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Content management, of course, plays a fundamental role in Internet-based commerce. Content management has been my core focus for several years now, and I have worked closely with large companies who have been automating how content is used in design, manufacturing, sales and marketing, logistics, and customer support. This is an area of intense focus for many companies now, and the platforms and systems to support content management are growing more powerful and more functional all the time.

Why is content management fundamental to eCommerce? Commerce involves intensive communication at all phases of the process, and eCommerce requires that much of the communication happen automatically and online--impersonally, as a colleague recently put it. When the products are complex, the content is correspondingly voluminous and complex, increasing the need for content management technology.

In fact, the challenge of content management is even more complex and interesting than that--this is precisely where the issues get interesting. I have been writing for years about how content management supports all kinds of business processes--research and development, design, manufacturing, marketing and sales, customer support, maintenance and supplies. I have not been able to successfully articulate this yet, but there is something fundamental about the connection between business processes and the content that supports these processes. There is some kind of lever here--the intimate relationship between content and business process at all points in the buying and selling process.

In the long run, organizations that most effectively tie content management and eCommerce together will profit from their efforts. Of course, I may have understated the potential impact. The real impact for these companies could be much more fundamental. Indeed, one could argue that being successful at this kind of process will soon become necessary for survival in many industries.