When this article was first published in the early 2000's, content management was new. People still built websites without them. That rarely happens any more. But understanding the key benefits may still help with the choice of a good system for you, so this article remains online.
Organisational Benefits
- Gain independence - you're not relying on someone else to run your business
- Update content when you need to, not when someone else has time
- Centralise storage of content
- Standardise content delivery processes to establish consistency of quality
- Respond quickly to customer demand
- Global access for easy content changes
Technical Benefits
- Separate content from presentation, allowing easy re-designing or modification of layout for
- Easily deliver content to different channels, or personalise it for one-to-one customer contact
- Quickly and cheaply build new web interfaces
Cost Benefits
- Update content within your organisation, don't pay someone else
- Accelerate development times and lower building costs by avoiding the need to create custom software
- Lower the requirement for desktop-based content software
- Lower the need to invest in speclialised web development skills (either internally or via consultants)