New survey finds that legacy technology is keeping businesses from winning in the experience economy.
New research from Crownpeak suggests that the speed and agility of digital experience platforms remain more of an aspiration than a reality.
The global pandemic has drastically changed how organizations interact with their customers. It has expedited digital evolution; what was important before is mission-critical now.
Organizations are striving to expand their reach across more and more digital channels. With their customer-base spending more time at home, they must be innovative and agile in their approach to digital communication.
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The Crownpeak study found that most organizations are burdened with out-of-date, legacy technology, which leaves them struggling to accelerate their digital evolution efforts and implement new content or campaigns without the support of the IT department.
By relying on a department that is often already stretched beyond its means, the timeliness of digital engagement strategies is being lost, limiting their effectiveness and lessening their impact.
Organizations must address this issue and quickly if they need to unlock the full potential of the marketing team and lift the burden from IT. Failure to meet digital agility goals has hefty financial implications for organizations, which will push them further behind their digitally agile competitors.
To effectively engage with customers digitally, organizations need digital experience platforms that are quick and nimble. They must keep pace with their markets or risk losing out to competitors. While they aspire for such a system, the reality is that most are struggling to achieve this.
Crownpeak’s research found that organizations are spending a lot of time implementing digital experience platforms (DXP) or content management systems (CMS). It has taken them an average of 11 months to implement their current platform. And for over a third (35%), this process took between one and two years.
And it is not just the first implementation that is taking time. It takes organizations several weeks to complete digital content tasks such as creating a new microsite (average of 5 weeks) or a new landing page design (average of 4 weeks). While some activities can be developed in tandem, they are all time-and resource-heavy — further impacting an organization’s digital agility.
Organizations reported these activities take up to twice as long as expected. For example, a new landing page design typically takes 2x longer to implement than planned. Creating a microsite with a new design/creative: 1.7x longer. A new content page with a new template or page layout: 1.3x longer. Even updating content using an existing template takes 2x longer than it should, on average.
Organizations undoubtedly appreciate the importance of being able to deliver and manage digital experiences in a quick and agile way. The vast majority (93%) agree that speed and agility are either extremely or very important to their organization when delivering digital experiences and managing their online content.
However, digital agility is rarely achieved — nearly three-quarters (73%) report that their organization requires at least some improvement in this area.
But what is causing this substantial reality gap between desire and execution? While organizational process gets some of the blame (40%) for sluggish implementations, technology takes two out of the top three spots. 40% say the technology is slow to implement, and 28% say that the technology is hard to use. Organizations need technology that helps them move faster, not hinder their progress.
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Why Organizations Must Prioritize Their Digital Focus
Being able to engage with customers digitally is at the heart of organizations’ marketing plans, especially during a global pandemic when their target customer is spending most of their time at home.
It is perhaps unsurprising to see digital channels dominating most organizations’ core communication methods. Digital advertising (20%), websites (19%), and evermore expansively — social media (16%) represent the most common ways that organizations seek to engage their audience. As newer or less explored technologies such as voice (3%) and chat bots (1%) start to enter and climb the list, organizations’ communication channels will continue to evolve.
To build digital momentum, organizations are expanding their online footprints. Respondents’ organizations manage an average of 21 websites overall. Given how long they report it takes to implement digital campaign assets, this could well be consuming large amounts of time.
Organizations must inevitably rely on technology to help deliver their digital strategies. But it is essential these technologies enable them to launch assets across multiple channels in an increasingly pressurized and fast-evolving online marketplace.
Deploying Technology To Developing a Digital Focus
Managing this large number of digital channels and domains is a sizeable task for organizations. Doing so in a streamlined way is imperative and requires organizations to be using technology efficiently.
Approaching half (46%) of respondents’ organizations opt for a commercially available web content management system (CMS) or digital experience platform (DXP). However, there is still a reliance on IT resources for building/updating web pages (26%) and in-house proprietary tools (9%). For one in five (20%), outsourcing the management of digital experiences and online content is the path they have chosen.
Every technology in use today has its drawbacks. While those using a commercially available CMS or DXP experience fewer limitations than those using other, using the right technology to drive a digitally focused strategy is key. The fact is that current digital experience management solutions are not living up to expectations.
Given the time it takes organizations to make changes to current digital content, it is not surprising that around a third (35%) are struggling to keep content consistent with brand messaging. Similar proportions (33%) struggle to keep the software they are using up-to-date with the latest features available. Furthermore, around three in ten feel they need specialists to operate or develop the software (31%), and 29% believe there is too much reliance on the IT department. These challenges all work against marketers, compounding the issues around lack of agility and speed.
These are all friction points it is imperative for organizations to address if they want to deliver best-in-class digital experiences to their customers.
Learn more: Why COVID Is Driving Companies To Double Down on Digital Experiences
Conclusion
The importance of digital experiences has never been as strong within an organization as it is today; keeping pace with digital evolution is mission-critical. Organizations must shift from reactive to proactive if they are to stay ahead of the ever-changing market conditions.
Technology plays a critical role in this shift and enables organizations to accelerate digitally. Using the right tools and software can facilitate a multitude of commercial and operational benefits.
However, many organizations are plagued with cumbersome, out-of-date, legacy technologies, which are more of a hindrance than a help. Archaic platforms are pushing marketing departments to be overly reliant on an already stretched IT team. By relying on IT to not only make software updates but also changes to content, the agility and effectiveness of both teams are compromised.
If organizations were to implement SaaS-based solutions that encompass no-code/low-code experience development, it would enable them to take direct control of the digital experience. Many of the limitations they face today would be resolved, and the greater potential of both marketing and IT teams would be unlocked. The benefits to the organization would be massive.
By shedding these shackles and implementing more agile digital experience technology, organizations look set to gain financially as well as freeing up resources to work on other critical tasks, which will further benefit them, now and in the future.