Many organizations install a CMS, but then struggle to determine if they are getting a return on their investment. Before installing a CMS, develop a plan for how you will measure its success. Take measurements of the time and costs you are spending using your current process. You can use these numbers to compare against the new measurements you take after you install a CMS. The key: Remember to take the benchmark measurements before you change your processes!

Every once in a while, you hear horror stories about failed content management system (CMS) implementations. Organizations invest a lot of time and money into a new CMS, and end up with a big mess. What went wrong? There are a number of things that could derail a CMS strategy—the CMS selection, the planning for the implementation, the amount of effort put into training or the people involved in getting it up and running—to name a few. How can you avoid a failed CMS implementation? Here’s what you can do to ensure a successful CMS implementation:

We talked previously about using intelligent content (content that is described by tags and metadata in a standard format, such as XML) and all the benefits intelligent content can provide. Intelligent content is very flexible, making it searchable and reusable for many different purposes across an enterprise.

Tips for Managing Digital Assets in a Content Management System

How do I find the asset I need?
Does my co-worker have a more appropriate asset sitting on his local drive on his computer?
Is the asset I found the most current version?
How do I make sure no one uses the outdated versions?
Where’s the translated version?

These are some of the issues of managing digital assets for a content set. It can be an overwhelming job, especially if your content set contains lots of graphics, videos, animations and sound clips to illustrate instructions and procedures. While file systems may get you more organized, they don’t help much to actually manage the assets for easy searchability and retrievability.