How To Choose the Right CMS for a B2B Organisation

In the rapidly evolving digital landscape, having an effective Content Management System (CMS) is crucial for the success of any business, including in the B2B sector. A CMS not only facilitates the creation and management of digital content, but also plays a pivotal role in enhancing user experience, streamlining operations, and driving business growth. 

With a myriad of options available, selecting the right CMS for your B2B organisation requires careful consideration of various factors and can often be a tricky choice. Let’s face it: not all CMS options are created equal. 

So, we wanted to help make that choice a little simpler and share our long-honed wisdom on the topic. In this post, we'll explore the key aspects to keep in mind when choosing the perfect CMS to meet the unique needs of a B2B organisation.

Define Your Business Objectives:

Before diving into the wonderful world of CMS options, it's essential to clearly define your business objectives so that you’re choosing from a place of understanding of what you’re aiming to achieve, along with the short, medium and long-term goals of the site. 

Understanding your target audience, the type of content you will be managing, and your long-term business goals are vital aspects when choosing the right CMS. Whether it's lead generation, customer engagement, or seamless collaboration with clients, a CMS should always align with your specific objectives.

Scalability & Flexibility:

B2B-focused businesses often experience growth, and your chosen CMS should be able to scale alongside your expanding needs. Look for a CMS that offers scalability and flexibility to accommodate the increasing volume of content and users. This ensures that your digital infrastructure remains robust and adaptable in the face of future changes.

Integration Capabilities:

A successful B2B ecosystem involves the seamless integration of various tools and technologies. Your CMS should have the ability to integrate with other essential systems such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, e-commerce platforms, analytics tools, social media tools and more. Integration capabilities contribute to a unified and efficient business operation.

Customisation Options:

B2B businesses often have unique requirements that demand a high level of customisation. Choose a CMS that allows for easy customisation of templates, workflows, and user interfaces.  This flexibility ensures that your CMS aligns perfectly with your brand identity and provides a tailored user experience for your clients and stakeholders.

Security & Compliance:

Security is paramount, especially when dealing with sensitive B2B data. Ensure that the CMS you choose adheres to industry-standard security protocols. Look for features such as regular security updates, data encryption, and user access controls. Additionally, consider any industry-specific compliance requirements your business may need to meet, such as GDPR.

Usability & User Training:

A user-friendly CMS is crucial for efficient content management. Consider the usability of the platform and the learning curve for your team. Look for intuitive interfaces, comprehensive documentation, and responsive customer support. Investing in user training can also enhance your team's ability to leverage the full potential of the CMS.

Mobile Responsiveness:

With the increasing reliance on mobile devices, your chosen CMS must provide a seamless mobile experience. It’s simply not an option to neglect the mobile UX of your site.  Ensure that the platform supports responsive design and mobile optimisation, enabling your users to access and manage content on the go.

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO):

While considering the initial costs of a CMS, it's equally important to evaluate the total cost of ownership over time. Account for expenses such as licensing fees, maintenance costs, and potential upgrade expenses. A CMS with a reasonable TCO ensures that your investment remains sustainable in the long run.

Key Considerations when choosing a CMS for a B2B Organisation

How will it be maintained?

Using an open-source CMS platform is a popular choice for man a B2B organisation, but one complaint that’s heard a lot is the lack of support for users in the event of an issue. How do you flag something to ‘Support’ when there isn’t a Support team? 

This can lead to some resourcing issues as internal teams may not have the skills, training or experience to deal with such problems. To add to this resourcing issue, open-source systems generally require more maintenance in general than their cloud-based counterparts. If that’s a potential roadblock for the future of your site, it’s better to factor this in now and make the right choice. 

Open-source or Cloud-based?

Both options have their pros and cons. A cloud-based CMS solution comes with all the functionality of an open-source CMS, with a 3rd-party host managing things like functionality, security, accessibility, etc. This, of course, comes at a price.

On the other hand, an open-source CMS is free to download and easy to use. These systems use a code that teams can use, modify and distribute and the platforms are frequently updated by diverse community members. As a result, open-source CMS often offer the latest technologies, which gives B2B organisations more options for site builds.

That said, open-source CMS options are often more disposed to security threats.

Headless or Traditional?

The question we’re asked so often these days. Traditional CMS platforms keep internal teams dependent on vendors’ preferred frameworks, databases, and technologies. At the same time, you can render only one front-end, for example, a website or mobile app.

When you add up the costs of training, maintenance, and security updates, the ROI of traditional CMS is hard to justify nowadays. On top of it, your team has to deal with unmanageable content silos across multiple CMSs and services.

Headless CMS, on the other hand, come with all the content your team uses to produce various types of digital content stored as structured content within the CMS. This content can then be distributed to any digital frontend from a single repository.

In the long run, a headless CMS can provide scalable architecture while eliminating content silos, and it’s often the preferred choice here at Show+Tell. 

What about Composable Architecture?

Nope, it’s not just a buzz phrase. Gartner predicted that organisations adopting a composable approach would “outpace the competition by 80% in the speed of new feature implementation.”  It’ll quickly become a phrase you can no longer ignore. 

Composable architecture is an approach to building software systems with flexible, reusable components. These components are designed to execute specific tasks with minimal side effects, enhancing a system's overall efficiency and adaptability.

In a typical website or app, the front-end code (what the user sees) is tightly coupled with the back-end code (the database and server side). This creates development and deployment challenges. This is because even small changes to the front end can require developers to make significant back-end changes. 

A composable architecture decouples the front-end and back-end code, making development faster and easier. A composable platform typically uses a headless CMS. This type of CMS provides an application programming interface (API) that the front-end code can call to fetch data. The separation of the front-end and back-end means each area can be developed independently, which makes deployments simpler and more efficient.

A composable approach enables a more modular and scalable approach to website development. 

Want to discuss your requirements?

This post gives an overview of the ways to choose the right CMS for a B2B organisation, there’s so much to discuss and it’s a conversation that we find works better over a coffee, delving into the unique requirements of your business. 

To schedule one, get in touch with the Show + Tell team here.