Why Omnichannel Often Fails and Why It Starts with Your CMS

1. Web-first CMSs in an omnichannel world

Most organisations are still running on CMSs built for a simpler time, when “digital” meant “the website.” These systems are page-based, layout-first, and rigid. They’re great for managing a website. But in a world of apps, portals, chatbots, and social feeds, they quickly become a bottleneck.

Teams end up copying and pasting the same content across tools. Marketing in one system. Product updates in another. Newsletter content somewhere else. It’s slow, messy, and impossible to keep consistent.

Research from Storyblok shows:

• 49% of CMS users need more than an hour to publish content.

• 14% need a full day or more.

That’s not just inefficiency. That's a lost opportunity. The shift begins with mindset: content-first, not channel-first. Content should be structured, modular, and reusable: created once, adapted anywhere. If your CMS still thinks in “pages,” you’ll never deliver a connected experience across channels.

2. Content silos kill consistency

Here’s how omnichannel fails quietly: content silos. Marketing runs one CMS. Product has another. The app team builds its own system. It seems practical, until it isn’t. According to The State of CMS 2024, 61% of companies now use multiple CMSs to manage their content. The result?

• The website says one thing, the app says another.

• Data gets duplicated, outdated, or lost.

• Regional teams “go rogue” with their own versions.

Omnichannel turns into chaos. The fix isn’t necessarily one tool to rule them all. It’s one source of truth. A single content hub that feeds every channel, region, and touchpoint.

Whether that’s one CMS or an integrated ecosystem doesn’t matter as much as the principle: Create once. Publish everywhere. That’s how consistency scales.

3. Modernize your CMS or stay stuck

If the problem starts in the CMS, the solution does too. And now, AI is part of that foundation. The market is moving fast toward headless and composable architectures: systems that separate content from presentation, flow it through APIs, and plug in AI for orchestration, personalisation, and automation.

Why AI matters

• 79% of teams say AI has made them more profitable.

• 76% report higher win rates with AI-powered omnichannel marketing.

• By 2025, an estimated 95% of interactions will involve AI in some form.

Your content platform must support AI-driven workflows, not just manual publishing. When AI lives inside your CMS, content becomes responsive. It reacts to context, adapts in real time, and finds the right person at the right moment. Think of it as moving from “publish once” to “continuously orchestrate.”

Headless gives you the freedom to deliver content anywhere. AI makes that content intelligent. According to Gartner, by 2026, 70% of organisations will adopt composable experience platforms instead of monolithic suites, and those platforms will be AI-native by design.

The real problem isn’t at the front, it’s at the back

The customer doesn’t see your tech stack. But they feel it. A seamless journey starts with a coherent content foundation. When systems are fragmented, the experience is too.

Most omnichannel strategies fail not because the idea is bad, but because the CMS can’t deliver what the strategy promises. The good news? Fixing it pays off. McKinsey found that companies with highly effective omnichannel engagement grow 9.5% faster per year than those with weak execution.

In the end

Omnichannel isn’t about adding more channels. It’s about one source, many expressions.

Modernising your CMS builds structure, consistency, and calm into your digital operations.

And customers can feel that. Because great experiences don’t start with more tools. They start with a foundation that holds everything together.