Sitecore

Interviewee:  Jill Grozalsky, Product Marketing Director

Sitecore delivers a digital experience platform empowering brands to build lifelong relationships with their customers, bringing together content, commerce, and data into one connected platform.

Do you agree that WCM is still a foundational platform for digital businesses in 2020?

"Yes, but there is more to the story. Web Content Management (WCM) platforms are critical for digital businesses in 2020, as they provide the infrastructure organizations need to deliver information and keep content fresh, as well as serving as the foundation on which other capabilities are built. WCM is the engine behind customer engagement and is the first tool used to start building relationships with customers. Customers visit a website with intentions and questions. WCM allows companies to figure out a visitor’s intent and present relevant content based on their searches that can lead them through the customer journey and on a path to purchase. That being said, while WCM is a foundational platform, it is just one piece of the broader CX puzzle as companies work to deliver exceptional customer experiences. Companies today need to earn trust with every interaction. Having a platform that collects data and actionable insights provides the ability to deliver tailored experiences. Driving engagement, empowering customers, and giving them more control over their interactions with a brand are essential."

As WCM tools are getting more robust and encompassing as digital teams get savvier, what are some of the key WCM features that have not changed and are still a vital part of organizing and deploying content? 

"Headless: With the ongoing proliferation of devices, the need to deliver consistent content across a range of devices is more important than ever. Having a headless WCM solution provides unlimited flexibility to companies by de-coupling content delivery from rendering – enabling companies to reach customers anywhere they choose to engage.

Workflow: As teams are increasingly global and dispersed, the importance of workflow can’t be overlooked, as it is a vital part of ensuring that the right content is deployed. WCM workflows help facilitate content editing and approval through a collaborative effort to ensure appropriate contributors and stakeholders are involved prior to publishing.

Analytics: You can’t change what you can’t measure, so having performance data within a WCM solution is important to working smarter, not harder when it comes to developing content and customer experiences. Analytics within a WCM system drives marketers to become more data-driven, opening the door for capturing customer data, which can transform companies by bringing them closer to consumers."

Although the WCM landscape remains a crowded field, what unique features stand out to manage digital experiences and meet business requirements? 
 
"The features that made WCM popular in the first place are the same features that will help businesses manage digital experiences via omnichannel content delivery, advanced workflows, and easy content administration, to name a few. Increasingly, though, what truly differentiates WCM is what is wrapped around it and how it creates a path to maturity for companies. The use of a WCM system is the first step in making an informed effort to improve customer experience for companies, but this is truly just the beginning of the journey for managing digital experiences and meeting business requirements. A stand-out WCM solution provides an efficient, effective, and scalable way to deliver a superior customer experience, as well as a pathway for organizations to move from a WCM system to a DXP platform, enabling them to act on customer insights to deliver personalization and take advantage of advanced marketing functionality. "

Do you feel an AI-enabled WCM will have a positive impact on the market?

"AI-enabled WCM systems and DXPs will certainly have a positive impact on the market as the exponential use of AI will continue to raise the bar for how we define exceptional customer experiences. The additional layer of content intelligence and insights that AI provides will contribute to more effective marketing campaigns, lead generation, and conversions. The increase in AI-enabled WCM systems and DXPs show us that the world of personalization is changing as more of the process becomes automated. Some view the increase in AI and use of automation in marketing as a negative. They fear that it will eliminate jobs or the need for certain skills. However, the need for brands to establish real connections with their audiences won’t change. We will always need human creativity to develop content that taps into emotions and plants the seed of brand loyalty. While you can automate personalization or content delivery, you cannot automate those connections."

Where do you see the WCM marketplace in five years?

"The WCM marketplace in 5 years will look similar to how it looks today – equally crowded and equally diverse. There will certainly be more headless WCM or SaaS WCM options, but the fundamental need for a WCM solution won’t change, keeping both the WCM and DXP markets thriving. As companies progress their digital transformations, they will graduate from WCM systems to DXPs and build up their marketing technology stacks to match ever-changing customer expectations. They’ll need a platform that collects data and actionable insights that can orchestrate campaigns across channels, and can help them plan, create, and manage the granular content assets that fuel digital experiences delivered by WCM. Vendors like Sitecore that provide the breadth of those capabilities in an integrated platform – compatible with the needs of the individual business – will be in the driver’s seat."

For more information about Sitecore, read our Sitecore platform review.

Acquia

Interviewee:  Lynne Capozzi, Chief Marketing Officer

Acquia is an open-source digital experience company built around Drupal to give enterprise companies the ability to build, operate, and optimize websites, apps, and other digital experiences.

Do you agree that WCM is still a foundational platform for digital businesses in 2020?

"Absolutely. Despite any and all technological changes and progressions, businesses will always need to solve the baseline problem of how to effectively and efficiently deliver content to their customers, employees, prospects, and constituents.  Putting content online is not difficult, but knowing what the user’s interests are, which content is relevant, and knowing how to engage them through the right communications channel are all extremely complex."

As WCM tools are getting more robust and encompassing as digital teams get savvier, what are some of the key WCM features that have not changed and are still a vital part of organizing and deploying content? 

"At Acquia, we have always seen open systems as a core, critical component of successful CMS. Content should be easily served up to any other system. There are so many disparate technologies that often are closed systems that cannot connect and coexist, so data gets siloed, and companies don’t end up with a holistic view of each customer. This hobbles their ability to run nimble campaigns and react quickly to change as it happens, because of the limitations of their technology.

So, despite an investment in technology, these rigid, closed platforms with a built-in inability to share and integrate data, actually become a barrier to digital experience, not an enabler."

Although the WCM landscape remains a crowded field, what unique features stand out to manage digital experiences and meet business requirements? 
 
"As the shift from CMS to digital experience management (DXM) continues, more and more companies are seeing how essential customer experience initiatives are. Solutions that help organizations manage digital experiences across multiple channels are becoming more critical. Today, customer experiences also happen outside of the website, and both consumers and business buyers have come to expect dynamic experiences that integrate with other channels beyond the website. It all starts with a website, but the Technology that can deliver the right content to all of these channels at the right time will become a core tool for every marketing organization in the very near future."

Do you feel an AI-enabled WCM will have a positive impact on the market?

"Very much so. Even though there’s a lot of froth around it industrywide, in the CMS world, AI is another implementation that can create a better, automated personalization tool. The work that AI can do in minutes quite literally would take a team of marketers years to do. It’s still early stages, and companies still need to figure out how they can build and adjust their organizations to use AI effectively, but over the next few years, it will radically change how we view personalization and experience."

Where do you see the WCM marketplace in five years?

"I believe we will see open, integrated platforms that use a combination of AI, Personalization, and a great customer experience all rolled into one.  Open Marketing systems.

We’re also going to see a huge number of B2B and B2C brands learn from businesses such as the trendsetters in personalization and tech - Shake Shack and StitchFix, that are doing experience right. This will become what determines winning or losing with customers. Experience and personalization will move on from knowing someone’s name and location into truly understanding what customers need so brands can be helpful and valuable so that those customers will stick around.

Content management is the key to better experiences, so I see nothing but progress in the years ahead."

For more information about Acquia, read our Acquia platform review.

CoreMedia

Interviewee:  Doug Heise, Vice President, Global Marketing

CoreMedia, a developer of the content management and experience orchestration platform, CoreMedia Content Cloud, is committed to forging high-touch collaborations with category leaders across all industries.  

Do you agree that WCM is still a foundational platform for digital businesses in 2020?

"Absolutely. Although WCM must now be considered a part of a broader set of omnichannel digital experience capabilities, it needs to sit at the core of that emerging ecosystem. Because great digital experiences depend on great content that must be delivered at every stage in the customer journey with speed and agility – at scale – there is still a tremendous need for WCM. Companies need to manage and frequently update content across all of their global web properties.

And it’s not just the Web. We see a need for more digital content on every channel, in many languages, for different audiences. This puts a lot of pressure on efficiency and process automation. Mature content management systems like CoreMedia provide the tools and integrations to enable the content and marketing teams to master that challenge."

As WCM tools are getting more robust and encompassing as digital teams get savvier, what are some of the key WCM features that have not changed and are still a vital part of organizing and deploying content? 

"Although marketers, merchandisers, and e-Commerce professionals are always looking for the latest technologies to engage customers, there are certain capabilities that remain fundamental to all WCM tools: a flexible, object-oriented core content repository that separates management from presentation; support for both ad hoc collaboration and structured workflows; and advanced user and rights management. Global experience delivery capabilities must include a dynamic event-based architecture, multi-site management, translation workflows, and support for true headless delivery.

Because no WCM platform can work in isolation, another essential set of tools includes the ability to easily and seamlessly integrate with third-party tools, including analytics, e-Commerce platforms, marketing tools, customer data, and tools for optimizing your content. And, of course, all of these features must be intuitively easy to use, flexible, and simple to extend and customize through built-in developer tools and a configurable business layer."

Although the WCM landscape remains a crowded field, what unique features stand out to manage digital experiences and meet business requirements? 
 
"One feature that should be ubiquitous but is actually less common than you would expect is instant omnichannel previews that let you see what all of your customer experiences will look like for any device, channel, persona, or region. And these previews need to include all third-party elements, including products, external content, and integrated rich media.

Secondly, a WCM platform is only as strong as its ability to integrate and extend. Some WCM tools come with a broad set of pre-built integrations and fast, flexible tools for customizing the experience. The next generation of WCM tools will need to emphasize agility and flexibility above all else with support for content planning, orchestration, measurement, and optimization.

Finally, both B2C and B2B companies need the ability to manage and integrate huge catalogues of product and marketing assets, so a built-in Digital Asset Management system is also a huge plus."

Do you feel an AI-enabled WCM will have a positive impact on the market?

"Without a doubt. We’re already seeing customers using AI to produce content for large catalogs of products, sports, or business news - all based on structured input data.

This will also have a huge impact on personalization. Rather than relying on segments, AI technologies are giving retailers the ability to create online experiences for an audience of one. Cutting-edge marketing automation software can capture reams of customer data (from clickstreams to browsing history), combine that with real-time information (location data, current weather, etc.) then use AI-powered tools to produce custom offers and shopping environments that match a customer’s preferences and help them convert."

Where do you see the WCM marketplace in five years?

"In the next five years, WCM will be at the center of an emerging suite of truly agile digital content and experience delivery tools. We call this brand orchestration. In this ecosystem, WCM will serve as the master control panel – the captain’s bridge - for orchestrating, managing and updating content from all sources. We believe that brand orchestration will become the system of record for all successful brands through the ability to manage content for all customers, including instant updates, and the synchronization of experiences across all touchpoints – including online and mobile experiences, but also in-store, programmatic advertising, out-of-home, and video.

It will provide the tools for editing, enriching, scheduling, translating, localizing, and approving content. It will allow business users to assign content to channels, audiences, locations. And it will become the primary engine for integrating data, feedback, and recommendations from all available sources to drive changes and decisions."

For more information about CoreMedia, read our CoreMedia platform review.

Progress Software

Interviewee: Gregg Shupe, Digital Experience Thought Leader

Meaningful engagement, elevated experiences delivered with ease, Progress Sitefinity makes it easy for marketers and developers to deliver compelling, multichannel user experiences.

Do you agree that WCM is still a foundational platform for digital businesses in 2020?

"Digital experiences are created by content, not just text, but imagery, video, styling, etc.  Content is the center of digital engagements and experiences.  Modern WCMs are set up to distribute content to build experiences and journeys that take place on multiple platforms and devices, beyond just web pages. The WCM is the central repository of content, and the capabilities to send the content to any digital format within a business's digital strategy set the winning WCMs apart."

As WCM tools are getting more robust and encompassing as digital teams get savvier, what are some of the key WCM features that have not changed and are still a vital part of organizing and deploying content? 

"Managing content across an omnichannel strategy is still one of the vital features of a modern WCM.  Organizing and managing content for distribution both to the front-end website, as well as digital destinations beyond the company website. Content management capabilities have evolved with the savviness of digital teams, and modern WCMs provide an easy access to create, manage, and distribute content without reliance on IT teams."
 
Although the WCM landscape remains a crowded field, what unique features stand out to manage digital experiences and meet business requirements? 
 
"Digital experiences do not solely reside on domains owned by the company. Modern customers demand a seamless, frictionless experience throughout all of their touchpoints, and that includes mobile, wearable, AR, and IoT devices. To address this, marketers need the tools to create, manage, and distribute content without reliance on IT teams. Developers, on the other hand, need to break the inherent limitations of traditional WCMs and be able to leverage any frontend framework to deliver across platforms and devices. A modern WCM fosters this sort of cross-team collaboration and provides the toolset for frontend-agnostic content management and delivery. Therefore, one of the most important features of a winning WCM is the ability to decouple content management from the presentation/front-end.  That, of course, is possible via a robust set of APIs / data services to not only store, fetch and serve the multi-channel content but also support the level of customization and personalization that traditional WCMs have been providing."

Do you feel an AI-enabled WCM will have a positive impact on the market?

"Keeping up with customer trends and expectations is what I would consider a “Sisyphean task” -- the Greek mythological story where Sisyphus was cursed by the gods to push a rock up a hill, however, every time he got close to the top, the rock would roll back down.  Even if companies had an army of marketers and business analysts to comb through all of their customer experience data, they would still be left behind.  A.I. offers the ability to speculate or make predictions based on data and training.  For most companies, collecting data is not the issue; it’s identifying the insights and knowing what to do with them.  I believe this is where A.I. can be very helpful."

Where do you see the WCM marketplace in five years?

"The WCM market is very saturated today with thousands of vendors promising they have the easiest, comprehensive, and versatile software on the planet.  This space, however, is very fragmented with full-ecosystem platforms to entry-level open source.  The future, in my opinion, will weed out some of the similar competing platforms and the vendors whose development risks are not what the market is looking for.  Those who rise to the top, will be the vendors who invest in connectivity. Be it continued investment in improving the API-driven content management, 3rd party and, A.I. integrations, and omnichannel customer data collection or unlocking the development potential by adding more and better frontend frameworks to the mix of frameworks they support. The key to successful WCMs is to make it easy for marketing teams to create and distribute content based on predictions of what the customers want. Equally important, they need to let development teams leverage emerging frontend technologies rather than being locked into a proprietary platform."

For more information about Progress Software, read our Progress Software platform review.

Crownpeak

Interviewee: Jason Breed, Global Lead, Partnerships & Alliances

Crownpeak provides an enterprise-grade, cloud-native platform with built-in quality assurance that gives you everything you need to deliver high-quality, contextual experiences across hundreds of touchpoints.

Do you agree that WCM is still a foundational platform for digital businesses in 2020?

"Absolutely, we are seeing higher usage rates across our products than ever before. This is partly because customers are responding to a life-changing global event, but it is a trend we expect to continue beyond 2020. Where we see changes are in how the Martech stack is evolving around WCM, and foundational is the perfect word to describe it. There is specialized marketing technology out there to help you do just about anything, but the tech always ties back to content in some way. Organizations have unique needs that are served by lots of different technologies, and marketing ops isn't just a role anymore, it's a department. People are looking to deliver high-quality digital experiences, and that is not possible with a single piece of technology. You must assemble your stack piece by piece, and it makes sense to start with Web Content Management. When you have that solid base, you can then add the pieces that help you do things like personalize, optimize, and distribute the content to the right audiences."

As WCM tools are getting more robust and encompassing as digital teams get savvier, what are some of the key WCM features that have not changed and are still a vital part of organizing and deploying content? 

"One of the things we hear from customers is that while WCM tools have gotten more sophisticated and broader, they’ve also gotten a lot more complex. It’s now more complicated than ever to use the large enterprise suites to manage content. One thing that hasn’t changed is the importance of being able to create and deliver content quickly and easily, and for those experiences to be delivered to customers anywhere in the world in an instant. Consumers have less patience than ever and expect sub-second response times, or they bounce.  We see a lot of customers refocusing on the speed of execution and results, and less on shiny and new functionality."
 
Although the WCM landscape remains a crowded field, what unique features stand out to manage digital experiences and meet business requirements? 
 
"Many WCM features that were once differentiators have been commoditized – you can deliver an excellent, personalized digital experience with any of the enterprise WCM tools available. But there are huge differences in the resources and time required to do so. Platforms that do not require extensive infrastructure to function have huge advantages over the rest of the market. Customers that go with a platform architected to take advantage of client-side processing power will be able to create and deliver experiences in a fraction of the amount of time at a fraction of the cost. Similarly, platforms with solid integration frameworks are much better suited to be the base of an efficient Martech stack."

Do you feel an AI-enabled WCM will have a positive impact on the market?

"Yes, there is no doubt that AI capabilities have had, and will continue to have, a huge impact on the WCM market. What AI does well is optimization – AI helps you serve the right content to the right people at the right time. On the other hand, AI is not a magic bullet. We will not see AI-generated content decimating the market for content producers. AI must be a part of your digital transformation strategy, but an “AI-enabled WCM” does not have to have native AI capabilities. There is a glut of AI engines in the market that are already tuned to specific industries and use cases, and an integration-friendly CMS is well-positioned to deliver more relevant AI-driven experiences."

Where do you see the WCM marketplace in five years?

"The market has started to realize that features are commoditized, the next big battle will be over who can make their tool the simplest to set up, easiest to learn, and most efficient to operate. Legacy players are saddled with outdated architectures and must spend large amounts of resources to stay relevant. How well they do will determine whether they remain on top or are replaced by nimbler, SaaS WCM systems. We will finally get to the point where Enterprise platforms are as clean, lightweight, and easy to use as consumer-grade platforms like Squarespace and Wix, but with less of a focus on traditional websites and more focus on other channels. Whether that happens from the top down or the bottom up remains."

For more information about Crownpeak, read our Crownpeak platform review.

Episerver

Interviewee: Deane Barker, Sr. Director, Content Management Strategy

Episerver is a global software company offering web content management, digital commerce, and digital marketing through the Episerver Digital Experience Cloud software platform.

Do you agree that WCM is still a foundational platform for digital businesses in 2020?

"Yes, insofar as ‘WCM’ means ‘a system that is primarily focused on web publication but is flexible enough to broadcast content to any channel.’  I realize the world of information delivery is always changing, but for more organizations, the web is still the dominant delivery platform. So long as your system is storing content free from presentation, and has API support to allow you to access that content and repurpose in different ways – like non-web channels – then a web-focused system is perfectly acceptable, and probably appropriate for most organizations."

As WCM tools are getting more robust and encompassing as digital teams get savvier, what are some of the key WCM features that have not changed and are still a vital part of organizing and deploying content? 

"Content modeling will always be utterly foundational to any content scenario in any channel. There is simply nothing else that will impact a project more over the long term than the ability to effectively model and represent a logical domain of content. Mistakes and limitations here are like the foundation of a house that cracks – it’s hard to save anything build on top of it."
 
Although the WCM landscape remains a crowded field, what unique features stand out to manage digital experiences and meet business requirements? 
 
"Content collaboration and editorial workflow are too often minimized. We assume editors “will just get it.” Systems need to concentrate on the editorial experience. Happy editors simply make better content. Also, we’re seeing such a fracturing of templating systems. Server-side HTML is receding. Systems need to be able to provide support for client-side rendering frameworks like React, which includes things like server-side rendering of the initial requests and middleware to ease the developer overhead of wiring up components."

Do you feel an AI-enabled WCM will have a positive impact on the market?

"Absolutely. The usage of AI in content consumption and supply analytics filters back into editorial questions about what content you should create in the first place. Episerver’s Content Intelligence product does just this – it uses Natural Language Processing to determine the actual topics visitors are consuming and the supply of content waiting for them. This helps editors make decisions about where they have enough content and where they’re falling short."

Where do you see the WCM marketplace in five years?

"Distributed. The future is content platforms and systems that take a ‘big tent’ approach and seamlessly incorporate content from multiple backend systems, combining them to form integrated experiences so that visitors have no idea they’re consuming content packaged together from multiple silos. Consider: what would a CMS look like if it didn’t actually store any content?  That’s a glimpse into the CMS of the future."

For more information about Episerver, read our Episerver platform review.

e-Spirit

Interviewee:  Michael Gerard, Chief Marketing Officer

e-Spirit provides a CMS solution bundled with their digital experience platform called FirstSpirit DXP. The FirstSpirit DXP platform, offered through a SaaS or on-premises model, helps customers accelerate time to revenue with personalized, content-rich digital experiences.

Do you agree that WCM is still a foundational platform for digital businesses in 2020?

"I always like to start from the perspective of the customer, and today’s customers, be they B2C or B2B, demand that their brands deliver a consistent, connected online experience on any touchpoint, extending beyond only the ‘web’ (e.g., mobile applications, digital signs, smart speakers, virtual assistants, etc.) Therefore, unless you’re a vendor with a large, monolithic CMS designed only for the web, calling today’s CMS a “web” content management system is a misnomer.  That said, a CMS that enables a consistent, connected online experience on any touchpoint, beyond only the ‘web’, IS a foundational platform for digital businesses in 2020. Depending upon an agile, hybrid headless CMS to orchestrate content-driven experiences and manage digital businesses will only become more important in the next 12-18 months as:

1.) The creation of content increases, as indicated by a recent study by the Content Marketing Institute.
2.) The need for business and technical agility surges due to COVID-19, requiring support of new business models, delivery processes, and types of customer interactions. (e.g., leveraging a hybrid headless CMS for interoperability in any DX ecosystem, and ensuring a rapid launch and time to value of new applications)
3.)  Brands need to further leverage content across any communication channel (e.g., digital presence, email marketing, digital signs) to inspire and connect with buyers to build relationships and differentiate their products and services. (e.g., for experience-driven commerce, integrating an enterprise-class hybrid headless CMS with e-commerce platforms)"

As WCM tools are getting more robust and encompassing as digital teams get savvier, what are some of the key WCM features that have not changed and are still a vital part of organizing and deploying content? 

"As e-Spirit’s CMS has continued to evolve, there are no doubt several key features to our enterprise-class content management system that have proven to be a mainstay for our existing and new customers. Examples include:
Multi-site, multi-language, and multi-brand management to orchestrate content creation and delivery across sites, touchpoints, brands, or regions and ensures a single source of truth for content that boosts efficiency and enables the highest compliance standards. This is a particularly valuable capability in today’s more complex, multi-channel world.

Workflow management to orchestrate the entire creation, approval, and delivery process of content across an organization and multiple functions and teams.

User rights management to be able to define particular roles for different users or groups across a company, thereby creating a more efficient and effective content management process. (e.g., manager, editors, copywriters, lawyers, etc.)
Interoperability and the capability to enable rapid and deep integration to third party systems. At least for e-Spirit, interoperability has been part of our solution’s DNA from the start to enable our CMS to operate within any DX ecosystem. (e.g., CMS + commerce platforms for content-driven commerce; CMS + marketing automation; utilizing our headless CMS capabilities to enable content through a REST API to be pulled into any touchpoint)

Static HTML file deployment as the fastest and most secure way to deploy ‘.com sites’. Even brand new headless CMS vendors, who lack this capability, are starting to realize the benefits of static HTML files and have begun to build these capabilities, which are a standard feature in enterprise-class CMSs. (see JAMstack movement)

An intuitive user experience/UI. This has become even more important with the increasing need for agility and putting the power of experience management into the hands of business users with an easy to use CMS interface.
Search capabilities for empowering customers to create a more personalized online experience and increasing their engagement with content relevant to their needs."

Although the WCM landscape remains a crowded field, what unique features stand out to manage digital experiences and meet business requirements? 
 
"e-Spirit is in the fortunate position of having an industry-proven solution that includes all of the more traditional CMS features (refer to prior question) not available in many of our newer competitors, coupled with “newer” capabilities required to deliver next-generation experiences to any touchpoint with ease. Unique features which stand out to manage digital experiences and meet business requirements, in alignment with the three key elements of Agility, Empowerment, and Intelligence, include:

Agility: Hybrid headless, API-first CMS enabling rapid launch of any customer touchpoint or application integration, combining the agility of a headless CMS with the enterprise capabilities of a “traditional” CMS. Few, if any, traditional CMS vendors are API-first.

Rapid launch of a CMS with a vendor’s start-up kit. (e.g., e-Spirit’s Experience Accelerator) To optimize the speed of creating content-rich omnichannel experiences, companies should ensure their CMS vendor offers some type of rapid, out-of-the-box start-up kit. For example, e-Spirit’s Experience Accelerator “leapfrogs” CMS project implementation times ahead by up to 75% for faster time to market and accelerated time to revenue by offering an out-of-the-box hybrid headless CMS with a front-end progressive web application and other next-gen features.

Ability to view and edit content on any touchpoint. (e.g., e-Spirit’s Touchpoint Editing) Your CMS should enable business users to view and edit content in the context of any channel easily and intuitively—without the need for a complex CMS integration by IT—giving them complete control for delivery of highly individualized customer experiences at every touchpoint.

Providing a modern microservice-based end-to-end delivery architecture instead of monolithic, hosted classic CMS suites.

Empowerment: Non-technical users (e.g., e-commerce managers, marketers) must be able to create, manage, and deliver content to any touchpoint with minimal dependence on technical teams. This will ensure that their companies can rapidly launch content-driven experiences, at minimal cost, to react to customer needs and better engage their audiences. CMS features that empower business users to reach this goal include:

Deep integration with commerce platforms, making it easy for business users to create more content-driven commerce experiences. (e.g., e-Spirit’s prebuilt integrations with Salesforce Commerce Cloud, SAP Commerce Cloud, and others - in this video, see how easy it is to create shoppable videos and enable voice-driven commerce with this type of deep integration)

Intuitive user experiences and interfaces, as previously mentioned.

Native SaaS and cloud capabilities to enable provisioning of new integrations, features, and content-driven experiences.

Intelligence: Delivery of dynamic experiences with AI-driven personalization. AI-driven personalization should be a key part of a high impact content management strategy. This will help you personalize anything that impacts the digital experience—layout, menu bars, display ads, pop-ups, CTAs, text, etc.—for any channel according to each visitor’s unique persona or on-line behavior or any micro-segment. For example, e-Spirit’s Intelligence Content Engine, cited in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Personalization Engines, enables: 1) effortless collection of internal, external and behavioral data; 2) leverage of that data to create micro-segments across your database, and 3) delivery of dynamic experiences across any touchpoint for micro-segments or individuals.

Content analytics and insight in a more fragmented world. The days of manually creating and updating many different websites across a company are (or should be) far behind us. Your CMS vendor should enable the creation and management of fragments of content across both internal and external touchpoints, and even more importantly, the analysis of those fragments to better manage their impact. For example, e-Spirit’s Smart Dashboards give marketers easy access to all content-relevant KPIs in one central location, making it simple to orchestrate intelligence-driven campaigns across sites, languages, and channels for high impact results."

Do you feel an AI-enabled WCM will have a positive impact on the market?

"AI-driven experience management has already begun to have a positive impact on the market, and a CMS without rich AI capabilities will not survive. AI should be used to empower business users, make their lives easier, and help their companies to create compelling, personalized digital experiences for end-users. And most importantly, AI should be part of the fabric of a CMS vendor and their solutions and not a stand-alone effort in only one part of their architecture. For example, within e-Spirit’s digital experience platform, AI impacts content and experience management across several areas, including but not limited to:

Natural Language Generation: To be an effective marketer, you need to create content fast. Natural Language Generation (NLG) automatically generates human-quality text with limited human resources. It eases the pressure on marketers by taking over routine content creation tasks and gives companies a huge advantage: scale.

Personalization for dynamic digital experiences: Examples of AI and machine learning to create these experiences include:
Automated Testing and Optimization: Automatically optimize content performance using AI-powered testing and optimization algorithms. Simply set your optimization goals and let the FirstSpirit Intelligent Content Engine select top-performing variations for you for effortless optimization.

Modifying digital experiences in real-time to optimize impact: Instantly quantify the impact of dynamic content changes on KPIs and tailor unique digital experiences for each persona or micro-segment.

Translation:  For most organizations, translations are costly and inefficient. Powered by AI, e-Spirit’s TranslationStudio captures even the tiniest language nuances and reproduces them with higher quality and faster speed, helping business users overcome language barriers with an easy solution that keeps costs low even when translation volume is high."

Where do you see the WCM marketplace in five years?

"We see five key forces that impact where we need to continue investing in from a CMS perspective in the next five years:

Buyer Demands: What’s needed to engage and inspire buyers will continue to change, and at a faster rate.

Competition in the tech space will only increase, requiring vendors to innovate at a more rapid pace to survive and thrive.

Software Technology Advancement: New advancements in technology will continue creating opportunities for agile CMS vendors to better meet their customers’ needs.

Expansion of Existing Touchpoints and Development of New Touchpoints: Adoption of non-web focused touchpoints will increase, and development of new touchpoints will continue, increasing the importance of hybrid headless content management solutions to support varying (and new) methods of delivering content to end-users’ devices.

Shift in business interrelationships: Business, environmental and technological influences will impact how companies work together, requiring greater agility in their technological infrastructure, including their digital experience ecosystem. (e.g., manufacturers go more direct to consumers and business buyers)

The most successful CMS vendors in five years will have developed their software with the agility to address these forces, while simultaneously empowering their customers to learn and leverage the power of their technology in a rapid and intuitive manner; and many of today’s cutting edge technologies will be embedded in the DNA of tomorrow’s CMS. (e.g., AI, microservices architecture, predictive analytics, etc.) For example:

Not sacrificing the foundational elements of a high impact CMS: As previously addressed, there are some features that must remain part of a CMS that are vital parts of helping global digital businesses to succeed. (e.g., Multi-site, multi-language and multi-brand management, workflow, interoperability)

The ability to manage fragmented experiences: Being able to manage more fragmented experiences across different data sources in an effortless way will be key!

Evolving the core CMS architecture to continue advancing the software’s agility. For example, 20 years ago, e-Spirit was a pure decoupled solution enabling integration within any DX ecosystem, and then it evolved to an API-first headless and hybrid headless architecture about four years ago. Another example is the embedding of AI into the “DNA” of e-Spirit’s software platform.

Providing a no-code environment for business users to enact whatever changes are needed from a content perspective in their digital and non-digital environments, including bridging the gap between these two. For example, e-Spirit is focusing on enabling smart assistances and more AI-driven capabilities to support our customers so they can better understand where content is going, which will allow them to get more insight-driven recommendations of what's the best content to use and how to develop better experiences in a web environment, a mobile environment, digital signs, voice-interactive devices, etc.

Enabling the launch (and upgrade) of a CMS with little to no effort. The days of 6–24-month launches of monolithic content management systems will be over. The CMS will be capable of being launched in hours or days, with minimal effort by developers, while development teams and service providers will be able to focus on more complex DX needs.

Leveraging data (and more sources of data) to power personalization, dynamic digital experiences, and deep insights. Personalization will be adopted by a majority of business users. Non-believers of the scalability of personalization even today indicate that this is an unobtainable capability for the masses. Yet, innovative companies continue to demonstrate its impact, using existing AI-driven personalization and data mining software. (e.g., Brose uses personalization to power online recruiting)"

For more information about e-Spirit, read our e-Spirit platform review.