There are multiple challenges and pressures that have been introduced to organizations due to changes shaping today’s business environment.
Increased consumer expectations for personalized, multichannel, always-on experiences.
The pervasiveness of digital experience in all areas of life.
The need to augment in-person processes with online processes.
Increased dependencies on IT teams while their resources become more constrained.
Increased need for agile time to market for campaigns, content and programs.
Now more than ever, organizations are realizing they need to adapt, revamp or migrate their digital solutions to platforms that allow them to be much more streamlined in their day-to-day processes. Otherwise, they will not be able to keep up with the increasing demands.
The terms WCM, CMS and DXP are are used to describe platforms organizations use to create, manage and edit digital content. However, there are important distinctions between these terms as we use them to describe digital experience.
Firstly, WCM (Web Content Management) is actually the process, not the system or platform itself. WCM describes systems that create, manage and maintain digital content. This is typically for website presentation, although other channels may be served as well. Web Content Management systems generally include management tools and a core repository for storage of content.
A CMS (Content Management System) enables marketing teams to manage a myriad of digital content including text, audio, video, documents, and images, and then publish that content. Traditionally, this is presented through a website, but modern systems will necessarily serve multiple channels and offer some integration capabilities. With a CMS, reliance on IT is greatly reduced as marketers and business users are enabled to independently upload and manage images and documents as well as amend, modify, edit and publish information with no coding knowledge.
Advisory firm, Gartner, tells us “Content management systems comprise a set of templates, procedures and standard format software that enables marketers and their proxies (e.g., webmasters) to produce and manage text, graphics, pictures, audio and video for use in Web landing pages, blogs, document repositories, campaigns or any marketing activity requiring single or multimedia content.”
A DXP (Digital Experience Platform) allows organizations not only to manage web content but also further streamline internal processes, consolidate data, apply data-driven insights, integrate critical MarTech systems and deploy content across devices beyond web and mobile. Newer DXP solutions offer the flexibility to add components to the platform as needs arise. This partly describes the concept of composability, which is trending away from the monolithic architecture of earlier DXP solutions.
Whether a CMS or a DXP is an ideal fit for your organization depends on your current business challenges, strategic goals and requirements for a digital transformation project.
Although a DXP is the usual goal for digitally mature organizations, a CMS is often a good fit for organizations that are just beginning their digital transformation journey. These platforms act as steppingstones into the digital landscape, enabling marketers to create and publish content and web pages with limited reliance on developers or IT. This offers more productivity as well as resource and time-savings for companies that need to establish their online presence quickly and effectively.
A DXP is the best fit for organizations that have achieved a level of digital maturity and who are looking to further scale and grow their business through digital channels. These platforms allow organizations to take that next step in their digital transformation roadmap – from automating cross-functional workflows, to delivering omnichannel experiences, to consolidating data silos. Progress offers this ebook with data to guide you on how to find the DXP that’s the right-fit for your organization.
Progress Sitefinity is an experience platform built around a powerful content management core. Sitefinity launched as a CMS back in 2005 and has since grown to be one of the leading enterprise content and experience management platforms. Building upon the traditionally user-friendly web content management of Sitefinity, our team keeps on adding more digital experience capabilities and richer integrations with every release. With Sitefinity, you can create and deliver experiences driven by content, tailor these experiences with marketing and add value through powerful integrations, headless content management and low-code connectivity. Read more about how a CMS is different from a Digital Experience Platform.
In today’s business environment, a flexible and agile solution is vital, especially for those organizations seeking to react to rapidly changing business demands. Modern organizations seeking digital maturity require a platform that equips them to scale their digital maturity long-term. This requires a platform built for integration and ease of use. Progress Sitefinity has been praised as the right fit DXP for organizations across industries, regions and company sizes. Check out Sitefinity's DXP for yourself.
A composable DXP (Digital Experience Platform) is a next-generation solution designed to provide businesses with the flexibility to build, scale and customize their digital experiences through modular integration. Unlike traditional DXPs that operate as a single, unified system, composable DXPs consist of independent, interchangeable components that can be tailored to meet specific business needs. This modularity allows organizations to adopt only the tools and services required, resulting in a more agile, responsive digital infrastructure.
As businesses face increasing pressure to innovate and adapt, composable DXPs are emerging as a crucial element in maintaining competitive advantage. By facilitating seamless integration across channels and enabling personalized user experiences, composable DXPs address the evolving demands of digital-first customers.
Traditional DXPs were built as monolithic systems, offering all features within a single platform. While comprehensive, these platforms often presented limitations such as inflexibility, slow deployment times and high customization costs. As the digital landscape expanded, businesses sought more adaptive solutions capable of responding to rapid changes.
Composable DXPs emerged as a response to these challenges, leveraging technological advancements like microservices, APIs and cloud computing. This shift allows businesses to integrate best-of-breed services rather than relying on one provider for all functionalities. The industry’s move toward composable architectures reflects a broader trend toward digital agility and the need for scalable, customizable solutions.
Several factors are accelerating the shift toward composable DXPs, reshaping how businesses manage digital experiences:
By embracing these drivers, businesses position themselves to thrive in a landscape where adaptability, speed and customer-centricity are paramount.
Composable DXPs rely on breaking down large, complex systems into smaller, reusable components. This approach allows businesses to implement only the necessary elements, promoting faster deployment and easier scalability.
Modular design reduces the risk of vendor lock-in by allowing organizations to choose best-in-class solutions for each function. And because business needs evolve, new modules can be integrated without disrupting existing workflows, fostering continuous innovation and growth.
Microservices form the backbone of composable DXPs, enabling the development and deployment of individual services independently. APIs facilitate communication between these microservices, supporting seamless data exchange and integration across different platforms.
This architecture creates a more resilient system by isolating potential failures, preventing issues in one service from affecting the entire platform. Additionally, developers can work on multiple services in parallel, accelerating release cycles and shortening time-to-market for new features.
Composable DXPs are designed to grow with the business. By incorporating new modules or services as needed, organizations can expand their digital presence without overhauling the entire platform.
This level of flexibility allows businesses to stay responsive to shifting customer expectations and industry trends. As digital ecosystems expand, composable DXPs help companies avoid the complexity of legacy systems, making it easier to adopt emerging technologies and experiment with innovative digital experiences.
Composable DXPs enable businesses to roll out new features or updates more quickly by deploying individual components instead of modifying the entire platform. This speeds up development cycles and reduces time to market.
By separating front-end and backend functions, teams can work on different parts of the platform simultaneously, accelerating the overall innovation process. This agility empowers businesses to respond swiftly to emerging trends, customer feedback or competitive pressures, fostering continuous improvement without major disruptions.
With the ability to select specific services and modules, businesses can craft highly personalized experiences for their users. This tailored approach enhances user engagement and improves customer retention.
By leveraging data from various touchpoints, composable DXPs can dynamically adjust content, recommendations and interfaces based on individual user preferences. This degree of personalization not only strengthens customer loyalty but also drives higher conversion rates, as users feel more connected to brands that anticipate and meet their needs.
Because composable DXPs eliminate the need to purchase and maintain a full suite of tools, operational costs are lower. The pay-as-you-grow model allows organizations to scale incrementally, optimizing resource utilization.
This model prevents overinvestment in unnecessary features, enabling businesses to allocate budgets toward critical areas that directly impact growth. Additionally, lower upfront costs reduce the financial risk associated with digital transformation, making composable DXPs an accessible option for businesses of all sizes.
Before transitioning to a composable DXP, organizations should assess their current digital infrastructure and identify areas for improvement. Understanding the specific requirements and long-term objectives is crucial for selecting the right tools and services.
Composable DXPs represent a significant evolution in digital experience management, addressing the limitations of traditional monolithic platforms. By adopting a modular, flexible approach, businesses can enhance agility, drive personalization and optimize costs.
As the digital landscape continues to evolve, leveraging composable DXPs becomes increasingly important for businesses aiming to stay competitive. Platforms like Progress® Sitefinity® CMS offer robust DXP solutions that empower organizations to build scalable, customized digital experiences, unlocking new opportunities for growth and innovation.
A composable DXP supports key capabilities of business agility, modularity, and orchestration. Together, these provide flexibility which allows businesses to adapt to changing market needs at a much faster rate. Cloud support, a decoupled presentation layer and flexible APIs are also critical to allowing businesses to match unique market requirements. Composable platforms stand in contrast to Monolithic DXPs.
The composable approach favors an integration strategy, allowing customers to choose the best options for such things as email and commerce as opposed to simply accepting the bundled offering of a monolithic platform. This orchestrated approach promotes optimal flexibility meaning such things as analytics, search and personalization might also be integrations added as needs demand.
Contrary to Composable DXPs, Monolithic DXPs are one-stop-shop platforms that incorporate a multitude of capabilities delivered by one vendor. Often these solutions are focused on the quantity of capabilities covered rather than the breadth of each capability. With so many capabilities delivered from one vendor, these solutions are often costly, too complex and do not enable organizations to scale with agility. Monolithic DXPs decrease the ability to integrate or leverage existing IT solutions and offer limited customization to meet very specific business requirements and strategy.