The DXP Catalyst Update - Jan 17, 2025

INTRO
Welcome to This Week’s DXP Catalyst Update

I attended the CMS Kickoff 25 event on Tuesday and Wednesday in St. Pete, FL, and it was a great experience. The audience was thoughtfully curated, bringing together a diverse mix of analysts, agencies, vendors, and customers. It was nice to reconnect with some familiar faces and meet new ones in person.

While I didn’t have much time to explore on Monday, I did manage to enjoy a walk along the St. Pete Pier early Tuesday before the event and visit Demens Landing Park on Wednesday morning. Next year, I’ll plan to arrive on Sunday to see a little more of St. Pete and the surrounding area.

The event was well-structured over two days. Day 1 featured customer stories, lightning talks, insights into emerging challenges in the CMS space, and a variety of demos. Day 2 shifted focus towards open discussions on issues for 2025. I joined two groups that tackled (1) when to take a composable approach (and when not to) and (2) barriers to integrating open-source composable solutions with productized composable platforms.

There’s a lot to unpack, and I’m sure I’ll miss a few things, but this week’s newsletter will focus on some key topics and insights from the first day of the event.

EVENTS
CMS Kickoff 25

The CMS Kickoff 25 event, hosted at the James Museum of Western & Wildlife Art, brought together a diverse group of leaders, customers, and vendors to share insights on the evolving content management landscape. Companies like J&J, Telus, and Intuit shared real-world examples of challenges and innovative solutions content management and delivering digital experiences. The event shed light on key trends shaping the future of CMS and digital strategy.

Search Experience: A Driver of Personalization and Strategy

Search is no longer just about retrieval - it has become a cornerstone of digital experiences, driving personalization and content strategy.

• Nick Condon (Squiz) emphasized the importance of finding content without clicks, signaling a shift from traditional search paradigms to contextual discovery.

• Sameer Maggon (SearchStax) highlighted search as a feedback loop for strategy, emphasizing its potential to:

  • Inform homepage and landing page design.

  • Drive personalization by capturing and interpreting user intent.

  • Bridge gaps between content and user needs, transforming search into a strategic asset.

Takeaway - Search is no longer a passive tool; it’s an active driver of digital strategy, enabling personalization, shaping user experiences, and aligning content with intent. Organizations should leverage search insights to optimize content and design strategies for maximum impact.

Structured Content: A Foundation for Scalability and Sustainability

Structured content is essential for scalability and long-term success, yet many organizations fail to implement it effectively due to poor governance and short-term thinking. Carrie Hane, a digital content expert, highlighted the risks of creating structured content on the fly, where tools prioritize visual flexibility and ease of use over strategic sustainability.

While tools like drag-and-drop editors and page builders may streamline publishing, they often lead to fragmented, inflexible content that cannot be reused effectively across channels or be adapted to new technologies. Organizations that focus solely on immediate results - such as publishing web pages quickly - sacrifice future readiness, adaptability, and strategic impact.

Key Challenges:

• Lack of governance leads to duplicated, siloed, or unstructured content.

• Content created solely for one purpose often cannot be repurposed, creating inefficiencies.

• Organizations risk falling behind as GenAI and multi-channel requirements demand structured, adaptable content.

Takeaway - Structured content, backed by governance frameworks, is critical for building scalable, sustainable digital experiences. Investing in content strategy and long-term adaptability ensures organizations are prepared for future challenges and opportunities.

How GenAI is Making Content King Again

Mike Spenceley of J&J discussed the critical role of content governance in enabling effective GenAI solutions. Drawing from his experience, he shared insights into two tools: a non-GenAI digital assistant launched in 2023 and a GenAI-powered chatbot introduced in 2024. The tools aimed to solve use cases like answering HR and payroll questions for employees, but highlighted distinct challenges and lessons in governance.

The GenAI-powered chatbot faced issues such as referencing outdated and unvetted content, conflicting governance processes, and underestimated efforts to ensure content accuracy. These challenges highlighted the need for clear roles, rigorous processes, and collaboration between content and technology teams.

Mike emphasized that business leaders now recognize how high-quality, well-structured content is essential for GenAI’s sucess. Effective governance requires cross-functional collaboration, accountability, and leadership support to align content efforts with organizational goals.

Takeaway - To unlock the potential of GenAI, organizations must prioritize content governance, involving SMEs, content owners, and business leaders to ensure content accuracy, scalability, and trustworthiness.

CMS Differentiation and Usability

Nicole France, evangelist at Contentful, highlighted how vendors are seeking to differentiate in a marketplace with growing feature parity.

• Usability has become a key differentiator, with vendors focusing on UX layers and tools that empower specific teams.

• Some platforms are tailoring their solutions to specific enterprise needs whereas others are showing more industry-focused innovation, with solutions for industries like higher education or regulated industries.

Takeaway - It’s harder for CMS platforms to stand out in a crowded market, but usability and vertical-specific functionality are among ways to do so.

Ensuring Truth in Content: A Shared Responsibility

The rise of AI-driven content creation has amplified concerns around truth and trust in the digital space. Joel, CTO at Agility CMS, posed a critical question - whose job is it to ensure the truth is it out there? Is it the government? CMS vendors?

He explored the CMS community’s role in ensuring accuracy and ethical standards, especially as platforms like TikTok and Instagram become dominant spaces for content consumption. The discussion emphasized how some of these platforms are shifting verification responsibilities to users, raising the stakes for governance and trust in content ecosystems.

Takeaway - Maintaining truth and trust in content is a shared responsibility among the broader CMS community. Governance frameworks and ethical oversight are essential as AI continues to shape how content is created and distributed.

Website-First vs Content-First CMS Platforms

Petr Palas, founder of Kentico and Kontent.ai brought up a distinction between website-first and content-first CMS platforms. I think this is a great way to differentiate between these two types of platforms.

• Website-first platforms:

  • Focused on web properties and visual experiences.

  • Typically built for “build-and-forget” projects, like a website redesign every few years.

  • Serves a small team of power users, with a set of approval processes.

• Content-first platforms

  • Content is treated as a strategic asset, designed to be up-to-date and reusable across multiple touchpoints.

  • Collaboration, accuracy, and compliance are prioritized, involving teams of subject matter experts with complex review processes.

  • Designed to manage the entire content lifecycle end-to-end, enabling discovery, auditing, and reusability.

Takeaway - Organizations must align their choice of CMS with their broader content strategy, considering both web-centric needs and multi-channel scalability.

Securing Content Management: Lessons Learned from Evolving Threats

The Brightspot team explored the growing challenges of securing content management in the face of evolving threats, particularly in industries like news media, where breaking news often leads to rapid and widespread content dissemination. Companies have seen the appropriation and misuse of content, raising questions about control, ROI, and the future of content distribution.

GenAI tech has introduced new layers of complexity. Content is now being appropriated, modified, and redistributed, often times from platforms that operate without accountability. Even major players like Google, while technically “playing by the rules” have shifted traffic away from creators by serving content directly on their platforms. This trends reduces page views and diminishes the ROI of SEO efforts.

Brightspot noted that SEO, once a cornerstone of digital strategy, may face a collapse of its superstructure. As consumption shifts to platforms like TikTok and other social-first ecosystems, the traditional model of driving traffic to websites becomes less relevant. Companies may need to rethink their approach.

Takeaway - Organizations need to think strategically about content creation and distribution, balancing accessibility with the reality of losing control over content. Protecting content requires rethinking priorities and adapting to a rapidly decentralizing ecosystem.

Developments within the WordPress Community

Since last fall, the WordPress community has experienced turbulence, primarily stemming from a dispute between Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg and WP Engine. The controversy began when Mullenweg criticized WP Engine for insufficient contributions to the open-source WordPress project and alleged misuse of the WordPress trademark. This led to actions such as blocking WP Engine’s access to WordPress.org resources and legal proceedings.

During the event, Crowd Favorite CEO Karim Marucchi provided updates on the ongoing situation. Given the complexity and significance of these developments, I plan to dedicate an upcoming issue of my newsletter to explore this topic in depth. Stay tuned for more details!

Leveraging AI for Hyper-Personalization of Customer Experiences

Makram Mansour from Intuit shared insights into how AI is reshaping customer experiences and driving hyper-personalization across their suite of brands, including QuickBooks Online, MailChimp, TurboTax, and CreditKarma. With over 100 million subscribers, Intuit’s approach focuses on delivering granular, hyper-personalized experiences at scale while supporting diverse customer segments like small businesses, self-employed individuals, and consumers.

The digital journey has evolved from “one-to-all” interactions to “one-to-one” hyper-personalization, demanding advanced AI-driven solutions. Intuit highlighted the importance of early experimentation, using insights to better understand customer needs and impact outcomes.

Makram detailed Intuit’s ability to enable real-time, in-session personalization - delivering tailored experiences without page reloads. These efforts require significant investment and validation, particularly when using GenAI for personalization. He noted that achieving success “takes a village,” requiring trust, accuracy, and collaboration across teams.

Takeaway - Hyper-personalization is transforming customer experiences, but it requires significant resources, robust governance, and a commitment to innovation to scale effectively.

Final Thoughts

The CMS Kickoff 25 event underscored the critical need for organizations to adapt their content strategies to meet the demands of a changing digital landscape. Whether it’s rethinking the role of search or addressing the challenges in content governance, the common thread is clear - success lies in balancing innovation with thoughtful strategy and execution.

Organizations must embrace sustainable practices to ensure they’re ready to tackle emerging trends and technologies. Stay tuned for deeper dives into some of these topics in upcoming issues of the newsletter.

WHAT’S NEXT
Upcoming Topics

• Next Week: Unlocking Value in PE-Backed Consumer Brands: CIO Challenges and Strategic Opportunities.