CMS Replatforming / Which CMS System to Choose

Does your organization struggle with inefficient content management across multiple digital channels? Is it time-consuming to update information and challenging to quickly adapt pages to changing offerings? Maybe you’re using solutions that haven’t kept pace with your fast-growing business, and you’re considering an alternative. Fortunately, today’s technology can help you build a website that both meets your needs and protects your critical data.

Your company is probably using some sort of website building solution, perhaps a content management system, or CMS. If you’re reading this, you’ve probably realized that your current solution doesn’t quite meet your organization’s needs.
There are many CMS systems on the market, but we can basically divide them into two main categories.

Types of CMS Systems

Let’s look at the two most popular approaches to building web portals and managing content. These are the monolithic CMS and the headless CMS. Each of these approaches has its own advantages and disadvantages, and will work in slightly different circumstances.
If you want to know which one is right for your organization, read on!

Monolithic CMS / Backend Integrated With Frontend

A monolithic CMS is a solution where both the backend and the frontend are integrated into a single system.
The system and all elements of the website are managed from one place. Examples of monolithic CMS systems include WordPress, Adobe Experience Manager, and Drupal.

WordPress, the most popular monolithic CMS system, is intuitive and easy to use for non-programmers. What’s more, implementation costs are relatively low, and users can count on the support of the huge WordPress community and a rich selection of plugins and themes.
CMS systems based on backend and frontend integration are sufficient for small and medium-sized projects, but large companies also rely on them.

Unfortunately, for complex projects and large sites (as we will see in a moment with a specific example), monoliths can become limiting to the business at some point. Reduced customization, performance, and scaling issues are the main reasons that companies re-platform and look for another solution.
And that other solution is most often…

Headless CMS / When Existing Solutions Are Not Enough

A headless CMS is fundamentally different from a monolithic CMS. First, the content management layer (backend) is separated from the presentation layer (frontend). Information is stored in one place and then delivered via APIs to different channels – websites, mobile apps, IoT….

A big advantage of headless CMS is the flexibility and ability to distribute the same content to different channels and touchpoints from one place. In addition, the fact that the front-end works independently of the back-end means that pages load faster, which is an important factor from a search engine positioning perspective.

A headless CMS allows developers to add new components to the site without making major changes to the architecture. That’s a lot of room for personalization and adapting the interface to different devices and types of users.

For many industries, such as healthcare and banking, data security is critical. Headless CMS meets these expectations because the lack of a direct connection to the public front-end reduces vulnerability to attacks such as SQL injection and brute force.

Headless CMS is an ideal choice for organizations that need the flexibility to deliver content to different customer touchpoints, plan to grow across multiple channels (omnichannel), and have an extensive network of sites. However, it’s important to remember that implementing a headless CMS requires an experienced development team and technical support. But no worries, fortunately we know experts who specialize in Headless CMS implementation 🙂

Replatforming CMS / Examples

As you already know, Headless CMS works well for complex and out-of-the-box projects. So let’s take a look at two examples of replatforming to headless CMS for two industries that face extensive services and high security requirements.

Lux Med / How a Leading Healthcare Company Manages Multiple Sites in One Place

LUX MED is a fast-growing leader in private healthcare in Poland. Rapid expansion and acquisitions have left the LUX MED group with an extensive ecosystem of communication channels, especially websites dedicated to different elements of its offerings and companies. Due to the nature of the content management system, updating content and adding new information to the offering required time and development effort.

The company’s challenge was to reduce the cost of maintaining digital channels, make communications more consistent, and reduce the time to launch new services.

The result of the consulting and implementation work was a site based on kontent.ai that separated the front-end from the back-end. Such a separate headless architecture allowed CMS users, in this case the marketing department, to easily change content and extend pages without interference from technical departments and while maintaining security requirements.

LUX MED Group can also develop sites faster thanks to the implementation of the Design System, reusable components from which new digital products can be created in a brand-consistent manner.

Innovative and Secure Web Portal for a Bank

One of the largest banks faced the challenge of adapting a web portal to the needs of a modern audience. It was critical to appeal to mobile users by refreshing the design and giving page editors more capabilities and independence from the development team. Security issues and the ability to integrate with external tools such as A/B testing were also important.

How did you overcome these challenges? First, the architecture of the site was based on the MACH approach (where the “H” just stands for headless :)), making it easy to change individual parts of the whole system.

The problem of long publishing pages was solved thanks to the SSG (Static Site Generation) approach, thanks to which the site is always available and the generated pages are displayed without problems even under heavy traffic.

In addition, the CMS could be retrofitted with new business-relevant functionalities. In this case, this included plug-ins for version management or custom plug-ins critical to the bank’s operations, such as calculators and document management modules.
Thanks to the headless CMS solution, the bank’s content managers can more quickly create new sub-pages of the site and respond to the bank’s business needs.

CMS Replatforming / Where to Start?

As you can see, replatforming a monolithic content management system to a headless CMS offers several advantages for complex and demanding projects where template solutions are not enough. Headless CMS works well wherever flexibility, a high level of security, and a variety of sites and services are required.

If you’re considering changing your CMS, think about what problems you’re trying to solve and what features are important to your business and marketing content management team.
An external, experienced technology partner may be able to help you take a fresh look at your systems and advise you on the best solution. After all, technology is only a means to an end, and it is important to choose a solution that will help you grow your business.

Remember, too, that CMS replatforming can be done incrementally without disrupting business continuity. During the development work to change the architecture, your customers won’t have any difficulty accessing your sites. Over time, however, they will notice faster performing sites or consistent communications across all channels.