So what is a Content Management System?

The goal of a CMS is to provide an easy way to create and publish content to the web. Your small business or corporate entity can streamline its business process using a CMS and save a lot of money – if you understand what a good content management system (CMS) is and how it can help your business.

Take my friend John for example. John has a very large team in one of those internet marketing businesses.

• Each member of his team has a marketing website where people go to learn about the business and opt in to receive more information.
• There is also a "back office" website where team members can track their business transactions, check email, and receive information from the parent company.
• Of course new team members have to be trained, so there is a training website.
• Team communication is facilitated by a message board that is hosted by a company specializing in these things.
• And finally there are various websites created for training leaders and disseminating information.

Each of these websites requires the team member to login using different login user ids and passwords…a lot to remember! Members of the team have also started creating their own blogs to grow their piece of the business. John's problem is that he can't afford to hire someone full time to keep each site updated and he doesn't have the time or knowledge to do it himself - so the sites look just the way that they did when John got started back in 2003. John has heard of the acronym CMS, but doesn't know that it’s the solution to his problem!

How Can A CMS Help John?
Point Dynamics CMS is easy to use, feature-rich, fast to deploy and affordable. This means that if John were to implement Point Dynamics CMS, he would be able to centralize his content and his websites and save money on hosting, web programming, and he could update his sites to current Web 2.0 standards. His team members would have just one user name and password to remember, and if someone leaves the team he can remove their access to everything with one keystroke. Since Point Dynamics CMS utilizes role-based security, John can set access to different parts of the site based on the role that a team member is assigned to. For example, his leaders will be the only ones who can access the leaders training section.

Point Dynamics CMS' WYSIWG editors would allow John to update or change the look of websites, even with his limited knowledge of web programming, Html, and CSS. With a good CMS you don't need to know any of that technical stuff; built in components allow you to place content on web pages where you want them (forms, RSS news, blog feeds, images, etc.). John can easily create a picture gallery of overachieving team members (with descriptions of their achievements) and add or delete their photos on demand. John can also offset his costs by offering his team marketing sites and blogs which can be secured by user and masked with their own domain name.

But what if you need Document Management?
Remember John's training website? Well, John has a lot of Word, Excel, and PDF documents that his team needs to download. He currently stores these documents on several different servers and that's created an entirely different nightmare for him. Luckily, Point Dynamics CMS is a content management system that includes powerful document management features. Documents can be managed from the desktop or via the web browser and also utilize role based security. So for example, John can ensure that only his leaders have access to leader training documents.