We use Sitecore CMS for our website at the moment and are considering adding the Sitecore DMS in the near future.
A colleague of mine insists that it is absolutely necessary to have our page editor along with the "cloning" functionality enabled and working for us to be able to use the DMS.
I'm familiar with their CMS but not the DMS so I wanted to know -- is it absolutely necessary?
Cloning functionality is mostly used for Multivariant(MV) Tests.
As it suggests in the Marketing Operations Cookbook:
When you use the Page Editor to set up an MV test you can use existing content, clone content or create new content items to use as test variable variations. This means that you do not need to ask a developer to help you to create special content to use in your MV tests.
In the Page Editor, one can create combination tests. These tests allow you to test more than one control on the same page. This is multivariant testing.
More information on MV Tests like cloning items to use as test variables or creating combination tests is also given in the Marketing Operations Cookbook.
More over also remember that you can also create MV Test in Content Editor but note the below (as suggested by Sitecore)
If you create an MV test using the Content Editor you do not have access to the same statistics on Engagement Values generated when you test these controls. We recommend that, if possible, you create all MV tests using the Page Editor.
So if one your goals for using Sitecore DMS is MV tests, I would suggest you do use cloning.
Hope this helps in deciding the way forward.