There's recently been a lot of discussion and considerable interest in content management systems. Buyers are starting to ask for these solutions from vendors with greater regularity and
buyers are clearly better informed than in past. Still issue that comes up again and again is, how do you know which content management system (CMS) is right for you?Begin with a needs analysis. Define your business goals, prioritise them, and then assess what features or tools are needed to help you reach those goals. At a later point, once pricing research is under way, you can then assess price of features relative to priorities of goals and come up with basis of an intelligible cost-benefit analysis.
Start by examining nature of your site. Is it a portal? A marketing exercise? An e-commerce site? These questions will set outer boundaries for defining type of system you need. A marketing site will demand far less from a system than a portal. Moreover, security, support, and data integrity issues will be dominant concerns for any firm involved in e-commerce.
Consider not only your short term needs but also your long term goals. Many of systems that are in market today are modular. This allows you flexibility to start with only features you need to meet your short term goals, then to expand system as justification (or necessity) develops.
Accordingly, look at modules offered by vendor and make an assessment of whether system will suit your planned future expansion. It is foolish to try to build it all at once as cost will be high and time line extended. It is better to start conservatively with a modular system that you can grow into.
When shopping for systems, it is best to approach vendor with a shopping list of features that you require/desire. Mature systems will offer more modules, but make sure you demo modules you are interested in, as implementations of similar functionalities tend to vary more than you might expect.
While many systems support basic modules, like membership tracking or online polls and surveys, there are other features which are harder to find and which may narrow your choices significantly if required. Key features you should be aware of include: multi-lingual support, archiving and roll back, and syndication. If your site requires one or more of these more advanced functions, you will find number of choices left for your review has dwindled (and prices have crept up, too).
