Key criteria for choosing a collaborative CMS

23 Jul 2020 5 min read

What criteria should be used when choosing a collaborative content management software?

The French market for content management software (CMS) and related services is expected to reach nearly €1.5 billion in 2020 according to MARKESS by exægis 1. The dynamics around services (development, configuration, support...) are driven by the weight of open source platforms on this market. It is also driven by the growth in demand for SaaS/Cloud solutions, whose corresponding market is expected to grow by +22% between 2018 and 2020. However, in recent years, expectations around these solutions have changed significantly. These must now be able to address a wide variety of uses: mobile, remote (e. g. remote working, the inclusion of external partners), collaborative, working with several people around the same content, automation, and intelligent personalization features.

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Regardless of the profile of companies, the trend is to deploy solutions to optimize the management of structured and unstructured content. Combined with collaborative functionalities, these solutions make it possible not only to create, share, enrich, validate, distribute and save content, but also to manage knowledge between users across the company and, in some cases, outside the company. "By 2015, we had noticed a growing demand for unified solutions that would allow us to better process all or part of the documentary processes and adopt a more transversal approach, thus breaking down some of the silos created by the juxtaposition of different solutions over time," states Hélène Mouiche, Senior Analyst at MARKESS by exægis.

But if 64% of the decision-makers surveyed by MARKESS by exægis consider content management solutions (CMS) effective, particularly in improving customer processes, then how do you choose such a platform?

Several criteria should be taken into account:

  • Used by more or less experienced user profiles, the solution must be ergonomic and intuitive. It should also have a "responsive design" to adapt to all media (computers, tablets, smartphones) and offer the possibility for several users to connect simultaneously from anywhere (within the company or remotely).
  • Whenever there are internal revision, authorization, or validation processes, the solution should include workflows to automatically manage access rights or governance rules when creating and publishing content (drafts, sharing, annotations, comments, approvals, uploading...). In order to optimize the management of their document processes, more than 40% of decision-makers also highlight the need for indexing, timestamping, search engine, rule management, and intelligent routing1 functionalities.
  • It is essential to validate the level of security of the solution and whether it is compatible with the company's information system. Beyond that, it is a question of ensuring the backup and archiving of content (disaster recovery procedures, deduplication of backups, compliance of content hosting with current legislation, etc.).
  • By integrating indicators to measure page traffic, the time spent, and user profiles, you can perform targeted actions that are beneficial to the company's business.

Ultimately, there are various options to choose from for both deployment and usage: on-premise mode or SaaS mode or hosting on an IaaS platform, which eliminates the need to deploy and use the associated hosting infrastructure. However, subscribing to a solution from a specialized publisher allows you to be advised and supported in the deployment of the solution, to delegate maintenance, updates and to entrust the publisher with the enrichment of the solution with new functionalities. This choice allows the company to evolve the solution over time, at its own pace, and according to its needs.  


1. Source MARKESS by exægis - Program "Digitalization of Documents and Business Processes" - www.markess.com (CMS = Content Management Software; ECM = Enterprise Content Management - GED = Electronic Document Management)

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