A content management system (or CMS) is a system used to organise and facilitate collaborative digital content creation. Recently, the term has been associated with programs for managing the content of web sites. Web content management (WCM) is also used to refer to these programs.

The current content management system at its simplest form is a computerised tool born of traditional sources (address books, encyclopedias, rolodex, etc.). The idea is to take information and organize it so that it's easily retrievable, updatable, flexible in how it can be reformatted and retransmitted, and searchable.

Today's content management systems are elaborate software/database applications designed to store and process large amounts of complex information.

Any application which manages information could technically be considered a CMS, such as Help Desk software, Address/contact management systems, web blogs, etc. However a classic content management system is generally regarded as a framework of tools that are less application or data-specific. A well-designed CMS should be like a computer: able to be "programmed" with different rules and perform different types of processes and manage different applications and related data.