Mastering CMS migrations: Solutions to 7 common challenges

At Kforce, we are frequently asked to assess problematic CMS installations for our clients. We often discover CMS platforms that are modern and capable but poorly implemented for real-world use. If you determine your existing CMS does not meet your business needs, we recommend first evaluating whether the issue is the CMS platform itself or the way it was implemented. It may be possible to adjust your existing CMS platform to maximize its value.

If your organization is currently inhibited by an antiquated CMS, there are many benefits of migrating to a modern platform. Leaders who make this investment can expect to see the efficiency of their marketing teams improve as they unlock new capabilities, such as personalization and analytics. But undertaking this large-scale change could severely impact customers and employees if not properly prepared for and managed, Kforce Digital Practice Leader Robby Cloninger said.

If your company is putting time and energy into this investment, here are seven challenges to anticipate, along with advice from our Kforce Consulting Solutions experts on how to address them—or avoid them completely.

Nothing's worse than finally getting sign off on a product after months of vetting to then learn the platform doesn't do what you thought.

"You're told what this magical tool can do, that anyone can use it, and it'll fix all your problems," Vitrano said. "Lo and behold, you get it in house and learn it needs total customization, it doesn't integrate with the rest of your systems and it doesn't have the security features you need. We hear this story all the time.

"How do teams avoid the bait and switch? Be thorough in your interview process when vetting different CMS options. Make sure you understand the true use cases. Determine where self-service and customization come into play.

Also important: when conducting platform demonstrations with the software vendor, ensure the demo only includes the functionality you will actually be licensing. Vendors sometimes conduct misleading product demos which incorporate integrations with tools that will not be included. The demos may be impressive but do not accurately represent what the organization would actually be licensing.

Companies need a detailed plan to protect their valuable assets. This includes safeguarding critical formatting, metadata and other settings that affect the quality and search-ability of content.

Marketing departments may choose to move to a new digital asset management tool during their CMS migration. This takes skills, time and resources their current staff might not have.

Leaders should make sure their timeline properly accounts for this intensive process. Consider dedicating team members entirely to the process. If you don't have the capacity, it may be worth bringing in an external partner to oversee the migration.

Before a migration can happen successfully, leaders first need to produce an application topology to fully understand their current platform, tools and products. When working with clients, that initial education and assessment is critical to developing the right plan.

Your existing solutions—whether they are custom plug-ins or your entire CMR—may not play well with your new CMS platform, so plan for the time and expense of updates or adjustments.

Common issues arise around mapping complex content types, managing custom code or plugins, and maintaining third-party integrations, especially if API compatibility is lacking, Vitrano said.

Migrating user roles, permissions and authentication systems can also be complex, as well as ensuring SEO settings, URL structures and media management remain intact. Differences in search functionality, scalability and performance between systems can affect user experience, while security protocols and automation workflows may need to be reconfigured.

Additionally, features like e-commerce, content versioning, analytics and editorial workflows may require custom development if the new CMS lacks equivalent capabilities, necessitating thorough planning and testing for a successful migration.

Migration can result in downtime that will directly impact your customers and business. Likewise, bugs or issues with your content may make it less accessible. Cloninger recommends leaders create a plan to avoid downtime and thoroughly test the site to ensure that the user experience remains seamless.

Often, companies will use a new CMS as an opportunity to create a different design language and brand experience, Cloninger said. As a result, their customers may come across content with different looks and feels. The design may change, or layouts might not match. The result is a different experience from page to page, depending on whether the material they're accessing was created on the new CMS or its predecessor.

Effective change management is essential to ensuring your team loves your new CMS. They will need training, which may require time away from other high-value tasks. Communicating with transparency throughout the migration process can help bring employees along and ensure business-critical tasks don't suffer.

Horne encourages leaders to be direct when setting expectations around the platform and ensure employees are leveraging its full capabilities. Otherwise, companies may find themselves switching to new tools at a higher rate—with each change adding new costs.

The vice president of marketing at a publishing house once explained the risk of poor expectation setting to Horne as a costly cycle. Leaders weren't clear about why they were purchasing the new CMS, what it could and couldn't impact, and what team members would need to do to unlock that value.

You can't really plan for the unexpected, but you should budget for it. A new CMS often requires additional development or customization teams hadn't considered.

"It's critical to partner with an implementation specialist who can set realistic expectations forged through past migrations and deployments," Cloninger said.

Internal training and additional licensing fees are two commonly missed budget lines. Marketing teams mistakenly think they only need one platform license when in fact each user needs their own seat license.

Also consider that CMS software providers are moving quickly into a cloud-first model where they can charge based on consumption as well as licensing. This creates a lot of uncertainty for businesses that do not know how much growth or usage to anticipate.

Another decision to be aware of: sometimes companies think they're getting a great deal if they buy an entire experience platform with a lot of tools—and platform providers will try hard to sell this way. But the savings are only there if the marketing teams plan to use and maximize each part of the experience stack.