Content Management System 

A content management system (CMS) such as a document management system (DMS) is a computer application used to manage work flow needed to collaboratively create, edit, review, index, search, publish and archive various kinds of digital media and electronic text.

CMS' are frequently used for storing, controlling, versioning, and publishing industry-specific documentation such as news articles, operators' manuals, technical manuals, sales guides, and marketing brochures. The content managed may include computer files, image media, audio files, video files, electronic documents, and Web content. These concepts represent integrated and interdependent layers. There are various nomenclatures known in this area: Web Content Management, Digital Asset Management, Digital Records Management, Electronic Content Management and so on. The bottom line for these systems is managing content and publishing, with a workflow if required.

There are five main categories of Content Management Systems (CMS), with their respective domains of use:

Enterprise CMS (ECMS)
Web CMS (WCMS)
Document management system (DMS)
Mobile CMS
Component CMS
Media content management system

Enterprise content management systems (ECM)
An enterprise content management (ECM) system is concerned with content, documents, details and records related to the organizational processes of an enterprise. The purpose is to manage the organization's unstructured information content, with all its diversity of format and location.

Web content management systems
A 'web content management' (WCM) system is a CMS designed to simplify the publication of Web content to Web sites, in particular allowing content creators to submit content without requiring technical knowledge of HTML or the uploading of files.

The Process of Content Management

Content management practices and goals vary with mission. News organizations, e-commerce websites, and educational institutions all use content management, but in different ways. This leads to differences in terminology and in the names and number of steps in the process. Typically, though, the digital content life cycle consists of 6 primary phases: create, update, publish, translate, archive and retrieve. For example, an instance of digital content is created by one or more authors. Over time that content may be edited. One or more individuals may provide some editorial oversight thereby approving the content for publication. Publishing may take many forms. Publishing may be the act of pushing content out to others, or simply granting digital access rights to certain content to a particular person or group of persons. Later that content may be superseded by another form of content and thus retired or removed from use.

Content management is an inherently collaborative process. It often consists of the following basic roles and responsibilities:

Creator - responsible for creating and editing content.
Editor - responsible for tuning the content message and the style of delivery, including translation and localization.
Publisher - responsible for releasing the content for use.
Administrator - responsible for managing access permissions to folders and files, usually accomplished by assigning access rights to user groups or roles. Admins may also assist and support users in various ways.
Consumer, viewer or guest- the person who reads or otherwise takes in content after it is published or shared.
A critical aspect of content management is the ability to manage versions of content as it evolves (see also version control). Authors and editors often need to restore older versions of edited products due to a process failure or an undesirable series of edits.

Another equally important aspect of content management involves the creation, maintenance, and application of review standards. Each member of the content creation and review process has a unique role and set of responsibilities in the development and/or publication of the content. Each review team member requires clear and concise review standards which must be maintained on an ongoing basis to ensure the long-term consistency and health of the knowledge base.

A content management system is a set of automated processes that may support the following features:

Import and creation of documents and multimedia material
Identification of all key users and their roles
The ability to assign roles and responsibilities to different instances of content categories or types.
Definition of workflow tasks often coupled with messaging so that content managers are alerted to changes in content.
The ability to track and manage multiple versions of a single instance of content.
The ability to publish the content to a repository to support access to the content. Increasingly, the repository is an inherent part of the system, and incorporates enterprise search and retrieval.

Content management systems take the following forms:

- a web content management system is software for web site management - which is often what is implicitly meant by this term
- the work of a newspaper editorial staff organization
- a workflow for article publication
- a document management system
- a single source content management system - where content is stored in chunks within a relational database

Enterprice Content Management (ECM)

The official definition of enterprise content management was created by AIIM (Association for Information and Image Management) International, the worldwide association for enterprise content management, in the year 2000. The abbreviation ECM has been reinterpreted and redefined many times.

In late 2005 AIIM defined ECM as follows:

Enterprise Content Management is the technologies used to Capture, Manage, Store, Preserve, and Deliver content and documents related to organizational processes.
In early 2006 AIIM added the following paragraph to the definition:

ECM tools and strategies allow the management of an organization's unstructured information, wherever that information exists.

In early 2008 AIIM changed the original definition to:

Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is the strategies, methods and tools used to capture, manage, store, preserve, and deliver content and documents related to organizational processes. This new term is intended to completely encompass the legacy problem domains that have traditionally been addressed by records management and document management. It also includes all of the additional problems involved in converting to and from digital content, to and from the traditional media of those problem domains (such as physical and computerized filing and retrieval systems, often involving paper and microforms). Finally ECM is a new problem domain in its own right, as it has employed the technologies and strategies of (digital) content management to address business process issues, such as records and auditing, knowledge sharing, personalization and standardization of content, and so on.

Source: Wikepedia