Establishing a single source of truth (SSoT) for marketing teams

How much easier would it be to craft the seamless experiences customers want if your content and data were connected with everything you need on the back end? This is what a single source of truth (SSoT) does. It tames the tangle of disconnected systems that slow marketers down so they can focus on delighting customers (without all the pre-launch craziness).

When Contentful pioneered headless CMS, marketers and developers were just beginning to feel the frustration of managing different systems for websites and mobile. Since then, the digital landscape has exploded into countless touchpoints across multiple channels, making an SSoT more important than ever. But most teams struggle to create seamless, connected experiences from a jumble of disconnected systems. 

If that sounds like you, I’ve got good news. Unifying content and integrating existing systems into the single source of truth marketers need is possible. Let’s look at how you can build a single source of truth in a multichannel world.

What does an SSoT look like for marketing teams?

For marketing teams, an SSoT platform is a central system containing all the content — copy, images, videos, data — needed to create, manage, and ship experiences across touchpoints, channels, and the entire customer journey. For enterprises, this might extend across multiple regions and brands. 

A single source of truth shouldn’t be confused with rigid all-in-one solutions. Today’s modern solutions provide endless flexibility with a composable approach. Composable platforms use APIs to connect all the tools you need, pulling content and data from multiple sources, unifying and structuring it so it's easier to find, use, and maintain. Best of all, with a composable approach, you can easily connect new tools to your SSoT — no more tacking on separate systems for every new channel.

For example, Kraft Heinz uses Contentful to connect the tools they need — Google Cloud Platform, Talon.One, Algolia, and other apps — to power digital experiences across multiple brands. Unifying content and giving teams access to everything they need in one platform enables teams to streamline workflows, improve communication, enhance collaboration, and shrink content production timelines. This new way of working allowed teams to get more creative and ambitious, enabling them to launch experiences that increased engagement by 30% and conversions by 78%.

Contentful provides a reliable source of content to fuel engaging experiences across Kraft Heinz brands. 

Signs that your team needs an SSoT 

Brands can create seamless, multichannel experiences from the chaos of various systems. Still, it’s hard, and it gets harder as consumers demand more content, personalization, and engagement across more channels. Here are some warning signs that disparate systems are slowing you down: 

You have too many content systems

It’s common for companies to keep adding more CMSes as older systems and monoliths fail to support new use cases — mobile, ecommerce, landing pages, etc. This might help set up new use cases faster, but it comes at a cost. Every change must be made manually in every system, often by different teams. This becomes increasingly time-consuming and risky. Even the best teams will miss things, leading to mistakes and inconsistencies that undermine credibility and customer satisfaction. That’s why Contentful lets you build once and reuse content anywhere. 

Data is all over the place

Separate systems also mean separate data. Without integration, these data silos keep teams from getting the historical data, customer data, and performance data they need. Manually compiling data is slow and unreliable. Data quality is critical for teams that want to leverage AI tools or engage customers with data-driven personalization. An SSoT solves these problems by integrating multiple data sources, giving everyone access to the same data so customer experiences are timely, relevant, and consistent across channels. 

Workflows are convoluted, and everything takes too much time

Data silos, content silos, and poorly integrated systems force teams to develop workarounds instead of efficient workflows. Let’s look at translation as an example. Many companies copy the content they want to translate from a web page into an Excel sheet. They send the Excel file to a translation agency that copies the content into another system for translation. The agency then exports the content back to Excel and returns it to the customer, who pastes it into a new web page. See how SumUp streamlined translation and localization workflows to support 20+ languages.

It's hard to implement features like AI and advanced personalization

Technology is moving fast. To keep up, companies need the ability to integrate multiple tools and features quickly. Content silos, data silos, and a lack of clear workflows will all make it harder to benefit from AI and implement features that rely on quality data, like segmentation, personalization, and A/B testing. Looking for a specific integration? Check out the Contentful Marketplace, with 100+ integrations and plugins to choose from.

An SSoT helps teams build the experiences customers expect faster

To keep your customers happy (and your team from burning out), you must tame the “content chaos” — fragmented tools, siloed content and data, and inconsistent workflows. With a single source of truth, teams can:

Save time and get to market faster: Templates, guides, repeatable workflows, and automation let you build up speed instead of figuring out new business processes every time. Clear workflows make it easier to onboard other team members and help everyone work more efficiently. 

“It’s quite ridiculous how fast we can get content out now, in comparison to how it was before.”

Ralph Urmel, International Digital Experience Manager, Alpro 

Reduce redundant manual work and errors: No more mindless copying and pasting and duplicate entries. With a centralized repository, you can make content changes in one place and push them out. See how ASICS used automation to eliminate duplicative work and keep messaging on brand.

Improve creativity and drive more value: Having everything you need at your fingertips lets you see the big picture so you can streamline project management, improve resource allocation, and let marketers spend less time managing systems and more time creating content and experiences that drive value. 

Support seamless collaboration: An SSoT helps the entire team get on the same page with the same data and customer information for seamless collaboration and better decision-making.

Gain new capabilities: Unifying content into one SSoT makes it easier to integrate AI into workflows, personalize content across channels, or launch content on new channels like touchscreens, virtual reality stations, in-car experiences, or voice search. 

See how Yorck Kinogruppe empowered a small team to do big things.  

Contentful is your SSoT in a multichannel world

Contentful has evolved from a headless CMS to a digital experience platform that connects everything marketers and developers need to thrive in an ever-changing digital world. Instead of fighting with multiple systems, marketers can confidently build, launch, and orchestrate multichannel campaigns in one place. You can almost hear the sighs of relief.

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