matthew-baier.png

Matthew Baier

<p>Echoing<a href="https://www.contentstack.com/blog/announcements/forrester-wave-contentstack-named-strong-performer" target="_blank"> Neha’s sentiment</a>, it is indeed a proud day here at Contentstack. Entering the Agile CMS Wave as a Strong Performer is, in our opinion, a reflection of the rapid enterprise adoption of Contentstack.</p>
<h2>Making Waves by Getting Rid of the "W" in WCMS</h2>
<p>The evolution of the Forrester Wave, including dropping the word “web” and adding the word “agile”, is sending an unmistakable signal: The time for web-only and web-first is over. Our customers embrace the surge of new channels and an explosion of digital touchpoints and confirm this trend. Today, “web” content management represents just one part of a much bigger digital arena.</p>
<h2>Best Omnichannel Support</h2>
<p>In a world beyond “web”,  content must be managed across many digital channels. In fact, omnichannel support is a mandatory requirement and critical decision criteria in nearly every evaluation of content management platforms.</p>
<p>Forrester stated that “Contentstack excels with the strongest channel support in this evaluation” and scored Contentstack highest in this evaluation criterion. Forrester further states that Contentstack offers “superior support in decoupled delivery from its headless roots and experience management capabilities to deliver content to omnichannel endpoints.”</p>
<p>We believe that omnichannel delivery is the biggest driver of the market shift from monolithic vendors to headless vendors.</p>
<p>tl;dr If you’re in the market for a modern CMS and looking for the best omnichannel support, look no further. :-)</p>
<h2>"M" Stands for Mission-Critical, not Microsite</h2>
<p>Contentstack’s customers include some of the largest financial institutions in the world, the largest retailers, the largest entertainment empires, pharmaceuticals, energy providers, hospitality and technology companies. What do they all have in common? High standards, complex infrastructure and the need to scale.</p>
<p>In the last year alone we’ve added over 100 marquee enterprises as customers and now serve $1B+ API calls – daily! Enterprises trust Contentstack to power mission-critical content at the core of their most treasured digital initiatives, ranging from revenue-generating sites to customer loyalty-boosting apps, to innovative digital experiences that attract top talent and enable them to better engage with their target markets.</p>
<p>Many CMSs can power a static website, a campaign microsite, partner portal or a corporate blog, but for digital engagement with so many new channels, more and more companies are turning to Contentstack.</p>
<h2>Agile CMS is for Everyone!</h2>
<p>Enterprises need a CMS that is agile, reliable, scalable – yes! – but it also has to be usable. While practitioners and developers have different requirements, here at Contentstack we believe that both are equally important. This sense of equality is reflected in the way we do business and in the way we designed our platform. The Forrester report quotes one of our customers, who sums it up best: “It’s been very easy to work with as a developer and very easy for our business users to use.” When the use case requires both business and IT teams to agree on a CMS platform, Contentstack shines.</p>
<h2>From CMS to Agile CMS</h2>
<p>The leap towards more CMS agility may sound exciting, as much as it does daunting – and for good reason. Historically, changing CMS vendors implied expense and disruption. The beauty of a modern, agile CMS is that it is additive in nature and the pace of change is controlled. Instead of ripping and replacing, a truly agile CMS acts as a catalyst to accelerate digital content initiatives, while gracefully interoperating and co-existing with legacy technology.</p>Curious about Agile CMS? Read the full report <a href="https://www.contentstack.com/resources/wr/forrester-wave-report/" target="_blank">here</a>.

, it is indeed a proud day here at Contentstack. Entering the Agile CMS Wave as a Strong Performer is, in our opinion, a reflection of the rapid enterprise adoption of Contentstack.

Making Waves by Getting Rid of the "W" in WCMS

The evolution of the Forrester Wave, including dropping the word “web” and adding the word “agile”, is sending an unmistakable signal: The time for web-only and web-first is over. Our customers embrace the surge of new channels and an explosion of digital touchpoints and confirm this trend. Today, “web” content management represents just one part of a much bigger digital arena.

In a world beyond “web”, content must be managed across many digital channels. In fact, omnichannel support is a mandatory requirement and critical decision criteria in nearly every evaluation of content management platforms.

Forrester stated that “Contentstack excels with the strongest channel support in this evaluation” and scored Contentstack highest in this evaluation criterion. Forrester further states that Contentstack offers “superior support in decoupled delivery from its headless roots and experience management capabilities to deliver content to omnichannel endpoints.”

We believe that omnichannel delivery is the biggest driver of the market shift from monolithic vendors to headless vendors.

tl;dr If you’re in the market for a modern CMS and looking for the best omnichannel support, look no further. :-)

"M" Stands for Mission-Critical, not Microsite

Contentstack’s customers include some of the largest financial institutions in the world, the largest retailers, the largest entertainment empires, pharmaceuticals, energy providers, hospitality and technology companies. What do they all have in common? High standards, complex infrastructure and the need to scale.

In the last year alone we’ve added over 100 marquee enterprises as customers and now serve $1B+ API calls – daily! Enterprises trust Contentstack to power mission-critical content at the core of their most treasured digital initiatives, ranging from revenue-generating sites to customer loyalty-boosting apps, to innovative digital experiences that attract top talent and enable them to better engage with their target markets.

Many CMSs can power a static website, a campaign microsite, partner portal or a corporate blog, but for digital engagement with so many new channels, more and more companies are turning to Contentstack.

Enterprises need a CMS that is agile, reliable, scalable – yes! – but it also has to be usable. While practitioners and developers have different requirements, here at Contentstack we believe that both are equally important. This sense of equality is reflected in the way we do business and in the way we designed our platform. The Forrester report quotes one of our customers, who sums it up best: “It’s been very easy to work with as a developer and very easy for our business users to use.” When the use case requires both business and IT teams to agree on a CMS platform, Contentstack shines.

The leap towards more CMS agility may sound exciting, as much as it does daunting – and for good reason. Historically, changing CMS vendors implied expense and disruption. The beauty of a modern, agile CMS is that it is additive in nature and the pace of change is controlled. Instead of ripping and replacing, a truly agile CMS acts as a catalyst to accelerate digital content initiatives, while gracefully interoperating and co-existing with legacy technology.

Curious about Agile CMS? Read the full report 

forrester-wave-agile-cms_blog.jpg

A Big Day for the CMS Industry – an Even Bigger Day for Contentstack

<p data-children-count="0">It’s no secret that the world of digital experience is evolving rapidly <span style='font-size: 11pt;'>— </span>and so are the definitions of the technologies that meet the changing needs of enterprises to deliver cohesive experiences for their customers.&nbsp;<br/></p><p data-children-count="0">The&nbsp;digital experience platform (DXP) definition is&nbsp;evolving, shifting from a term that implies a monolithic, tightly-coupled, all-in-one offering encapsulating content, commerce, personalization, search, analytics and customer data, to a vision of a <a href="https://www.gartner.com/document/3994550" target="_blank">composable business architecture</a> where microservices, API-first, cloud-native, and headless (MACH) technologies comprise the enterprise digital experience “stack.”</p><p data-children-count="0">We at Contentstack have always had evolution at our core. As a platform that empowers enterprises to transform the way they create and use their digital content, we have not been blind to the challenges of describing our category. </p><p data-children-count="0">Often, we call ourselves a content management system, a term that calls up gray dialog boxes and clunky databases <span style='font-size: 11pt;'>—</span> and for the most part, as a product, mainly refers to content storage and publishing, not its creation, analysis or personalization.</p><p data-children-count="0">But what do you call a platform that recognizes and empowers content as the lifeblood of an organization <span style='font-size: 11pt;'>—</span> a platform that supports not only the publishing and omnichannel delivery of content, but that content’s entire lifecycle <span style='font-size: 11pt;'>—</span> from ideation, to creation, to dissemination, to its analysis and evolution?</p><p data-children-count="0">In this rapidly changing digital environment, many  organizations are desperately trying to find help in defining this need. <em>What experiences should I be building? What use cases are there for my industry? And who are the proven and emerging players?</em></p><p data-children-count="0">Today, we believe we are closer to an answer. We’re excited to support Aragon Research in introducing the category of<strong> </strong>content experience platforms.</p><h2 data-children-count="0">Content has changed</h2><p data-children-count="0">The world has become so much more digital <span style='font-size: 11pt;'>—</span> and touchless <span style='font-size: 11pt;'>—</span> than anyone could have expected in the past year. But it was already changing long before we were confined to our homes in 2020. The way businesses communicate has become increasingly more interactive and complex. We’ve moved from a single channel of communication, the web, to an infinite number of channels. How much e-commerce is now done across mobile – 10%, 25%? It turns out, it’s already <a href="https://medium.com/ivpvc/the-future-of-commerce-is-headless-b5b864d18e1" target="_blank">half and growing</a>! And customers are increasingly expecting something that’s tailored based on individual preferences, not demographic labels, using language specific to their vocabulary and needs. It’s not enough to read content on a website. When we seek to interact with companies or brands, or organizations, we want to <em>interact</em>. </p><p data-children-count="0">That means that it’s no longer enough to have content<strong>.</strong> Content has to do more and be more. And that’s where experiences come in.  </p><h2 data-children-count="0">Introducing the content experience platform (CXP)</h2><p data-children-count="0">Today, Aragon Research has defined the category of <a href="https://www.contentstack.com/cms-guides/content-experience/" target="_self">Content Experience Platform (CXP)</a> as the “next-generation offering to address the age-old enterprise need to create and deliver dynamic experiences to users on any device” – including content experiences <span style='font-size: 11pt;'>—</span> in a multichannel world.</p><p data-children-count="0">If experience is the future, there is no meaningful experience without content. Content is at the core of every experience. If you use it right, that experience is engaging, meaningful, valuable and unique. The CXP is at the core of powering the transition from flat content to a rich experience<strong>.</strong></p><p data-children-count="0">A CXP is an organization’s primary control center that turns content into experiences and experiences into business.</p><p style="margin-top: auto;margin-right: auto;margin-bottom: auto;margin-left: auto;text-align: center;" data-children-count="0"><img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/JleW2orsvV7SzPjPEQEpnCGcPIPAKyjY6CnBmqf3kVUs1sS89yukD0wTg0SCtr8znIQh1qtFFhosZWd43Zhk9inWy6gTyROGsxDn5hbGK2-bH7lMBc0i_pcZLj-fhrrIlxh3ozgH" data-image="yl2vnbpmusv0" alt="cxp-content-experience-diagram"/></p><p data-children-count="0">Just like other systems of record, such as a CRM and ERP, a CXP is the centralized hub that coordinates all creation, management, and delivery of content-first experiences across all channels. </p><p data-children-count="0">“Simply put, new offerings are harnessing content to provide integrated user experiences, moving beyond isolated content creation and delivery towards a comprehensive content development lifecycle that enables the construction of customized buyer journeys that meet the needs of users at their specific contextual perspective," Aragon said. "Transcending the limitations of a traditional “pu(bli)sh” model, modern technology makes content more impactful and enables organizations to reap superior returns on their investments through digital content experiences. Given COVID-19 and the rush to become a complete digital business, Aragon feels that CXPs are one of the key priorities for a digital enterprise.”</p><p data-children-count="0">What makes it different from other approaches and categories on the market? A content experience platform must:</p><p data-children-count="0"></p><ul data-children-count="0"><li>Be omnichannel by nature. It must be built to open new channels quickly and easily, so content is not bound by any predetermined boundaries. It can instead flow instantly to anywhere it’s needed, including touchless, voice-driven, and extended reality experiences.</li><li>Be composable and extensible. The platform must be built to integrate with any tools and technologies that a business may require to scale and extend its digital reach, such as analytics platforms, personalization technologies, or localization services.</li><li>Empower the content creators. Content is at the heart of the CXP. The platform must be built with the content creators and end-users in mind, allowing the full content development lifecycle (CDLC) to take place seamlessly within it, including ideation, creation, testing, and publishing.</li></ul><p data-children-count="0">The purpose of the CXP is to allow content to flow through organizations at maximum speed and with minimal friction. It helps businesses become unstuck from old-school models of <span style='font-size: 11pt;'>— </span>and tools for <span style='font-size: 11pt;'>—</span> creating and disseminating content. The CXP unleashes the power of content across the whole organization.</p><h2 data-children-count="0">It’s not just for content managers</h2><p data-children-count="0">Content lives within all aspects of the digital enterprise, far beyond the reach of the marketing team. There is simply too much demand for hyper-relevant content for the old model of a single creation team to write and edit content, and be published days or weeks later with another team’s help. These days, the world moves too fast for that. To use content to its full potential, businesses have to enable a new kind of collaboration.  </p><p data-children-count="0">Democratizing content creation across all subject matter experts, with operational oversight provided by agile governance and workflow models, and untangling the content process from waterfall IT cycles, will unleash all those highly skilled professionals’ full potential. This makes it possible to use the CXP to do more than create and publish content, but to deliver personalized and optimized experiences enriched with all the digital innovation that is here today and possible tomorrow. The CXP touches every part of the organization and helps it to function better by letting content creation be as distributed as its consumption and its publishing be unfettered by technological constraints.</p><h2 data-children-count="0">Th evolution of CMS: It’s a new kind of platform</h2><p data-children-count="0">Businesses no longer have to rely on outdated technologies that are built for an old world. We believe that they should be able to build or buy any of the capabilities they need without a long list of restrictions and restraints. “Building” increasingly means “build up” from a collection of individually functioning, independently maintained, microservices “pieces” <span style='font-size: 11pt;'>—</span> LEGO blocks for content creation, publishing, delivery and distribution. Our fundamental belief is that, with a CXP, it will never again be impossible for the business to do something they want.</p><p data-children-count="0">The CXP architecture is composable and rooted in the technology principles of MACH <span style='font-size: 11pt;'>—</span> microservices-based, API-first, cloud-native SaaS, headless. Contrary to legacy, static CMS suites, a CXP embraces the extensibility and diversity of an ever-changing technology landscape and makes it easy to incorporate innovation through integration. You can assemble the pieces that you need from the top players in each category and connect them to the centerpiece <span style='font-size: 11pt;'>— </span>the content hub, the CXP. Change becomes your superpower, not your Achilles’ heel. </p><h2 data-children-count="0">What does this new category mean for business?</h2><p data-children-count="0">With a CXP, organizations reap unprecedented returns on digital content by streamlining content management operations and accelerating time to market with rich, engaging digital experiences. </p><p data-children-count="0">By embracing a platform that puts content back at the heart of their engagement strategy, enterprises can repair the content optimization cycle that has been broken for too long. That means optimizing content for personalization with information flowing continuously and in real-time to the content creators without costly workarounds or black-box visibility limitations. </p><p data-children-count="0">Businesses can innovate instead of being weighed down by a CMS built for a bygone era that drains precious resources through costly upgrade cycles or scalability concerns. There are many very talented developers and marketers and a lot of interesting projects they could be working on with new technology. Infusing personalization, AI, AR/VR, and anything else that a business wants to do next is possible with a platform built for content experiences.</p><p data-children-count="0">But don’t take our word for it. <a href="https://aragonresearch.com/the-rise-of-content-experience-platforms/" target="_self">Aragon</a> predicts that “By YE 2022, 50% of large enterprises will shift to a Content Experience Platform (CXP) (70% probability)” <span style='font-size: 11pt;'>—</span> and we are excited to be at the forefront of this shift.</p>

It’s no secret that the world of digital experience is evolving rapidly 

and so are the definitions of the technologies that meet the changing needs of enterprises to deliver cohesive experiences for their customers. 

The digital experience platform (DXP) definition is evolving, shifting from a term that implies a monolithic, tightly-coupled, all-in-one offering encapsulating content, commerce, personalization, search, analytics and customer data, to a vision of a 

 where microservices, API-first, cloud-native, and headless (MACH) technologies comprise the enterprise digital experience “stack.”

We at Contentstack have always had evolution at our core. As a platform that empowers enterprises to transform the way they create and use their digital content, we have not been blind to the challenges of describing our category.

Often, we call ourselves a content management system, a term that calls up gray dialog boxes and clunky databases 

 and for the most part, as a product, mainly refers to content storage and publishing, not its creation, analysis or personalization.

But what do you call a platform that recognizes and empowers content as the lifeblood of an organization 

 a platform that supports not only the publishing and omnichannel delivery of content, but that content’s entire lifecycle 

 from ideation, to creation, to dissemination, to its analysis and evolution?

In this rapidly changing digital environment, many organizations are desperately trying to find help in defining this need. 

What experiences should I be building? What use cases are there for my industry? And who are the proven and emerging players?

Today, we believe we are closer to an answer. We’re excited to support Aragon Research in introducing the category of

The world has become so much more digital 

 than anyone could have expected in the past year. But it was already changing long before we were confined to our homes in 2020. The way businesses communicate has become increasingly more interactive and complex. We’ve moved from a single channel of communication, the web, to an infinite number of channels. How much e-commerce is now done across mobile – 10%, 25%? It turns out, it’s already 

! And customers are increasingly expecting something that’s tailored based on individual preferences, not demographic labels, using language specific to their vocabulary and needs. It’s not enough to read content on a website. When we seek to interact with companies or brands, or organizations, we want to 

That means that it’s no longer enough to have content

 Content has to do more and be more. And that’s where experiences come in.

Introducing the content experience platform (CXP)

Today, Aragon Research has defined the category of 

 as the “next-generation offering to address the age-old enterprise need to create and deliver dynamic experiences to users on any device” – including content experiences 

If experience is the future, there is no meaningful experience without content. Content is at the core of every experience. If you use it right, that experience is engaging, meaningful, valuable and unique. The CXP is at the core of powering the transition from flat content to a rich experience

A CXP is an organization’s primary control center that turns content into experiences and experiences into business.

Just like other systems of record, such as a CRM and ERP, a CXP is the centralized hub that coordinates all creation, management, and delivery of content-first experiences across all channels.

“Simply put, new offerings are harnessing content to provide integrated user experiences, moving beyond isolated content creation and delivery towards a comprehensive content development lifecycle that enables the construction of customized buyer journeys that meet the needs of users at their specific contextual perspective," Aragon said. "Transcending the limitations of a traditional “pu(bli)sh” model, modern technology makes content more impactful and enables organizations to reap superior returns on their investments through digital content experiences. Given COVID-19 and the rush to become a complete digital business, Aragon feels that CXPs are one of the key priorities for a digital enterprise.”

What makes it different from other approaches and categories on the market? A content experience platform must:

The purpose of the CXP is to allow content to flow through organizations at maximum speed and with minimal friction. It helps businesses become unstuck from old-school models of 

 creating and disseminating content. The CXP unleashes the power of content across the whole organization.

Content lives within all aspects of the digital enterprise, far beyond the reach of the marketing team. There is simply too much demand for hyper-relevant content for the old model of a single creation team to write and edit content, and be published days or weeks later with another team’s help. These days, the world moves too fast for that. To use content to its full potential, businesses have to enable a new kind of collaboration.

Democratizing content creation across all subject matter experts, with operational oversight provided by agile governance and workflow models, and untangling the content process from waterfall IT cycles, will unleash all those highly skilled professionals’ full potential. This makes it possible to use the CXP to do more than create and publish content, but to deliver personalized and optimized experiences enriched with all the digital innovation that is here today and possible tomorrow. The CXP touches every part of the organization and helps it to function better by letting content creation be as distributed as its consumption and its publishing be unfettered by technological constraints.

Th evolution of CMS: It’s a new kind of platform

Businesses no longer have to rely on outdated technologies that are built for an old world. We believe that they should be able to build or buy any of the capabilities they need without a long list of restrictions and restraints. “Building” increasingly means “build up” from a collection of individually functioning, independently maintained, microservices “pieces” 

 LEGO blocks for content creation, publishing, delivery and distribution. Our fundamental belief is that, with a CXP, it will never again be impossible for the business to do something they want.

The CXP architecture is composable and rooted in the technology principles of MACH 

 microservices-based, API-first, cloud-native SaaS, headless. Contrary to legacy, static CMS suites, a CXP embraces the extensibility and diversity of an ever-changing technology landscape and makes it easy to incorporate innovation through integration. You can assemble the pieces that you need from the top players in each category and connect them to the centerpiece 

the content hub, the CXP. Change becomes your superpower, not your Achilles’ heel.

What does this new category mean for business?

With a CXP, organizations reap unprecedented returns on digital content by streamlining content management operations and accelerating time to market with rich, engaging digital experiences.

By embracing a platform that puts content back at the heart of their engagement strategy, enterprises can repair the content optimization cycle that has been broken for too long. That means optimizing content for personalization with information flowing continuously and in real-time to the content creators without costly workarounds or black-box visibility limitations.

Businesses can innovate instead of being weighed down by a CMS built for a bygone era that drains precious resources through costly upgrade cycles or scalability concerns. There are many very talented developers and marketers and a lot of interesting projects they could be working on with new technology. Infusing personalization, AI, AR/VR, and anything else that a business wants to do next is possible with a platform built for content experiences.

 predicts that “By YE 2022, 50% of large enterprises will shift to a Content Experience Platform (CXP) (70% probability)” 

 and we are excited to be at the forefront of this shift.

cxp-future-beyond-content-management.png

Beyond content management: Introducing the content experience platform

<p>Let’s face it, almost no one likes their content management system (CMS). For the most part, it doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, what vendor you’ve chosen or how big your budgets are; if you have a serious business with a serious website, you have a CMS – and more likely than not, you (and most of the people that use it on a daily basis) hate it.</p>
<p>When John, our Head of Product Management, first came to me to talk about an overhaul of the Contentstack user experience, I couldn’t have predicted that it would be one of the most consequential moments in the journey of our company. “Why would we focus on that right now?” I initially challenged. “Almost every customer chooses us – at least in part – <em>because</em> of our user interface.”</p>
<p>It was true, Contentstack had bucked the prevailing trend of treating Headless CMS like a developer-first tool, where function mattered more than form and relatively little attention had been paid to the user experience. On the contrary, our firm belief was that developers and business users alike could and should benefit from this exciting new approach to content management. More than just equals, we viewed them as critical partners to each other and, keeping that in mind at all times, we had painstakingly designed Contentstack from the ground up to be appealing to hardcore developers and non-technical end users alike.</p>
<p>As John began to fill up the whiteboard, I realized this was much more than just a UI refresh. He was asking for a significant investment – financially and in terms of our engineering resources – and I knew that the entire company would have to get behind this. “What are we going to call this thing?” I asked John, who didn’t hesitate. “Venus. Like the Roman goddess of beauty and love. It will be the visual expression of the love and care we have for our customers. In fact, it will be the reason even a non-developer falls in love with a headless CMS.”</p>
<p>Ambitious? Yes. Cheesy? Perhaps a little. But, as it turns out, John was onto something big...</p>
<h2>“This is Your Apple Moment”</h2>
<p>Our first indication of just how big came when we shared Project Venus with one of the analyst firms we work with. After walking through a sneak preview of Venus, one of the all stars of the CMS industry (who once upon a time authored a Magic Quadrant for enterprise content management and now runs his own research company) looked up and said: “Do you realize how big this is going to be? This is your Apple moment.”</p>
<p>His statement took me right back to my first “Apple moment”, which happened during the early 2000s when I was a Product Manager for a popular Unix operating system and, at the time, we were locked in a passionate battle with Microsoft, whose Windows operating system owned the lions’ share of the business and end user markets, powering nearly every PC and laptop in sight.</p>
<p>Back then, our customers chose us because our operating system was technologically superior in almost every conceivable way. Better performance, better reliability, better scalability. IT departments the world over <em>loved</em> Unix! Rebooting a Unix computer? Forget it. The infamous “Blue Screen of Death” simply didn’t exist in our world. Even more, you could automate routine and otherwise complicated tasks using powerful scripting languages. Sure, the UI might have been a little uninspiring, but it was a geek’s dream come true – and I was a geek.</p>
<p>Microsoft’s customers, by contrast, often chose Microsoft because things were relatively easy and uncomplicated. There were no obnoxious command lines, you didn’t have to download open source drivers and unzip software packages into a very specific folder. Even a non-technical person could install something with a double-click and there was a whole ecosystem built around Microsoft Windows, with a wealth of applications and easy integrations.</p>
<p>You could skip reading the manual and, for the most part, navigate Windows without hassle and generally muddle through your daily tasks. As long as you didn’t divert from standard procedures and could live with the occasional, unexpected reboot (that might “eat” your 30-page report as well as its backup copy) – you were all set.</p>
<p>And then along came Apple with its MacOS. MacOS has a rich history of its own but tl;dr Apple took a rock solid operating system core – made of Unix – and blended it with a rich and beautiful and intuitive user interface – made by design geniuses. When I bought my first Apple laptop, I knew I’d never go back. My machine didn’t crash anymore. There were plenty of equally beautiful apps for me to use. It was so elegant and pleasing that I actually looked forward to my interactions with it. Best of all, there was no steep learning curve and I never once had to pick up a manual.</p>
<p>Apple had turned the chores of my Windows laptop into delightful productivity on my Mac.</p>
<h2>Never Settle</h2>
<p>To be fair, Apple has had many, many “Apple moments”: The iPod, the iPhone, the iPad, the Apple Watch, the App Store and even the Apple stores, to name but a few. What did they all have in common? Each time they set a new, higher standard, even in categories where Apple was already ahead and as a result they created products that people didn’t know they needed until they couldn’t live without them. They shattered beliefs of what a certain thing or experience should be or look like. And they were all marked by their elegance and beauty. In fact, when I think of Apple, I think of a company that doesn’t make me choose between form and function. I don’t have to settle. I can have it all.</p>
<p>And that’s the whole point of Contentstack’s Project Venus. Headless CMS as a technology shift has been immensely exciting – initially for developers who could build superior experiences and build them faster using state-of-the-art tools and frameworks and languages. Then for forward-thinking businesses that were able to find and hire such developers.</p>
<p>It’s time for everyone else to get inspired too. Just like developers don’t want to work with clunky, ugly, old technology, content managers and marketers don’t want to use outdated software or fill out ugly forms all day. In reality, that’s what using a CMS still looks like for most people today.</p>
<p>Our belief is that people do their best work when you remove all the technology hurdles blocking them from doing what they truly want and need to do. By reimagining the CMS user experience, the ugly and burdensome part of content management simply melts away. What remains is an experience that is as effective and productive as it is pleasant to the senses. Now, everyone who wants to can participate in the content development life cycle – from creation, to management, to delivery.</p>
<p>So burn the CMS manuals and take Contentstack’s new user experience for a spin. We hope you’ll love it as much as we do!</p>

Let’s face it, almost no one likes their content management system (CMS). For the most part, it doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, what vendor you’ve chosen or how big your budgets are; if you have a serious business with a serious website, you have a CMS – and more likely than not, you (and most of the people that use it on a daily basis) hate it.

When John, our Head of Product Management, first came to me to talk about an overhaul of the Contentstack user experience, I couldn’t have predicted that it would be one of the most consequential moments in the journey of our company. “Why would we focus on that right now?” I initially challenged. “Almost every customer chooses us – at least in part – 

It was true, Contentstack had bucked the prevailing trend of treating Headless CMS like a developer-first tool, where function mattered more than form and relatively little attention had been paid to the user experience. On the contrary, our firm belief was that developers and business users alike could and should benefit from this exciting new approach to content management. More than just equals, we viewed them as critical partners to each other and, keeping that in mind at all times, we had painstakingly designed Contentstack from the ground up to be appealing to hardcore developers and non-technical end users alike.

As John began to fill up the whiteboard, I realized this was much more than just a UI refresh. He was asking for a significant investment – financially and in terms of our engineering resources – and I knew that the entire company would have to get behind this. “What are we going to call this thing?” I asked John, who didn’t hesitate. “Venus. Like the Roman goddess of beauty and love. It will be the visual expression of the love and care we have for our customers. In fact, it will be the reason even a non-developer falls in love with a headless CMS.”

Ambitious? Yes. Cheesy? Perhaps a little. But, as it turns out, John was onto something big...

Our first indication of just how big came when we shared Project Venus with one of the analyst firms we work with. After walking through a sneak preview of Venus, one of the all stars of the CMS industry (who once upon a time authored a Magic Quadrant for enterprise content management and now runs his own research company) looked up and said: “Do you realize how big this is going to be? This is your Apple moment.”

His statement took me right back to my first “Apple moment”, which happened during the early 2000s when I was a Product Manager for a popular Unix operating system and, at the time, we were locked in a passionate battle with Microsoft, whose Windows operating system owned the lions’ share of the business and end user markets, powering nearly every PC and laptop in sight.

Back then, our customers chose us because our operating system was technologically superior in almost every conceivable way. Better performance, better reliability, better scalability. IT departments the world over 

 Unix! Rebooting a Unix computer? Forget it. The infamous “Blue Screen of Death” simply didn’t exist in our world. Even more, you could automate routine and otherwise complicated tasks using powerful scripting languages. Sure, the UI might have been a little uninspiring, but it was a geek’s dream come true – and I was a geek.

Microsoft’s customers, by contrast, often chose Microsoft because things were relatively easy and uncomplicated. There were no obnoxious command lines, you didn’t have to download open source drivers and unzip software packages into a very specific folder. Even a non-technical person could install something with a double-click and there was a whole ecosystem built around Microsoft Windows, with a wealth of applications and easy integrations.

You could skip reading the manual and, for the most part, navigate Windows without hassle and generally muddle through your daily tasks. As long as you didn’t divert from standard procedures and could live with the occasional, unexpected reboot (that might “eat” your 30-page report as well as its backup copy) – you were all set.

And then along came Apple with its MacOS. MacOS has a rich history of its own but tl;dr Apple took a rock solid operating system core – made of Unix – and blended it with a rich and beautiful and intuitive user interface – made by design geniuses. When I bought my first Apple laptop, I knew I’d never go back. My machine didn’t crash anymore. There were plenty of equally beautiful apps for me to use. It was so elegant and pleasing that I actually looked forward to my interactions with it. Best of all, there was no steep learning curve and I never once had to pick up a manual.

Apple had turned the chores of my Windows laptop into delightful productivity on my Mac.

To be fair, Apple has had many, many “Apple moments”: The iPod, the iPhone, the iPad, the Apple Watch, the App Store and even the Apple stores, to name but a few. What did they all have in common? Each time they set a new, higher standard, even in categories where Apple was already ahead and as a result they created products that people didn’t know they needed until they couldn’t live without them. They shattered beliefs of what a certain thing or experience should be or look like. And they were all marked by their elegance and beauty. In fact, when I think of Apple, I think of a company that doesn’t make me choose between form and function. I don’t have to settle. I can have it all.

And that’s the whole point of Contentstack’s Project Venus. Headless CMS as a technology shift has been immensely exciting – initially for developers who could build superior experiences and build them faster using state-of-the-art tools and frameworks and languages. Then for forward-thinking businesses that were able to find and hire such developers.

It’s time for everyone else to get inspired too. Just like developers don’t want to work with clunky, ugly, old technology, content managers and marketers don’t want to use outdated software or fill out ugly forms all day. In reality, that’s what using a CMS still looks like for most people today.

Our belief is that people do their best work when you remove all the technology hurdles blocking them from doing what they truly want and need to do. By reimagining the CMS user experience, the ugly and burdensome part of content management simply melts away. What remains is an experience that is as effective and productive as it is pleasant to the senses. Now, everyone who wants to can participate in the content development life cycle – from creation, to management, to delivery.

So burn the CMS manuals and take Contentstack’s new user experience for a spin. We hope you’ll love it as much as we do!

enterprise-cms-user-experience-elevated_hero.jpg

Unveiling Contentstack’s Reimagined CMS Experience

Contentstack and commercetools Host Retail Industry MACH-tail Reception

<p>Contentstack executives had a wonderful time sharing an evening with our commercetools partner, catching up with friends in the retail industry and making new ones. The event, Headless Over Hell’s Kitchen, featured MACH-tails and a wine tasting assembled by Contentstack’s own COO, and certified sommelier, Matthew Baier.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><img data-image="4jg9bzsoalog" src="https://images.contentstack.io/v3/assets/blt77283b164776448a/bltbb321bf30cb56ba4/5e29d115132ead1155e8f40b/contentstack-commercetools-wine-table-set-up.jpg" data-sys-asset-uid="bltbb321bf30cb56ba4" alt="contentstack-commercetools-wine-table-set-up.jpg"></p>
<p><strong>MACH – Microservices, APIs, Cloud, and Headless</strong> – turned out to be a popular topic, and the penthouse suite overlooking New York City, was packed with industry experts, vendors, and brands considering or already embracing the new architecture, in this case for the retail industry. While the acronym, MACH, was new to some, the individual components – Microservices, APIs, Cloud, and Headless – were familiar terms and almost every visitor to the suite came with a point of view and some experience with the concepts.</p>
<p>Many conversations quickly turned into a discussion on <em>how to implement MACH successfully</em>: what use cases are good candidates, what are the best practices, what are some industry examples and comparisons, what is the vendor and partner landscape like, what skill set is needed to embrace MACH, and so on. Since the event was co-sponsored and attended by multiple vendors there was a refreshing mix of expert opinions representing multiple industries and market segments, which created active debates between retail brands and their agencies, technology vendors, and implementation partners.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><img data-image="6nx8euex6k77" src="https://images.contentstack.io/v3/assets/blt77283b164776448a/blt7ef3f9d9d993afab/5e29d15563d1b6503160f71b/contentstack-commercetools-mach-tail-event.jpg" data-sys-asset-uid="blt7ef3f9d9d993afab" alt="contentstack-commercetools-mach-tail-event.jpg"></p>
<p>All in all, it was an enjoyable evening, and a VIP alternative to other retail industry events happening in parallel, so thank you to everyone who joined us. And many thanks to our friends at commercetools for organizing the event and partnering with us to co-sponsor a wonderful and enlightening evening dedicated to the future of customer experience technology, <strong>MACH – Microservices, APIs, Cloud, and Headless.</strong></p>
<p>Here is some recommended reading, if you’re interested in learning more about <a href="https://www.contentstack.com/blog/search?q=retail" target="_blank">the impact MACH can have on the retail industry</a>.</p>

contentstack-commercetools-retail-wine-event.png

<p>For most companies, Salesforce is the gold standard when it comes to customer relationship management (CRM). On the marketing front, things are a little more convoluted.
</p>
<p>The marketing tech stack tends to cover more categories, such as marketing automation, campaign management, analytics, content management, personalization, social media, email marketing, bid optimization, A/B testing – the list is nearly endless. For a glimpse down the rabbit hole, take a look at the recently updated 2019 <a href="https://chiefmartec.com/2019/04/marketing-technology-landscape-supergraphic-2019/" target="_blank">martech landscape</a>.
</p>
<p>From a marketer’s perspective, this richness in technology and the endless software choices comes at a price: things can get dicey once you’ve crossed the on-boarding hurdle and the tool is in full operation. Every new software has the potential and, sadly, the susceptibility to become yet another technology island and data silo, disconnected from the other tools already in production.
</p>
<p>The big reason why we, as marketers, continue to be drawn to all these shiny new tools, is their promise to enable marketing to create digital experiences for customers and prospects. With the rise of digital transformation, marketers and content managers are more focused than ever on making these content-driven experiences <strong>richer and more engaging</strong> for audiences, while at the same time <strong>ensuring that they have a meaningful impact on the business.</strong>
</p>
<h2>What are Content Experience Platforms?</h2>
<p>Marketers using Salesforce can now enjoy all of their marketing tools in one single hub via the use of AI-powered Content Experience Platforms. They can create content and put them in front of the right people, at the right time, based on insights from Einstein derived directly from customers. In fact, Gartner's <a href="https://c212.net/c/link/?t=0&l=en&o=2410155-1&h=3679569453&u=https%3A%2F%2Fventurebeat.com%2F2019%2F01%2F21%2Fgartner-enterprise-ai-implementation-grew-270-over-the-past-four-years%2F&a=2019+CIO+Survey" target="_blank">2019 CIO Survey</a> determined that AI implementations grew by 270 percent over the past four years, and 37 percent in 2018 alone. The research firm attributes that growth to the "maturation" of AI capabilities and how quickly AI has become an "integral part" of digital strategies.
</p>
<p>Content Experience Platforms make it easy to incorporate (read: integrate) any third-party technology. Whatever is considered best-in-class in a specific category – Salesforce Sales Cloud in the CRM category, Salesforce Pardot for marketing automation, Salesforce Einstein – is seamlessly connected to the CMS to share data, gain new insights and make marketers better and more efficient in the process. With the right connected systems, value begins pouring in immediately.
</p>
<h2>Embedded AI is the Future of Digital Experience Platforms - 3 Use Cases</h2>
<p>Developers and marketers who aren’t tapping the full potential of AI risk losing out to competitors using smarter tools to make more informed decisions.
</p>
<p>Anxious to begin reaping the rewards of this investment? We’ve outlined three use cases that will bring more value to marketers and enable Salesforce users to create a more personalized digital user experience:
</p>
<h3>Use Case 1: Sales & Service Targeted Content </h3>
<p>By connecting Salesforce’s Sales Cloud and Service Cloud to a Content Experience Platform like <a href="https://www.contentstack.com" target="_blank">Contentstack</a>, users can create content and associated workflows that map back to account health and sales cycle. Instead of sharing generic or irrelevant content, a customer portal can now contain targeted information based on data gathered in real-time from Salesforce, such as:
</p>
<ul>
	<li>The most relevant case study to support an immediate upsell opportunity.</li>
	<li>A personalized FAQ and documentation for a customer with a technical question.</li>
	<li>Pre-approved support and status messages for a customer with open service issues.</li>
</ul>
<p>This targeted information can make or break the engagement with your content and, by extension, with your brand.
</p>
<h3>Use Case 2: Einstein Prediction & Recommendations </h3>
<p>With Salesforce Einstein and the infusion of AI into content management, content marketers can unlock even greater benefits. Einstein can help:
</p>
<ul>
	<li>Discover pipeline trends and analyze sales cycles to determine which content is most likely to inspire action.</li>
	<li>Speed up issue resolution by sharing intelligent, in-context conversation prompts.</li>
	<li>Suggest knowledge recommendations that can be delivered to the customer on any digital channel across any digital touchpoint by the CMS.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Use Case 3: In-app Experiences</h3>
<p>For applications built on the Salesforce Platform and published on the AppExchange, Content Experience Platforms can deliver content for the in-app experience, as well as any other digital channel that matters to the app developer, including websites, community portals and online stores.
</p>
<p>By providing a unifying content layer and digital content hub, companies can deliver a consistent brand experience across all digital touchpoints and throughout the entire customer journey. For an extra kick, the in-product experience and content can be personalized via adding Salesforce Einstein into the mix.
</p>
<p>The result: Users are taken on a product journey that’s optimized for their profile, preferences and behavior which is a revolutionary approach to designing and delivering digital products.
</p>
<p>Summary With Salesforce innovating across many technology domains, marketers should choose complementary, best-of-breed tools to take advantage of its continually evolving capabilities and features. Leveraging the same technology principles that Salesforce used to turn the CRM industry on its head – cloud, APIs, microservices and an extensible architecture – Contentstack is delivering the same benefits to the CMS domain. The result: By connecting their CMS to the entire Salesforce ecosystem, companies can gain new insights, enable new use cases and facilitate a new level of collaboration across sales and marketing. Marketers will have insight into which content will most effectively engage, motivate, or satisfy an audience – and receive SEO recommendations to make the final content asset rise to the top of search engine results.
</p>

For most companies, Salesforce is the gold standard when it comes to customer relationship management (CRM). On the marketing front, things are a little more convoluted.

The marketing tech stack tends to cover more categories, such as marketing automation, campaign management, analytics, content management, personalization, social media, email marketing, bid optimization, A/B testing – the list is nearly endless. For a glimpse down the rabbit hole, take a look at the recently updated 2019 

From a marketer’s perspective, this richness in technology and the endless software choices comes at a price: things can get dicey once you’ve crossed the on-boarding hurdle and the tool is in full operation. Every new software has the potential and, sadly, the susceptibility to become yet another technology island and data silo, disconnected from the other tools already in production.

The big reason why we, as marketers, continue to be drawn to all these shiny new tools, is their promise to enable marketing to create digital experiences for customers and prospects. With the rise of digital transformation, marketers and content managers are more focused than ever on making these content-driven experiences 

ensuring that they have a meaningful impact on the business.

Marketers using Salesforce can now enjoy all of their marketing tools in one single hub via the use of AI-powered Content Experience Platforms. They can create content and put them in front of the right people, at the right time, based on insights from Einstein derived directly from customers. In fact, Gartner's 

 determined that AI implementations grew by 270 percent over the past four years, and 37 percent in 2018 alone. The research firm attributes that growth to the "maturation" of AI capabilities and how quickly AI has become an "integral part" of digital strategies.

Content Experience Platforms make it easy to incorporate (read: integrate) any third-party technology. Whatever is considered best-in-class in a specific category – Salesforce Sales Cloud in the CRM category, Salesforce Pardot for marketing automation, Salesforce Einstein – is seamlessly connected to the CMS to share data, gain new insights and make marketers better and more efficient in the process. With the right connected systems, value begins pouring in immediately.

Embedded AI is the Future of Digital Experience Platforms - 3 Use Cases

Developers and marketers who aren’t tapping the full potential of AI risk losing out to competitors using smarter tools to make more informed decisions.

Anxious to begin reaping the rewards of this investment? We’ve outlined three use cases that will bring more value to marketers and enable Salesforce users to create a more personalized digital user experience:

Use Case 1: Sales & Service Targeted Content

By connecting Salesforce’s Sales Cloud and Service Cloud to a Content Experience Platform like 

, users can create content and associated workflows that map back to account health and sales cycle. Instead of sharing generic or irrelevant content, a customer portal can now contain targeted information based on data gathered in real-time from Salesforce, such as:

This targeted information can make or break the engagement with your content and, by extension, with your brand.

Use Case 2: Einstein Prediction & Recommendations

With Salesforce Einstein and the infusion of AI into content management, content marketers can unlock even greater benefits. Einstein can help:

For applications built on the Salesforce Platform and published on the AppExchange, Content Experience Platforms can deliver content for the in-app experience, as well as any other digital channel that matters to the app developer, including websites, community portals and online stores.

By providing a unifying content layer and digital content hub, companies can deliver a consistent brand experience across all digital touchpoints and throughout the entire customer journey. For an extra kick, the in-product experience and content can be personalized via adding Salesforce Einstein into the mix.

The result: Users are taken on a product journey that’s optimized for their profile, preferences and behavior which is a revolutionary approach to designing and delivering digital products.

Summary With Salesforce innovating across many technology domains, marketers should choose complementary, best-of-breed tools to take advantage of its continually evolving capabilities and features. Leveraging the same technology principles that Salesforce used to turn the CRM industry on its head – cloud, APIs, microservices and an extensible architecture – Contentstack is delivering the same benefits to the CMS domain. The result: By connecting their CMS to the entire Salesforce ecosystem, companies can gain new insights, enable new use cases and facilitate a new level of collaboration across sales and marketing. Marketers will have insight into which content will most effectively engage, motivate, or satisfy an audience – and receive SEO recommendations to make the final content asset rise to the top of search engine results.

3UseCases_blog.jpg

Smarter Content Experiences: 3 Use Cases For Connected CMS, Salesforce Einstein & APIs

<p>Your content is king. Yet, many enterprises find they are still searching for the best way to manage and optimize their content. </p>
<p>Whether you already have a CMS provider or are shopping around for a new one, take the strategic and smart move to evaluate your options. A CMS investment should be evaluated because it is exactly that – an investment. So it should be analyzed carefully, evaluated often, and questioned deliberately. For any platform handling your content, you guard, protect, and question it for the safety of the realm. </p><h2>10 Important Questions to Ask Your CMS Provider</h2>
<p>When evaluating a CMS vendor, determine if it’s the solution that’s ready for your organization now, and for the future, with these questions. </p><h3>1. What enterprise expertise and experience exists at the company?</h3>
<p>Look for experience working with (or at) large enterprises across all of the vendor’s business functions, including leadership, sales, product engineering and support organizations. Take notice if the vendor speaks your language and understands your challenges. The more experience the vendor has working with companies just like yours (e.g. same industry, similar size), the more they can relate to, anticipate and meet your requirements throughout your customer journey. </p><h3>2. What processes exist in support of key enterprise concerns?</h3>
<p>Verify that the vendor has and follows documented security and business continuity policies and procedures. Ask about relevant certifications, such as SOC 2 or GDPR compliance. Confirm the vendor has adequate insurance and operates with agreements (NDAs, MSAs etc.) conforming to industry standards. </p>
<p>The vendor should be financially viable. While this may seem obvious for some, it’s wise to peel back the layers. For a VC-funded startup without a long history, dig a little deeper into how sustainable their business model is. Hypergrowth often comes at the expense of a high burn rate, which could mean they have a limited run rate. Conversely, legacy vendors that have shifted attention to other products may not be collecting significant enough revenue from their CMS anymore, so vendor size isn’t a guarantee for CMS longevity. </p><h3>3. What capabilities and features do you have that specifically address enterprise needs?</h3>
<p>There should be a long and thoughtful list of features that support enterprise requirements and concerns, including needs around service reliability, scalability, security, auditability, collaboration, workflows and global deployments. A CMS should appeal to both business and IT users. Ask about features that address the needs of your marketers, content managers, developers and IT. staff. Many CMS solutions favor one audience’s needs at the expense of another. </p><h3>4. What support and service-level agreements are offered?</h3>
<p>How many of the vendor’s customers (actual number or percentage) operate at each level? You don’t want to be the only mission-critical customer relying on and financing the vendor’s support infrastructure. </p>
<p>Understand what support levels and response times are offered. There’s many layers and levels of support – find out which one is right for your organization. Some implement 24x7 support, via a self-service on-line portal, or interacting with a chatbot or by live support via a qualified, human subject matter expert. </p><h3>5. What is the concrete, ongoing commitment to innovation?</h3>
<p>If the CMS is merely one of many different products, ask how resources are prioritized across the product portfolio. Look for the total number of CMS improvements in the previous 12 months and the general cadence of feature releases. </p>
<p>Ask how large the core engineering team is. If there are only a handful of developers working on the product (which can happen at both large or small vendors), this may be an indicator for lackluster future product enhancements. Be proactive and ask to see future development plans and feature roadmaps. </p><h3>6. What is the historical performance and service uptime?</h3>
<p>Look for publicly available service status information and historical outage data. Evaluate architecture, features and procedures that mitigate or eliminate the impact of a service outage to your sites and apps. In the event of a service issue, find out how it would it be communicated. </p><h3>7. Why do developers like and choose your product?</h3>
<p>Look for a rich library of tools, SDKs and thorough (ideally public) documentation. Ask about features that differentiate the CMS for technical users. </p><h3>8. Why do content managers and marketers users like and choose your product?</h3>
<p>Ask about features that differentiate the <a href="https://www.contentstack.com/business-cms/" target="_self">CMS for business users</a> and evaluate the editor experience. </p><h3>9. Can we run a POC?</h3>
<p>The vendor should not only encourage you to try out their product before signing contracts, they should have a formal program to guide you through a quick and effective POC that validates (or adjusts) your assumptions about the CMS. </p>
<p>If the POC doesn’t demonstrate value in a matter of days, or if it seems complicated and requires specialist expertise – reconsider. Consider the POC a preview of your actual project experience. If the CMS doesn’t seem amazing at a reduced project scope, things will only get worse with a full-scale deployment. </p><h3>10. What other customers do you have and can we speak to them?</h3>
<p>Dig a little deeper than just the company logos on the website – determine if these are non-strategic projects (e.g. a microsite) or if the CMS is powering a mission critical digital property. Ask to speak to customers and take the time to check at least one to two peer references. </p>
<p>Try and find out where your use case falls on the scale of all of the vendors’ customers. You don’t want to be the largest – or most complex – deployment, or be the first company for a major new product option. </p>

Your content is king. Yet, many enterprises find they are still searching for the best way to manage and optimize their content.

Whether you already have a CMS provider or are shopping around for a new one, take the strategic and smart move to evaluate your options. A CMS investment should be evaluated because it is exactly that – an investment. So it should be analyzed carefully, evaluated often, and questioned deliberately. For any platform handling your content, you guard, protect, and question it for the safety of the realm.

10 Important Questions to Ask Your CMS Provider

When evaluating a CMS vendor, determine if it’s the solution that’s ready for your organization now, and for the future, with these questions.

1. What enterprise expertise and experience exists at the company?

Look for experience working with (or at) large enterprises across all of the vendor’s business functions, including leadership, sales, product engineering and support organizations. Take notice if the vendor speaks your language and understands your challenges. The more experience the vendor has working with companies just like yours (e.g. same industry, similar size), the more they can relate to, anticipate and meet your requirements throughout your customer journey.

2. What processes exist in support of key enterprise concerns?

Verify that the vendor has and follows documented security and business continuity policies and procedures. Ask about relevant certifications, such as SOC 2 or GDPR compliance. Confirm the vendor has adequate insurance and operates with agreements (NDAs, MSAs etc.) conforming to industry standards.

The vendor should be financially viable. While this may seem obvious for some, it’s wise to peel back the layers. For a VC-funded startup without a long history, dig a little deeper into how sustainable their business model is. Hypergrowth often comes at the expense of a high burn rate, which could mean they have a limited run rate. Conversely, legacy vendors that have shifted attention to other products may not be collecting significant enough revenue from their CMS anymore, so vendor size isn’t a guarantee for CMS longevity.

3. What capabilities and features do you have that specifically address enterprise needs?

There should be a long and thoughtful list of features that support enterprise requirements and concerns, including needs around service reliability, scalability, security, auditability, collaboration, workflows and global deployments. A CMS should appeal to both business and IT users. Ask about features that address the needs of your marketers, content managers, developers and IT. staff. Many CMS solutions favor one audience’s needs at the expense of another.

4. What support and service-level agreements are offered?

How many of the vendor’s customers (actual number or percentage) operate at each level? You don’t want to be the only mission-critical customer relying on and financing the vendor’s support infrastructure.

Understand what support levels and response times are offered. There’s many layers and levels of support – find out which one is right for your organization. Some implement 24x7 support, via a self-service on-line portal, or interacting with a chatbot or by live support via a qualified, human subject matter expert.

5. What is the concrete, ongoing commitment to innovation?

If the CMS is merely one of many different products, ask how resources are prioritized across the product portfolio. Look for the total number of CMS improvements in the previous 12 months and the general cadence of feature releases.

Ask how large the core engineering team is. If there are only a handful of developers working on the product (which can happen at both large or small vendors), this may be an indicator for lackluster future product enhancements. Be proactive and ask to see future development plans and feature roadmaps.

6. What is the historical performance and service uptime?

Look for publicly available service status information and historical outage data. Evaluate architecture, features and procedures that mitigate or eliminate the impact of a service outage to your sites and apps. In the event of a service issue, find out how it would it be communicated.

7. Why do developers like and choose your product?

Look for a rich library of tools, SDKs and thorough (ideally public) documentation. Ask about features that differentiate the CMS for technical users.

8. Why do content managers and marketers users like and choose your product?

Ask about features that differentiate the 

The vendor should not only encourage you to try out their product before signing contracts, they should have a formal program to guide you through a quick and effective POC that validates (or adjusts) your assumptions about the CMS.

If the POC doesn’t demonstrate value in a matter of days, or if it seems complicated and requires specialist expertise – reconsider. Consider the POC a preview of your actual project experience. If the CMS doesn’t seem amazing at a reduced project scope, things will only get worse with a full-scale deployment.

10. What other customers do you have and can we speak to them?

Dig a little deeper than just the company logos on the website – determine if these are non-strategic projects (e.g. a microsite) or if the CMS is powering a mission critical digital property. Ask to speak to customers and take the time to check at least one to two peer references.

Try and find out where your use case falls on the scale of all of the vendors’ customers. You don’t want to be the largest – or most complex – deployment, or be the first company for a major new product option.

Matthew Baier

Posts by Matthew Baier