What are the Benefits of Adopting a Harmonised Approach When it Comes to Global Content Management?

In our globalised economy, digital assets such as websites and blogs play a key role to reach and retain your customers. As organisations expand their digital offering, it is essential to ensure all of your communications and content are consistent across multiple languages and match the voice of the brand. Content management systems, such as Umbraco Global Content Management System, have been able to fill this space and provide a means to develop a harmonised content strategy. In this blog, we explain what a Global Content Management System is and the key benefits for International Organisations.

What is a CMS?

Firstly, let’s discuss what a Content Management System is, and how they work. A Content Management System is a software platform that allows multiple contributors to create, modify and publish digital content, all in one place, often without having to write any of the code themselves.

The user-friendly interface means even those with limited technological expertise can build their own website, write blogs, create portfolios and much more. Aside from enabling easy and dynamic content collaboration for companies, CMS platforms also provide additional features such pre-designed templates, SEO boosting suggestions to improve your ranking on Google and optimisation of page load times.

A CMS is made up of 2 principal components, the CMA (content management application) which forms the front-end user interface and the CDA (content delivery application) which processes the content and updates the intended interface, such as the website. A CMS can either be on-premises or cloud based, with the former being installed on the server and the latter being hosted by the vendor.

What is Umbraco Global CMS?

Umbraco CMS is an open source .NET CMS which helps developers, marketers and agencies to enhance its content creation capabilities. It is the most popular platform that uses a Microsoft-based infrastructure development framework. Since its launch in 2000, Umbraco has consistently grown in popularity among web developers and marketing managers due to its great usability, meaning non-technical users can create and curate content to create engaging digital assets.  

Here are some of the key benefits:

1. Design look

Umbraco creates fluid and fast websites for its users. With its flexibility, design and branding can easily be applied and changed over time.

2. Usability

Umbraco is easy to edit which gives companies flexibility to create content without having to rely on developers

3. Infinitely scalable

Umbraco is a CMS platform which is great for business’ who need to manage a large number of pages. It can also support the infinite growth of organisations in a stable manner. Also, as Umbraco is a primarily developer led program which means the possibilities of what organisations could build are also limitless.

4. Cross-referencing capability

Umbraco as a platform is great at tagging, linking and cross-referencing to other pages, so organisations can promote content and deepen engagement with site visitors.

5. Flexibility

Instead of developing pages separately, Umbraco allows you to develop page templates that can be reused with different content across the site. Umbraco also allows you to edit individual components without affecting any other sections on that page or the rest of the site. Umbraco Heartcore provides even more flexibility in the form of a headless CMS. This removes the front-end from the CMS, while keeping the interface necessary to add content, allowing you to deliver content to any platform such as a website, app, smart fridge, billboard and many others, whilst maintaining the correct structure.

6. Sophisticated search

Umbraco provides a powerful and very adaptable search tool, allowing the user to have more control over the content they view.

7. Cloud first

Hosting your website in a ‘cloud first’ CMS provides many advantages, such as instant updates, reliability and the option to scale your Cloud subscription up or down depending on your requirements.

8. Open source

As an open-source CMS, Umbraco is completely free and you will only have to pay for hosting and web development services.

9. Security and support

Umbraco is very secure compared to most CMS platforms due to its identity-based security system. Despite being an open source CMS, Umbraco provides great commercial support when needed.

Why is a Global CMS important for International Organisations?

One of the core benefits which we are yet to mention is the multilingual capabilities of Umbraco which means collaborators in different regions can unite on one platform to generate content, and  tailor it to all the markets in which the business operates. With built in multilingual features, Umbraco allows international organizations to publish different variations of a web page depending on the locations/language preference of the user. Being able to manage these variations on one intelligent CMS ensures organizations maintain a synchronized communication approach, ensuring consistency in their branding and messages.

Read our success story: Baker Tilly International

At ClerksWell we understand the importance of using the right CMS for your organization. Baker Tilly International, one of the World’s largest accountancy firms, was struggling to keep its branding consistent across its extensive online member presence. By adopting the Umbraco Global CMS, Clerkswell could develop the back-end, and set up a system that consisted of a single content editor that provides a space to organise each of the member firms’ website.

The set up ClerksWell designed ensures that, while member firms can make edits to their own website, readily share and read the content of other member firms’ websites, BTI have executive control over changes or modifications to member firms’ websites if required. The upgraded international website resulted in an increase in online engagement due to improved UX. The deployment of a harmonized content approach created an intuitive user journey from the main website to the individual member firm websites.

Check out our other Umbraco success stories on our and send us an email on hello@clerkswell.com for all enquiries.