Transforming the digital experience through web and content management

On 17 September, some of Hong Kong’s most respected marketing practitioners from a diverse range of industries, including medical, hospitality, travel, finance, telecommunications, and more, gathered for a roundtable discussion on how to drastically uplift digital experiences through improvements to web and content management.

Marketing’s lunchtime event, held at The Mira in Tsim Sha Tsui, was sponsored by sponsored by Progress Software whose Content Management Solution, Sitefinity provides a frictionless omnichannel experience that flows across web, mobile, chat, and more – even in multi-site and multilingual environments.

“You’ve got the database management and you’ve got the digital footprint and you’ve got the big data. Everything you work on is wired to your phone now so we actually know a little bit and can profile them [the customers]. So, it’s currently a challenge for us to construct a digital transformation of our full platform,” said Peggy Jor, general manager for marketing and programme management at Hutchison Telecommunications.

Amrit Sethi, senior marketing manager at Excella Travel, a family-run travel company, talked about the challenges presented by innovation. “Marketing is not just about content, there’s a hybrid of humanisation I want to learn more about. There’s so much noise and there’s so much about where to dispense your budget. I need to learn how I can revamp our website so I can cast a wider net to find a wider audience,” she said.

One issue that several of the marketers could relate to wasn’t a lack of content management tools, but that the system they had in place was a cluster of multiple platforms, which in itself presented its own set of problems.

With her team using three or more systems to manage content, Corliss Ruggles, the executive director and head of communications for regional trade association at ASIFMA, lamented how a newly introduced database management system doesn’t connect well to any of them. This was only exacerbated by having multiple disjointed learning curves.

“I feel like every time we do something we seem to be adding some other software that you have to learn and you can’t become an expert even in one of them because you have so many others in play,” she said.

Citing a previous client of his digital agency that had a similar problem, Paul Yung, consulting director at Bigazines Consulting, proposed the solution of consolidation.

He said: “No matter if it’s a website or a B2B or B2C portal, one advantage of using a single CMS (content management system) is that at least you don’t need to train up lots of different people to learn about the systems.”

Backing this up was Cammy Choy, alliances consultant at Progress Software. She empathised with how many Progress customers had ended up using a blend of CMS or marketing solutions because different projects in the organisation required different solutions at different times. But she explained how the trend was moving towards something more streamlined. “Many marketers want to merge all the solutions to a single platform because using one will make it easier to manage, and easier to upgrade,” she said.

However, she also made it clear that migration is not the only fix available. When several different solutions are already in place, integrating these existing elements, rather than migrating them to a single platform might be preferable. Choy said considering which method to go with was important.

There was great consensus between everyone at the event that although benefits and savings were to be had with a unified CMS solution, they often faced pushback.

“My industry, security, is very conservative, especially with the current economic situation and I think that marketing is a department where they tend to cut costs and try to restrict spending. That is very challenging,” said Amanda Chang, head of marketing at Guardforce.

Agreeing with worries about cost perceptions, Edison Tsui, director of eCommerce at Langham Hospitality Group, said that a further roadblock to pulling the trigger was that the decision often rests solely at the CEO level. He said that individual departments must make an effort to fight for innovation.

“You need a CEO that has a vision. Someone who thinks, ‘I need to reform the whole CMS with a really thorough investigation about each of the departments to see how they gel together’,” he said.

Yet, that led to the question of what strategy would be the best to educate leadership to come to this realisation. Janis Tse, marketing director at Plaza Premium Lounge Management, presented one solution.

“Operational efficiency is something that we really need to highlight. Once you have the operational efficiency – with minimising manual processing and training – in the end you make all the marketing managers happy because you have a tool to use for them to market in their respective regions,” she said. “And then they can do more tactical promotions, they can do more content management, and that will stimulate sales.”

As a Two-Time Gartner Peer Insights Customer Choice for Web Content Management, Progress® Sitefinity® is one of the most user-friendly content management systems on the market. For more information about Progress’s Sitefinity, please visit https://www.progress.com/sitefinity-cms

This content is sponsored by Progress Software