Upgrade or replace CMS?

The most important move beforehand is to take a step back and clearly define your digital needs. What’s your end-goal and how does that translate into requirements? Chances are the customer experience needs immediate attention while product owners, marketers, and developers want to optimize channels.

What role should the CMS play?

Responding to changing customer needs means choosing the best technology for each touchpoint. Then providing content to those channels dynamically through systems such as the CMS, CRM or other specialist software APIs. This helps to create cohesion and your intended customer experience.

In practice, this is a lot more complicated. Especially when you’re running on a so-called 'legacy suite' CMS such as Bloomreach, Adobe Experience Manager, or Sitecore with all their limitations.

You’re probably stuck, without the full freedom to (technically) shape channels yourself. Not to mention the expense, time, and complication of upgrading after a major release. 

Often, this legacy software has become intwined with the code of internal systems like a plate of spaghetti. It raises the question whether your CMS is still future-proof.

Is your current CMS future-proof?

Each major release is a good time to check whether a  – somewhat forced – upgrade is the right way to go. Do you stick with your current CMS or is it time for an upgrade?

Upgrading preserves existing workflows and functionality, ensuring a smooth transition. But there are strings attached. Go down the checklist to see whether an upgrade or switch is the best option for you.

Best-of-breed architecture

How do you take back control now and ensure that you don't end up in the same situation again in the future? At Touchtribe, the answer is always: a best-of-breed architecture.

Unlike the legacy or enterprise suites we mentioned before, best-of-breed architecture doesn’t comprise a ready-made set of solutions. Instead, it gives your company the space to stack its own building blocks. 

Based on your business requirements, we select specialized solutions in all disciplines and connect them via APIs. This results in a solution that matches your business requirements, and is also extremely agile – because you no longer need to depend heavily on a single supplier.

A singular function

We often see legacy CMS’s that have become a one-stop-shop for front-end technology, personalization, A/B testing, analytics, and ofcourse, content management. 

At Touchtribe, we believe that a great CMS has one job: allow content editors to manage and publish content in a user-friendly way. 

Increasing agility

Once your business is ready to take a next step such as integrating content and commerce, we can connect a software-solution that adds this functionality sing an API. 

This allows organizations to profit from all kinds of individual specialisms, while being flexible enough to switch or add solutions. The architecture is better suited to application lifecycle management: by increasing the agility, you increase the opportunities to manage changes. 

Buildable and flexible

The number of software providers in the market is increasing, the most popular being Contentful, Contentstack and StoryBlok. 

Each of these CMS systems is Headless, ensuring developers have the freedom to work beyond the constraints of a legacy suite. They can pick their preferred coding language, whether that be in a webshop, Progressive Web App, native mobile app, chatbot, or voice app. Any touchpoint can be loaded from that one central point.

API-first: own your stack

An important feature of these specialist CMS systems is their cloud-native (SaaS) and API-first approach. This ensures that your new software solution can receive new features without a costly upgrade. And that is a huge time (and money) saver for developers and IT-teams. 

Headless CMS systems are designed to share information with other systems. This makes them so relevant as part of a larger technology stack. 

• Ready to add a commerce layer to your website or domain? An integration with Commerce Layer, commerce tools such as BigCommerce is a step away.

• Does the customer experience require personalization? Companies like Relay42 offer advanced functionalities. 

Connecting these solutions creates a brick-by-brick stack – your very own, proprietary DXP – that perfectly aligns and grows with the digital maturity of your organization.

Migration: step by step

Companies that have successfully transformed their legacy suite to a best-of-breed architecture with headless CMS tend to start small and expand incrementally.

Step 1. Replace the content-management functionalities of the website
Step 2. Redesign the most important features 
Step 3. Expand using extensions such as an e-commerce layer 

This ensures your replatforming remains manageable. No need to fear an all-encompassing migration or a big-bang go-live moment. 

A richer, omnichannel experience 

Something we often see after migration: when developers are no longer tied to the techniques chosen for them by software vendors, they create richer experiences.

Where the website used to be a silo, the channels are easier to manage from one central point, bringing the omnichannel experience another step closer. 

Forward-thinking brands know how to fully integrate content and commerce. Behind-the-scenes, they are supported by a flexible architecture of Headless SaaS tools that help to develop at a higher speed.

CMS in its new role

For many, introducing a Headless CMS is like introducing a fresh breath of air. Legacy systems often focus on the CMS itself, whereas Headless makes the role of the CMS smaller, and the architecture as a whole, bigger. 

Content managers will enjoy their new way of working that allows them to to focus more on content than technical work. 

There are endless possibilities when it comes to designing your CMS to fit its users. Standardized or flexible. With image-heavy layouts, interactive forms or endless scrollers. 

Working with Headless also ensures that the addition of best-of-breed search functionalities, multi-variant websites in different languages, and user-testing can be implemented without the need for big releases.