5 ways a CMS can improve the efficiency of your daily tasks

You’ve might have heard it on your digital team: “The system won’t load again”, or: “where did we put that piece of content?”

A CMS is a tool like any other. If it’s blunt or rusty, it won’t work as well as if it was sharp and glistening. Therefore, having the right tool—the right CMS—can improve the efficiency of your daily tasks. Here are 5 ways a great CMS can achieve just that.

1. Responsive editor

Instead of having to sit on the right spot and with the right computer, having a responsive content manager allows you to edit on the fly, even when you only have access to a smartphone. Need to fix something in your digital experiences quickly? Just access it from your phone, tablet, laptop, or computer—wherever there’s internet access.

A responsive CMS fits any screen size, and takes into account small screens with large icons and touch screen compatibility—while at the same time using all the available space on giant screens in a reasonable and purposeful manner.

Do you have the right CMS for your digital experiences? Find out:

2. Faceted search and navigation

Being able to navigate your ever-growing content repository is of utmost importance, or else you will drown in content or be hard-pressed when you’re attempting to retrieve something you know you stored somewhere in the system ages ago. This is where faceted search and navigation come into the picture.

“Faceted” simply means “different sides/views.” In this approach, you can see your content through different “lenses,” so to speak. Search your content with text, filter it by different parameters, sort it, easily see version history, publish parent or select child contents—you name it.

An easy and powerful navigation system makes handling your content a breeze, instead of a needle-in-the-haystack nightmare.

Go one step further: Supercharge your site with Next.js and headless CMS »

3. Media asset management

Nothing is more boring or counterproductive than having to use several services and programs to do what you ideally should be able to do in just one single solution.

Simple image editing is a prime example. Every CMS with respect for itself should offer basic image editing tools—like cropping, flipping, resizing, color handling, and focal point.

Fast, easy and responsive management of images and other media will free your team’s time to do more strategic or creative work, instead of being encumbered with manual, repetitive routine tasks like changing image sizes.

4. Third-party marketing tools integrations

Your CMS obviously can’t offer every solution from here to the moon. You have to have some separate software, right? An effective CMS is modular by its nature. Your CMS should allow for adding and removing parts in its engine based on what your organization needs.

Do you for instance need an analytics dashboard? Bring it on the table through an integration. Or marketing automation software? Feed the data back and forth through the right channels.

Managing and reporting through every needed tool in one place, your CMS, is a great way in improving efficiency for your team. In that way they don’t have to start and log into a new program or solution every time, and it makes the hunt for KPIs and reporting a much less strenuous task.

Find out more: Why combine a powerful CMS with popular marketing tools?

5. APIs to handle legacy systems

If you’re working for an established organization or a large corporation, chances are that the organization has been around for a while and started to board the digital train several years ago—if not decades.

This means that your organization may be riddled with old, almost outdated technical systems. We call these “legacy systems,” as they reflect the organization’s old legacy.

Just like with third-party marketing tools, you sometimes must have these systems sticking around. And if you do, do not tear out your hair in frustration over the lack of user-friendliness and modern functionality.

Instead, contact your developers and make them pull out of their hat a magic trick called “API”. APIs are tool boxes that enable different systems to communicate with each other.

This is exactly what you need if you are stuck with legacy systems that otherwise would have hampered your productivity. Now the old system can feed needed data into your modern system, freeing you from the chains of manual labor here as well.

***

While there are tons of tools to help you with task management, the CMS remains your central hub for your digital experiences. Make sure that your CMS arms your digital team with responsive editing, a smart and flexible navigation and search function, easy media management, access to third-party marketing tools and APIs to handle your legacy systems.

Boost your productivity by improving the effective delivery of your daily tasks. You will not regret it.

First published 7 November 2018, updated 9 August 2022.