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Cloud-first Headless CMS—The Game Changer for Digital Agencies

mike-johnston Profile

Cloud-first headless CMS in the SaaS model is clearly going to revolutionize content production and delivery to a multi-channel, multi-device generation. But, how exactly is it going to impact business, and should digital agencies be getting on the bandwagon now?

For any digital agency looking to increase the ROI of their digital initiatives, become more agile, and gain a competitive advantage through a true cloud platform, the answer is “yes, you should be getting involved now!”

1) Stop Babysitting the Technology

We all know how much effort it takes to run a traditional CMS, whether on-premise or in the cloud. You need to configure the hosting environment, install the CMS, apply hotfixes and upgrades, take care of security, and ensure proper backup protocols are in place. Just think of the countless hours you are spending only babysitting the CMS and the amount of your client's budget that is not going to the actual project. All that time could be used to deliver higher value, complete more successful projects, and increase your business’s effectiveness.

With a cloud-first headless CMS, you focus on delivering business results instead of “CMS projects” and increase the value for your clients.

2) Decrease Time to Market with Greater Agility

Digital transformation is having a huge impact on many industries, and agility is no longer a business advantage—it’s a business necessity. To make an impact in the market, businesses must launch new digital initiatives and test new ideas much faster. They need an agency that is much more flexible and will enable them to launch in a matter of weeks. With traditional CMSs, it is very common to take your static HTML prototype and convert it into the template format used by the CMS. With a headless CMS, it is much easier and faster. You can launch the static website and then start making the website dynamic step by step—begin with your content-rich blog or news section, continue with an in-depth product catalog, and top it all off by making your invaluable Contact Us page content editable.

And, to make it all even better, the cloud-first headless CMS approach provides better separation of the CMS and custom code. This enables continuous deployment and other agile development techniques that greatly help to decrease the time to implement changes to your website and even to roll them back again, if necessary.

Go live much faster with a cloud-first headless CMS.

3) Get Creative and Become Innovative

Don’t feel restricted to just a website. A cloud-first headless CMS lets you explore all kinds of new possibilities, including mobile applications, bots, virtual reality, interactive in-store displays, digital assistants, wearables, or Internet of Things. Easily combine its API with any development technology, including modern JavaScript frameworks, such as AngularJS, React, or Ember, and let your creative side shine through.

With a cloud-first headless CMS, your agency will gain so many opportunities to design innovative digital experiences that start standing out from the crowd.

4) Unrestricted Content for Unlimited Design

How often have you had to reconsider website layouts because the content didn’t fit right? Or had to consider the content layout before you even wrote it? Or worse still, had to rewrite content to fit uncompromising templates? Well, with modular content and a cloud-first headless CMS, those headaches are a thing of the past. By creating content items and assets in modular form, you can take the same content items and reuse them in any layout you want.

With a cloud-first headless CMS, modular content will save you countless hours in content creation and provide you with many layout options, ensuring your projects always meet the needs with the minimum of effort.

5) Happy Employees Are Loyal Employees

Traditional CMSs are built on one specific development platform. That means that, as an agency, you need to have developers that know a specific programming language and how to develop in your CMS of choice. Trying to find such a person could be as difficult as finding a unicorn, and if you can’t find them, you’re stuck trying to train them to become productive.

Here is the real beauty of a cloud-first headless CMS—your developers can use any development platform. By utilizing their favorite tools and development and deployment processes to develop standard applications rather than CMS-specific templates, your developers will be productive and efficient from the very beginning. And not having to rely on a particular technology or having to train your developers from scratch means you can easily move developers across projects. Stop thinking “I only have .NET projects for the next month, what do I do with all my PHP developers?” Instead, let them use their PHP skills for the project and utilize a cloud-first headless CMS.

Additionally, your more experienced developers will probably tell you that they hate CMS projects. They want to write the code their way. Cloud-first headless CMS lets them do that.

With a cloud-first headless CMS, your team is happier, it is much easier to hire new developers, and you can build your business around dedicated professionals because of the increased employee retention.

6) Increased Profits and Productivity—the Real Advantage

Every digital agency wants to increase their productivity and ultimately their profit margin. With a cloud-first headless CMS, you can achieve exactly that with:

  • Quicker implementation and deployment—using a cloud-first headless CMS is easy and results in shorter implementation times. Additionally, deployment and configuration of the CMS are much quicker because it's provided as a cloud service.
  • Consistently successful projects—with a cloud-first headless CMS, you have more control over the whole solution. Your developers won't waste time trying to figure out something that is impossible, making sure the precious project budget is not thrown away.
  • Low-margin upgrade projects are a thing of the past—you’ve probably experienced many times clients not being interested in investing into upgrade projects. They are time consuming and are barely profitable for the agency. With a cloud-first headless CMS, the upgrades are performed by the service provider, meaning you concentrate on implementing new, profitable projects.

Enjoy working on profitable and more successful projects.

Don't Wait for Your Competitors to Try This First!

The cloud-first CMS wave is coming, and the ones that jump on it first will gain the competitive advantage! Try Kentico Cloud for yourself and see why you should be thinking about a cloud and headless approach for your next project!