"Pimcore" Among Vendors Providing CaaS Solutions, says Gartner

The report titled, "Use Content as a Service to Support a Unified Experience Strategy for Digital Commerce" talks about the crucial role CaaS can play in taking consistency and customer experience to the next level in a digital commerce environment.

The report highlights some pertinent points regarding how straitjacketed digital commerce businesses can feel when it comes to managing siloed content and supporting new channels by creating more disconnected storage spaces, thereby increasing complexity which directly affects personalization, consistency, and continuity of experience.

Enterprises are hard-pressed to solve the puzzle of generating and managing authentic, customized content. They want to eliminate bottlenecks and for that they need to go beyond mere CMSes.

The report addresses this growing need to keep customer-facing enterprise content in a dynamic state via CaaS, sometimes referred to as mCaaS (managed content as a service).  
Content-as-a-Service providers concentrate solely on content management and are output agnostic; they can partake in content management as content creators, website owners, content managers, and can also handle hardware, bandwidth and backup requirements.
A smarter content management strategy pertains to suitable orchestration and governance of content. It dissociates the presentation of content from its management, regardless of the device or the channel. 

What Makes CaaS Vital to eCommerce?

Responsive websites comprising of search engine and product catalogs are no more the be all and end all in the world of digital merchandising, especially in this era, when the proliferation of channels has given way to unprecedented complexity. 
Traditional eCommerce platforms are only equipped to enable transactions, and not omnichannel content strategies. In other words, they’re not built for enticing online experiences and customized buying from any touchpoint.

Digital content management delivered through CaaS can disseminate content to customers consistently and in no time, irrespective of how it’s accessed—through web store, smart device, kiosk, native apps, social platforms or IoT (Internet of Things). 

Instead of distributing the content through conventional ways, it’s delivered as-a-service across channels instantaneously. With CaaS, enterprises don’t need any complex integrations, the APIs can easily call the content anywhere immediately and simultaneously. This makes them more and more agile. And since content is detached from its presentation, flawless digital experiences can be brought to life for every channel, imparting enterprises the much-needed competitive edge.    

What’s Really Expected of CaaS?

In the report, Gartner advises the use of “headless” content, to solve the challenges of content and commerce. And the easiest way to do it is by using CaaS, since it can bring together the best of web content management (WCM), product information management (PIM), and digital experience platforms (DXPs). And it does this through a cloud-based solution purchased on a subscription basis. Typically, a CaaS should be used for: 

•      Improving the current state of eCommerce channels without rebuilding any platforms
•      Maintaining continuity and consistency while pushing content on new channels
•      Centralizing content by breaking down silos into one cross-channel service
•      Enabling an API-driven architectural approach for emerging eCommerce initiatives
•      Fueling personalization for creating a customer specific content narrative 

By deploying CaaS solutions, digital commerce organizations are trying their best to match the latest channels for consistent brand experiences, targeted at their customers. Besides, the flexibility CaaS comes with is apt for today’s emerging digital business technology platforms.  

Building a Case for CaaS: The Report Summary

All in all, the report sheds light on making content compatible to the needs of multitudinous channels in existence today. It talks about technical constraints and business situations, enterprises are faced with, and how CaaS can fulfill their requirements without inflating their software or infrastructure costs.

The report also looks at the gamut of vendors currently offering CaaS products, right from product information management (PIM) applications, cloud digital asset management (DAM) application to pure-play headless API-based content management systems. According to Gartner, in the long term, CaaS may become a standard option within WCM packages. 

The report strongly stresses on the need to decouple the presentation of content from its management, and the ways in which CaaS vendors are tackling this challenge. It also makes an attempt at “Understanding the challenges of using CaaS” before naming the vendors providing CaaS solutions, where Pimcore is featured.