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Complexity is a slipperier slope than you might think.
Consider this. Companies in the growth phase are going through a period of rapid expansion and increasing market presence. They often experiment with different strategies, adopting a variety of technologies to meet immediate needs, but without a clear direction. Budgetary restraints often result in ad hoc technological investments, leading to disjointed systems.
As they grow, they must scale their operations to meet increasing demand and continue adding technologies and channels (social media, mobile apps, email marketing, etc.) to an already complex ecosystem.
Once they reach the maturity phase, their focus is on maintaining their market position, profitability and customer relationships while adapting to evolving market dynamics.
They now have a highly customized platform and super-complex technology landscape (including corporate website, regional websites, e-commerce, product mini sites, campaign microsites, third-party sites, etc.) in addition to all the channels they set up during the growth phase. These are all either bolted on to the original platform or sitting in isolation, and the ecosystem is now an agony to maintain, let alone make consistent, compliant and secure.
The lack of scalability and integration is increasing operating costs and impairing agility. Processes are complex, data is siloed, customer experiences are suffering and content management is a nightmare.
And this is only half of the story.
The Hidden Costs of Complexity
Under the hood of a complex technology ecosystem is a web of inefficiencies and inconsistencies that impact more than just maintenance.
- Content duplication: Disparate systems lead to assets being stored in multiple locations, consuming more resources (increased infrastructure costs); requiring greater content management effort (more errors or inconsistencies); and decreasing efficiency (increased search and retrieval time).
- Greater channel management effort: Managing multiple communication channels and coordinating content across them can be complex and costly when each channel requires separate content creation, distribution and maintenance.
- Inconsistent customer experience: Customers can become confused or frustrated when they encounter inconsistent branding or experiences across different touchpoints, which can lead to customer attrition and decreased revenue.
- Lower visibility and governance: Complex technology environments can make it difficult to track and govern processes and systems, which can lead to compliance breaches and increased risk.
- Mounting total cost of ownership (TCO): As complexity grows, TCO rises significantly due to increased maintenance costs (more frequent updates, patches, and troubleshooting), increased labor costs (larger specialist teams required) and integration costs (for disparate systems).
Is it any wonder so many companies at the maturity phase are looking to consolidate?
Consolidation: The K-I-S-S of Life
Consolidation is about simplifying and streamlining your technology infrastructure by reducing redundancy, eliminating unnecessary systems and optimizing technology assets. The goal is to create a more efficient, cost-effective and manageable technology environment.
What does consolidation look like? In my opinion, it looks like a Digital Experience Platform (DXP). DXPs provide a centralized and unified framework for managing digital experiences by seamlessly integrating multiple systems and serving as a single point of control for them all.
Let’s look at two of the biggest benefits consolidation via a DXP brings.
1. Centralized reusable content
It goes without saying that by consolidating all content assets (text, images, videos, documents) in a single, central repository will simplify content management. That part is a no-brainer.
But things get exciting when you add content reusability to the mix.
Content reusability is the ability to repurpose the same content across multiple channels or contexts, reducing duplication efforts and ensuring consistent messaging regardless of where it is used. Channel-agnostic content (not tied to a specific platform or format) can be flexibly reused across multiple locations (web, app, email) and easily adapted to suit the requirements of each channel, enhancing its relevance and impact.
Each reusable content item amortizes costs across multiple uses and remains valuable and relevant for longer periods, increasing its overall ROI. The ability to use it across various channels and target audiences also extends its reach and impact.
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What’s more, content creators can update content once, and it automatically updates across all locations, significantly improving content management efficiencies. Standardized workflows streamline content creation, review, approval and publishing processes, while taxonomies and categorization systems improve content discoverability and organization.
Overall, centralized reusable content leads to more efficient, cost-effective and consistent content management processes that help you extract the full value of your content assets.
2. Global capabilities
The second way DXPs deliver unmatchable value is by becoming the central hub of your technology stack — sharing its capabilities with the entire solution and reducing redundant efforts in strategy development and execution. As a result, you can benefit from applying a range of digital marketing capabilities in either a global or channel-specific fashion. For example:
- Multilingual and fallback support: Fallback mechanisms ensure content availability even when localized versions aren’t available. For example, if Spanish isn’t available, visitors in Mexico will be shown US English. If that isn’t available, UK English will be displayed, avoiding the dreaded 404 page.
- Publishing workflows with channel-specific or global requirements: Publishing workflows streamline content creation, review, approval and publishing processes, ensuring prompt delivery while meeting both channel-specific and global requirements.
- Forms for channel-specific or global requirements: Forms tailored to channel-specific or global requirements ensure relevance and effectiveness and that data collected adheres to standardized formats and quality.
- Tracking activities across channels: Tracking user activities across various channels provides a 360-degree view of customer interactions and behaviors for better insights and enhanced customer understanding.
- Personalizing the experience through segmentation: Targeted messaging and promotions improves relevance, conversion rates, customer retention and cross-selling opportunities.
In summary, a DXP with global capabilities empowers organizations to create personalized, data-driven digital experiences that resonate with diverse audiences across multiple channels, while maintaining consistency and efficiency.
Increase the Value of Your Investments
Complexity in the technology stack will spill over into every part of the organization, costing time and resources, but also profitability, operational efficiency and competitiveness.
The journey from complexity to consolidation is a critical evolution, especially for those in the growth and maturity phases. But best of all would be for companies to have a well-defined IT strategy from the outset, investing in scalable and flexible technology solutions that prioritize integration and scalability.
A future-proof DXP provides centralized control and unified management of digital experiences, addressing the challenges of content duplication, inconsistent customer experiences, and rising total cost of ownership. Centralized reusable content simplifies content management, improves consistency, and enhances the ROI of every content item by allowing them to be flexibly reused across multiple channels. Meanwhile, global capabilities bring a holistic view of your ecosystem and customer activities and enable digital experiences tailored to regional or channel-specific requirements while boosting productivity, efficiency and consistency.
Consolidation is not just about simplifying technology but also about maximizing the value of your investments. It’s about improving operational efficiency and staying competitive in an ever-evolving digital landscape.
If you want to discover more about how businesses are simplifying complexity, enhancing efficiency, and staying ahead in the digital age, then join us for Kentico Connection where we will deep dive into Xperience by Kentico — the future of DXPs.
