New research commissioned by Storyblok suggests that 93% of marketers and developers say their current CMS is falling their business. This belief is despite businesses spending an average of $453,126 on martech per year.
Integration may be widely established as the backbone of the future omnichannel experience. However, the research reveals some of the world’s biggest brands still feel held back by outdated legacy tech stacks that cannot meet their evolving needs.
Key research findings
- 38% of IT and marketing leaders working at some of the biggest global brands state they constantly need a better integration experience.
- 40% also believe collaboration with each other is ineffective or non-existent.
- Most IT and marketing leaders admit 20-30% of their content isn’t even relevant.
- Expert consensus is platform integration failures could impact Christmas conversions and must become a 2025 priority.
300 IT and marketing leaders at global businesses, a third (29%) of which state revenues over $100M, were asked a range of questions about their company’s CMS. In addition to the ability to integrate new tools and applications as part of the existing tech stack.
Unsurprisingly, given that all surveyed companies use monolithic CMSs, most respondents (93%) expressed frustration with limited integration options with other services and tools in their tech stack. Two in five (38%) also state they constantly need a better integration experience. Nearly a quarter (24%) find integrations “difficult,” showing a need for more flexible solutions.
Additionally, outdated content is a widespread problem. Most respondents report that 20-30% of their CMS content is no longer relevant. Only 29% updating content monthly or less. This comes as two in five (37%) admit to not having an audit or update process that works for them.
“This survey shows that many companies are hitting the limits of their current CMS,” says Dominik Angerer, CEO of Storyblok. “They are dreaming of a CMS that’s keeping all their systems in sync without constant workarounds.”
Strained relationships
The survey also revealed that collaboration between marketers and developers is strained, with 40% saying it’s either ineffective or non-existent. For example, when a marketer wants to update a post or make quick edits across multiple pages, they may need to request developer support each time. This is because content changes on a monolithic CMS are often complex and can impact the entire site. This back-and-forth creates bottlenecks and delays, that when combined frequently, add months to a project. “A headless CMS can eliminate these holdups,” Angerer says. “These flexible, integration-friendly systems meet the needs of both marketers and developers”
Looking to 2025, the consensus is that integration will become an even more dominant martech trend due to the rapid growth of new technologies and the need to manage data from multiple systems. According to Storyblok, failure to prioritize this could continue to cost businesses time, money, and resources due to the underutilisation of martech tools, limited scalability, and the potential for poorer cross-team collaboration.
This comes as a previous Storyblok study revealed almost half (48%) of all businesses are embarrassed by their website despite spending an average of $453,126 on marketing technology. The Storyblok report also found that business leaders estimate that poor website user experience costs $72,000 in lost sales annually.
Enterprise Times: What this means for businesses.
The results of this research are not too surprising. Storyblok is grounded in the MACH principles of microservice, API-based, cloud and headless technologies. The opposition remains the monolithic, all-encompassing CMS platform, which brands say is blocking them from achieving modern customer experiences.
The other interesting facet of the research is the strained relationship between marketing and developers. The purpose of any CMS is to enable marketeers to make changes content changes without the need for development support.
Today’s CMS needs to empower brands and retailers to unlock the full potential of their digital experiences. This is achieved by offering an intuitive, scalable, and intelligent platform to deliver digital experiences from idea to success.
