Three ways a cloud-native CMS improves your content processes

The content management landscape is changing. To support the modern enterprise in its quest to meet evolving customer expectations, technology is shifting away from on-premise and cloud-based infrastructure, both of which are outdated and unable to deliver the modern customer experience, towards cloud-native infrastructure which holds agility and flexibility at its core.

The driving force behind this shift is that customers in the present day are demanding an enhanced experience along their e-commerce journeys, even though this may appear at odds with the direction of data protection legislation. Essentially, consumers want their shops to recognise them without the shop in question infringing far into the territory of personal information. At its best, therefore, enhancements should be subtle yet effective, a difficult balance to achieve.

Unfortunately, many organisations are struggling to quickly and efficiently deliver enhanced content experiences as, while 64% report to having a CMS in place, only 31% can publish content to multiple channels without having to laboriously create each piece of content separately. This bottleneck can slow the entire content delivery process, making it difficult for businesses to deliver the contextualised experiences their customers have grown accustomed to.

Fortunately, technology has responded to pick up the slack. Organisations are turning to modern, cloud-native content management software powered by artificial intelligence (AI) to provide both IT personnel and marketers the foundation necessary to deliver upon evolving customer expectations.

Personalisation

The role of AI within the enterprise continues to grow, with CIOs on a constant lookout for new ways to use developing technology to gain an edge over their competitors. When it comes to content processes, the intervention of AI technology is nowhere more apparent than in its ability to impact data and help deliver the level of personalisation that customers expect. Because of this AI is integral to the cloud-native CMS pitch, as it’s essential to delivering the most relevant experiences to an audience.

Personalisation can come in many forms. Relevant advertisements, suggested items, and message pop-ups, all driven by data, comprise the types of targeted advertisements sure to enhance the customer experience.

Machine learning specifically can be used to capture data over a period of time and translate that data to understand how audiences interact with the content present on a website. That information can then be used to automatically deliver personalised experiences to future visitors based on what it believes that person wants to see. Advertisements and so forth can then be tailored to each individual customer, resulting in more relevant content that receives greater rates of engagement.

Faster content creation

One of the main positives of AI in any use case is in its ability to shoulder tasks, complete these tasks efficiently and quickly, and simultaneously liberate parts of the human workforce to focus on more valuable initiatives; and when it comes to content management there’s no exception to the rule.

Even today the regular content management process involves lots of manual tasks that, given the right technology, could be automated. However, a cloud-native CMS is able to offer automatic tagging to ensure employees can focus on the creative elements of their job rather than, for example, spending work-hours sourcing and modifying photos and videos. Further, AI can make reusing content simple through its ability to adapt text parameters to fit various screens, allowing authored content to be promoted across multiple channels and devices.

A cloud-native CMS smooths out the wrinkles in the content delivery process. The time saved through automation is, of course, useful and enables employees to focus on the tasks that really add value, but the real reward here is the enhanced customer experience the cloud-native CMS is able to deliver to each content channel in real time.

Optimisation

In saturated markets where each sliver of space is valuable, optimisation can be the key differentiator between an organisation remaining competitive or sinking to murky depths. Optimisation can be achieved through thorough testing in order to identify what works and what doesn’t. Content teams should compare different variables, combining different types of content, navigation, design and so on, and then conduct A/B testing to understand how those changes perform. The best performers can then be used going forwards.

However, varying content and conducting systematic testing uses up valuable resources and time. Often A/B testing is seen as a luxury that organisations can't afford, meaning content isn’t tested, performance suffers, and customers are liable to flock elsewhere.

A cloud-native CMS can help developers create different testing variations of navigations, interactions, and so on, by running A/B tests automatically. Similar to the ability to allow for faster content creation, a cloud-native CMS permits more efficient testing to free developers to focus on other projects that add more value to the organisation, with perhaps the more potent benefit being that content is optimised to serve each user, enhancing the all-important customer experience.