31% of retail marketers say ‘lack of ownership’ is their biggest challenge when building digital experiences

This article is brought to you by Retail Technology Review: 31% of retail marketers say ‘lack of ownership’ is their biggest challenge when building digital experiences.

Over a third (31%) of marketers working in the retail sector say that a ‘lack of clear ownership’ is their biggest challenge when building digital experiences. That’s according to new research from CMS provider, Magnolia.

The Magnolia report, ‘The state of CMS in the retail sector,’ incorporates a survey of 200 marketers and IT professionals and examines the unique needs and challenges of marketers in the retail sector.

It reveals that a quarter (25%) of retail marketers say that a lack of communication with IT is a key challenge, with 19% believing that IT is not open to collaboration. 

Internal bureaucracy is another issue that many in this industry are up against, with 25% of marketers highlighting it as a key concern.

Commenting on the research, Rasmus Skjoldan, CMO at Magnolia said: "Following the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s vital that retailers ensure they have a strong digital experience and make it as easy as possible for their customers to shop online. This means being able to manage stocks, offer real-time promotions and provide customers with personal experiences in the moment. Without clear ownership of their digital projects, however, marketers are fighting with IT teams to get new technologies and experiences off the ground. When ownership is vague, it results in digital projects that are slow to implement and delivered to a far lower standard than they should be.".

“However, by providing marketers with the right tools to curate and re-use content across multiple touchpoints — without needing to over rely on IT — we’ll begin to see a reduction in these implementation delays. This, in turn, will mean better experiences for customers and, ultimately, more online sales for retail stores.”

As more and more retailers look to best of breed systems, integrating a content and commerce strategy easily is becoming key and Magnolia's commerce connectors to all the common systems provides valuable interoperability and effective business workflow.

Methodology

This report incorporates data from a study of 100 in-house marketers in the US, 100 in-house marketers in the UK, 100 senior IT decision makers in the US and 100 senior IT professionals in the UK — with a focus on those who identify as working in the retail sector. The study was commissioned by Magnolia and conducted by independent research house Censuswide. The research report was launched in March 2020.