Custom CMS Solutions

Custom Content Management Systems from Chicago, Illinois

Summary

Our custom, powerful, CMS solutions allow you to manage the content of your website or application in a very simple and straightforward way.

Our custom-created modules are tailored for your company's exact needs to simplify all operations and save time. Compare to Wordpress-like websites where, even if suitable plugins exist, time would have to be spent fine-tuning them, and they still won't be an exact fit to suit your needs.

What is Content?

Content is any information that users (clients or employees) create, or need to consume.
For bloggers - articles they write.
For small business - product details they manufacture or sell.
For large organizations - employee policies and documents.
For schools - student learning materials.
For doctors - patient forms, x-rays, lists of pharmaceuticals, etc.

Content is not only text and pictures, but any other structured or unstructured information.

CMS (Content Management System) allows you to effectively manage all of this information, so it is important to choose the right CMS to store, organize, and retrieve your content, as well as automate routine tasks. For example, you could use Wordpress to manage documents within your company, but it will be clunky and cumbersome.

Factors to Consider

1. Type of content and Business Logic - Type of content is the most important factor to consider as some CMS are created for specific needs. For example, Wordpress is good for blogs and web sites, but it cannot process more complex data and business logic. As your data and business logic become more complex, custom CMS becomes more valuable.

2. Resources for implementation - If you have in-house IT resources and relatively simple data structures, you could go with some open-source CMS, but if you have many different entities, specific workflow and data processing rules, and need a high degree of task automation for your employees - consider building custom CMS.

3. Timeline and Deadlines - While you could get open-source CMS running in a short time frame, with the right approach, custom CMS solutions can also be implemented quickly and they include customized tools for your business needs.

CMS Alternatives

1. Open-source CMS

• Examples: Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla
• Pros: Free or low cost, can have many plugins and many themes.
• Cons: Not well suited for non-sales websites such as internal business applications, hard to configure for your exact needs, security issues as they are frequently targeted by hackers.

2. Proprietary CMS (Hosted/Enterprise)

• Examples: Squarespace, Weebly, Wix
• Pros: Pre-built for specific needs, quick first results.
• Cons: Usually expensive, takes time and resources to configure properly, no access to source code, once you're invested, you can't easily switch to another provider.

3. Custom CMS

• Examples: Your custom CMS created by Engineered IT. See below
• Pros: Exact fit for your company needs, you pay for essential features, no overhead of "universal" system, much simpler and easier to use, full source code available.
• Cons: Takes time and resources to build, but this can be reduced with Engineered IT solutions!

Our Custom CMS Solutions

In order to reduce time and costs, we have created CMS Framework (available in PHP and ASP.NET).
CMS Framework allows us to quickly prototype CMS to fit your company needs and then add features essential for your business.

Engineered IT CMS solutions support out of the box:

• Unique user logins
• Flexible user access levels
• Integrated audit logs
• Unified user experience
• Personalized dashboard
• Integrated security best practices
• Ability to customize and add more functionality
• Low maintenance costs

Additionally if you have already built in-house CMS using MS Access we can convert it into a modern cloud-based CMS application.

Successful Custom CMS Projects

Company profile: Facilitates international exchange programs for students working and living in the USA.
Problem: Documents were manually placed as .pdf/.docx in web-server folder, then direct links were used. There was no search function.
Solution: EIT Custom CMS allows our client to create web-readable documents, automate document management, and provided an easy and quick search tool for students.

Company profile: Music ensemble selling concert tickets online.
Problem: Client manually updated html pages with concert and venue descriptions, any changes in pricing or running a promo required editing and reuploading multiple files.
Solution: EIT Custom CMS allows our client to quickly setup multiple new season concerts and manage promos instantly using a convenient web interface.

Company profile: Law firm.
Problem: Attorney profiles and newsletters were created as raw html files and images, and then uploaded via FTP. It was time consuming and required technical knowledge to make updates.
Solution: EIT Custom CMS enabled client to manage attorney bios in a structured way, newsletter creation was streamlined, and anyone could make updates as our easy User Interface does not require technical knowledge to use.

Company profile: Commercial real estate sales.
Problem: All information about lots and properties was uploaded via FTP in files, then some PHP scripts modified manually, and private information access managed manually.
Solution: EIT Custom CMS let managers easily set up property information via one web screen. Membership registration and login was integrated with Salesforce allowing automated access to private areas of the site.