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With the multitude of CMS solutions that now exist on the market, it is imperative that you choose your solution very wisely. The wrong product to manage an inappropriate form of content WILL have significant negative consequences for your organisation. Equally, the purchase of a niche product that only manages ONE type of content, could leave you stranded when you come to extend the types of content you wish to manage.

Know the types of content you wish to manage.
If you approach the CMS market and simply ask for a 'content management system', then the types of CMS solution that you are offered WILL overwhelm you. If you are not able to specify to the vendor the type of content and the manner in which you wish to manage it - then you should not be surprised if the vendor simply interprets how to use their product to manage your content. Every CMS solution that started out its development life, targeting the management of a particular type of content, can be 'stretched' to provide grey areas of functionality when it comes to managing another type of content. The more specific you can be in terms of your requirements, the less likely you are to be 'bamboozled' by what the vendor would like to sell to you.

Example: An intranet is one of the key business tools that exists within most organisations - yet the CMS solutions to manage an intranet are varied both in terms of the single options and also the combination of content management options.

For some organisations, the intranet could be 'web focused' and require a tool that allows non-technical staff to create web pages - which would suggest the use of a web content management system. For another organisation, the intranet could have more of a document focus, with authors using tools like MS-Office to create content at the document level. This would suggest the use of a Document Management System. Yet another organisation might decide that they have a document focus, but they would like the document content to be displayed as a combination of web pages and native documents, which would suggest the combination of a web content management system with a document management system, or a document management system combined with a document publishing tool. If any of the above organisations decided that they wished to personalise the intranet, then further CMS tools such as 'portals' could be used in combination with the above to display content.

The above example should hopefully serve to demonstrate that the request for a solution to content manage an intranet, could lead to a whole host of different solutions and options. Only if YOU know the type and manner in which you wish to manage your content will you be able to select the CMS solutions that are appropriate to your needs.

Think about tomorrow !

When the CMS market was more fragmented and the business unit within an organisation realised they had a requirement to manage a type of content (or was sold a vision to manage content in a different way), the selection of a CMS was usually done in a 'vacuum', with no consideration to the impact that the chosen CMS would have on other business units within the same organisation. In some ways selecting a product in this environment was much easier. The formula for the purchase of a CMS being something along the lines of business unit has e.g. a website - business unit wants to be able to create web pages without needing IT - business unit buys a web content management system.

With the maturing of the CMS market and that realisation within many organisations, that content increasingly needs to be viewed not at a business unit level but at an 'enterprise' level, then increasingly organisations are understanding that a solution that manages or provides an answer to only one type of content manipulation, is not going to enable the organisation to scale to future requirements.

For example, the purchase of a Web Content Management System that only serves web pages - which is relatively inexpensive - turns into a nightmare scenario, if after two years it needs to be replaced because it a) offers no alternative forms of content management to allow the organisation to scale its requirements and/or b) offers no integration with other types of content management solutions that would make up the product shortfall.

Many organisations make the mistake when purchasing a type of content management solution of only looking at today's requirements and purchasing the cheapest solution to meet those needs - often forgetting that post implementation there is a high likelihood that a) their usage and requirements will increase at a quicker rate than the development path of the cheaper solution and/or b) the more efficient management of content in one business area - together with the associated return (profit) on investment are likely to lead to internal requirements to manage other types of content in a similar manner.

If a product cannot demonstrate that it is able to scale with the business needs of your organisation - then all you will have succeeded in doing is replacing your internal content management bottlenecks - with an externally controlled bottleneck - namely the vendors development path (or lack of it)....