For the past couple of decades, the most common way for enterprise software to be developed and sold was as monolithic packaged applications and even larger platforms – all fully built and integrated in a big chunk. More recently, due in large part to the growth of cloud computing, agile development processes, and the need for lightweight, virtualized applications and enterprise architecture flexibility, the movement has been toward microservices and containerization.

Over the past year or so, we’ve shared our research and explored CCM’s place in organizations’ larger digital experience (DX) delivery architecture. We’ve been listening particularly closely to the needs of business users, the primary users of our software.

Late last month, CMSWiRE published an article by Dom Nicastro titled, "Discussion Point: What Frustrates You About Your Web CMS?" In it, Nicastro asks three different digital agencies what frustrates people about their web content management system? The answers sounded all too familiar to us.

In a recent webinar entitled Who Won the Digital Experience Race? Hint: It’s Not Over Yet, Forrester analysts Mark Grannan and Ted Schadler discuss why you need a digital experience platform, who’s winning the platform war, and how to go about choosing the best platform(s) for your organization. We highly recommend this webinar for anyone trying to consolidate their customer experience technology portfolio in order to deliver a more cohesive end-to-end customer experience.

For effective customer experience management (CXM) that spans the entire customer life cycle, organizations need powerful digital experience (DX) technology platforms that help wrangle content, data and other core services across the marketing, commerce and customer service functions of an organization. That’s asking a LOT of any single vendor or solution. In fact, as it turns out, it’s asking too much.

We’ve been writing a lot about sharing content and integrating data lately. The reason we keep harping on those ideas is because they are what feeds brand consistency. And brand consistency is vital to building recognition, trust and value in the eyes of consumers. The consistency of your brand goes far beyond making sure the company’s logo and colors are right in marketing materials. It pertains to the entirety of how people perceive your company and its products and services. This consistency is built over time, a cumulative image made of all the impressions and interactions customers have with the company. In that sense, it’s a big part of the overall customer experience.