Editorial
The Gist
- Midlife crisis. Content management systems are facing a midlife crisis, shifting focus from customer-centric content to internal digital operations, losing sight of their original purpose.
- Content neglect. Vendors have deprioritized content management, treating it as a solved problem, while brands need tools that focus on strategic content coordination, not just publishing.
- Future demands. Brands should demand CMS solutions that enhance content coordination, agility and governance to meet evolving customer experience and marketing needs.
Your customers don’t care about your website’s technology. What they care about is the information you provide them. Yet content management vendors only seem to want to talk about technology these days.
Web content management is approaching its fourth decade and experiencing a midlife crisis. It’s no longer young and exciting, but it hasn’t yet reached the stage of wisdom. It's time for content management systems to refocus on what matters most: delivering valuable content to customers.
Content Management Systems Need a Midlife Makeover
As other areas of digital technology claim the spotlight, content management systems (CMSs) are attempting a career and lifestyle makeover. Private equity firms have pumped billions into the CMS sector in recent years to improve how content management tools are positioned and perceived.
Not too long ago, content was king. Brands believed good content was essential to keeping customers happy. They prioritized having a CMS that would improve how they developed, managed and published customer content. Their CMS had a clear purpose: to ensure customers could get what they needed to see.
Over time, though, the purpose of content management systems has drifted. Instead of prioritizing the web content for customers, the focus shifted to managing digital operations for employees. This tilt toward internal stakeholders has stunted content management’s progress. The emphasis changed to administering “digital properties” rather than enabling content.
The Shift From Content to Developer Experience in CMS
The departure from content management fundamentals began with the emergence of digital experience platforms (DXPs), which vendors positioned as a software platform that provides core technology to manage digital experiences across touchpoints. Content faded into the background.
Now, even DXPs are an old hat. Many vendors promote another kind of DX: the developer experience. As vendors' solutions grow in complexity, they suggest brands should prioritize keeping their developers happy. Platforms compete on being “developer friendly.” One describes itself as a “composable data platform.” Content has been downgraded to being another data input.
Vendors have stopped discussing content because they treat content management functionality as a solved problem. Writers and editors access functionality frozen in a rudimentary “draft, approve, publish” framework. But is content management really as good as it can be? And why replace an existing CMS if there are no improvements in content management functionality?
Vendors argue customers should replace their CMS because they require capabilities beyond content management. Content is now considered a commodity; the valuable part comes from data and code. New solutions move further away from enabling content toward enabling technology administration.
Related Article: 14 Rules for Selecting the Right Content Management System (CMS)Stop Taking Content for Granted
CMS vendors have been taking content for granted. They’ve failed to recognize that content management involves more than the serial publishing of individual web pages. Enterprise content needs high-level coordination. Good content depends on capabilities that support a robust content supply chain, orchestration and governance.
As content management requirements have become more interconnected, most content management systems maintain a transactional, tactical focus on publishing individual items. They don’t support the strategic coordination of related activities. They lack the capacity to measure and summarize the company’s efforts and outcomes.
Brands must be able to manage groups of content items effectively. They should ask vendors how well the vendor’s tools can:
- Develop related content items together to support the launch of a new product or marketing campaign globally. CMS support for this, when available, is often clunky.
- Provide an aggregated picture of which topics and formats deliver results rather than simply tracking clicks on individual pages.
- Improve operational agility by decreasing the time required to update multiple items.
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The coordination of related content is a chronic problem that needs attention. Brands should demand CMS tools that improve how they support this requirement.
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