For years now, businesses have understood the importance of search engines and how SEO can drive prospects to their websites. But with websites having a shelf life of one to two years, businesses often perform redesigns. Along with redesigns come new web development vendors and new Content Management Systems.

The need to update websites faster to keep content fresh has been ever growing. Ever since the first business owner wanted their Web designer to update their website faster, content management systems have played an important role on the Web. Why does this matter to you? How do you know if your company is ready?
In this article, we will look at how to tell if your organization needs a content management system. We will also give you information on the abilities of content management systems to help you better understand what they can do. While content management systems may seem complex, their entire purpose is to streamline your workflow and make your life easier.

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Content Management Systems (CMS) automate the process of creating, publishing, and updating web site content. They make maintaining and updating the content of a web site easier, giving the content contributors, not just the web team, the means with which to manage their own content. They are usually made up of a front-end editor for inputting content, a back-end system for storing the content, and a template mechanism to get the content onto the web site.

This sample is taken from Chapter 1: "Foundations of CMS" of the glasshaus title "Content Management Systems"

Enterprise Content Management is the technologies, tools, and methods used to capture, manage, store, preserve, and deliver content across an enterprise. At the most basic level, ECM tools and strategies allow the management of an organization's unstructured information, wherever that information exists. Numerous terms are used, depending on whom you're talking to, nearly interchangeably with ECM-integrated document management, digital asset management, integrated document and content management, and total content management to name a few. Regardless of the precise terminology, ECM capabilities manage traditional content types (images, office documents, graphics, drawings, and print streams) as well as the new electronic objects (Web pages and content, email, video, and rich media assets) throughout the lifecycle of that content.

As with any technology, the most important thing isn't how you define it or categorize it, but successfully applying the technology to your particular business processes. The technologies included in this poster will enable you to manage your content at the various stages of that content's lifecycle. Implementing all of these technologies together will allow you to manage content throughout its complete lifecycle-from creation to either long-term preservation or deletion.

Several people have asked for more information about certain aspects of the Enterprise Information Architecture in Context diagram (PDF). In particular, they have asked about definitions for the various kinds of content described in the diagram: content, documents, and records. Here are working definitions for those three kinds of information, and some other contextual definitions...

There is considerable confusion in the market between document management systems (DMS) and content management systems (CMS). This has not been helped by the vendors, who are keen to market their products as widely as possible.

These two types of systems are very different, and serve complementary needs. While there is an ongoing move to merge the two together (a positive step), it is important to understand when each system is appropriate.

If your organization is planning a move to content management, it’s likely you’ll need to obtain training from experts who understand the challenges content management projects introduce. Because content management is a paradigm shift that requires the creation of new roles, modifications to existing roles, and the development of new skill sets, it’s best to identify -- up-front -- what new knowledge your staff will need to succeed. Organizations that have failed to build a formal training component into their content management strategy often find themselves in the unenviable position of trying to learn-as-they-go. This on-the-fly learning approach is costly and often opens the organization to a trial-and-error learning curve that damages the return on investment made possible by a properly planned and implemented content management strategy.