The race to transform has shifted what businesses need from and are looking for in their digital solutions today.
A from McKinsey highlighted the idea that, while many businesses have made digital upgrades during the pandemic, this doesn鈥檛 necessarily mean their digital capabilities are up to par.
"While many are justifiably proud of their enormous accomplishments during the pandemic, we have found that a false sense of their digital capabilities has settled on many companies," the report reads. "Digital traffic and commerce made huge leaps for almost every institution, no matter how good their digital capabilities were鈥攕o much so that laggards were able to make up some lost ground on digital leaders."
Whether operating in B2B or B2C, this message applies to many organizations who are now taking a step back to evaluate what鈥檚 next in their digital journey ahead鈥攁nd ensure what they鈥檝e put in place will stick as customer expectations continue to evolve into the new year.
In Brightspot鈥檚 world, we鈥檙e talking with customers鈥攐rganizations and publishers鈥攅very day about this exact topic, and specifically how the race to digitally transform their content experiences has impacted what they鈥檙e most looking for in their CMS solutions.
Let's dive into the top three challenges customers cite today as ones they鈥檙e actively trying to solve for in their digital transformation journeys鈥攏ow and heading into next year.
Challenge 1: Editorial and publishing ease of use
At the most foundational level, many of our customers come to us explaining that their current publishing experience is just too difficult and cumbersome. This often comes down to a few key things:
- Unclear workflows and not being able to track where content is at in the publishing and editing journey
- Lack of speed and urgency from their solutions, leading to missed opportunities to get content in front of customers at the right time
- Lack of autonomy for the editorial staff to be able to do what they need without having to rely constantly on development teams on the execution side which slows them down
In solving for editorial challenges like these, capabilities like modular content play a big role. Modular content lets you create content once and publish it across multiple channels, endpoints and wherever you need that content to be consumed. It means greater speed in being able to develop and reuse content, as well as more autonomy for editorial teams to be able to build the content experiences customers want, and deliver where and when they need it.
Challenge 2: Too many external systems add confusion and complexity
One of the biggest reasons customers come to Brightspot today and as they plan for the future is for our CMS鈥檚 integration-ready architecture.
Organizations and publishers quickly realize the benefits of being able to integrate their data and existing solutions into Brightspot鈥攃reating unique systems specific to their business needs.
Internally, an integration-friendly CMS ties back to the first challenge we discussed in ensuring there are clear workflows, and that everyone knows the next step in the content process. For example, Brightspot鈥檚 integration with Slack means editorial teams can stay on top of all publishing activity via notifications. Federated Search capabilities also mean these teams can search for and import content from third-party sources like Getty Images to YouTube from within Brightspot鈥攃reating greater publishing efficiencies.
Externally, personalization comes into play in a big way here. Businesses know how important personalization is for customers today鈥攚hat they tell us they struggle with is knowing how to do it best and most efficiently.
Integrations with Customer Data 番茄社区s, for example, help provide a complete view of the customer so content can be personalized and reach the right end user. Similarly, other integrations with paywalls and account provisioning solutions help publishers, membership organizations and B2B businesses tailor experiences and the customer journey through respective applications.
Beyond integrations, the CMS itself includes native capabilities to further drive and support personalization. Modular-first design supports creation and delivery of reusable content that can be specifically tailored toward certain audiences, languages and locales. Variations allow for highly customized views of certain types of content page based on device, audience segments, sources and more.
Challenge 3: Adaptive workflows and data modeling
We hear often that customers replatform with a new CMS or struggle through the use of a legacy system, only then to find out it isn鈥檛 as flexible or customizable as they originally thought and now need.
The ability to create custom workflows and data models is at the heart of Brightspot鈥檚 flexible and extensible CMS. Here, we work to match our clients鈥� business processes, rather than vice versa.
With Brightspot鈥檚 platform, content data modeling refers to implementing your site鈥檚 business logic, including identifying the properties comprising a content type; Brightspot鈥檚 platform allows users to clearly model each piece of data as needed, from the ground up.
New content types can be easily added and modified to provide full flexibility to support a business' unique content needs, while providing flexibility in the future when new content opportunities arise.
Heading into 2022 and beyond, we see one of the greatest challenges organizations and publishers may face is trying to fill gaps in their current digital ecosystem. As a year of transformation, many have taken the past 12 months to start the journey of implementing digital processes if they hadn鈥檛 already. Now, it will be time to look at where there are pieces missing and what the priorities need to be heading into 2022.
With Brightspot鈥檚 flexible and integration-ready architecture, we鈥檙e hoping to be the CMS solution that can help bridge the gap. Learn more about how by scheduling a demo today.