Successful CMS Implementation: Explained Step-by-Step

Our guest author Katharina-Maria Röder explains to you in a step-by-step guide, how to succeed in a successful CMS implementation. To this end, she gives you an overview of suitable tools.

⁠Without a Content Management System (CMS), companies can hardly cope nowadays if they want to keep pace with their competitors in content creation and management. Implementing a CMS can be a tricky affair. Many obstacles arise during the CMS introduction and need to be solved. How to introduce your CMS step-by-step and which stakeholders should be involved is explained in this article.

Who should be involved in the CMS implementation?

Numerous stakeholders with different interests and needs are involved in the implementation of a CMS. They should definitely be involved in the CMS selection and implementation:

1. Key-User: These are the employees who are directly affected by the CMS introduction and who will use the system intensively, such as authors, editors and content managers.

2. IT Department: The IT employees, developers and system administrators who are responsible for the technical implementation and maintenance of the CMS.

3. Management: Executive and department managers, who make strategic decisions and often decide on the budget.

4. Software Manufacturer: The contact persons of the CMS manufacturer are important for advice and support during implementation and can provide valuable solutions with their experience.

5. Employees of the Specialist Departments: They are the end users of the CMS and need to be able to cope with it in their daily work. This requires comprehensive training.

Each of these stakeholders plays an important role in the implementation process and should be involved at an early stage to ensure that the CMS meets the needs of all and can be implemented efficiently.

How is a CMS implemented? 

No matter which CMS software you choose, you will always struggle with some difficulties and have to accept limitations in functionality. Because there is no perfect CMS. What ultimately decides between success or failure is the implementation. We'll walk you through how to best handle this step by step.

Step 1: Define requirements for the CMS 

The successful introduction of your CMS requires an optimal alignment between the system and the individual requirements of your company for content management. 

Create a requirements list for the CMS and split it into "must-have" requirements and "nice-to-have" requirements. Also, think about what future requirements there might be.

You should not decide on the requirements alone. Involve colleagues from the outset who are directly affected by the CMS introduction and who will use the system intensively. They will be your key users.

These questions will help you define your requirements:

• Can the goals and strategies of the company be supported with the CMS?
• What are the challenges you want to solve with the introduction of the CMS?
• What could the solutions look like?
• Which technology should it be? 
• Which other systems should the CMS be connected to? The best thing to do here is to note down the entire process from the content idea to publication in order to find the interfaces.
• Which future requirements can be derived from the company's vision?
• How adaptable must the CMS be?
• What is the budget?

Develop use cases with goals, requirements and priorities together with your key users. The most important use cases must be covered by the CMS. Gradually, you will narrow down the choice of CM systems. The software manufacturers often offer a free trial period. Use this to test the most important use cases for the first time and to make your choice. Also involve the manufacturers to clarify your questions directly and test the support. 

Step 2: Define CM process with key users

Ensure that everyone in your implementation team knows what task they have. Key users and stakeholders are often not involved intensively enough in the implementation project. This leads to conflicts and delays the introduction of the CMS. The content workflow process should be created together with your key users. The process and roles must be clear to everyone. Make sure to regularly keep everyone involved up to date. Use the fresh start and also create guidelines for standardised procedures, for example for content creation. A good CMS will support you in building smooth, cross-departmental cooperation and working more efficiently.

Step 3: Project planning for the CMS-Implementation 

Next, you create a schedule for implementing the CMS introduction. Coordinate this plan with all key users and stakeholders. It is almost impossible to know all requirements at the beginning or to fully describe them. Therefore, it is advisable to carry out the CMS implementation with an agile project management method such as Scrum. If you are unfamiliar with Scrum, this video explains agile project management with Scrum in just under 5 minutes. 

You have already clarified the key users, such as authors, editors, IT staff and managers, as well as their roles and responsibilities. It is best to keep the information in writing so that everyone knows who is doing what and understands the connections. You now start planning small sub-projects together with your key users. This way, the entire process is mapped out step by step. Once you start implementing after successful planning, there will always be bigger and smaller hurdles. Which brings us to the next point. 

Step 4: Contacts of the Software Manufacturer

It makes sense to involve contacts of the software manufacturers as early as possible in your implementation process. They get to know your requirements and working methods well. This allows for very good advice and support when you start the implementation. If you have difficulties with the implementation, you will receive competent and individual advice. This saves you time and nerves. Your contact person is also not the first time accompanying a CMS implementation. With the project experience, she is a valuable help in all matters and sees solutions that you don't come to. She finds ways to map your requirements with the tool, even if there is no own feature for it. 

Step 5: Planning and conducting training for employees

Training the employees is one of the most important steps in the implementation process of the CMS. Create learning materials and presentations for all affected employees. Depending on the size of your company, you can use the key users as multipliers. Each user group has its own materials. Plan enough time to create materials and conduct training sessions. You must ensure that all affected employees are trained promptly. Not all employees are open to changes, especially when they directly interfere with their daily work. Comprehensive training can dispel concerns and pave the way for your successful CMS introduction. 

Step 6: Tests and Quality Control

Before the CMS is rolled out across the company, you should thoroughly test it and make it available to key users for some time. Let them use the software and provide feedback on whether the system works as expected. Only when the tests have been passed successfully should you make the CMS accessible to everyone in the company. This can be done via big bang or step-by-step. 

However, after commissioning, the implementation is not quite complete. Establish quality controls to ensure that everything runs smoothly. This includes, for example, whether data is transmitted correctly or contributions are published in the correct design on all platforms. 

What are the best CMS? 

Every CMS has its advantages and disadvantages. How these are to be assessed depends on the requirements you have of the system. Open source software, Headless CMS, hybrid forms: A large selection of Content Management Systeme (CMS) with reviews from real users can be found at OMR Reviews. Because there is such a large choice, it is essential that you deal intensively with your requirements. To make it easier for you to get started, we have created an overview of the 10 most popular tools in the category Content Management Systeme (CMS) for you:

• WordPress
• Storyblok
• Contao
• Pimcore
• TYPO3
• Magnolia
• HubSpot CMS Hub
• Scrivito CMS
• Joomla
• Contentful

In this post on OMR Reviews about the best Content-Management-Systems you will find many of the CMS listed above. There you can read in detail which features the CMS have and how much they will cost you. With the help of your requirements for required features and budget, you can already exclude some. If you have a larger company, you are well advised with an enterprise CMS. You should definitely check out the article "The 6 best Enterprise-Content-Management-Systems". 

Conclusion

A CMS-Implementation is no easy task. Here, many different areas, processes, personalities and requirements come together. Added to this is the fact that such major changes are not welcomed by everyone. So there are many challenges to master. If you pay attention to the essential steps mentioned in this post, you are on a good path. Get strong support from within your company and externally from contacts of the CMS manufacturers and nothing (much) can go wrong!