There are so many interesting things happening as enterprises evolve into an omnichannel world! Earlier this month, RSG released its latest set of marketplace evaluations, for a new stream called "Omnichannel Content Platforms" or OCP for short.

The Omnichannel Challenge

Enterprises typically manage a dozen ore more different engagement silos for interacting with customers and prospects. The fundamental problem with this approach as it evolved through the 2010s is that each silo typically embeds its own content, data, rules, planning, and analytics. A lack of integration among them results in customer experiences becoming isolated, disjointed, and inconsistent.

Customer Data Platform (CDP) technology seeks to unify core people data across channels.  Journey Orchestration (JOE) technology seeks to unify core rules and decisioning across channels.  RSG evaluates several dozen CDP and JOE vendors.

Real Story Group’s Omnichannel Stack Reference Model.  Note especially the critical services in the core "Enterprise Foundation" layer.

What Does an OCP Do?

Like CDPs and JOEs, an OCP seeks to serve as a single source of truth, but in this case for reusable or derivable assets you want to propagate across potentially any engagement channel.

Just like a CDP may not hold all your data, an OCP doesn't manage all your content, just your base assets, deployed for omnichannel engagement. This can include a variety of different types of assets: text and copy snippets, offers, images, video, audio, but also documents and micro experiences. An OCP should also have tracking services to monitor asset usage. 

To be sure, this is a young market.  RSG's vendor evaluation research reveals that not all OCPs support all those asset types, not all of them can track usage and derivation, and not all of them enable useful compounding of assets.

Do You Need One?

The reference model above suggests a more services-oriented approach to your omnichannel technology stack, moving foundational services lower to apply them enterprise-wide.  You then  feed those services into different engagement environments for a more integrated customer experience.

You likely already see the need to do this for data, but now you'll want to think about where omnichannel content management sits on your roadmap as well.  You don't want to rush this, but you don't want to ignore it, either.

Next Steps

Should you consider an OCP for your stack road map? Watch the recorded webinar: Is There an Omnichannel Content Platform in Your Future?

If you see a potential match here, or you're just curious, download a complimentary sample of RSG's OCP vendor analysis