Wednesday, Jul 28, 2010

I recently presented at the NetSquaredCamb Meetup group. Here are the presentation slides Open Source CMS for SMEs, Charities and NGOs.

Open source content management systems (OSCMS) are being utilised by a growing number of organisations, not only to manage their presence on the Internet, but also to assist in the running of their business processes and give workers flexible working arrangement. How can small to medium businesses, charities and non governmental organisations use OSCMS to drive efficiency and grow their business within the specific restraints over these businesses, with all resources; budget, time and knowledge being at a premium.

Content management systems in their simplest form can be a simple paper based system. Content, defined as all of your “stuff”, text, audio, video, and the way that it is managed is of imperative concern to all businesses. The particular use of open source software, as compared to bespoke of commercial software award businesses a specific way to use their restricted resources to a maximum, building software that can be used successfully by the business.

Choosing an open source project can be a difficult proposition, especially with so many software projects competing for attention. Yet, by researching and analysing the community around the project, the documentation and code and how you can leverage the open source community for support and assistance, it is possible to choose the best open source project for your business be it Drupal, Wordpress, Joomla or another popular OSCMS.

By analysing the requirements and the business and business processes and comparing it with the strengths of OSCMS it is possible to choose a system that will not only drive efficiency and growth in your business for not only now, but the future.