Can a Content Management System Bridge the Digital Experience Divide?

Priya Patel Dockerty

December 27, 2019

In recent years, one term has seemingly come to dominate discussions surrounding online businesses — digital experience. And just like a decade ago, when IT and Marketing departments still debated who should edit the website, optimize for search engines and manage customer databases, the digital experience is causing a similar rift within companies.

The latest research from Magnolia has revealed that 60% of marketers feel they should be in charge of digital experience, while 72% of IT professionals believe it should fall under their remit.

Of course, it’s no bad thing for multiple departments to be passionate about such a vital aspect of online business. However, the magnitude of this internal disconnect can lead to a number of problems.

As IT and Marketing battle for control of the digital experience, things inevitably fall through the cracks — ultimately leading to digital assets being implemented at a slower rate and delivered to a sub-par standard. Obviously, this is something that online businesses want to avoid at all costs. But in order to do this, they must understand what is causing the fracture between departments in the first place.

Communications Breakdown

Far from being an opportunistic power-grab from IT and Marketing departments looking to plant their flag on the emerging landscape of digital experience, it seems both sides are keen for greater collaboration. In fact, 59% of IT and marketing professionals say they would like to work more closely together in the future. So, what is the problem? Well, for many businesses, it seems that the disconnect is being caused by one thing — poor communication.

Communicating with clarity is key, especially between departments that might not implicitly understand each other’s functions. If one or more parties walk away from a conversation confused about what was actually being discussed, processes will not run as smoothly as they would otherwise.

‘Buzzwords’ represent a huge problem here. What is a useful shorthand for your department and team, can be an impenetrable wall of jargon that the rest of the organization has to try and workaround.

Almost a quarter (23%) of IT teams think that marketers use too many buzzwords — 24% don’t know what a call to action (CTA) is and 21% have no clue what ‘Omnichannel’ content might entail.

But this use of jarring jargon cuts both ways, marketers are similarly confused by IT departments’ use of buzzwords. Nearly a third (31%) don’t know what an ‘API’ is with a further 29% admitting that they don’t understand what ‘CSS’ means.

Clearly this is a massive problem for online businesses to overcome — so what can companies do to bridge this divide?

Straight-Talking CMS

In truth, the digital experience is not an entirely new phenomenon that needs to be fought over or controlled, it’s the natural continuation of a process that marketers and IT professionals have collaborated on for years.

Rather than arguing about which department is responsible and using jargon such as ‘Big Data’ and ‘Account-Based Marketing’, businesses simply need to drop the buzzwords and adopt a more straightforward approach to the digital experience.

In the past, content management systems (CMS) played an important role in enabling IT teams and marketers to work together efficiently and effectively — ensuring their systems were compliant and secure without any compromise on content quality. The rise of digital experience has necessitated a new-wave of advanced, Java-based CMS that will be equally as vital.

Magnolia’s straight-talking, intuitively designed CMS is focused on providing the simplicity and flexibility that businesses currently require — for both IT and Marketing departments.

Using a minimalist, fuss-free drag-and-drop interface, the right platform can help both the Marketing and IT teams swap complexity for clarity. It should be the role of an intuitive CMS to cut through the jargon that is so often damaging the digital experience.

Too many CMS’ — and digital experience platforms — are focused on pleasing either IT teams or marketers. What’s needed now is more solutions that cut through the confusion and allow both sides to work collaboratively. That is the challenge facing the CMS industry today; to create innovative solutions that are optimized for both quality content and technical considerations — without resorting to any buzzwords.

Priya Patel Dockerty

Priya Patel Dockerty joined Magnolia as the company’s Marketing Director, UKI and Nordics in January 2019, with 15 years of experience implementing integrated marketing programmes across Europe and internationally. Previously, Priya has held positions as a Marketing Consultant at Shoppa and Marketing Director, EMEA at Metalogix. She also worked at Silicon Valley start-ups Ensighten and Instart Logic, and at IKEA as Marketing and Communications Graphic Designer.