For manufacturers, a MACH approach opens new opportunities to grow and scale. Discover how a headless CMS like Contentstack can solve key challenges and drive your digital experience and digital business.
As competition within the manufacturing industry continues to increase, organizations are looking for business opportunities that will reduce operational costs, increase ROI, and improve their overall customer experience. Companies need the ability to set themselves apart from the competition while building a digital experience that helps them differentiate and compete. Manufacturers are especially challenged with complex products, multiple sales channels, and unique sales cycles - making content discovery and consumption critical to their revenue.
To understand a headless CMS, it is important to first understand its predecessor—the traditional CMS. Since the early days of web development, traditional CMS systems (i.e., WordPress) have been used to store the images, videos, and text that make up a website. These elements were written directly into the code and were only capable of being used in one linear fashion.
Fast-forward to the present day, where companies can now initiate touchpoints and nurture leads in a variety of different ways outside of the traditional website structure of text, video, and images. Now, the inclusion of mobile apps, drip campaigns, digital displays, virtual assistants, and other digital platforms helps create a much larger, all-encompassing user journey. To stay ahead of the competition, you need a CMS that is flexible enough to adapt to these ever-evolving digital platforms. This is where a headless CMS system steps in—and shines.
To put it simply, a headless CMS serves as an asset repository that organizes existing content then uses APIs to map that content to a specific digital platform, device, or display method. With a headless CMS, your hosting and delivery live in the cloud, making it secure, flexible, and configurable anytime, from anywhere.
Even prior to the onset of the pandemic, customers globally were spending less time on-site to source products and services. As a result, manufacturers are moving key business functions and experiences online. Creating compelling, unified, and scalable experiences is the new challenge and opportunity for businesses looking to compete in this new reality. Manufacturers need the tools to create effortless multichannel and multitouch online experiences.
Here is where headless CMS architecture comes into play. With a headless CMS, manufacturers now can personalize the entire digital experience by creating a structured digital ecosystem. Through API technology, they can develop highly targeted content regarding products and services, empower sales teams to nurture prospective clients, and improve the user journey overall.
The greatest benefit of a headless CMS is the decoupling of the frontend and backend capabilities. This allows content to be created without the burden of frontend presentation and ensures the workflow of developers remains uninterrupted. Essentially, this means content creators can create and developers can develop without one impeding the other.
With the help of APIs, all content or assets held within a headless CMS can be repurposed for delivery to fit any digital platform. With this cross-platform support, the typical time-to-market is significantly reduced. Content delivery to platforms like mobile phones, smartwatches, digital displays and more can be done quickly and with minimal issue.
Unlike a traditional CMS, the headless CMS solution provides developers the freedom to use their desired framework as opposed to conforming to one programming language. They instead have the flexibility to utilize a multitude of APIs and data formats to accomplish frontend and backend functionality.
The structure of a headless CMS prevents vendor lock-in by allowing you to design your platform with a best-of-breed approach. Its architecture enables you to integrate best-in-class APIs easily and quickly from multiple vendors to develop an optimal user experience.
Research has found that on average, IT teams spend 40% of their time delivering upgrades. With cloud-native headless CMS technology, upgrades are a thing of the past, which can lead to massive cost and time savings, and radically improved efficiency.
Review the factors below. If your business meets one or more of these conditions, headless content may be the most robust, future-friendly solution.
Once you’ve found the right CMS for your business, here are the common implementation steps:
A digital consultancy like Object Edge can help with defining your business requirements, implementation, and management after launch. Contentstack’s headless CMS is an Agile Content Management System that empowers teams to drive dynamic, multichannel digital experiences. Both Object Edge and Contentstack are members of the MACH Alliance.
