To create a compelling Web experience for prospects, customers, and partners, numerous and diverse sources must be brought together under one roof. Content-management systems help companies leverage all of their valuable intellectual property—from documents to audio and video, to Flash presentations and more—to present a vibrant Web presence.
Typically, the many resources involved are held in such diverse places as databases, file-system content and application code, legacy systems, and many other places. Many companies have found that it's a Herculean task to assemble and integrate them—which is why they've realized they need a solid infrastructure for cataloging, consolidating and retrieving their corporate data. Content-management systems provide an organizational database that does just that. They help organizations quickly move their businesses to the various different venues, especially the Web.
One of the key benefits of content-management systems is the ease they provide in web publishing. It's simply more efficient for a company to let all of its content contributors and subject-matter experts post their contributions directly to the firm's Web properties. However, that can be easier said than done. Complex mark-up languages, multiple operating systems, a dizzying variety of formats, and even international language barriers all can make such a task tiresome and frustrating. That's why companies are looking for a way to let their employees self-publish content without enduring extensive training in multiple, complex software platforms. The answer is an open, scalable content infrastructure that will:
Integrate with various technologies and solutions; and Keep the company's Web properties at the vanguard of technology. In short, before companies can be successful in this new approach to Web-based business, they must implement the right foundation: Content infrastructure.