Business is all about productivity, sales, cash flow, branding and timing. What has a website got to do with these things?

Here are a few questions that can indicate the need for changes in your 'information' strategy:

If you are about to launch a new web site or redesign an existing web site, deploying a content management system now can help the redesign go more smoothly and even launch sooner.

Also, if you answer yes to a few of the following questions, then you need a content management system.

• Does it take more than a few hours for a job posting, press release, news story, product page, support note, or other time-sensitive document to be posted to your web site?
• Do all web site changes grind to a halt if anyone in your organization goes on holiday or is sick?
• Does any one group in your company always get top priority for content changes, delaying web site changes for other groups?
• Are groups within your company disenchanted with the web site because it doesn’t serve their needs within their time frames?
•  Does it take weeks or months to make a simple global change to the web site, such as adding a new navigational element on every page?
• Is your site larger than few hundred pages, or does it need to be updated more than a few times a week?
• Is the information architecture of your web site slowly decaying, with broken links or broken images found throughout the site?
• Does it take a protracted amount of time to redesign your web site?
• Are content creators and contributors located at multiple locations?

Read On to 'Determine Business Objectives and Constraints'.