As content management evolves, organizations face new challenges and opportunities. For this blog, we reached out to our partners for their unique insights on how they tackle the complexities of content management—let’s check them out.
Published on Dec 17, 2024
Organizations are navigating greater complexity in content management as they respond to rising customer expectations and adapt to new technologies. To gain deeper insights into the challenges and opportunities in this area, we reached out to our partners BizStream, DEPT®, MMT, Luminary, and ThinkLogic. As they work closely with customers across different industries every day, their on-the-ground expertise gives them a unique perspective on the challenges content teams face.
To gather their insights, we asked them the following questions:
In this blog, you’ll hear directly from our partners as they share what they’re seeing in the field and how they’re tackling these complexities with effective solutions. With their experience and insights, we hope you’ll gain new perspectives on the complexity of content management and feel better prepared for what the future may hold.
To start, we asked our partners to share what complexity in content management means to them and their clients, and which aspects they find the most challenging to address. In exploring their responses, we found that complexity is seen from both an internal and external perspective.
On the internal side, complexity often arises in workflows and asset management, while externally it is the demand for personalized content and managing multiple channels. Let’s see what our partners have to say about it.
“The bigger the team involved in content management, the more complex it becomes. Where we see the biggest challenges, both for us and for our clients, is in asset management (storage and retrieval of images, video etc) and controlling workflows. The more people involved in producing content, the less you are able to get away with informal workflow systems and siloed content repositories.”
Adam Griffith, Managing Director, Luminary
“At ThinkLogic, we see complexity in our clients’ content management primarily in organization—or lack thereof—and their content workflow. A major challenge is quickly finding content, compounded by a lack of team segmentation that grants all team members access to all content. This often leads to team members creating any content they wish, resulting in a CMS that reverts to its previous disorganized state in less than a year.
With Kontent.ai, we address this issue in two main ways. First, we ensure that taxonomy terms are included in all our content models, making it easy to sort and locate specific content. We apply the same method to assets, making the search for the perfect image or PDF straightforward. Once this foundation is in place, we set up roles so that users only see and create content relevant to their responsibilities. This reduces clutter for team members and minimizes disorder for the management team. Additionally, we lock down the fields within the content models, ensuring that only the types of content we want are accepted.
The second way we address this is by setting up custom workflows for the team. This introduces checks and balances and varies depending on the type of content being published. For instance, there may be a complex workflow with multiple review and translation steps for press releases, while simpler self-publishing steps are applied for parts of the site managed by only one or two team members. By implementing these foundational changes when moving to Kontent.ai, we consistently see rock-solid results with a CMS that maintains its integrity for years.”
“The world of content is becoming increasingly complex, as technology evolves at an unprecedented pace, it’s driving higher customer expectations for greater digital experiences. With this opportunity comes greater complexity when creating and managing content, with content teams needing to get to grips with new tools, systems, skills, and processes to be successful.
One growing expectation from customers is for greater personalization, which means content teams are having to manage an increasing number of content variations and orchestrating these across various channels like websites, commerce, social, marketplaces, etc.
Key factors we see coming up and making things more complex for content teams include:
Katy White, Client Development Director & Kontent.ai MVP, DEPT®
We also asked our partners if they believe content management is becoming more complex. If they agreed, we wanted to know the major contributing factors, but we were also curious whether they see certain aspects of content management as enduring challenges, year after year.
Across the board, our partners agreed that content management is indeed growing more complex, driven by both internal factors, such as fragmented systems, and external ones, like the increasing demand for personalization and multichannel consistency. In addition, there are some ever-present challenges that continue to persist. Let’s take a look at our partners’ responses.
“Yes. As organizations are required to support digital strategies, they often end up with multiple systems that don’t always integrate nicely. The need to work this way adds unnecessary repetition and can quickly complicate workflows and frustrate editors. The contributing factors are fragmented systems and lack of resources and time. When content lives in silos, teams spend more time duplicating efforts to ensure consistency. Additionally, rapid platform changes and updates can disrupt established workflows, adding even more strain to marketing teams.”
Brian McKeiver, Co-Owner & Kontent.ai MVP, BizStream
“Content management is certainly becoming more and more complex. Especially when creating, publishing, and maintaining content at scale (the businesses we work with need intricate workflows and governance across global teams). The sheer thirst for content from audiences means that organizations are creating more content than ever to keep up with growing customer demands, and there is a constant need for fresh, engaging material across multiple channels. Not only is there the challenge of regularity and freshness, but people also want the content to be “hyper-personalized”.
Although content management has become more complex with new challenges (some of which I have detailed above), there are some that have existed for many years and will continue to do so. Maintaining a cohesive, on-brand content experience across distributed teams and channels is certainly on that list. Inconsistencies in tone of voice and visual identity can significantly harm the effectiveness of even the most excellent of content efforts.”
Robert Yardy, Director of Partnerships, MMT
“Trying to demonstrate the return on your content investment is an ever-present challenge. It’s rare that leads can be directly traced back to individual pieces of content. Yet we know that, collectively, the content we produce has a significant impact on how prospective customers perceive us.”
Adam Griffith, Managing Director, Luminary
Content management is becoming increasingly complex, both internally and externally, as organizations strive to meet evolving customer needs. Despite these challenges, there are actionable strategies that content professionals can adopt to help them succeed.
To see how content professionals can navigate these complexities, we asked our partners to share one key piece of advice for those looking to thrive moving forward. From embracing structured content and building a resilient content infrastructure, to adopting flexible systems and using AI thoughtfully, our partners have shared practical insights to guide content professionals in the years ahead. Let’s check them out.
“Use AI judiciously. While it can be a great tool to help you kickstart or put the finishing touches on your content, relying too heavily on it will come back to bite you. The human touch is still very much a necessary part of producing good-quality content. Consumers are increasingly able to sniff out overreliance on AI in content production—while this might save you money in the short term, it’s not going to serve you well in the long run.”
Adam Griffith, Managing Director, Luminary
“Looking ahead to 2025, content teams need to embrace a mindset shift, focusing on building a flexible, data-driven content ecosystem rather than thinking in terms of pages or rigid templates. With the increasing demand for personalization and the rise of AI-driven content generation, success lies in creating structured, modular content that can adapt and flow seamlessly across channels. Learning to work with a composable CMS and centralizing data sources will help teams deliver real-time, personalized experiences.”
Katy White, Client Development Director & Kontent.ai MVP, DEPT®
“Focus on building structured content that can serve multiple channels and get it all in one spot. By streamlining where and how content is created, you can improve efficiency (and quality). Watch out for repetitive tasks and ask your team if your systems have a way to simplify or eliminate that duplication.”
Brian McKeiver, Co-Owner & Kontent.ai MVP, BizStream
“Embrace a modular content strategy and prioritize a flexible CMS that enables content recycling across channels without sacrificing a consistent brand experience. Choosing a platform like Kontent.ai, along with a platinum partner like us, ensures that your content management system will support multichannel distribution and adapt to evolving digital needs. Our focus on beautiful, scalable designs and ease of use for content managers will equip you to navigate the complexities of content management in 2025 and beyond.”
“If I was to give one piece of advice to content professionals who have big ambitions in 2025, it would be to have solid and stable foundations! Just like any of the tech solutions we build, the fundamentals have to be in place.
For content management, this means establishing clear governance, roles, and workflows, investing in content intelligence and analytics, automating repetitive tasks where possible, and fostering a culture of collaboration and continuous improvement.
By building a resilient content infrastructure, you’ll be better equipped to adapt to emerging complexities and deliver exceptional experiences for your audiences.”
Robert Yardy, Director of Partnerships, MMT
We’re grateful for the insightful conversations with our partners and the unique perspectives they shared. Analyzing the answers, we found that the complexities in content management arise from both internal and external factors. Internally, factors like fragmented systems, lack of organization, informal workflows and asset management are common, while externally, challenges such as maintaining multichannel consistency and meeting the demand for personalization add to the complexity. There are also enduring challenges, such as demonstrating the return on content investment, that content professionals continue to face.
While content management is becoming more complex, driven both by internal and external factors, content professionals can still thrive in 2025 by embracing a strategic approach to these challenges. Here are some key pieces of advice from our partners:
By staying flexible and proactive, organizations can make sure they successfully navigate the complexities of content management in 2025 and beyond. If you’re looking to explore how a flexible content management system can help you be better prepared, schedule a demo with us today.
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