Digital is driving industries to adapt to a new type of audience, one that is always on and that demands the ability to connect with your content -- or your competitors' content -- anywhere, on any device, at any time. This pressure to deliver relevant content for specific audiences at just the right time is a death toll for some companies but an opportunity to succeed.
Change has always been part of the landscape, but the rate of change has gone from rapid to extreme. In the past 5 years, a company that owns no hotels or lodging has emerged as the most successful travel company. A startup car company now competes with and dominates sales over Mercedes, BMW, Lexus, and Audi combined.
In this rapidly evolving landscape where more agile competitors are constantly disrupting incumbent brands, it pays to use tools that can adapt with you, including a cloud-based CMS that allows you to future-proof your website.
With a cloud-based platform, you don't have to invest in a completely new content management system in two years when new technology or a new competitor has disrupted the playing field. A CMS solution based in the cloud can push instant changes directly to your workstation as the changes are needed. Technology gives you an edge when the pace of change is accelerating.
3 Key Strengths of a Cloud-Based Content Management System
There are many advantages to a cloud-based CMS, but to sum up, three stand out.
Maintainability
Updates are pushed easily. Security updates and improvements to site performance can arrive on your desk when the need arises. You don't need to invest time or energy into staying on top of the latest crisis to hit the web - a cloud CMS takes care of that for you.
Usability
Managing the software is easy when the CMS is based in the cloud. Many small details need attention behind the scenes to keep your workflows and content editors happy, and a cloud-based CMS offloads those details onto the CMS team, leaving you and your team to focus on developing and delivering great content.
Adaptability
There is no other solution that allows you to iterate on what works so quickly and quickly change what doesn't. In a way, using the cloud is like future-proofing your technology. A CMS built on a cloud platform can change when you need something to change. When you need a new feature, you can get the new feature.
Where traditional CMSs require extensive reboots and re-installs, a cloud-based CMS requires an internet connection.
Cloud-based CMS: The Digital Future
Goods used to be tangible consumable things like cars or clothes. They blend tangible and intangible, delivering the product, and the customer experience is inextricably intertwined with the end product.
Think of a stage production of a show involving purchasing and refunding tickets, scheduling reminders, and addressing customer inquiries, all of which contribute to the customer experience, and yet none of which could rightly be called a tangible thing. Using the cloud allows you to respond to unexpected friction points and quickly address them before your competitors do it better than you can.
That is the customer-facing side. There is also the internal perspective.
Designing a customer journey is no longer something you can set and forget. At the same time, it is no longer something that can be orchestrated by a few people at the top of an organization. Business success depends on giving employees the tools they need to deliver top-notch customer experiences. Using technology that can provide analytics on the fly, investing in platforms that make it easy for your employees to do great work, and carefully planning the experience and content needs around each customer touch-point can make the difference between success and failure. When your technology can quickly adjust to suit the needs of your employees, your customers reap the benefits.
In this intensely competitive landscape, using a cloud-based solution allows you to quickly build on successes and adapt to change as it happens. It's a competitive edge that can make the difference between a digital strategy that does the job and a digital strategy that is still trying to find a better way to sell DVDs.
Ultimately, a cloud-based CMS allows you to deliver the things you planned for and adapt to what you didn't. That rapid adaptability is what sets cloud-based solutions apart and makes the suitable CMS such a potent tool in a digital company's tool chest.
It's one of the reasons we are proud of the Agility Cloud CMS solution.
