Your Content Management System (CMS) is the backbone of your digital experience. It powers your website, enables content creation, and supports marketing efforts.
However, like any technology, a CMS has a lifecycle - and clinging to an outdated system can negatively impact productivity, content performance, and user experience.
If your CMS is causing more problems than it solves, it may be time to replatform to a modern Digital Experience Platform (DXP).
But how do you know when the time is right?
Here are five red flags that signal it’s probably time for a change.
Red Flag #1: Your CMS Limits Content Publishing
Symptoms
- Slow performance - pages take too long to load in the backend, so even minor changes can take time to push live.
- Repetitive tasks, with teams forced to complete manual tasks without automation or AI support.
- Editors struggling with complex workflows, requiring multiple steps to publish simple updates.
- Onboarding new people is time consuming, because of system complexity and the undocumented workarounds that have built up over time.
Why It Matters
A slow, inefficient CMS creates bottlenecks, delaying marketing campaigns and time-sensitive content. At best this means your business is wasting money, but in many businesses, content velocity is critical. If your CMS can’t keep up, you risk falling behind competitors who can publish and iterate faster. Working with outdated tools is also demoralising for digital marketing and content teams and can lead to higher churn.
Red Flag #2: Your CMS Doesn’t Integrate Well With Other Business Tools
Symptoms
- Your CMS doesn’t integrate well with essential tools like CRM, ERP, DAM, or PIM, creating manual processes or complex technical hacks.
- Data silos exist, making it difficult to sync customer insights across platforms.
- Digital ambition for new capabilities is constrained because APIs are either non-existent, outdated, or difficult to implement.
Why It Matters
Modern businesses rely on a connected ecosystem. If your CMS doesn’t seamlessly integrate with your other platforms, your marketing, sales, and content teams will struggle with inefficiencies and data gaps. Examples might include having no joined-up view of the customer, difficulty tying together content and products/services, and significant challenges in delivering personalised experiences.
Red Flag #3: Your CMS Doesn’t Support Ongoing Optimisation
Symptoms
- Ineffective or lacking experimentation capabilities, meaning you’re not able to base site changes on objective usage data.
- No intelligent personalisation capabilities, where it’s difficult to segment audiences and serve targeted content so you’re typically reliant on generic, one-size-fits-all content experiences.
- AI isn’t embedded, so you’re not able to take advantage of intelligent analysis of performance, best practice, and content gaps directly in context.
Why It Matters
Intelligent optimisation and personalised experiences are no longer optional - they’re expected. Without them, engagement rates suffer, marketing strategy & execution remains manual, and business value can stagnate.
Red Flag #4: Your CMS Won’t Meet Increased Security & Compliance Risks
Symptoms
- Your CMS no longer receives regular updates or security patches, suggesting it’s either heading towards or is end of life, and dramatically reduces the pool of talent that can work effectively with legacy solutions
- It fails to meet modern compliance standards, creating additional information security risks.
- Your platform and site don’t adopt appropriate consent management practices, impacting data collection and customer trust.
Why It Matters
Not only are cybersecurity threats evolving, making legacy sites and CMS platforms an easy target for hackers, but brand reputation can be equally damaged by not keeping up with the significant shifts in consent management and compliance practices, not to mention the potential for significant fines.
Red Flag #5: Your CMS isn’t Scaling with Business Needs
Symptoms
- Your platform and site(s) struggle with high traffic volumes.
- It’s difficult and costly to manage multiple sites, brands, or regions.
- Expanding to new channels (mobile, apps, voice assistants) is a challenge.
Why It Matters:
As businesses grow, their digital needs evolve. If your CMS can’t scale efficiently, you may face performance issues, downtime, and high infrastructure costs.
The solution in these cases is to start the process of identifying a new CMS (and potentially a new partner) to support your online digital experiences.
One that will provide:
- Flexible and intuitive UI/UX for editors with configurable workflow
- Streamlined workflows and automation
- Seamless integrations and connectors
- Ongoing AI-powered improvements including personalisation, segmentation, and experimentation
- Modular, composable approach for long-term scalability
- Scalable cloud architecture
- Enterprise-grade compliance and security
- Multisite, multilingual, and omnichannel delivery
- Clear, tangible ROI tracking
We help organisations transition to the right DXP - ensuring a seamless migration with minimal disruption. If you’re unsure whether it’s time to replatform, or need support in planning a migration, contact us for a consultation and start your replatforming journey with confidence.