The DXP Catalyst Update - June 4, 2025

INTRO
Welcome to This Week’s DXP Catalyst Update

This week’s edition of The DXP Catalyst Update was sparked by a recent conversation with an agency owner navigating platform planning within a large, complex organization. The platform decision had already been made, but the real challenge was aligning priorities, teams, and timelines across a fragmented ecosystem.

It is a challenge I have encountered several times in my own work. While platform selection often gets the spotlight, the real determinant of success is what follows. That includes architecture planning, stakeholder coordination, and a phased rollout strategy. I wanted to share some thoughts and lessons learned on how to assess and improve platform readiness in these kinds of environments.

LEADERSHIP GUIDANCE
Getting Aligned: Platform Readiness in Complex Ecosystems

When organizations invest in new digital platforms, whether CMS, commerce, personalization, or another system, the hard part often isn’t selecting the platform itself. It’s everything that comes next. In complex environments with multiple departments, business units, or campuses, the real challenge becomes alignment. That means aligning goals, timelines, processes, and roles so the platform rollout has a clear path to success.

This edition of the newsletter explores how to assess platform readiness, not just from a technical perspective, but through the lens of organizational coordination. We’ll examine the people, processes, and planning required to support a successful implementation.

1. What Are You Aligning Around?

Successful platform adoption starts with a shared understanding of the why. Too often, different stakeholders enter the conversation with different interpretations:

• IT might be focused on modernizing infrastructure or reducing vendor sprawl.

• Marketing might see the platform as a way to improve personalization or campaign velocity.

• Content teams might just want a better editorial workflow.

If these motivations remain unspoken or misaligned, platform work can stall. You need shared business outcomes, such as “reducing time to launch new sites” or “increasing self-service access to analytics,” to act as clear guiding goals. These objectives should be communicated early and mapped to what the platform is actually designed to support.

Establishing alignment means not only articulating goals but also connecting them to real-world use cases across teams. This approach helps generate buy-in and clarify priorities.

2. Readiness Isn’t Just About Tech

Once you have directional alignment, the next step is to understand whether your organization is truly ready. Readiness is not just about infrastructure or APIs. It is about people, processes, and ownership.

Here are a few key questions to assess:

• Do teams have capacity to participate in platform rollout planning, governance, or training?

• Are roles and responsibilities clearly defined for the post-launch phase?

• Are workflows in place, or in need of redesign, to support the intended use of the platform?

• How much variation exists across departments or regions that will need to be accounted for?

You may find that not all parts of the organization are equally ready, and that is okay. The goal is to uncover gaps early so they can be addressed through interim governance, training, or phased rollout strategies.

You can also think of readiness as both a strategic and operational capability:

• Strategic: Is there leadership sponsorship? Are platform decisions tied to business priorities?

• Operational: Are teams prepared to take ownership, manage workflows, and support the system day to day?

When readiness is limited in one area, it may be necessary to provide interim solutions. For example, some organizations begin with a content orchestration layer to bridge across departments until a fully unified CMS or governance model is adopted.

3. Pace: Timing, Rollout Strategy, and Sequencing

One-size-fits-all rollouts rarely succeed, especially in complex ecosystems. The most effective adoption strategies are tailored, transparent, and staged.

A few key principles:

• Pilots help test assumptions. Starting with a pilot, such as a single department or website, helps identify blockers, refine workflows, and demonstrate early value. It also gives teams something tangible to react to.

• Staggered adoption works best. Not every group will be ready to adopt at the same time. Some may move quickly, while others will need additional support. Define a rollout path that reflects actual readiness, not just the organizational chart.

• Be transparent about sequencing. Teams should know what’s coming, when it’s coming, and how they’ll be supported. Share timelines, milestones, and the criteria for advancing to each new phase.

• Define success for each stage. Rollouts aren’t just about turning on features. They’re about enabling outcomes. What does success look like for the pilot? For phase one adoption? These definitions should be visible and measurable.

Common rollout models include:

• Pilot and scale: One unit rolls out first, lessons are captured, and the broader rollout is shaped accordingly.

• Department-by-department onboarding: A staggered approach based on each group’s readiness and resourcing.

• Centralized build, decentralized adoption: A central team develops the platform or core features, and local teams onboard at their own pace.

Each model has its tradeoffs, and often, a hybrid approach works best. The key is to sequence based on actual readiness, not assumptions or internal politics.

Final Thoughts: Orchestrating the Organization for Platform Success

It requires clarity on shared goals, an honest assessment of readiness, and a deliberate strategy for how rollout will occur across a diverse organization. That means planning for uneven maturity, designing interim solutions where needed, and communicating consistently.

The most successful platform initiatives take the time to align stakeholders not only around what is being launched, but also around why it matters, how it will unfold, and when each stage will take place.

If you’re helping guide an organization through this journey, your role goes beyond implementation. It’s about creating the conditions for alignment, clarity, and long-term ownership.