CMS Web Design. Scratching The Surface - CMS Benefits: Part III

of non-web content, channel integration and business re-engineering. Companies traditionally put web-production into a silo. Often, the first that a web team would hear about a new product would be when the first public ads were released. To be really effective, the web channel needs to be integrated into the core business as other communication channels are, which has implications regarding work flow and sign off of communication.

In the journey towards an effective CMS strategy, conflicts between departmental silos will be unearthed. Introducing a CMS can be the lever to ensure that R&D talk to marketing, rather than throwing products over the wall and expecting them to be sold without customer insight. If implemented completely, product information can flow between marketing, R&D and suppliers in a smooth flow, reducing departmental conflict.

Furthermore, it can be the lever which ensures that the eCRM nirvana of cross-channel, single customer view comes about, as the customer will be able to view the same content as the call center and the sales force and the marketing department.

Publishing the wrong price or availability information on your site can bring strongly negative PR and class-action lawsuits, and hit your margins. Similarly, some industries - finance and pharmaceuticals for example - are highly regulated, where communicating the wrong interest rate or disclaimers can have serious legal consequences. By systematizing the publishing of your content through automated work flows, you can ensure that all content is checked and signed off before it is publicly exposed.

Alternatively, you may wish to develop a user community by enabling users to contribute to your site. As Lawrence Godfrey's successful action against Demon shows, you may be held liable for defamatory content merely by providing a forum for the third parties who produce it. Ensuring that all content supplied by a user group perhaps numbering in the thousands is approved and launched in appropriate timescales and is available for removal will require all the automation help that you can get.