Background
With full disclosure that I've spent most of the last decade in web content management discussions, what follows is my belief that your content management / digital marketing platform strategy will benefit from a much needed breath of fresh air with the Thunderhead ONE Engagement Hub.Web Content Management Systems are central and fundamental to successful digital marketing. They provide the backbone of an effective online communications strategy and are critical to the create-->validate-->review-->publish workflow needs of today’s dynamic site projects. Many systems also offer add-on or additional capabilities that cover the range of digital marketing expectations--personalization, analytics, multivariate testing, outbound communication and campaigns.
While Content Management Systems accomplish their core duties admirably, they often struggle when trying to apply their disciplined, structured, procedural approach to the ever-changing and dynamic conversations that you want to have with your customers across the various channels you want to communicate on.
Where does ONE fit?
Conversations are free-flowing, not structured. They need to pick up effortlessly where they left off (often in a different place than they started in). Conversations need to be valuable to both sides...or they end abruptly.
You or your customer likely have multiple CMS systems--off-the-shelf varieties combined with internal custom applications--multiple CRM systems, on premise and ecommerce systems and more. While some days it might seem like a good idea to “start from scratch” with one new system, you know that is not realistic, cost-effective or timely…and you know it is foolish to believe that all of the stakeholders in your customer engagement efforts (after all, this should be everyone), will agree on a single tool for their part of such a significant undertaking.
This is where Thunderhead's ONE Engagement Hub comes in. ONE was created with this omni-channel reality in mind from day one. It appreciates that you will continue to leverage multiple systems to gain insights. ONE becomes a thin and lightweight layer over those systems, listening for insight, showing you opportunities, helping you make the right decisions.
Architecturally and strategically, ONE never tries to be something it's not--in this case ONE fully appreciates the great content management systems out there (including those that you currently leverage or are looking at), and fully appreciates their role as the content system of record. The job of content management systems in an overall digital strategy is generally clear, well-understood and at the very least underway (and more likely firmly entrenched after years of development). You (or your customers) don't want to hear that the next step of optimization is going to take a restart, a rip-out, a re-learn.
Let's get specific:
Three quick areas to consider as you start to understand where your CMS project and ONE complement each other:
1) Personalization, started or improved TODAY across any number of systems
Leveraging SAAS and using an easy to apply javascript tag and browser plugin, ONE allows you to start immediately previewing and activating personalization across any of your digital properties. Doesn't matter what system or technology lies beneath...if you're serving pages, you can start personalizing with ONE immediately. Of course speed is nice...but more important are the insights that drive a great personalization strategy. Those insights are rich in ONE as it listens across all of your customer conversations and touchpoints. Don't let speed and the effortless start up fool you--this is heavyweight decisioning and automation that you'll never grow out of.
2) Deliver your managed content across all customer conversations
As I mentioned, ONE is not trying to be or to replace your CMS. Our brilliant technologists, developers and architects shudder at the thought of your duplicating content or data to achieve better engagement with your customers. Instead, ONE introduces an "Action" concept which allows you to consider the message to the customer first, then act on sending that message to the appropriate endpoint to continue your conversation with your customer--whether that be a web page, a mobile app screen, a CRM call agent screen, a point-of-sale system....wherever. The content and assets used in these actions can be pulled directly from your CMS so that there's no duplication or questioning of where the approved assets belong.
3) Truly understand your customer's journey
ONE is able to take action based on data gathered across all channels, all customer touchpoints. It is able to make efficient decisions without duplicating (or even storing) these data. It honors all systems of record and their ability to effectively manage data for their purposes, and is able to surface that data, in the moment, to help you make the decisions that drive the next best conversation with your customer.ONE is a Hub. It's in the name. Rather than assuming the only insights you want and need will be driven by or tied to your CMS, ONE recognizes that those insights will be available in all kinds of places in the enterprise--CMS, CRM, on-premise / point-of-sale, mobile apps, social, email and campaign management. ONE provides a beautifully designed visualization of your customer's journey, showing you any obstacles in their path to complete excitement with your brand, ensuring you're providing them with the seamless, contextual conversation they expect, wherever and whenever they expect it.
I look forward to our next conversation and truly diving into your successful project that marries the power of your CMS and the agility and insights of ONE.
