In the global business economy, every organization needs a competitive edge. Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) may find it difficult to differentiate services and products from competitors. But the competitive advantage is broader than product and service offerings.

To be competitive in your market of choice, you will also need a competitive edge to attract and retain employees, partners and suppliers. Competitive advantage can even extend to financial resources. The organization that can easily flex to obtain additional financing and provide timely expansion has a critical edge on its competitors.

One of the key factors for flexibility is building and maintaining a stable, innovative communication framework. This framework can provide numerous advantages for internal and external communication. The expanding reach of Content Management Systems (CMS) offers a foundation for growth and enables a flexible environment where your organization can creatively address client, employee and partner needs.

To engender competitive differentiation, your organization must assess the available tools and solutions in the CMS software market. Open source tools provide flexibility for a multi-layered functional approach and there are proven CMS frameworks, modules and templates that provide a simple environment and toolkit from which you can create your CMS solution.

Let’s take a look at some of the areas within your organization where CMS may offer a competitive edge.

Yesterday, I spent my time at the Techknowlogy Summit in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. We don't get too many technology or geek conventions in the state of South Dakota, so I didn't want this one go to by without a mention here at CMS Report.

Keynote Speaker

The Techknowlogy Summit is a trade show with presentations by both national and regional leaders in technology. The keynote speaker for the show was Kodak Company's Bill Lloyd, CTO, discussing his company's transformation for meeting the demands of the digital age. It was an interesting discussion on the challenges a century old company faces when needing to shift their primary products (film) over to new digital products. Kodak's current modernization efforts began around 2001 and is expected to be near completion in 2007. It was an interesting story, a story that looks likely to have a happy ending for the company and its investors.

Breakout Sessions

The show also had some breakout sessions. I attended a couple Web oriented sessions as well as a session on project management (well done). Regarding the Internet focused sessions, all the speakers were knowledgeable but I'm not convinced all the speakers fully understood who was in their audience. The make-up of the audience was made up by about half developers and half small business people (many of them small retail owners). Naturally, a business technology show should have made sure those talks had the small business owners in mind.

However, the talks were more geared toward the CEO crowd. When the speakers found that the audience didn't contain the companies with the huge IT budgets, the speakers then shifted their talk toward the more comfortable IT people. From my perspective, the small business people were squirming in their chairs and suddenly felt out of place. Oh, how often we IT people spend so much time talking about what we know and so little time listening to the needs of potential customers!