5 Ways Headless CMS Architecture Advances Innovation Across Enterprises

Nearly 80 percent of Americans are venturing online at least once a day. That should mean your online business efforts are getting awesome traction, right?

Only if your marketing team is creating, and your tech team can deliver, all the top-of-the-line (and very time-consuming) content it takes to win business across 5+ connected devices at once.

That’s right. As of 2019, the average American household contains five different internet-enabled devices. And some estimates even say that in the near future—by 2030 to be exact—each person could regularly be using as many as 15 different connected devices.

Consumers have ditched desktops. Today, people are using mobile devices, wearables, social media channels, applications, and even voice-activated technology to consume content and navigate the buying process at breakneck speed—and in seemingly random order.

And not only that, the demand for personalized language and offers across these channels and devices has gone from “nice to have” to “necessary for the business that wants to keep up.”

What’s an enterprise to do to meet changing demand and growing competition? Innovate—company-wide.

Here’s how your tech team should be implementing headless CMS architecture to drive opportunities for marketing, sales, IT, and innovation across the entire enterprise.

Why Is It Time for Companies to Innovate?

As the “connective tissue” of the marketing that brings leads and customers in the door, content is the heart of the omnichannel experience modern consumers crave.

Content is how your business raises brand awareness, establishes recognition and trust, answers consumers’ questions, and makes their interactions effortless. And now, everyone is experiencing it on their own time, in their own way, and with the expectation of personalization that only smart technology can deliver at scale.

Over 70 percent of consumers express frustration when a shopping experience doesn’t feel personalized. Half of them expect personalized discounts just 24 hours after making the first contact with a business.

Unfortunately, most widely-adopted content management systems (CMSs) are monolithic—meaning they’re built to cater to traditional websites and assume every consumer will follow the same predetermined pathway. They fall short of delivering the personalized, consistent experiences that modern consumers demand along each zig and zag in their shopping journey.

Simply put, company-wide innovation has to begin with content management if businesses want to continue to engage consumers by providing personalized experiences throughout their shopping journey.

It’s pressing that IT organizations enable their businesses to innovate on content delivery and customer engagement through smart technology adoption. Here’s how.

How to Foster Company-Wide Innovation with Headless CMS Architecture

Traditional, monolithic CMSs are admittedly excellent at one thing—delivering content to a single, static, highly-styled website.

However, that one awesome thing isn’t quite enough for the modern enterprise that needs to deliver personalized content experiences to various channels simultaneously.

That’s where the innovative power of headless architecture comes in.

With headless architecture, developers use application programming interfaces (APIs) to display code, content, design, app, and other kinds of functionality in whatever configuration makes the most sense for the situation.

By “decoupling” marketing content from the structure or style in which it’s displayed, an API-first headless CMS grants the flexibility to use any technology to craft any user experience based on the consumer channel you’re using to drive the engagement.

5 Ways Headless Architecture Advances Innovation Across the Enterprise

Here’s how tech teams that adopt headless architecture in their organization can help drive opportunities for innovation company-wide.

Increases Agility for Faster Time to Market

When consumers are switching between engagement channels and methods several times in a day, you have to be ready to react.

With a traditional CMS, marketing presentation and content experiences are tethered to a slow-moving backend that only caters to a single channel. However, with headless architecture, content updates and new channels can be created and implemented independently and at the individual touchpoint.

Therefore, headless architecture innovations enable businesses to implement marketing updates quickly, cut down on resource costs, and get their offerings to market faster for a competitive edge.

Also, headless solutions make replication simple. Launching new products and brands or pushing into new geographical areas has never been so fast.

Enables Seamless Integration of New Strategies, Systems, and Solutions Providers

The scalable, interchangeable nature of headless CMS inspires innovation by integrating with new technology seamlessly.

When it’s time to bring a new device, digital marketing strategy, or service provider online; all IT needs to do is engage that flexible API layer to “plug and play” pretty much any new tech.

This allows businesses the freedom to choose whatever solution they want to work with at any given time.

For example, let’s say a B2B company wants to integrate their favorite customer relationship management (CRM) platform but use another plugin to generate SEO recommendations. As long as both systems connect via APIs, IT can seamlessly integrate, update, remove, and otherwise change both independently whenever and however you want.

At Contentstack, we build easy integration right into our core headless CMS with experience extensions.

Delivers the Consistent Experience Customers Crave

Unified content delivery across mobile, web, and IoT and optimization and personalization extensions make headless CMS the best tool for delivering on-brand experiences at every turn.

Contentstack’s headless CMS in particular offer plenty of enterprise-ready collaboration and governance features that enable every member of the marketing department to work independently without overwriting each other.

Empowers Independent and Quick Iterations Across the Enterprise

One of the key contributors to revenue is the ability to innovate at speed and cost.

With headless CMS, content managers can, well, manage content without involvement from the development team. Marketing is empowered to innovate quickly and without the additional cost of IT hours.

Decoupling front- and back-end systems enable businesses to make changes to specific features without having to reconfigure or even touch the entire system—enabling independent and faster innovation company-wide.

For example, if you need to launch a new widget in a different development language, all you have to do is add that integration to the backend with headless architecture. The customer-facing content on the frontend can remain undisturbed. This enables making timely and cost-effective customizations without upending the underlying infrastructure.

Improves IT Cost and Time Efficiency

Legacy CMS developers often find themselves constrained by the forced coupling of back- and front-end systems. Minor content changes or user experience additions call for alterations at the database level.

That's why one of the most beneficial things for IT teams when it comes to going headless is the fact that the team can use any technology or development framework at any time. Developers can make modifications and customizations without re-creating the logic every. single. time. And, inevitably, when the IT team needs to change the code in the future, the changes can be done without ruining the content and display you’ve carefully crafted over the years.

Additionally, since the frontend and backend are separate, code decisions can be made and maintained by the tech team with the matching skill set—boosting IT’s overall cost and time efficiency.

How Will Your Tech Team Drive Enterprise Innovation?

The demand for content experiences that are personalized for the consumer and customized for the channel is growing. The only way to outpace it is to pursue digital marketing innovations that will transform the entire enterprise.

We invite you to see if an API-first, headless CMS is your company’s solution to game-changing innovation. Sign up to create a free proof of concept with Contentstack today. No obligation. No hassle. Just innovation.