I was reading an article from James Robertson at Step Two Designs on what are the goals of a CMS. He discusses the importance of having clear business goals and provides some examples. I’ve grouped them into 3 key themes:
- Improve revenue and customer satisfaction
- Reduce costs and increase productivity
- Reduce Business Risk
Thes are presented below.
Improve Revenue and Customer Satisfaction
Support sales
E-commerce sales are growing steadily, and the CMS should provide further sales material to enhance the sales impact of the website. It should also complement current e-commerce infrastructure.
Support marketing
Websites have become a key marketing channel for businesses. The CMS should facilitate the delivery of marketing material, as well as supporting current brands and corporate identity.
Improve customer experience
The CMS should enhance the ability to provide a full-featured, rich environment for website visitors. This will include enhancements to the quality of the site, and the ease of use.
Improve business responsiveness
The CMS should support the development of new products and services, as well as other changes in corporate direction. This is achieved by providing a rapid and efficient mechanism to update internal corporate information and resources.
Increase website audience
The CMS should allow a wide audience to access the corporate website. All customers of the business will then benefit from the site. (This includes non-English speakers.)
Reduce Costs and increase productivity
Reduce customer support costs
Customer support requirements should be reduced, by providing more accurate and comprehensive information to customers.
Reduce publishing costs
Many business manuals are still produced in paper form. Direct cost savings would be realised by replacing these with online resources.
Reduce website maintenance costs
By replacing the current labour-intensive maintenance activities, the CMS should reduce the need for website administration staff, and other associated costs.
Reduce duplication of information
Duplication of information across business units and platforms increases maintenance costs and error rates. Wherever possible, information should be stored once, and reused multiple times.
Streamline information updates
The current manual process for updating website information is slow and inefficient. This should be streamlined to support rapid and simple updates to information across the site.
Improve publishing process
Ad-hoc publishing processes prevent effective management and tracking. The CMS should improve on this, as well as providing greater transparency and accountability.
Support knowledge discovery
Many staff are now confronted with ‘information overload’. By providing powerful searching, browsing and filtering, the CMS should allow staff to find and track key information.
Improve knowledge sharing
Direct staff communication, and ‘peer-to-peer’ sharing of information are two of the most effective ways of spreading knowledge. The CMS should provide both an environment and the tools to facilitate these processes.
Improve staff efficiency
Staff efficiency can be improved by supporting key business processes with sufficient information. The CMS must aim to provide staff with the information they need, when they need it.
This will translate into direct time savings by avoiding fruitless searches for required information.
Risk Management
Reduce legal exposure
All information presented on the corporate website exposes the business to legal liability. This should be reduced by establishing greater control and accountability over the review and publishing processes.
Capture business knowledge
It is recognised that the loss of key staff reduces the knowledge available within an organisation. The CMS should support the capture of this information in a documented form.
Support website growth
There is a strategic need to substantially increase the amount of information published on corporate websites. The CMS should deliver efficiency and management benefits to support the goal of website growth.
Rory Ford 