In this blog, we share recommendations and practical advice for organizations who want to modernize their technology stack in service of greater efficiency, flexibility, and growth.
Published on Apr 14, 2025
At Kontent.ai, we often have conversations with potential and new customers about the challenges and concerns of moving from legacy technology onto a modern architecture.
While the definition of modern may be subjective to the business making the change, in our world of content management, it’s often paired with terminology such as API-first, headless, cloud-based, or content-first, and typically armored with innovative AI, the highest standards of security, improved performance, and a much nicer user experience.
Since the theme of modernization is top of mind for content-driven organizations in a wide range of industries, this blog is aimed at sharing best practices we see our customers adopt when going through the process of shifting from legacy to modern technology.
The reasons to embark on a lengthy digital transformation project—one that most likely will require a ton of resources and significant financial investment—should be clear and championed internally.
From our experience, organizations who are most successful making a switch have their “why” tied to a deep business challenge with multiple contributing factors. The strongest whys are typically well-articulated as key objectives to overcome this challenge. As an example, here’s one we hear quite often: “We’re falling behind our competitors and have identified gaps in our technology stack.”
Let’s look at common reasons organizations decide a change of technology is needed:
See what Knab, a Kontent.ai customer in financial services, has to say about the issues they faced with their tech stack and the benefits they’ve experienced by switching from their legacy solution.
Before implementing Kontent.ai’s headless CMS, we were constrained by a cumbersome monolithic system and numerous SaaS platforms. This fragmented setup made standardization and agile scaling impossible, while also creating a significant dependency on traditional vendors. Thanks to Kontent.ai’s flexible yet powerful capabilities, we’ve advanced to the next level of digital maturity and reduced our reliance on external platforms, resulting in substantial cost savings.
Daniel Abrahamse
Product Owner of Digital Channels, Knab
For all its pitfalls, legacy technology does have one thing going for it: it’s often been molded in a way that suits the organization using the technology, though typically due to years of frequent modifications and patches without proper refactoring and a mixture of tangled code.
Is this best practice and secure? No, but it does solve an issue, and it’s what the internal users are used to. This familiarity provides a certain level of comfort and confidence that can make change, even a necessary one, harder.
When going to market for new technology, whether for a single solution change or a full tech stack overhaul, organizations who are most successful in this endeavor are those who embrace the opportunity for a positive change. They don’t focus too much on the dissimilarities compared to their current way of working. Why? Because, simply, there is no direct replacement for highly customized legacy technology.
From our experience, the teams that identify the challenges they are looking to solve instead of the features they’re looking to replace are the ones that adopt new technology the best—and the quickest. Focusing on the objectives allows the true value of the technology to shine, which, in return, will drive real change within the business.
When adopting a headless and API-first solution, it’s generally the same case as with other technology: the true value isn’t just in the feature set, but rather in the added flexibility an organization will finally have to build their ideal tech stack that’s future-proof and primed to scale.
See what Newcastle Building Society, a Kontent.ai customer in a highly regulated industry, has to say about the value of finding a modern solution that can grow with them.
We’ve been ambitious in terms of our development over the last couple of years and we’re still growing. It’s reassuring to know we won’t be stuck with a CMS that we’ll outgrow. There’s so much potential with Kontent.ai that we can take advantage of.
Tom Lainchbury
Digital Optimisation Specialist, Newcastle Building Society
Organizations looking for new technology are faced with a daunting task, particularly as there are more options out there than ever before. We’ve seen that two questions can really help make the shortlist, well, shorter:
Let’s check out these two alignment questions in more detail.
Vendors will often charm during the sales process, pitching awards, accolades, and badges as a guarantee of future success. But ultimately, your project is your uniquely yours. And your evaluation should be too.
When considering the solution itself, it’s important to focus on the core value the solution will provide you and your teams. Sometimes, even the most informed evaluators can get caught up in the nice-to-have features, especially if a sales rep continues to push them as must-haves. But are they must-haves for you?
There’s also the question of going for a suite of products. Suites are often touted as unified, all-in-one solutions, but, in reality, they’ve often come together from a series of acquisitions and patched-up integrations. If your organization is intent on solving technical debt once and for all, increasing efficiency, and gaining true flexibility, we recommend deeply evaluating every product and module the suite offers. Otherwise, the suite approach may simply become a new source of bloat.
Organizations who ensure that any new solution ticks most of their boxes generally have much more success in the long term.
Shifting from a legacy tech stack involves a big shift in technology; it equally involves a significant shift in mindset. The mindshift is often as important to the success of the project as the tech.
When evaluating the right fit vendor, people matter. Organizations should place huge emphasis on the feeling they get from working with a vendor during the discovery phase. They should also put weight on the confidence they have in the vendor/partner to deliver the project.
To assess a vendor’s ability to deliver, we recommend evaluating aspects such as customer success services, the support model, the commercial model, and experience with similar projects, as they can significantly impact the outcome. Ultimately, you’ll be spending a lot of time with the people delivering your new technology, so they should be people you can see yourself working with.
Check out what Seco Tools, Kontent.ai customer and one of the world’s largest tooling company, has to say about the importance of the human element during implementation.
Our main challenge was the shift from a traditional CMS focusing on website content to a content-first and reusable content hub approach. Kontent.ai’s training program, e-learning, and workshops were incredibly helpful in onboarding the full marketing team, from local web editors to content managers, and will be a huge success factor in this implementation.
Maxime Bonnin
Global Web Content Manager, Seco Tools
To navigate the complexities of implementing new systems, it’s essential to build strong relationships based on trust and mutual understanding. Ultimately, the right technology paired with the right people will lead to transformative change that moves the organization forward in a competitive landscape.
The decision to embark on a digital transformation journey is not one to be taken lightly. It requires a clear understanding of the underlying business challenge and a strategic approach to selecting the right technology solution to drive efficiency, productivity, and flexibility. The solution should also, at the end of the day, make your teams happy that they went through with the change, even if it means moving on from what’s familiar.
The organizations who look beyond immediate needs and consider long-term goals like future growth and innovation tend to have the most success making the shift. Those who consider the impact on their users and the trust they have in their vendor also fare much better.
See why Transavia has to say about about their satisfaction now that they’ve made the switch to Kontent.ai.
Having separate content systems was slowing us down. We needed a solution that allowed us to manage everything in one place and reuse content across all digital channels. With Kontent.ai, our users are happy. The combination of a more intuitive CMS, better automation, and streamlined workflows has led to a more enjoyable experience for our team.
Anna Tijsen
Digital Content Strategist, Transavia
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