Web Content Maturity
Making the case for a more integrated approach to Web content management (WCM) is not difficult for any company focused on its customers. Consumer technologies such as smartphones, social media, personalization and video have conditioned customers to expect a faster and better experience with a higher degree of service.
Most companies have some pieces needed to improve customer experience in one form or another lying around, but these pieces often need to be brought together to create a superior customer experience. Ideally every touch point with the customer—from a mobile app to an e-commerce transaction—looks and feels the same with full contextual awareness.
But while that sounds good on paper, how many organizations have actually reached this "Holy Grail"? To find out, we partnered with Forrester Consulting to develop a WCM maturity model that looked at integration along with a number of other factors vital to an improved customer experience. While there are some exceptions, Forrester's research efforts—as summarized in the chart—indicate that most organizations have a long way to go.
To characterize the various stages in this model, Forrester identified seven factors that together define WCM maturity. These include authoring, workflow contextualization, content types, channel types, global/local content and social. Companies at the "inform" level on the scale, for instance, have static Web pages with next to no social functionality, limited media types and poor if any mobile support. Moving along up the curve to "experience" or "engage," companies will have added support for more media types, better mobile support and increased customer awareness and social capabilities. Still, while most organizations have moved past basic "inform" levels, virtually all organizations fall short of delivering the full "multichannel" experience, according to Forrester.
Integration Drives CXM Maturity
Content and information management professionals will play a central role in advancing customer experience initiatives along the maturity scale. However, organizational and technology silos make it difficult to deliver consistent, contextual customer experiences—and are the key reasons why so many organizations are lagging. One possible approach could be to adopt a single customer experience management (CXM) system that includes components such as creative tool sets, content management, content delivery, commerce, analytics, testing and optimization along with other capabilities. However, Forrester identifies two major issues that it says will prevent adoption of a single CXM platform:
1. Lack of an available, truly integrated CXM suite. Though some larger vendors have begun to assemble the components of a CXM suite, none truly has all of the components to support rich, contextual, cross-channel experiences. And of those vendors that have partial CXM portfolios, only a portion of those vendors have components that are truly integrated; and
2. Existing investments in CXM technologies. Since there is little appetite for complete rip-and-replace, CXM success will partially be the result of knitting together existing technologies via prepackaged connectors and flexible and well-documented application programming interfaces (APIs), particularly when tying together separate solutions that live on-premises and in the cloud.
Five Tips for Boosting WCM Maturity
Based on these factors, it is clear that organizations must consider how integration will factor in as part of the goal to deliver rich, contextual, multichannel experiences. When evaluating where your company falls on the WCM maturity scale and what you can do to improve, here are five tips to keep in mind:
1. Analyze the status quo. Before they dive in and choose a system, companies should first gain an overview of the available technologies and tools that employees are already using. Next, they should evaluate which of these systems is critical to the company's digital success, and whether they fulfill the company's current as well as future needs;
2. Evaluate features based on business benefits. Some splashy Web features are often weighted more heavily because of their "wow factor" than business need. Therefore proposed functionality should undergo a clear benefit analysis to determine which features are most likely to offer immediate benefits;
3. Rely on team players. Companies should focus especially on the integration potential of their Web content management (WCM) solution, and they should look for vendors who understand how to play well with other solutions. Buyers should look for a central system with an open architecture (such as FirstSpirit 5 from e-Spirit), well-documented interfaces and strong technical support along with a portfolio of available connectors to popular enterprise portals and e-commerce platforms;
4. Use the experience of content managers. Often the best people to consult when choosing a content platform and implementing an online strategy are the employees responsible for creating, administering and updating the content; and
5. Define a clear customization strategy. Every company faces different challenges, so some customization of the CMS is inevitable. However, by planning strategically companies can keep development and maintenance costs low while keeping their options open.
With the "age of the customer" upon us, business-as-usual risks customer erosion and dissatisfaction. By integrating existing best-of-breed solutions with a Web content integration platform, information management professionals can put their organizations in the best position for success. For deeper insights into WCM maturity and the importance of integration in advancing customer experience, download the full Forrester white paper at e-spirit.com/forresterKMW.
e-Spirit is the developer of the FirstSpirit 5 CMS. Unlike traditional Web content management systems, FirstSpirit is designed for open integration with existing IT infrastructure as well as cloud applications. It offers renowned usability together with full multichannel output capabilities including digital, mobile and print.