Enterprise CMS: How can it help you achieve better results?

In this whitepaper, we’ll shed more light on enterprise CMS and how it differs from “regular” CMS. We’ll talk more about how middle-sized and large-sized companies can leverage CMS to gain more control over their digital content, and distribute that content at the right time to the right people. 

First off, let’s see what exactly is an enterprise CMS.

What is an enterprise CMS? 

Strictly speaking, an enterprise content management system functions just as any other CMS on the market. In essence, it’s a software used mainly by editors and content specialists to create, manage and distribute digital content. 

The main difference between enterprise content management systems and other content management systems on the market is that enterprise CMS are specifically designed and created for medium and large enterprises. Taking into account that both medium and large enterprises handle larger volumes of content, enterprise CMS comes with pre-built content management features that enable the marketing team to execute any kind of multichannel strategy.

When looking at the CMS market, WordPress stands out as the most popular CMS. But when looking at its capabilities of handling large volumes of content needed by medium and large-sized enterprises, it falls behind platforms such as Pimcore. For blogs and small business websites, WordPress may seem as an appropriate option, due to its wide availability and fast installation. 

However, as the business continues to grow, there are more functionalities needed and at some point, the website will start to slow down due to the limitations of such a content management system.

In time, as the company grows even bigger, there will be more stakeholders, more users, and more digital content, possibly in several different languages. The volume of your digital content is sure to increase and the whole information architecture will become even more complex.

This scenario is likely to happen and when it does, managing such large quantities of content with a CMS such as WordPress is going to be extremely difficult. To successfully overcome this challenge, it’s highly advisable to give higher priority to using advanced digital platforms that are specifically designed for medium and large-sized enterprises.

Customizable architecture is crucial

Today, we’re living in a world filled with digital systems, all of them interacting with each other. To take advantage of today’s situation, a number of companies are implementing enterprise CMS.
 
Contrary to belief, an enterprise CMS is much more than just a CMS. It’s a complex solution capable of communicating with other systems, such as digital asset management systems, eCommerce platforms, customer data platforms, and so on. 
 
Pimcore, one such solution, offers its users to access all 6 Pimcore modules. It has evolved past the definition of a CMS and found its main purpose as a digital experience platform able to provide customers with a true omnichannel experience. It has an incredibly customizable architecture, meaning we can integrate any kind of a system into Pimcore DXP.
 
This provides an opportunity to connect all of your systems and create a single source of truth - one central point where all of the master data is gathered. Data such as customer data, product data, and vendor data is located in this centralized database and it’s fully at your disposal. This means that it’s possible to create personalized content for all users based on the gathered data from the integrated systems.
 
Besides integrating external systems, Pimcore boasts 6 different modules, each with its own unique purpose and benefits. Ranging from data management systems to different experience management systems and its very own eCommerce module, Pimcore platform enables you to craft and deliver any kind of experience to your customers.

Keep all of your content in a single unified platform

Your company may even now be in a situation where you’re handling several websites at once. These situations prove to be extremely difficult to manage when your websites aren’t unified in a single platform. And all the more, duplicated content and even unsynchronized content end up becoming common issues. 
 
To solve this problem, a new solution is needed. Enterprise CMS platforms will allow you to store all of your content on a single platform, regardless of how many websites your company is managing. Pimcore DXP enables you to do exactly that - creating, testing, and distributing content for different websites in different languages and in different formats. 
 
Pimcore specifically allows you to create custom dashboards and track data from your analytics tools, data from your customer data platform, and many more. Everything is located in one central repository, so it’s possible to access all content with only a single login.

The benefits of implementing an enterprise-class CMS

Along with the benefits of customizable architecture and unified platform, enterprise content management systems benefit the company in several more ways.

Streamlined content maintenance process

One of the biggest advantages of implementing an enterprise-class CMS is the streamlining of content maintenance. It’s a huge time-saver and it helps ensuring that all of the content is updated and relevant.

A majority of enterprise-class CMS platforms have a pre-built content maintenance system that alerts the editors when a certain piece of content is outdated. Moreover, it can be programmed to unpublish that specific piece of content when it becomes outdated.

Another great benefit of implementing an enterprise CMS is the ability to reuse content and update it synchronically. In a situation where there are several versions of a single piece of content in the CMS, more time is needed to update the website. The issue grows even bigger when editors need to manage multiple websites simultaneously. 

Enterprise CMS platforms, and Pimcore specifically, enable editors to reuse content continuously through several formats and on more web pages and websites. Updating that content synchronically will make sure that content is up to date wherever it’s used.

Reduced training time and costs

Every time one of your employees moves to a different area within your organization or assumes another role, they need to spend a certain amount of time on learning the new system. This is far from efficient, having spent more time and budget than it’s supposed to be spent. 

Training your employees to effectively use a CMS is critical for any organization, and it’s far more efficient to build your employees’ knowledge in a single CMS in order for them to master it, than to stretch your training time and budget to cover several systems.

In essence, if you’ve implemented, or you’re planning to implement, an enterprise-class CMS, you’ll need to train your employees in just one system. This encourages collaboration between your employees and enables them to help each other across the organization. Ultimately, they won’t need to resort to seeking support from your IT department, as all of your employees will be well-versed in using one particular system.

Lowered cost of hosting

The benefit of lowered hosting costs is a straightforward one. Instead of hosting multiple CMS platforms and racking up the hosting costs, with an enterprise CMS you can drastically reduce your hosting expenses. Later on, you can use your savings and improve the quality of your hosting service - maybe even choose a different hosting provider! 

The problem with hosting arises when you’re using hosting services of several hosting providers for your websites. If the websites need to be upgraded fast, especially if there are some security issues, some serious problems could occur. The most cost efficient way to handle your hosting expenses is to consolidate all of your websites into a single enterprise CMS platform.

Prominent features of enterprise-class content management systems 

In this chapter, you’ll find listed several features that are mainly exclusive to enterprise-class CMS. These features are commonly referred to as the must-have features for any medium and large-sized enterprise CMS.

Built-in SEO tools

To get a hold of all of the on-page SEO factors and optimize your websites in the best possible manner, enterprise-class CMS usually come with built-in SEO tools. 

These SEO tools will enable you to add metadata to your content, edit page titles, add alt tags, avoid duplicate content, and much more. 

Pimcore, for example, comes with its pre-built SEO dashboard, enabling you to modify all of the SEO elements without using any plugins. Every page can be highly optimized through its SEO document editor.

Also, it stands out by providing you an overview of all HTTP errors that may occur on your website(s). Pimcore covers all of these errors, and enables you to edit all of the metadata for all types of assets. 

All in all, such tools give you total control over your data, another crucial aspect of enterprise-class content management systems.

Social media integration

Today, social media networks are the go-to destinations for interacting with your target audiences. For that reason, any kind of advanced enterprise-class CMS needs to have an array of social tools.

In short, this means that you can easily add any kind of social media sharing button to any of your pages or pieces of content, ensuring that your content can be effortlessly shared on any social media platform. Moreover, it encourages the website visitors to share content with their social media followers. 

Pimcore does a great job in this area. You can create thumbnails easily for all social media inside the platform, easily add all types of sharing buttons and optimize content in a matter of minutes. 

Publishing controls

In medium and large-sized enterprises, it’s uncommon for a single person to publish all of the content themselves. Even if it’s a small company, the marketing director or the CMO may delegate the content production and editing to a freelancer or a content specialist.

In those types of situations, publishing controls are extremely important. Various roles and levels of access within your enterprise-class CMS will make sure that every employee and team member has its own firmly established permissions.

For instance, there are some generic roles such as editors, authors, contributors and so on. Each of these roles have their own unique permissions and capabilities. Editors, in this case, have a low tier of permissions. They can effectively create entire articles and other types of content and publish them. But if you want to have a different role with permissions to create pieces of content, but not to publish them. Instead, before publishing that content, it needs to be reviewed by a senior staff member. 

You want your publishing controls to reflect your organization’s needs. Create any kind of custom role for your team members and gain full control over all of the operations that are happening on your website.

High security

Making sure that your website supports the highest security standards is an essential need. It won’t just protect your data, it will protect your customers and your company from being publicly exploited. 

When considering different enterprise-class CMS, review their security offerings: 

• What kind of security features does the platform offer?
• How long will it take for your team to achieve your security objectives through that platform?
• Are your customers and their data going to be secure?
• Will your customers feel safe using your website and transferring money with?

Pimcore takes security very seriously. It features a sophisticated database, meaning that if anyone got in the database, they couldn’t do much because it would be a too complex mission for the intruders.

Pimcore isn’t a simple out-of-the-box solution - it’s a framework. Parts of Pimcore’s multi-layer security are provided by the core framework from the start, while other components will be provided by your development partner.

Versioning control

It’s almost inevitable for some kind of post to be published accidentally. For that reason, you need a CMS with the ability to quickly solve that issue. 

Versioning will ensure that you always have a backup option to go back to if something is accidentally published. These types of situations may have negative consequences, so it’s crucial to assume control as quickly as possible to ensure all of your on-site operations are going perfectly.

Moreover, if you’re updating a certain page or a section for some kind of a promotion or a seasonal on-site event, you’ll want to quickly go back to the previous version of the website once the event or a promotion is over.

In-depth analytics

Tracking engagement data on your CMS is a crucial part of your content strategy. High-end enterprise CMS tend to ship out with the feature of integrating powerful analytics tools such as Google Analytics. This way, you’ll be able to track all of your KPIs directly from your dashboard.

Pimcore specifically has its own Reports section where you can create your own custom reports, review all of the complex workflows, control image quality, and much more. Best of all, you can easily integrate Google Analytics into your dashboard and have an instant overview of all of your website data. 

The first step towards an enterprise CMS

Enterprise-class CMS serves your company as a foundation for all website activities. Your choice of CMS will have a great impact on your team’s content management capabilities, Google rankings, security, costs, and much more. 

If you’re still looking for an adequate enterprise CMS, feel free to reach out to us at hello@factory.dev! We’d be happy to help! 

We’re a certified Pimcore Gold partner with a proven track record of numerous successful CMS implementations. Send us an email and let’s schedule a meeting! We’d like to see what business goals we can help you achieve!