Using a streamlined CMS is all about ensuring that your workflows are as efficient as possible, so that your team can build and deliver content faster and more efficiently. By making every workflow more intuitive, tasks become easier and faster, causing a ripple effect that will translate into a better user experience for everyone, from your editors to your end users.

So how can you ensure that your CMS is streamlined and efficient? The key is to work with a CMS that has a strong focus on content architecture. Content architecture is the way all your backend content is organized and structured. This will have an effect on everything, from how easy it is for a content editor to build a page to how smoothly you can integrate new systems in the future.

But it’s not just about choosing the right CMS, it’s also about how you then configure it. So these are the main two elements that you should focus on when looking for a CMS that is streamlined and efficient:

1. Is the CMS easy to set up and configure and does it provide a flexible user interface that can adjust to the skill level of your editors?
2. Is it possible to configure the CMS in a way that it supports your unique workflows?

So how does a streamlined and efficient architecture benefit you in the long term, and why should you make this your top priority when choosing a CMS?

1. It helps you stay more competitive

A streamlined CMS helps you to stay more competitive by making it easier for your team to react to industry changes. The more agile you are compared to your competitors, the better.

For example, if there is a particular piece of news or content that you want to get out there fast, a streamlined CMS will make it easier for your content editors to build and push out this content. Common issues such as having to depend on a developer will not be a problem.

A streamlined CMS is also ideal when it comes to adopting new systems. If you want to stay innovative and ahead of the curve, using a CMS that can quickly integrate a new system is a great advantage. By keeping integrations in mind during the content architecture building stage, you can ensure that adding a new integration will be as simple as building the right API, and that you won’t encounter any unexpected issues in relation to other integrations or data links.

Finally, thanks to its intuitive workflows, a streamlined CMS makes the onboarding process a lot smoother. New employees can get building content as soon as possible, saving you additional time and resources!

2. It speeds up deployments

By increasing the efficiency of your internal workflows, a streamlined CMS also significantly increases your speed to market.

As mentioned, streamlined workflows make it easier for content editors to be more efficient in building and pushing out content. If their tasks are intuitive and easy-to-complete, of course that’s going to improve their speed, enabling them to more quickly build and deliver new pages and content.

Another important aspect here is that streamlined CMS platforms have a strong focus on non-technical workflows. Content editing workflows are designed to be simple and intuitive, and not intended to require any developer assistance.

This way, building and modifying content and pages becomes as easy as publishing a blog post. Any content editor can do it, regardless of their technical background.

3. It prevents you from being stuck in the past

Not only does a streamlined CMS allow you to be agile and reactive, it also prevents you from becoming stuck with outdated content and technologies.

This is because of their focus on content architecture from day one. Instead of building content and then setting up its architecture around it, the first step is thinking into the future and addressing any workflow issues in advance. This way, common issues such as being unable to update a particular feature or technology, or having to constantly upgrade or enhance your systems “around” the CMS, can be avoided.

When the need comes around to update a feature or system, this can be changed very easily because it’s set up so that it works independently from all other systems and content within the architecture. And so, making these kinds of changes and optimizations over time becomes an easy task, rather than a time-consuming and expensive one.

Of course the benefits of this approach are many. More than anything you can ensure long-term growth without the need to make big changes to your CMS setup, enabling your system to grow with your business.

It saves you ongoing costs

But time is not the only thing you will be saving with a streamlined CMS. The financial savings can be very significant too!

First of all, the intuitive nature of a streamlined CMS will make it much easier for you to find developers and editors who understand the platform and who can simply pick it up and start building (so long as the platform doesn’t use any proprietary languages). The training resources saved here can be considerable.

Secondly, by keeping workflows and future growth in mind, a streamlined CMS prevents unexpected redevelopment costs in the long-term. On the one hand, developers will take less time to make changes or enhancements and they’ll be able to use that time to work on other things. On the other hand, they will find it much easier to integrate new systems without having to develop APIs from scratch, using the same architecture.

By having a thought-out content architecture, projects can also be broken up into phases and spread out over time, whether that involves additional integrations or other changes.

Finally, upgrades also become more efficient and less costly with a streamlined CMS. In fact, in some cases updates should even be automatic, such as with multi-tenant systems, where these can be automatically rolled out to all tenants.

In general, a streamlined CMS makes it a lot easier to adjust and roll out features rather than requiring a rebuild and the costs that entails. When it comes to new features or products, for example Ecommerce or Personalization initiatives, these can be incorporated as new integrations rather than requiring you to rebuild your entire content architecture, which would be extremely costly.

 

In summary, to ensure your CMS is streamlined and efficient your best bet is to work with a CMS that is flexible and highly configurable, that supports your unique business processes and that allows you to grow over time. A CMS platform that follows these prerequisites will enable you to gain the benefits outlined in this article and allow you to continue focusing on your long-term strategy without any unexpected bumps on your way there.