January 19, 2023

By: Anindyo Sarkar, Associate Consultant, LTIMindtree

A content management system (CMS) is a PC framework or an application that permits distributing, altering, or change of content, as well as site support, from a single page. The existing content on the internet comprises HTML, XML, and different reports and media records. This content can be showcased physically by altering and coordinating records on a file system, available on the web through a web server. As per Zion Market ResearchVC, it was forecasted that the global content management system market will generate US$ 123 million by 2026 with a CAGR of 16.7% between 2019 to 2026, which was valued at only US$ 35 million in 2018. The growth in this market globally is inevitable as the focus has shifted to innovation, better decision-making ability, and cost effectiveness across all industries.

In simple terms, content management can be defined as a process of creating, collecting, organizing, categorizing, and structuring information resources of any type or format so that they can be saved, retrieved, published, updated, and re-purposed in any way desirable. – (Yu, Holly, 2001)

Five Trends That Are Shaping the CMS Market

Without question, content management applications give efficiencies, as well as oversee and upgrade content creation, implementation, distribution, and integration. Additionally, there’s the advantage of accessing effective analytics to analyze the ROI of the content. Teams can create more budget-friendly and performance-enhancing processes, appropriate content management systems and improved decision-making ability. As per ‘The Five Key Patterns That Will Shape Your 2021 Substance Administrations Methodology’ report delivered by Forrester Exploration in April 2021 noted five drivers that are shaping CMS usage and new turns of events:

1. Responsive and intelligent content service equals automated responses
Organizations are automating specific workflows to reduce costs incurred and the time associated. The increased use of Artificial Intelligence means that there is a rise in the usage of voice chats, chatbots, etc. to enhance the experience for their customers. , With constant updates to AI the content management system should be flexible and agile. Processes like A/B testing, analysis and optimization are being used as part of the AI and ML experience by the organizations, but to keep up with the latest trends in planning, scheduling and executing content will be needed.

2. Post-pandemic remote work equals intuitive point of interaction
Remote or flex-based groups/teams will not have breadth or familiarity with content management systems and they are expected to be an ace once they start working on it. Therefore, an easy and intuitive platform that is easily interpreted and not just the digital experts is essential. Tools used for editing should have user-friendly options such as drag and drop or some added features like drag and drop feature, clean and copy paste, etc. which overall improves efficiency and increases productivity.

3. Gadget skeptic equals better personalization

The team shouldn’t require hardcore coding expertise to utilize the CMS. Instead, it must have a primary WYSIWYG-rich word processor (what-you-see-is-what-you-get), so they can see the content before publishing. An added feature can be the capacity to export the given content for internal reviews and peer reviews before publishing.

4. Management of knowledge equals Exact standardization
Sometime in the distant past, the pattern was to decentralize an organization’s documents – various divisions utilized different frameworks and had various conventions for updates, communication, and compliances. Organizations are currently unifying their documenting arrangements – particularly in compliance-related domain – to guarantee that significant data is normalized and centralized. That implies data silos are presently obsolete and replaced by better interdepartmental work processes, which are precise and quicker.

5. Fate of reports equals easy accessibility
Some analysts found that knowledge workers spend at least 30% of their time looking for data. That is a ton of lost efficiency. Customarily viewed as exhausting, document management is finally gaining importance. With the blast of knowledge workers, the need for a proper information management system increases, so that the teams can work without any loss of productivity and understand how it directly impacts the profit and performance of the organization.

Headless CMS

Nowadays, many organizations are using the trending phrase, ‘Let’s go headless.’ To comprehend what a headless CMS is, it is important to first understand how conventional CMS tools used to work and why they came into existence. Customary CMS tools have been around since the beginning of web improvement. Tools like WordPress, Drupal, and Sitecore were intended to store and present content components like a message, pictures, and videos on websites.

A headless CMS, otherwise called headless programming or headless framework, is any sort of back-end content management system, in which the content archive, or the ‘body,’ is isolated or decoupled from the ‘head’ i.e., the presentation layer. What this truly implies is that a headless CMS permits you to oversee content in one spot, and yet, deploy the overall content across any kind of front end as per the need. This is vital to omnichannel techniques, since it allows you to coordinate and manage content into any framework, platform, or website by easily calling the APIs the headless CMS accepts. The valuation of the headless CMS market was $328.5 million in the year 2019 and was estimated to reach $1.16 billion by the year 2027 as per Global Headless CMS Software Market Forecast Report 2020-2027.

Benefits of a Headless CMS over a Traditional CMS

Common CMS Players’ Valuation and Investments:

1) Acquia: as per Crunchbase, they have funding worth $173.5 million. In 2019, it was acquired by Vista for $1 billion.
2) Contentful: as per Crunchbase, they have funding worth $334.6 million, with its value being $3 billion
3) Sitecore: as per Crunchbase, they have funding worth $1.2 billion, and it was acquired in 2016 by EQT for $1.14 billion
4) Optimizely: as per Crunchbase, they have funding worth $251.2 million, and it was acquired in 2018 by Insight Partners for $1.16 billion

Contentful is very popular among all other players, given that it provides customized results, unlike traditional CMS. It is an API-driven agile content management system that enables the concerned team to publish content on any digital platform.

The expression ‘headless’ comes from the fact that the content repository of the website remains isolated from the frontend UI. In this scenario, Contentful is the content repository, and it needs a frontend framework to represent the content on the website as per the client’s needs. It is a fully hosted service by the creators and monthly values from free (Community Plan), Team (starting from US$489/month), and Enterprise (custom prices). This is an approximate cost estimate for an organization to set up a Headless CMS.

Contentful is ideal for high-development organizations that are prepared to interact with their customers via unique and interactive website experiences, available across various channels at once. It eliminates the need for having a huge number of resources or engineers to maintain a headless CMS and uplifts the quality of the content as well as the website. Organizations like Spotify, Mailchimp, Trunk Club, etc. have chosen this CMS as it allows them to publish content on different platforms all at once.

LTIMindtree in the CMS domain:

LTIMindtree is paving the way for its customers by introducing headless CMS for their businesses. We have implemented headless CMS websites at scale for a leading CPG player, who faced these problems:

a) They lacked flexibility in design
b) They were unable to incorporate the brand aspirations and vision with the user experience
c) The lead time for implementing new capabilities was higher
d) Their sites performed badly in SEO rankings, had a poor end-user experience, and weren’t at par with the latest web performance expectations
e) The CMS’ capabilities were underutilized and due to the higher infrastructure footprints, additional costs had to be incurred

With these challenges in mind, LTIMindtree initiated the solution of implementing a headless CMS by integrating it with Contentful, with the CMS and React as the front-end technologies. The platform-based approach with reusable components was creatively strategized to provide a seamless user experience and an improved digital platform. After implementing 150+ sites, 70 brands in around 55+ countries, and 30 languages, many benefits were observed –
A responsive design that supports all browsers and devices.
Earlier, the designs were based on pre-defined wireframes, however, after the shift, the designs were brand-led. There were smaller hand-offs, leading to better agility. Hosting and operation costs were reduced for front-end websites

LTIMindtree can help enable comprehensive CMS in your organization to help you provide a seamless user experience to your customers. Explore now.

References:
1. https://www.tiny.cloud/blog/cms-trends-you-need-to-know/
2. https://www.contentful.com/case-studies/bang-and-olufsen/
3. https://www.contentful.com/blog/ecommerce-trends/
4. https://www.aplyca.com/en/blog/contentful-and-the-headless-cms-trend
5. https://www.cmswire.com/digital-experience/can-contentful-crack-land-of-content-management-system-giants/
6. https://www.contentful.com/resources/the-ultimate-guide-to-headless-cms/
7. https://www.contentful.com/r/knowledgebase/what-is-headless-cms/#headless-cms-explained-in-1-minute
8. https://www.webstacks.com/blog/content-management-system
9. https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2021/02/23/2180124/0/en/Global-Headless-CMS-Software-Market-Forecast-Report-2020-2027-Market-Opportunities-in-the-Rising-Deployment-of-Headless-CMS-in-BFSI-Sector.html
10. https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2019/04/11/1802414/0/en/Global-Content-Management-Software-Market-Will-Reach-USD-123-500-Million-By-2026-Zion-Market-Research.html
11. https://www.forrester.com/report/The-Forrester-Wave-Agile-Content-Management-Systems-CMSes-Q1-2021/RES161667
12. https://www.crunchbase.com/acquisition/vista-equity-partners-acquires-acquia–45402b6a
13. https://news.crunchbase.com/enterprise/contentful-funding-valuation-tiger-global/
14. https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/sitecore
15. https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/optimizely
16. https://www.tiny.cloud/blog/cms-trends-you-need-to-know/
17. The Five Key Trends That Will Shape Your 2021 Content… | Forrester