administered by content, by group and/or user.

Another important aspect of capturing this content is loss of knowledge transfer.  As older workers retire their valuable experience is often lost and not extended or transferred to the organization and its employees.  This can be a valuable and easy way to perpetuate knowledge transfer and make sure your organization hangs onto its IP and innovations.  When the older employees retire you can carry on their knowledge by having their tricks and techniques replicated.

Discussed are a few reasons why CMS becomes important to organizations.  Is it time for your organization to adopt a Content management system?  If your organization faces any of the problems listed it may be time to evaluate a CMS for efficiency sakes and protect your valuable IP now.