In this fast-paced digital landscape, getting more from your chosen Experience Platform or Content Management System (CMS) is crucial to stay ahead of the curve. Your experience platform licence cost is likely a major slice of your marketing or digital budget. Since 2020 enterprise companies have been spending about 28% of their marketing budget on CMS platforms.
Maximising this potential could be the key to using your marketing budget more effectively and successfully being able to empower your marketing team to get quantifiable new digital results. If you're part of the Sitecore community you have invested in a sports car solution but the message is clear: "Get more or get off."
Are you pushing your sports car to the heights of performance it was made to achieve?
The question we are asking here revolves around the organisations that have invested in Sitecore but are not harnessing its full capabilities. If this is your organisation, then you need to decide if you would like to do more with Sitecore or consider alternatives. CMS and Experience Platforms vary in terms of cost, functionality and features making it crucial to align them with your specific needs, objectives and intended use. Some platforms excel in advanced machine learning, personalisation and split testing options (like Sitecore), providing an incredible opportunity to optimise your web experience in general and for individual users. On the other hand, others prioritise user-friendliness and efficiency, ensuring a seamless experience for both developers and end-users. Taking a really good look at what you really need ensures that your chosen platform will align with your organisation, goals and objectives. The right CMS platform is not just a technological choice but a strategic investment in the long-term success of your online presence, and the wrong one will hold you back for years to come.
Open the bonnet and take a really good look at what you are driving
Investing in a robust platform like Sitecore demands a commitment to leveraging all its capabilities. If you're paying a premium, exploring the full spectrum of what the platform can offer is essential.
Explore Sitecore's Digital Experience Platform (DXP) and how it enables personalised features, machine learning, and AI. If you've invested in Sitecore, develop a strategy that aligns with its technological prowess.
Sitecore’s offering is broad where you can dive into personalisation, split testing, and aligning your customer data analytics within the platform.
Appius are constantly pushing to the performance limits of Sitecore with our clients. Our Lifesearch case study shows how we have implemented Sitecore features, customisations and integrations to align with the business objectives of our client.
Collaborating closely with Appius, Lifesearch have successfully transitioned from a predominantly offline presence relying heavily on comparison sites to becoming a digitally-focused organisation. Through strategic optimisation of their Sitecore investment, they have evolved into a digital-first entity, taking the reins in developing their own integrated insurance technology. Through our work with Lifesearch, there has been a 2.7% uplift in UX and split testing based overall conversion improvement and a 5.7% conversion uplift from Sitecore personalised content.
The nightmare scenario – just using the sports car for the local run
A cautionary tale unfolds for those who merely use Sitecore as a CMS without tapping into its advanced features. This nightmare scenario involves costly projects, expensive developers doubling as content managers, descoping the use of enterprise features for a phase 2 projects that never happen or poorly implemented solutions delivered by non-certified development teams leaving marketing teams struggling with complexity and not being able to use the CMS properly.
As Enterprise CMS platforms shift towards powerful scalable cloud subscription models, ongoing costs are on the rise and the emphasis is moving away from one solution, to feature rich composable product suites with individual costs. This is good news for many large organisations looking for tailored, flexible technology suites but something you should be considering as a business in a climate where CMOs are already struggling for the budget to execute their strategy .
Is This You?
Take a moment to reflect: Is your organisation merely scratching the surface of Sitecore's capabilities? Are you facing challenges in keeping up with rising digital and marketing costs and changing dynamics? Are you struggling to keep your Sitecore implementation up to date with consent models to retain data that you can't even make sense of? Are you finding that your marketing team are not empowered to manage the website independently without the help of a developer?
If this sounds like the kind of scenarios you are encountering the choice is clear: Get more out of Sitecore or re-evaluate your CMS strategy. By understanding and fully utilising Sitecore's capabilities, organisations can not only reduce costs and improve revenues but also stay at the forefront of digital innovation. The time for "Get more or get off" has arrived. We appreciate that this is a big decision and you need to choose wisely, and we also understand that to ‘get more’ you may need help from a agency with a track record of helping organisations to enjoy their Sitecore technology choice, and the results they get from it.
Appius is a full service digital agency with specialist Sitecore developers and a range of different experts on the platforms capabilities. Please get in touch via our Contact Us form to find out more. With an informal discussion, we can take stock of where you are at with your version of Sitecore so far, and give you some initial advice based on your particular current situation and objectives.
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