Dr Raphael Richter, senior project manager at e-Spirit AG, and Robert Birker, managing director of the Berlin-based full-service agency interactive tools, are connected by years of client consulting and work with the FirstSpirit CMS. A conversation about challenges, solutions and the future of content management systems.

RR: e-Spirit helps companies realise global digital marketing and transformation strategies. To do this, we develop a content management solution, namely FirstSpirit, with passion and enthusiasm, enabling them to reach their customers efficiently and effectively across the countless channels available today.

RR: we put on our customers' glasses: what are their pain points, what does our product need to deliver so we can support them optimally through digital transformation? Digitalisation is changing how companies reach their customers. They need to engage them differently than a few years ago, and to do so they must not only digitise but also transform – that is, adapt their business models to new possibilities. That's very much about customer focus. And content matters at every point of customer interaction, which is why content management as a strategic component is increasingly moving to the fore in organisations. The days when the CMS was just a tool for managing static HTML websites are long gone. Content now needs to be prepared completely differently and delivered highly dynamically and consistently across a growing number of channels.

RR: one unique selling point is our best-of-breed approach: all the heterogeneous systems from the marketing technology space, from analytics through e-commerce and real-time targeting to video management, that are used within organisations can integrate with FirstSpirit. This lets companies break down their silos, so they keep using the solutions best suited to them, but everything on one central, user-friendly platform, namely FirstSpirit. The system is platform-independent, meaning it works largely regardless of the operating system a company prefers. The customer's familiar frontend, e.g. a shop or a personalised website, can be retained. Thanks to this integration approach, users have the flexibility to easily adapt their best-of-breed infrastructure to changing requirements. The set-up is therefore ideal for transformation processes.

RR: e-Spirit is a product house. We decided early on to focus on software development and rely on committed, skilled implementation partners for project delivery. Partners also build their own project solutions and modules, which we add to our marketplace. They're also a valuable channel through which we keep getting customer feedback, and together we improve solutions for our customers in close exchange. Everyone involved benefits from this close, trusted collaboration — customer, partner and us as vendor.

RB: we've been partners since 2005 and quickly noticed that FirstSpirit is a very interesting product, especially in terms of usability for editors. interactive tools focuses on usability and joy of use when developing websites, and that fits well with a content management system that convinces us not just technologically but also through its user-friendliness. Another advantage is that FirstSpirit handles even highly complex projects very well. Looking at interactive tools' development over the last ten years, it's clear that the big growth steps are largely down to FirstSpirit – especially in corporate communication and with B2B customers.

RB: over the years, in dialogue with e-Spirit's professional services, we developed various solution approaches. These include conceptual approaches that let us address recurring customer needs. How do I build an internationally oriented website so editors can handle it well? And how do we ensure the website simultaneously meets the often complex requirements of internationalising online communication? From questions like these raised by our customers, we develop technical solutions that we apply to individual company needs and deploy quickly. One example is our Dynamic Content Controller.

RB: Challenge lies more in continuously evolving system and adapting it to customer needs. Right now much focus sits on static content generation. Greater complexity of website structure, more external applications connected via interfaces, harder both technical and editorial content management becomes. Our Dynamic Content Controller solves this problem. Yet as applications and systems keep evolving and changing, we will also keep developing and optimising this solution.
RR: With growing number of delivery systems in company, finding right path with customers to publish their content stays constant challenge. Challenge we always welcome, since our best-of-breed approach follows forward-looking path. FirstSpirit's hybrid architecture makes it fully flexible – system can pre-generate content in time- and resource-efficient way while frontend stays highly dynamic. For companies wanting to offer personalised digital online experiences, combining dynamism, resilience and high performance is efficient approach.

RR: Companies need to rethink content completely. Content can no longer simply be managed. It's about creating it for specific target groups, delivering it consistently in a personalised way across a growing number of relevant channels, analysing it and optimising it to achieve measurable business goals. And always with an eye on the value for the customer in a world undergoing digital transformation.
RB: The internet is no longer just one of many communication channels; it's on its way to becoming the leading channel. We're seeing with our clients that high-quality, precisely targeted content is becoming ever more important. As content becomes more important, the demands on the systems used to manage it rise too. On one hand, it's about rethinking content; on the other, about creating the technical infrastructure. Content can't be generated by machines – it still comes from people's minds. And for these people, we need the best possible digital tools.