Choosing the right Content Management System (CMS) for your enterprise takes careful consideration. It can also be extremely time-consuming to evaluate CMS platforms, analyze their features and determine the appropriate platform. Fortunately, knowing what features to look for to support your business goals makes the process much easier.
Understanding the intricacies of enterprise CMS development is crucial for selecting the right system. Additionally, evaluating the features of enterprise content management can guide you to the best enterprise CMS platforms for your needs.
This guide will provide you with a complete picture of the top features of enterprise CMS software in 2024, so you can make the best and most informed decision when selecting a CMS platform for your organization.
What is Enterprise Content Management?
Enterprise content management (ECM) is a set of processes, tools, and strategies that allow organizations to collect, manage, and organize content for use by a target audience, like executives or customers. ECM is more than just a single strategy or process–instead, it is a combination of methods used to manage content.
Exploring the best CMS for enterprise websites involves considering enterprise content management solutions that offer scalability and integration capabilities, crucial for large-scale operations.
- Saving time that would be spent on managing and organizing content manually
- Adding structure to your data and simplifying the organization of documents
- Simplifying the collaboration process and logging every step for easy tracking
- Boosting efficiency and increases productivity by automating workflows and increasing the ease of access to information for employees
- Improving customer satisfaction by streamlining employee management of information and analytics
The concept of enterprise content management is a broad umbrella and may look different for various businesses depending on their specific needs and goals. To appropriately implement enterprise content management, you need enterprise CMS software that supports your operations. Organizations often pick and choose applications and features that best support their unique goals, allowing for optimized efficiency in their business functions.
Enterprise Content Management Systems Key Features for 2024
An effective ECM strategy is important, but your ability to implement it is only as strong as the tools you use. When planning a process that works for your enterprise, it helps to have a complete picture of the available capabilities and features so you can determine which may benefit your business the most. There are 10 key features that set the best enterprise content management systems apart.
For businesses looking to stay ahead, incorporating enterprise CMS systems with the latest enterprise content management system features is essential. These systems should align with your business strategies, offering CMS for enterprise solutions that drive growth and efficiency.
1. Dynamic Publishing Tools and Content Creation
Not everyone in your organization will know programming languages like HTML or CSS. An enterprise CMS platform that doesn’t allow non-technical users to create, edit and format content will slow down development processes and publication workflow.
Choosing a CMS that simplifies content management for all users is a hallmark of the best enterprise CMS platforms.
2. Trusted Cyber Security
When choosing an enterprise CMS platform, security is sometimes overlooked. The upward trend of cyber-attacks worldwide makes it imperative to have security features in place to protect your enterprise’s proprietary technologies, customer data and other sensitive information.
This is why enterprise web CMS solutions focus on robust cybersecurity features to safeguard your online presence.
3. Streamlined Workflows and Reporting
With features to easily manage your content team and oversee entire workflows, enterprise CMS software keeps content production moving forward. One of the best content management system examples is Optimizely Approval Workflow, which allows you to keep track of your content through the following features:
- Manage your entire content team with changing roles and approval authority
- Set up flexible sequences into your processes and systems to optimize workflows
- Save time by providing stakeholders with previews and approval links
- Create and approve multilingual content and multi-site experiences
- Easily add a task or a reviewer to projects as the need arises with flexible sequencing
Effective workflow management is a critical aspect of enterprise content management systems, ensuring that content moves seamlessly through various stages of creation and approval.
4. Scalability and Adaptability
Every enterprise looks to grow fast, which means your enterprise CMS platform needs to grow with your organization. One of the main benefits of enterprise CMS platforms is the ability to integrate with a vast number of APIs.
The adaptability and scalability of an enterprise CMS are paramount, allowing for seamless integration with existing systems and accommodating future growth.
5. High-Speed Performance
Slow loading times, blurred visuals, or underperformance across different can make your user bounce rate skyrocket, therefore harming your brand. The cloud-based hosting capabilities of enterprise CMS platforms ensure your content operates at high speeds.
For example, Optimizely’s Content Cloud can handle dramatic traffic increases, speed up site processes and take the worry of site crashes off your shoulders.
6. Commerce Integration
Businesses and customers are interacting online more than ever before. Once at the forefront of commerce, human interaction has been transformed into interactions, leading to the explosion of ecommerce.
This shift has made enterprises rethink their entire digital strategies to focus on transparency and personalization.
Companies need new ways to manage more extensive inventories and promote their products with creative digital content.
Enterprise CMS platforms provide multiple features that benefit both the consumer and company to create a revolutionary buying experience. For example, benefits for B2C companies include:
B2C
- Seamless customer journey
- Trusted payment systems
- Personalize promotional targeting
- Simple navigation UI/UX
- Enhanced product visibility
Meanwhile, benefits for B2B companies include:
B2B
- Automated quotations
- Simplified and personalized pricing
- Catalog management
- Enhanced inventory management
- Product configuration
Of course, this list isn’t exhaustive. To name every commerce integration offered by enterprise CMS software would be a whole article in itself. But, the main point is that enterprise CMS software can positively impact all aspects of your commerce operations.
7. Built-in SEO Tools
SEO continues to be an effective strategy to drive organic traffic to websites. Companies that fail to invest in SEO could fall behind their competitors in search rankings and, therefore, in obtaining customer leads.
With Google changing its search algorithms on a routine basis, it’s crucial to stay updated on the current SEO trends and implement them into your content. Enterprise CMS platforms carry many features to optimize your on-page ranking factors.
For example, Drupal SEO Essentials provides users with a simple way to automate the installation and configuration of Drupal SEO modules.
Tools like these give companies an easy way to optimize their SEO efforts. Since SEO can be a compounding digital marketing tactic, you’ll find these features in every enterprise CMS platform.
8. In-Depth Analytics
Understanding how your content performs helps you improve your customer’s digital experience.
Without integrated analytics or proprietary tracking software, customers' behavior can change and leave you in the dark when you begin planning your next campaigns.
Enterprise CMS software provides you with integration capabilities for Google Analytics or equips you with other proprietary tools to collect and analyze consumer behaviors
This can help your company maintain personal relationships with your customers and deliver relevant content at different stages of their journey.
For example, Optimizely provides users with the Intelligence Cloud, a multifaceted analytical service integrated into its enterprise CMS platform. Some of the benefits of Intelligence Cloud include the ability to:
- Predict customer behaviors with machine learning to help set future goals
- Use one-click integrations to perform tests on a visualized data model
- Transform data into customer profiles and create an engaging communication experience
Many other platforms offer similar capabilities. In your search for the right CMS, you should consider which data and information is most useful to your operations to find the right analytical tools and integrations.
9. Collaboration Tools
In many organizations, multiple people have a role in producing content. Without collaboration tools, this can get messy quickly. The best enterprise CMS software makes organization and collaboration easy, supporting your workflow management with reporting tools and dashboards that help you track progress and deadlines.
Effective systems will also track the important details surrounding your content, like authoring information, editing history, and publishing approval. These features are especially useful when you make regular edits and updates to your content, as well as for helping you meet regulatory compliance.
At the same time, these systems allow you to control who can access content and handle administrative tasks by setting user permissions through customizable user administration. This moderation helps reduce the risk of mistakes and ensures high-quality content.
10. Advanced Search Capabilities
The driving force behind an ECM concept is to make content more accessible to members of an enterprise. With advanced search capabilities, software only improves the accessibility of information for users. Advanced search includes the ability to perform a full-text search, filter the results and find specific pieces of information.
When this search capability carries over to your customer-facing site, customers are better able to find the specific products or information they are looking for. A site that makes information easier for customers to find also drives more conversions.
Level Up Your Enterprise CMS Continue to Evolve
With companies needing additional capabilities in the digital world, developers of enterprise CMS Platforms will continue to innovate. There is no limit to what companies can accomplish with a high-level enterprise CMS platform. As enterprise content management systems continue to evolve, you should too.
A completely integrated system that can handle virtually all your technical requirements can cut costs, increase organizational efficiency and help you surpass the competition. Learn more about the benefits of integrating an effective enterprise CMS into your daily operations from Guidance. Our team of developers is here to connect you with the best platforms on the market and support you in building an enterprise CMS integration to advance your business goals. Contact us today.
