Our previous article in this series, Knowledge Management, Powered by Content Management, touched on:
- The differences between knowledge management and content management
- How content management systems are the basis for knowledge management
Now we’ll go over how to find the right content management system. But before we get into the how, it’s worth remembering why this choice matters so much.
For those of us building learning programs at associations, the end goal is a sustainable knowledge management ecosystem that supports our members, our learners, and our internal teams.
Knowledge and content are part of a virtuous cycle:
- When we capture knowledge, we can translate it into new or existing content
- When we have great content, we can extract knowledge from it when we need it
To fulfill this cycle, we need a CMS that can:
- Support a variety of content types and data models
- Support the systems that drive our business
- Support our business for the long haul
Below are just some of the questions for choosing a CMS that will be the backbone for your knowledge management system.
Can You Trust the CMS with Your Content?
Before anything else, make sure the basics are solid. Here are some of what we’d consider CMS table stakes:
- Full version history so you can see what changed, when, and by whom
- Proper access controls so the right people can edit, review, and publish
- Cloud-based and accessible from anywhere, without sacrificing security
- A real API, not an afterthought, so content can flow in and out freely
- Reliable backups and a clear path to get your data out if you ever leave
Does the CMS Think in Structure, Not Pages?
We shouldn’t be in the business of storing Word docs anymore.
Content should be thought of as data and stored accordingly, structured in the correct data model that works for your systems and apps:
- Content is broken into reusable topics, not locked inside monolithic files
- You can define your own content types, fields, and relationships
- One source of truth feeds multiple outputs (web, print, LMS, mobile)
- Different content can be shown to different audiences
- Variables and key references keep shared values consistent everywhere
- Content maps or books let you assemble topics into structured collections
Caveat: You will still likely have downloadables like PDFs, EPUBs, and, yes, Word docs. However, these shouldn’t be the way we store our content. These are outputs that live in the ecosystem but should not be the source.
Of course, even the most elegant data model is useless if no one will work in it.
Can Your Authors Actually Use the CMS?
The most powerful system in the world fails if your subject-matter experts won’t touch it.
Before committing to a CMS, have your authors/editors actually test it. It should work for them, not against them.
Be sure that:
- The content authoring tool is approachable for non-technical authors
- New contributors can be productive in days, not weeks
- Teams can collaborate (comment, review, and suggest changes) all in one place
- Templates and guided authoring help maintain consistency without slowing people down
- Rearranging and reorganizing content is intuitive, not scary
An approachable system also needs to handle the kinds of content your domain actually requires.
Does the CMS Handle Your Content Needs?
A good CMS handles the basics without compromise: text, tables, images. But it should also support audio and video and other types of data/files.
Ensure the CMS can handle:
- Tables, figures, images, and captions
- Embedded audio and video
- Math notation support if your domain requires it
- Glossary terms, index entries, and cross-references that stay valid as content moves
- Custom data field types that act as a catch-all for complex inputs
- File uploads (PDFs, etc.)
Note: Be sure to ask your IT/Data teams what data types they might need to support. And know that some complex content types do not fit in the regular HTML mold. So if your CMS lets you creatively and sustainably support these complex structures, you’re in a good position!
If your association serves international audiences, content variety is only half the picture.
How Well Does the CMS Support Translation and Localization?
Supporting translated/localized content is essential for international products and members. Without a proper storage mechanism, keeping translations in sync with your content’s default language is not tenable.
When evaluating a CMS, be sure that:
- Translations are stored as separate linked objects, not overwritten inline
- Each language has its own workflow and review lifecycle
- Right-to-left languages are supported when applicable
- Locale-specific variants are available for content that differs beyond just language
As your library grows in size and complexity, the ability to organize and surface content becomes just as important as creating it.
Can You Classify and Find Things?
The ability to organize, tag, and retrieve content becomes critical the more your content library grows.
Be sure that your CMS has:
- The ability to create 1 or more taxonomies that you can apply at the topic or block level
- Support for multiple classification schemes at once
- Full-text and metadata-based search across all content
- Cross-content find and replace
Strong classification works best when your CMS connects cleanly to the rest of your stack.
Does the CMS Play Well With Everything Else?
A CMS that cannot successfully integrate with your tech stack and products only creates more siloes, not more value.
Make sure the CMS has:
- The right capabilities for your software team
- Integrations that work with many types of applications (internal and third-party)
- A plugin or extension marketplace for what the platform doesn’t do natively
And integration increasingly means thinking about AI.
What About AI?
Using AI to create content directly in the CMS can be a game-changer. Instead of creating content externally and importing in, why not create it natively in the system?
Some AI features that might be available in a modern CMS:
- Built-in AI for drafting, summarizing, or adapting content
- AI-assisted accessibility, including auto alt-text, captioning, readability checks
- Extensibility to bring your own models or connect external AI services
Any AI-driven recommendation or adaptive assembly is a bonus, not a baseline.
All of this assumes the platform itself will be around long enough to matter.
Is the Vendor a Good Long-Term Bet?
Picking a CMS is not a light decision, so the quality/stability of the CMS vendor should be taken into account.
When choosing a vendor, make sure:
- CMS pricing scales predictably with your growth
- The vendor is financially stable
- They have referenceable customers in education, publishing, or knowledge management
- The CMS is actively developed with a transparent roadmap
- CMS support is responsive and actually resolves issues
- There’s a clear, tested exit strategy if you ever need to migrate away
Note to the Perfectionists
No CMS will fit your use case perfectly, but it should always add value to your organization.
If it passes all your critical must-haves and meets most of your success criteria, you may have to make a compromise along the way. That’s okay! That’s part of your organization’s growth, and it’s a great opportunity to reflect on what you think you are compromising on and how you can achieve it differently.
Similarly, when choosing new tools, we may have a fixed idea of what we want. The challenge here is that what we think we want and what we need as an organization might be completely different.
For example, let’s say we currently work in Word. We might think we want a system that exactly replicates Word’s features. But instead of trying to replace Word, we should be trying to expand what we think is possible towards the future needs of the business.
This checklist is not an end-all, be-all, but hopefully it’s a helpful starting point in your organization’s CMS journey!
So What’s Next?
In our final article in this series, we’ll put all the pieces together and see what knowledge management, powered by content management, can do for our business!
In the meantime, if you are working through your own CMS evaluation or wondering whether knowledge management is the right next step for your association, HC can help. Reach out to us at [email protected].
