• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, October 22, 2021

IT leaders are more advanced than marketing executives in distributing content assets via email and most other ways, judging by Building Better Experiences, an international study of large organizations by Wunderman Thompson Technology and Sitecore. 

For one thing, IT is much more likely to conduct high-level analytics (i.e., page views, call to action clicks, etc.) — 52% versus. 45% for marketing. 

IT also leads in using feedback via a survey delivered by email or SMS after their channel visit — by a gap of 47% to 39%. 

And, IT leads in these areas:

- Analytics on specific content molecules and assets 

- Calculated metrics such as engagement: value of content 

- Specific content effectiveness analytics

- Channel content effectiveness analytics

Granted, 60% of IT decision-makers feel their department is a bottleneck in delivering an optimal customer experience. But 71% of marketers say the same about theirs. 

In addition, 53% of IT respondents use AI for content renditions for channels, as do 48% of marketing leaders.  

Here’s another finding—that 56% of IT decision makers deploy AI for regulatory compliance, as opposed to 50% of marketers. Both numbers may reflect the high European skew of this survey and the challenges of GDPR.  

Meanwhile, only 16% of decision makers overall claim their metadata updates are fully automated. That includes 20% in IT and 13% in marketing. 

But 62% of IT respondents and 56% of marketers say their process is semi-automated. And marketing is much more likely to load data manually—by a margin of 32% to 18%. 

In general, companies still face hurdles in delivering personalization — for these reasons: 

• Lack of data from which to drive personalization — 41%
• Existing personalization tool cannot deliver what you want — 38%
• Not having a clear view on what content to personalize — 36% 
• Not having a content strategy that enables personalization — 32% 
• Inability so ahre data with personalization tools — 32% 
• Not having a personalization tool — 25%

And, many firms are hobbled in adopting newer ideas like headless content—systems that decouple content from specific channels, allowing it to be created once and then consumed by any channel. The obstacles are: 

• Some content will only ever need to be available through our website—42% 
• The ease with which systems or apps are able to retrieve they content they need—41%
• We don’t yet have any headless content delivery needs—39% 
• Creating a (non-webpage based) content structure that successfully supports headline content delivery—38% 
• Inability to visualize content on a channel—35% 
• None of these—5%

While 54% are familiar with the concept overall, that figure rises to 65% among IT staff.

In general, 60% of companies have invested in digital asset management, a system that that “manages assets centrally, independently of content.” The largest investors in DAM are retail (72%), manufacturing (65%), financial services (61%) and IT (54%). 

What is next for large organizations? Their future AI priorities include:

• Regulatory compliance—79%
• Asset tagging—71%
• Accessibility assurance—70%
• Brand governance—70%
• Content suggestions or recommendations—69%
• Asset renditions for channels—68%
• Translations—63%

Wunderman Thompson Technology and Sitecore surveyed 580 executives at companies with at least 1,500 employees from the UK, Germany, Switzerland and Austria.