Content Management encompasses Content Management, Information Management and Document Management. Content management (also known as knowledge management), is a relatively new discipline, and if you ask the many suppliers of content management software they all have different definitions. It is fair to say that most people regard content management as applying solely or mainly to the management and delivery of web content. This is a very limited view, content management software covers a much wider area and can be categorised as follows:
1. Web Content Management Systems (CMS) - this was the first and is the most common use of the term "content management". The CMS system sits under a website to manage web content. In this context the word "content" refers to any resource used to build a website.
2. Document/File Management Systems - these are designed to manage whole documents and other files rather than the words and pictures inside them. They know little about what the files contain and treat them as a "blob" of data. Traditionally they rely on users defining and applying metadata to give them more information, however AI is opening up the ability to search within documents and surface content with the context of a plain english query. This overcomes the problem of metadata being applied haphazardly.
3. Digital Asset Management systems (DAM) - similar in nature to document and file management in that they manage files, but the focus is on large brand or campaign assets that need to be distributed in a controlled way around brands, products, packaging or advertising activities. DAMs help with transferring sometimes very large files between, for example, manufacturers and their distributors or between brand owners and their advertising agencies, where email is problematic.
