The Classification and Evaluation of Content Management Systems

Evaluation of the CMS


Here are a few criteria to evaluate the CMS on:

· Content Creation – the CMS must provide a conducive environment for content creation. It must allow multi-user authoring, content re-use, Meta data creation and linking. It should also allow for removal and archiving of content.


· Content Management – the most important part of a CMS is its central repository, which is supported by a range of tools for manipulating and managing content. Some key requirements here are version control and archiving, intelligent and flexible workflow models, integrated audit trails, and flexibility for integration into existing business systems. It should also enable the production of an extensive range of reports, for both users and administrators.


· Publishing – the CMS should have flexible and expandable style sheets, templates and support for multiple formats.


· Personalization – the CMS must allow personalization, enabling users to work within their comfort zones.


· Analytics tools – a good CMS must allow for comprehensive usage statistics to be gathered, including most popular pages, daily usage, and search engine usage. This allows you to track your site and its usability.


· Presentation – The CMS must allow for customization to present data in the required format.

It is easy to say that ‘a good CMS must be usable, easy to learn, efficient, adhere to standards put down by the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), and offer cross browser support.’ But the reality is that few systems will match all of this: you will simply have to find the best available combination of these attributes.

The right CMS must also be supported by documentation for users, administrators and developers; it must provide training materials for your users and have a maintenance agreement. In the case of purchased CMS applications, make sure you have a warranty. Whichever CMS model you eventually settle for, it is also useful to ask the vendor for reference sites where the application is successfully running.


Know Your ROI


Enough has been said about the importance of ROI, so we will simply provide a sample of an ROI calculator that should help you know just where your CMS dollars are doing their best work:

SaaS: Leading the Game?


Gartner pegs SaaS market size to reach $19.3 billion by 2011. Hosted CMS is fast breaking ground as an affordable and feature-rich option. With no hardware to buy or software to install, the subject matter experts within your organization can focus on what they do best – generate content – without worrying about html, formatting, or non-compliance with brand guidelines.

The SaaS option not only saves scarce resources, it also put the onus of installation, maintenance, and upgrades largely on the vendor. You only pay a fixed monthly or quarterly subscription fee. Vendors like CrownPeak offer an intuitive browser-based interface, smart workflow and publishing features, database management, wireless compatibility and more. With lifelong Active Support thrown in, it is easy to see the advantages of such a CMS model.


For more info: http://www.crownpeak.com


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Paperless Documents

Is paperless document storage a fad? Not if you are one of companies that have done it and realized the benefits of cost savings, disaster prevention and data security.

Paperless document management is nothing new. Since the early 80’s, organization’s across the country have talked of going paperless. But then, just like now, the cost of performing this correctly has proven prohibitive, especially to smaller companies without the staff or financial means to do so. However, Future Filing, LLC has bucked this trend by providing companies with an affordable paperless document management solution to achieve an operational advantage over the competition.

Future Filing™ is a paperless office system that is jammed packed with features, is easy to use and very affordable. From its data security, activity tracking, and file searching, Future Filing has the flexibility of integrating within your processes while eliminating inefficiencies resulting from a paper based operation.

So what separates Future Filing™ from the other paperless documentation systems currently available? The answer is simple. Future Filing™ offers an array of features for one low affordable price. Whether you need the ability to quickly locate document using the Quick Document Searching (QDS), route files with the integrated workflow, or access information remotely, you get these and much more for one price regardless of the number of users within your organization. Unlike the other document management systems that charge extra for additional features and users, Future Filing’s paperless office solutions pricing model does not “nickel and dime” your organization to realize the various benefits of top features.

To learn more on how you can convert your company’s paper documents into paperless documents, visit www.FutureFiling.com


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Click2Scan: Specialists In Document Management

So why not pass the buck to a company that spends its entire time concentrating on the one and only technology field of document scanning and digitising hard copy information.

 

Click2Scan specialists in document scanning have the whole package in terms of focusing on this important area of business, and offer their clients expert advice and opinion, also provide support and backup every step of the way.  Services include, hardware and software sales, document management software, document scanning services, document scanner hire, photo scanning, slide and negative scanning.

 

Click2Scan can help a business to eliminate nearly all paper from those bulging filing cabinets, by scanning documents and converting them to PDF files, and using optical character recognition (OCR) software, to digitize copies of document text, thus making them searchable, easy to back up and accessible from just about anywhere.

 

The online store will give you in depth information of all the service on offer, encompassing archiving of documents, Click2Scan will collect a companies files, scan them to their requirements and return electronic images with the originals being securely shredded, or for document management which is a sophisticated way of finding information faster, keeping all information in one place, and of course its easy to search for specific documents, Click2Scan work with a great solution called File Director.

 

Click2Scan are probably the UKs largest photo scanning company, and scan photos for clients who want their old photos converted to digital images, also offer a more tailored service for businesses who may want old product or marketing literature converted.

 

A spokesman for Click2Scan said “because we use scanners with feeders for the bulk of photo scanning this allows us to scan photos comparatively quickly, and we guarantee you will be happy with our service and the results, or we will re-scan any photos for you, and we are confident to offer this guarantee because of our very high standards, all photos are scanned until perfect”.

 

With offices in London and Wiltshire it doesn’t matter where you are in the UK, Click2Scan are able to assist, and their portfolio of clients is very impressive such as Police, NHS, Local Government and commercial businesses no matter how small.

 

Click2Scan have the expertise and technology in place to take on all scanning and document management processes, whatever it is, scanning data, microfilm scanning and have many more strings to their proverbial bow, so why not pass the buck, let Click2Scan handle all your document scanning and digitising hard copy information, after all this is a very important area of business.

 

For further information visit:  www.click2scan.co.uk

 

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CRM software packages automating your customer relationship management

Understanding customer’s needs and behaviour is pivotal as far as survival and growth of any business is considered. Every business thrives on its loyal customers. Creating a loyal customer base and maintaining it are not handy. You need to have a deep insight regarding what customers’ need, when they need more and how they can be retained. All these problems get solved with an effective customer relationship management. Managing customer relationship is more about a process or methodology to capture customer behaviour, track data related to their expectations and enabling business operation to match to it.

Customer relationship management helps your business and human resource to have a brighter picture regarding the demand of target audience. CRM software packages are available in market to streamline your relationship with customers. CRM software packages can be for sales force automation, online CRM and customer service. Sales force automation CRM software packages can be for contact management and lead management. Similarly, online CRM is of two types. Self service CRM packages help you to have a faster web-based customer interaction, automation of mails, call logs, website analytics and promotional campaign management. For better efficiency, you can also install online survey management software that enables you to understand customer preferences in a better manner by automating electronic surveys, polls and questionnaires.

Call centre and help desk software are the effective CRM packages for better customer service. Web space is flooded with scores of CRM software packages. You need to choose the right one that matches to needs and your budget.

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Web Content Management System, The Good Of Its Capabilities

A CMS or Content Management System is a computer application used to manage work flow needed to collaboratively create, edit, review, index, search, publish and archive various kinds of digital media and electronic text. There are currently 5 types of CMS’ used today. These are: Enterprise CMS (ECMS) Web CMS (WCMS) Document management system (DMS) Mobile CMS Component CMS What I’m going to discuss today is about the Web Content Management System or WCMS. Considered as the second most used type of CMS, WCMS or Web CMS is used to manage and control a large, dynamic collection of Web material (HTML documents and their associated images). A WCMS facilitates content creation, content control, editing, and many essential Web maintenance functions. The Good According to some Web design Philippines specialists, the good of WCMS is that it usually provides authoring (and other) tools designed to allow users with little or no knowledge of programming languages or markup languages to create and manage content with relative ease of use. Most systems use a database to store content, metadata, and/or artifacts that might be needed by the system. Content is frequently, but not universally, stored as XML, to facilitate reuse and enable flexible presentation options. Most WCMS also use some form of server side caching which enables a boost of performance. This works best when the WCMS is not intended to be changed often but visits happen on a regular basis. Unlike Web-site builders like Microsoft FrontPage or Adobe Dreamweaver, a WCMS allows non-technical users to make changes to an existing website with little or no training. A WCMS typically requires an experienced coder to set up and add features, but is primarily a Web-site maintenance tool for non-technical administrators. So what other capabilities that WCMS makes good? WCMS Capabilities Some Web design Philippines consultants have stated that WCMS provides the following key features: Automated templates – Create standard output templates (usually HTML and XML) that can be automatically applied to new and existing content, allowing the appearance of all content to be changed from one central place. Easily editable content – Once content is separated from the visual presentation of a site, it usually becomes much easier and quicker to edit and manipulate. Most WCMS software includes WYSIWYG editing tools allowing non-technical individuals to create and edit content. Scalable feature sets – Most WCMS software includes plug-ins or modules that can be easily installed to extend an existing site’s functionality. Web standards upgrades – Active WCMS software usually receives regular updates that include new feature sets and keep the system up to current web standards. Workflow management – Workflow is the process of creating cycles of sequential and parallel tasks that must be accomplished in the CMS. For example, a content creator can submit a story, but it is not published until the copy editor cleans it up and the editor-in-chief approves it. Delegation - Some CMS software allows for various user groups to have limited privileges over specific content on the website, spreading out the responsibility of content management. Document management – CMS software may provide a means of managing the life cycle of a document from initial creation time, through revisions, publication, archive, and document destruction. Content virtualization – CMS software may provide a means of allowing each user to work within a virtual copy of the entire Web site, document set, and/or code base. This enables changes to multiple interdependent resources to be viewed and/or executed in-context prior to submission. Types of WCMS There are three major types of WCMS: offline processing, online processing, and hybrid systems. According to Web design Philippines consultants, these terms describe the deployment pattern for the WCMS in terms of when presentation templates are applied to render Web pages from structured content. Offline Processing These systems pre-process all content, applying templates before publication to generate Web pages. Vignette CMS and Bricolage are examples of this type of system. Since pre-processing systems do not require a server to apply the templates at request time, they may also exist purely as design-time tools; Adobe Contribute is an example of this approach. Online Processing These systems apply templates on-demand. HTML may be generated when a user visits the page, or pulled from a cache. Hosted CMSs are provided by such SaaS developers as AspireCMS, Bravenet, UcoZ, Webs and Crownpeak. Some of the better known open source systems that produce pages on demand include Redaxscript, Concrete5, Mambo, Joomla!, Drupal, TYPO3, Zikula and Plone, etc. Hybrid Systems

Some systems combine the offline and online approaches. Some systems write out executable code (e.g. JSP, ASP, PHP, ColdFusion, or Perl pages) rather than just static HTML, so that the CMS itself does not need to be deployed on every Web server. Other hybrids, such as Blosxom, are capable of operating in either an online or offline mode.Visit http://www.myoptimind.com for more info.

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