Content Governance and System Security Emerge as Top Content Management Software Use Cases

Credit: expresswriters

Content plays a vital role in marketing and communications and has helped organizations increase conversions and generate more leads since time immemorial. In his 1996 essay, Microsoft founder Bill Gates mentioned that “content is king,” a statement that still holds true nearly three decades after, when most marketing initiatives have been digitized. Today, content management software solutions are an anchor of digital marketing initiatives, with 58% of all websites using one, and can spell the success of a business.

It’s common knowledge that content management systems aid organizations in various regards, but how exactly are companies leveraging these platforms? A 2022 survey report by Rocket Software found that 60% of users identified content governance and system security as the most important features, followed by reporting and analytics (54%), data classification (53%), collaboration and productivity (49%), cloud use (46%), and information governance (46%).

This underscores the relevance of streamlined workflows, on-point content creation, and organized content distribution in the current digital corporate landscape. After all, with effective content governance, organizations can plan out content across various channels, with the specifics of each accounted for in creating, scheduling, and storing content. In addition, content governance initiatives enable managers to systematize and sometimes automate the steps in the content creation process and assign ownership to all the tasks involved.

Meanwhile, the system security features of CMS software ensure that content and other types of sensitive information are safeguarded through access management tools and multiple layers of authentication.

Productivity as the Most Favored Benefit

The high prioritization of content governance and collaboration ties in with why organizations avail of content management software to begin with. New digital marketing software statistics show that 37% of organizations cited raised productivity as the most significant factor when bringing in a platform. Additionally, 22% purchased one for records management, 19% for document management, 18% for business process management, and 4% for back-office process management.

Content management solutions enhance employee productivity by granting access to various channels within the interface, providing collaboration tools for teams, and automating workflows. Managers also gain a clear view of the entire content creation and distribution process, allowing them to perform timely corrections and adjustments in tasks and workflows. What’s more, the unified view of marketing channels like social media sites, blogs, and content schedules speeds up the content distribution process and reduces the likelihood of errors.

With many CMS platforms delivering as planned, the demand for these tools has significantly grown. A report by Global Industry Analysts reveals that the content management software market size is projected to rise from $47.1 billion in 2020 to $129.4% by 2027 at a remarkable annual growth rate of 15.5%. While on-premise models are anticipated to record decent growth (14.8%), cloud-based CMS solutions are seen as the preferred deployment of business users, with an annual growth of 16.3% during the forecast period.

Driving the market are the rise in demand for digital marketing, the need for digital content, and enhanced customer experiences. Content management software influences the success rates of these three factors, which explains its global market’s notable growth. Moreover, the solutions CMS platforms offer are designed to address the biggest content management challenges faced by organizations.

Common Content Management Challenges

Content management is a diverse practice, given that it accounts for the posting rules and schedules of various marketing channels and entails collaborations with sales and digital marketing teams. Its performance is also partly hinged on the success of an organization’s digital transformation. With these many factors affecting the practice, issues may arise at different junctures.

According to Rocket Software’s report, the most prevalent ones are disorganized file storage (37%), cloud migration concerns (36%), retention of unnecessary or redundant information (34%), compliance risks with privacy policies (34%), and employee skill gaps (33%). Besides these, problems like the extended storage of content, limited budget, limited feature access, and significant volumes of unstructured data hound many content teams.

Despite the varied sources of challenges, top-tier CMS platforms are equipped with solutions to resolve or mitigate these. The leading content management systems for business offer centralized document storage, which eliminates the practice of storing content in different drives.

Meanwhile, some software solutions enable users to comprehensively map out workflows—including content posting and scheduling on various channels—and automate digital tasks and reminders. This simplifies the process for users, leading to a boost in performance, smaller skill gaps, and easier migration to the cloud. To add to this, a CMS system unifies content creation and distribution as it consolidates numerous functionalities into a single screen or interface, eliminating the use of disparate platforms and some manual processes. Furthermore, there are CMS applications that have compliance solutions and even compliance self-assessment tools so users can avoid policy-related issues.

Of course, not all challenges can solely be resolved by a CMS platform, but having one makes content governance far less painless and significantly more efficient.

Picking a CMS Solution

Another concern that may come up is picking an ideal content management solution. After all, industry analysts appear to be divided when it comes to which products own the lion’s share of the market. A report from Kinsta shows WordPress has the largest content management software market share at 64.7%, followed by Shopify (5.4%), Joomla (3.3%), Squarespace (2.5%), and Wix (2.4%). On the other hand, data from various sources collated by Statista reveal Microsoft (34.8%), OpenText (9.9%), Adobe (9.4%), Docusign (7.6%), and Google (7.5%) as the market leaders.

The huge disparity echoes the fact that CMS platforms tend to have varying core competencies. Some are fixed CMS platforms while others offer content management as a module of a bigger core function like collaboration management, project management, or digital marketing. Many analysts fail to delineate these core functionalities within or beyond the content management spectrum.

With this, business users are advised to consult software reviews and user reviews from various sources to know how each product works. Those with a good amount of spare time can take advantage of the free trials offered by vendors. The process may be a bit tedious but the rewards of finding the ideal solution are certainly worthwhile.