Why Digital

Transformation
Can’t Wait
Discover how to deliver exceptional customer experiences
with an an agile content platform built for speed and scale.
Introduction
Over the past decade, digital transformation has
forced a shift to online channels. This trend was further
accelerated by the impacts to consumer behavior as well
as work patterns following the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to a July 2022 research report from

Accenture, fast-changing consumer behaviors have
forced a shift in how businesses need to meet consumer
expectations. Every digital experience across touchpoints
needs to be highly relevant, contextualized, genuine
and authentic. A tall order for businesses also facing the
constraints of stretched resources and technology that
can’t scale. The same Accenture research notes “64%
of consumers wish companies would respond faster
to meet their changing needs.” Importantly, 88%—the
large majority—of business executives responding to the
survey thought their customers were “changing faster
than their businesses can keep up.”

64%
of consumers wish
companies would
respond faster to meet
their changing needs.
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These numbers hint at one thing: consumer and
online behavior is changing faster than many
of today’s organizations can keep pace. What’s
more, people are not waiting for organizations and
publishers to catch up: they are finding new options
and engaging with new businesses based on who’s
already successfully digitally transformed and can
meet their needs online. A Bloomreach study, in
partnership with Forrester, found 40% of customers
and 56% of B2B customers, would pay more for a
better experience and not purchase again from a
store which gave a bad experience. Almost four in
five respondents said they abandoned purchases
because of poor website navigation, irrelevant search
results or unclear product information.
Why utilizing a content hub is at the heart of
successful digital transformation
It’s clear that the digital experience is one of the
most critical factors—if not the most critical factor—
that will define businesses’ success immediately
and into the future. At the heart of delivering on this
successful digital experience is content.
Today, every business is now a content business that
requires technology that will enable organizations
and publishers to work smarter, faster and more
seamlessly. First things first, the most important
consideration in digital transformation success for
your content business is adopting solutions that
enable you to work with your existing technology
while moving your business forward. The foundation
with which organizations and publishers need to
achieve this is a content hub that brings together
all existing and new solutions in one place, and can
seamlessly handle integrations.
Technology that is integration-ready and has an
extensible architecture allows organizations and
publishers to create their own business logic
and adopt their own workflows. In many cases,
businesses already have multiple systems, channels
and processes in play before they find that they are
stuck when trying to transform their digital offering.
A content hub solution considers the business as
a whole from the inside out, allowing the digital
transformation journey to start with what you already
have, as opposed to ripping and replacing current
systems and processes.
Great content is key to setting
your business apart from your
competition. To succeed, you
need to consider it early in your
transformation process.
Clare Forster
Head of Marketing & Content Strategy, DAC
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Getting your content
management up to
speed quickly
We’ve established the basics. Digital transformation For organizations and publishers, there is no one-
starts with a content hub that enables you to work size-fits-all solution to get up to speed quickly online
with your existing technology and lets you adopt your to deliver personalized digital content experiences—
own workflows. The next consideration for digitally each business faces unique challenges that require
transforming for success is doing it quickly, especially flexible thinking and architecture, fast. Other
given the pressure being put on organizations and common challenges to getting your content business
publishers today. and management started quickly include identifying
the most important problem at hand, gaining real-
Speed is the name of the game for businesses time access to content and data, and understanding
looking to build a digital presence. In many cases, the technology landscape to know which trends to
organizations are already behind given the rapid prepare for long term.
progression of digital transformation driven by
the pandemic. At the heart of the problem is again
the fact that digital transformation is slowed when
new systems don’t plug-and-play into existing
environments. Oftentimes, businesses have to
completely rethink how they’re working and reshape
their existing architecture—a daunting feat that is
impossible to achieve quickly.

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Identifying the problem

Sorting through which problem to solve first can be a daunting challenge for organizations
and publishers looking to enhance their digital content strategy. For some, merely not having
a digital presence is the main problem at hand, while in many cases, others who already
operate online realize the digital experiences they’re providing are not satisfactory in today’s
new age of customer expectations. For these organizations and publishers, anything from
time-consuming manual processes, to lacking a scalable solution to streamline the publishing
process are common challenges. In pinpointing the main problem at hand, frequently the
right answer is to find a platform that lets you evolve rather than change every process
currently in place.

Utilizing content and data

Real-time access to all of an organization’s or publisher’s content and data is critical to

carrying out a successful digital content strategy. These businesses have two options when
it comes to getting started quickly and most efficiently: migration or integration. Both avoid
the need to build from the ground up, abandon current publishing workflows, or rely heavily
on IT for start-up maintenance. With access to all content and data, and knowing how the
business wants to use this information going forward, organizations and publishers can
easily create content for different channels from a single publishing experience.

Understanding the technology landscape

The landscape for digital content is changing constantly. From the shift of web to mobile, to
increasing interest in video and audio, truly understanding the technology landscape as you
get your content strategy up to speed can be challenging. Some trends might be just that—
trends—while others will require transferable skills for the long haul that need to be planned
for as you develop your content strategy and look for the right solution.

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Accelerating Digital
Transformation With
the Right Solutions
Why an integration-ready, extensible architecture is key

While deploying and maintaining new digital experiences comes with unique
challenges for every business, the right solutions can support rapidly transforming
your content business to enhance the customer and user experience, even as
trends evolve.

A migration and integration-ready platform allows businesses and organizations to:

Work with any third-party
system on the back end
for deep integrations with
their data and publishing
experiences.
Extend and enhance relevant
important enterprise
information and systems.
Utilize GraphQL APIs for
content management and
delivery to other external
systems, including third-party
syndication.

Work with new and emerging Avoid manual cleanup through

technologies in machine bulk editing and custom
learning and artificial work streams after migrating
intelligence that streamline content.
content creation.

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 Spotlight
Beyond an integration-ready and
extensible architecture, other front-end
features like pre-built components and
intuitive publishing workflows play a
role in rapidly transforming content
businesses.

Pre-built component libraries:

Adaptable and extendable pre-built

components and out-of-the-box
integrations allow businesses to get
off the ground quickly with efficiently
creating, managing and publishing
content. These solutions also help
to reduce reliance on IT teams by
empowering editorial and digital leads DispatchHealth: Rapid digital transformation
to easily take control of the publishing in under two months with Brightspot
process from start to finish.
With the help of Brightspot’s out-of-the-box
An easy-to-learn publishing flexibility, the DispatchHealth website was migrated
experience: off WordPress in less than two months.

To get started quickly with upgrading a
digital content experience, digital and
editorial leads benefit from technology
that drives an intuitive and functional
experience tailored to how they work.
From the editing experience to different
workflows, the right solution can help
streamline how teams create, manage,
edit and publish content.
Following the initial project kickoff in November
2021, the digital home for the Denver, Colorado-
based healthcare provider got a major upgrade in
January 2022.
Today, DispatchHealth site editors are now able to
leverage dynamic publishing tools and workflows
in the CMS to generate stories as well as manage
and create pages for DispatchHealth’s directory of
healthcare-provider listings in markets throughout
the U.S.

Read the case study

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The Benefits of a
Decoupled or Headless
Solution to Build Digital
Experiences Fast
Digital transformation requires versatile options that truly work for whatever
business problem you’re trying to achieve. For fast and fluid content delivery, one
consideration is the option of a decoupled, headless or hybrid approach gives
organizations and publishers the greatest flexibility for content management.

Defining decoupled, headless and hybrid approaches to content

management

Each approach to content management comes with its own set of pros and cons
depending on your business need. First, let’s look at how decoupled, headless and
hybrid architectures are defined.

Decoupled CMS architecture Headless CMS architecture Hybrid CMS architecture

In a decoupled environment, the back
end and front end of a website are split—
or “decoupled”—into two unique systems
that are managed separately. One system
handles content creation and storage,
while the other is responsible for taking
that input and presenting it to the user
through a chosen interface.
Headless solutions are a subset of
decoupled architecture. With a headless
CMS platform, there is no fixed front
end—instead, the solution acts as a
content-only data source. This allows
developers to use a combination of
their favorite tools and frameworks
to determine where and how content
appears.
Decoupled and headless architectures
have paved the way for the hybrid
model. With a hybrid CMS architecture,
organizations and publishers get
the best of both worlds through the
ability to mix presentation or front-
end choices. The hybrid approach
offers an environment in which you
can deliver different experiences to a
browser window or a device, where
both decoupled and headless CMS
architectures can be combined.

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The benefits of a headless or hybrid approach
to build digital experiences quickly

Depending on your business’s content goals, a

headless or hybrid approach offers the greatest
benefits to get started on your digital content journey
quickly.

Flexibility:

Headless is often considered the most flexible

and developer-friendly CMS option since it allows
developers to use a combination of their favorite tools
and frameworks to determine where and how content
appears. It also gives organizations and publishers the
ability to mix and match frontend content offerings,
meaning they can deliver the best user experience
across every device, channel and touchpoint. With the
ability to deploy a headless or hybrid architecture, like
Brightspot supports, organizations and publishers
don’t have to choose one or the other. This means
digital teams can accommodate changing business
requirements more easily, which is now more
important than ever as consumer expectations
continue to evolve.

Simplification:

Both decoupled and headless content distribution

eliminate many of the tasks that normally would slow
businesses down in their digital transformation efforts.
Headless rids organizations of the need to create
custom front ends for every device, while decoupled
allows for rapid design iterations. A hybrid approach
that utilizes both architectures also still allows for
important functionalities like WYSIWYG authoring,
template management and workflows, encouraging
content reuse across different experiences and
channels to be able to produce more assets quickly.

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Why your CMS should
be the hub of all your
integrations
Digital transformation across industries has been a reality for many years. And if
continuing economic headwinds and other pressures have taught us anything, it’s
that digital transformation can’t be put on hold—it needs to happen now, and it
needs to happen fast.

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No matter what industry you operate in, content is ultimately what drives users and
consumers to engage with your business. As such, the type of content experience today’s
organizations and publishers offer must be digital, intuitive and personalized. Brightspot’s
content platform acts as the center, or “hub,” of all of an organization’s integrations.
Instead of requiring businesses to completely rethink the ways they’re currently working,
Brightspot works with customers’ existing logic. This ensures the process of digitally
transforming your content business is seamless and effective through:

• Support for a clean and iterative migration approach: Brightspot offers several
tools to help ease the workflows around content migration directly into the CMS,
including search and counts for various content types, custom search results,
bulk export of search results, bulk editing and workstreams.

• The ability to use existing systems: Brightspot’s API-first architecture ensures

interoperability with the existing technology stack. Organizations and publishers
can leverage existing internal and external content, data and systems in place
rather than needing to completely rip-and-replace their approach.

• The ease of integrating new data: Digital transformation is not a standalone

event; it’s an iterative process that requires organizations to be agile and able
to make enhancements at a fast pace. Brightspot’s integration-ready platform
minimizes time spent on things like creating definitions and new architectures
when other tools, applications or data are introduced to the system. The hub
instead allows you to integrate new data easily over time.

• Front-end flexibility: Brightspot’s CMS offers the greatest flexibility to publish

content on different platforms through a headless approach. The front end can
change completely without impacting what’s happening in the back end, making
it easier and faster to integrate new designs.

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To learn more about how to accelerate digital transformation through
Brightspot, visit Brightspot.com and book your product demo today!