Now is the time to upgrade your CMS. Here’s why.

Why Act Now?

1. Your competitors aren’t slowing down

With ongoing budget constraints and economic headwinds, the decision to delay tech investments ― such as upgrading your content management platform ― may feel necessary, usually with the context ‘our process is working well enough for now, let’s push this spend to next year.’

In reality though, those companies who make the necessary tech investments to keep pace with the ongoing change in consumers’ digital preferences and needs, will be poised to weather economic challenges and accelerate growth on the other side.

The companies who continue to push off these investments, on the other hand, will continue to struggle not only with operating and engaging a distributed workforce, but with addressing changing consumer needs. The result: an inability to compete in an increasingly digital landscape.

2. Your workforce needs have changed

It’s not uncommon for organizations to operate a legacy content management system, sometimes even multiple content systems, with point solutions layered in over the years, managed by manual processes and workarounds. While this approach has always been inefficient, the associated challenges have become even more pronounced with the transition to full or near full remote working environments.

Consolidating solutions into a unified platform creates a positive impact across your organization - spanning user workflows to cost expense. For your IT and dev teams, no longer tasked with the upkeep that comes with maintaining multiple solutions or legacy systems, these resources are now freed to refocus on other business objectives. For Arc XP customer The Globe and Mail, this meant the ability to develop new products such as Sophi, their AI system that powers automated content curation and predictive analytics.

For those charged with content creation, navigating multiple tools, not to mention the often-present manual workflows and approval processes, takes considerable time and effort that is exacerbated by the demand for fresh digital content.

Frequently, we encounter customers eliminating upwards of 10+ individual content tools when migrating to Arc XP. Such consolidation not only drives efficiency in the content development process with multi-channel creation and automated workflows, but reduces total cost of ownership as customers are able to eliminate the fees associated with the individual tools.

Arc XP customer BP highlights the impact consolidating your content tools can have. By migrating their four individual content management systems and other individual tools to Arc XP Content using a headless configuration, BP experienced a 75 percent reduction in the time their teams spent creating and delivering content to their 70,000 employees across 29 countries. Using one CMS versus several also enabled BP to create a single source of truth that delivered consistent communications across all their teams.

3. You risk inconsistent communications

Consistent messaging is vital – both internally and externally, and across channels. With teams dispersed and individual team members working in semi-silos often across a multitude of tools, chances are high that different and perhaps even contradictory messages are conveyed.

Internally, when employees don’t receive clear communication about initiatives, policies or performance, morale and output can suffer. When inconsistent messages are sent externally, customers become confused, negatively impacting brand reputation. Consolidating disparate content tools into one platform creates a centralized view of content, providing clarity for marketing and communications team members and reducing the risk of inconsistent messaging.

In the case of BP, migrating to Arc XP enabled their goal of building a ‘write once, publish anywhere’ communication culture. With significant increases to the effectiveness of their internal communications, BP embraced an “inside-out” communications strategy where internal communications are shared with the outside world in an effort to build transparency.

The impact of this strategy and the consistency in their communications earned BP the number one spot on Bown Craggs & Co.’s Index of Online Excellence, an annual evaluation of the effectiveness of corporate websites.

Getting started is easier than you think

As spending on digital transformation initiatives climbs, 64 percent of decision-makers in IFS’s global research study cited the ability to quickly deliver a measurable return on investment as their number one concern. When it comes to consolidating and migrating content management tools and systems, quick return on investment is a phrase not often associated with what are frequently large, all-in, consultative-led projects.

Those who want to take a measured approach can do so by migrating one or just a few components and assessing the resulting impact before moving to the next. Such was the case with Graham Media Group who, challenged by the limitations of their previous video platform, started their transition by migrating to Arc XP’s Video Center. Shortly after the video migration, and spurred by near instantaneous workflow and delivery improvements, Graham proceeded to migrate the rest of their content ecosystem to Arc XP. Spanning eight individual sites, the process which can often take upwards of a year to execute, was completed in just ten and a half weeks.

If you’re ready to upgrade your CMS and position your organization for ongoing success, Arc XP is ready to support your unique content and digital experience needs. Contact us today to learn about upgrading your CMS to Arc XP.