The terms WCM, CMS and DXP are are used to describe platforms organizations use to create, manage and edit digital content. However, there are important distinctions between these terms as we use them to describe digital experience.
Firstly, WCM (Web Content Management) is actually the process, not the system or platform itself. WCM describes systems that create, manage and maintain digital content. This is typically for website presentation, although other channels may be served as well. Web Content Management systems generally include management tools and a core repository for storage of content.
A CMS (Content Management System) enables marketing teams to manage a myriad of digital content including text, audio, video, documents, and images, and then publish that content. Traditionally, this is presented through a website, but modern systems will necessarily serve multiple channels and offer some integration capabilities. With a CMS, reliance on IT is greatly reduced as marketers and business users are enabled to independently upload and manage images and documents as well as amend, modify, edit and publish information with no coding knowledge.
Advisory firm, Gartner, tells us “Content management systems comprise a set of templates, procedures and standard format software that enables marketers and their proxies (e.g., webmasters) to produce and manage text, graphics, pictures, audio and video for use in Web landing pages, blogs, document repositories, campaigns or any marketing activity requiring single or multimedia content.”
A DXP (Digital Experience Platform) allows organizations not only to manage web content but also further streamline internal processes, consolidate data, apply data-driven insights, integrate critical MarTech systems and deploy content across devices beyond web and mobile. Newer DXP solutions offer the flexibility to add components to the platform as needs arise. This partly describes the concept of composability, which is trending away from the monolithic architecture of earlier DXP solutions.