When someone starts a small business they have so many things to do. They work all the time, probably don’t make a lot of money to begin, and sleep very little.

As that business begins to grow and the workload expands exponentially the personal computer can no longer handle all of the files, folders, and assets needed to run a business.

What are the steps that a business owner can take to first decide if they need a content management system (CMS) and then the steps to get them there?

First, can people who work with you or for you get digital files in a way other than email? Most of us rely on email every day to get work done, but email starts to show it’s limitations when lots of files are going around that many people need to work on.

Second, what would happen if your personal computer was stolen or consumed a mug of steaming coffee?

And lastly, is there are all these things that you need to do and get done repeatable? Meaning, is there some kind of routine that you and your employees or consultants do over and over again in your business?

If the answer is yes then you are probably ripe for a CMS. But ask yourself this, are you ready to invest the time and money needed to build one? There are plenty of open source CMS out on the market today that can get you what you need (www.joomla.org, www.opensourcecms.com). What will take the longest amount of time is sitting down and figuring out things like business processes to model workflows after and determining roles.

One way to get to the point where a business should implement a CMS is to take baby steps to get there. Try using a collaborative workspace just to get the mountain of emails out of inboxes. You will be able to workout the kinks of any workflow issues during this phase because you will clearly see where the bottlenecks are. Pay attention to the issues that come up around versioning of documents - you’ll know if you have a solid enough business process in place that will easily translate to a content management system.
If that works for 3-6 months then think about building a CMS. You probably don’t need to buy something fancy or to buy anything at all, for that matter. I strongly recommend investigating open source options. They don’t cost anything to buy, just to implement.

When you’re ready to pick the right CMS consider that now is the time to spend some money on getting the right people to do this for you. I recommend getting someone to help you do all the planning and mapping out of the system. You will save your business a lot of money in all the rework that will be required if you don’t plan out a CMS correctly.