Building A Business Case For CMS
As with any substantial technology investment, it is likely that you will need to build a robust and detailed business case to make sure that purse strings are sufficiently loosened.
Our recently published CMS Vendor Selection Pack contains a business case template to help make this process a bit easier.
The list of business benefits below can be expanded and tailored, according to their relevance to your business. Your business goals should be as SMART as possible, i.e. specific, measurable, agreed, realistic and time-limited.
Increase sales
Boost in visitor numbers through improved customer acquisition. A better web CMS will help you provide more relevant and better presented content at all stages of the customer journey, and across all devices including desktop PC, tablet and smartphone. This, in turn, will help you gain more registrations and sales, helping to drive increased revenues.
Better search engine optimisation and site search. Modern web content management systems help to improve a company’s search engine visibility through the creation of web-friendly URLs and sitemap xml files. Better SEO will increase your volume at the top of your sales and marketing funnel, and this will, ultimately, feed down into your sales figures, both online and offline. Better site search will also improve your website performance.
Improved conversion rates leading to more transactions. A more user-friendly experience for end users will increase your conversion rates, irrespective of whether you have a transactional website or rely on offline sales assisted by web properties. Greater control in delivering the right content at the right time will have the same effect. Conversion rate optimisation isn’t necessarily about boosting sales. It can apply to a range of micro conversion points that impact on business performance.
Greater volume of content about products and services. The more user-friendly the platform for internal CMS users or a remote workforce, the more time they will have for producing content. If it is easier to publish, and unpublish, then your business will upload more content across a range of formats on to your web properties.
Better organisation and architecture of content. The end user will be the ultimate beneficiary if a more modern CMS makes it easier for you to organise content on your site. If consumers can find the right content, they are more likely to convert into sales.
Reduce costs
Increased automation of processes. Automated processes bring down your costs because less time is spent on fiddly processes and unnecessary stages in the workflow. A modern CMS will automatically show you the status of all content, e.g. draft, approved or published.
No need for time-consuming formatting and uploading procedures (i.e. fewer editors and writers).
As above. Though it is hard to quantify exactly, the morale and productivity of editors and internal users will rise significantly if they have more intuitive software.
Reduced requirement for internal IT resources. The underlying architecture of a CMS means you can carry out maintenance without having to repeat the process on thousands of pages.
Technology that can scale without the need for replatforming. With cloud-based technology, the software will automatically scale to your requirements and update without you having to download new software.
Reduced call centre costs through better service online. A better online experience will empower consumers to find answers to questions and resolve issues online, without resorting to picking up the phone or visiting a store, assuming that is the goal of the exercise.
Improve customer experience and loyalty
A more intuitive customer experience. Companies increasingly understand the link between customer experience and business performance in a world where most organisations don’t want to differentiate only on price. A more intuitive experience on your digital properties will enhance loyalty and improve advocacy of your brand via word of mouth and on social media.
A faster and more reliable website. A website that is fast to respond on both desktop PC and smartphones has long been a hygiene factor for businesses, so it follows that a CMS that doesn’t support this is highly detrimental to your brand.
Consistency of branding across different types of content. A good CMS makes it easier to apply appropriate branding across your digital properties, and also to align digital content with offline marketing collateral.
Improved website layout and design. A modern CMS means that design and content are separate, and you have a much greater degree of flexibility to apply and change website layouts and designs.
Support for customisation and personalisation. Increased potential for customisation is the lifeblood of the modern CMS, with software making it possible for you to tailor the website experience easily for different audience segments based on both implicit and explicit data.
Easier sharing of content on social networks and video-sharing sites. As social media have grown in importance as a source of traffic for many brands, it has followed that social-sharing functionality has gone from being a nice-to-have to being a key requirement for a best-of-breed CMS.
Better measurement and data
More accurate reporting into site usage. CMS users typically need more granularity and accuracy than in years gone by, so accurate reporting is fundamental. Marketers also need dashboards that present information clearly, giving them high-level information at a glance.
Understanding the value of content, for example, performance of individual articles or units. Whatever the sector, marketers and site editors need to be able to understand the extent to which content is helping them to deliver against their business goals. Marketers want to be able to compare the relative performance of different types of content and format.
Integration with digital analytics platform. Marketers need software that can be integrated with their digital analytics technology to ensure that they have a “single version of the truth” in terms of what is happening on their site. They also require a CMS that can help feed the right data into other tools such as marketing attribution technology, or separate marketing automation and personalisation tools.
Download our CMS Vendor Selection Pack for more information about how to select the best web CMS for your business.