Brands that have evolved their Digital Experience

The brands that have evolved their digital experience in 2024-2025 aren't just moving faster—they're building foundational agility that enables teams to adapt continuously, experiment confidently, and deliver relevant experiences without slowing business operations. From MongoDB's operational transformation to Pirelli's enterprise-scale modernization, the pattern is clear: success comes from upgrading the infrastructure that powers digital delivery, not just optimizing individual campaigns.

For digital and marketing agencies managing multiple clients, understanding how these brands achieved their transformation provides a blueprint for the strategies you'll need to recommend and implement in 2026. Let's explore what separated the winners from the rest.

The Shift from Speed to Sustainable Agility

In 2024, speed was a competitive advantage. By 2025, it became baseline expectation. Leading brands that got digital transformation right didn't just launch faster—they invested in modern workflows and unified content structures that enable continuous improvement. This distinction matters tremendously for agencies managing multiple client accounts with different needs and timelines.

Customer expectations have fundamentally shifted. According to industry research, customers increasingly expect timely, responsive digital experiences and reward brands that adapt to their interests and behaviors. This means your clients can't just launch once and maintain—they need systems that support ongoing iteration and personalization. The foundation for this capability begins with choosing the right content management system that handles complexity without creating operational friction.

MongoDB: Operational Agility Through Infrastructure Modernization

MongoDB faced a classic challenge that many of your enterprise clients encounter: multiple custom CMS systems that consumed resources maintaining legacy infrastructure rather than innovating. Their teams spent excessive time managing technical debt, leaving little capacity for translation, taxonomy, and personalization initiatives that actually drive customer experience improvements.

By consolidating on a modern headless platform with AI-assisted workflows, MongoDB achieved a 400% increase in migration velocity and freed teams from infrastructure maintenance to focus on strategic digital work. They deployed content across 8 languages faster than ever before. The key insight here is that operational agility comes from eliminating the burden of maintaining legacy systems—it gives your team time back for the work that matters.

For agencies managing multiple clients, this pattern reveals an important truth: understanding the evolution of content management systems helps you identify which platforms will reduce friction versus add complexity as your clients scale.

Pirelli: Enterprise-Scale Agility Through Centralization

Managing over 200 websites across dozens of regions with legacy infrastructure created a bottleneck that limited publishing speed and increased operational costs. Pirelli's modernization journey demonstrates how centralization actually enables flexibility rather than restricting it.

By consolidating on a unified content platform, Pirelli achieved 75% faster publishing and 55% more efficient content editing. They completed a major migration in 10 months while establishing a content structure ready to support global experiences in 25+ languages. This matters for agencies because it shows that your clients don't need to choose between consistency and flexibility—the right platform provides both.

When you're recommending a CMS solution to clients managing multiple markets or regions, emphasize that centralized governance creates clearer workflows and faster decision-making, not bureaucratic slowness. Big brands that adopted digital transformation consistently found that unified platforms accelerated their operations.

Zilch: Real-Time Agility in High-Frequency Environments

For fintech platforms and other businesses where customer behavior changes daily, content relevance directly impacts engagement. Zilch needed to update offers, retailer partnerships, and customer-specific messaging within minutes, not days. Legacy workflows made this impossible.

After centralizing storefront content on a modern platform, Zilch achieved 99% faster placement creation and maintained higher engagement through continuous content updates. This case study is particularly relevant if you work with clients in fast-moving industries—retail, fintech, travel, or any sector where customer interests shift rapidly.

The lesson for your agency: when evaluating a CMS for client management, prioritize platforms that support quick publishing cycles and flexible content structures. Your clients in high-frequency environments won't succeed with tools built for quarterly campaign launches.

iFIT: Global Expansion Without Performance Compromise

Supporting high-consideration purchase journeys across multiple regions and brands requires consistent, content-rich experiences while maintaining performance. iFIT launched their NordicTrack Canada site in 6 months and followed quickly with additional international sites, all while improving page-load speeds by 30% and giving content teams flexibility to tailor storytelling for each region.

This achievement highlights a critical point for agencies: winning examples of brand digital transformation show that agility supports both speed-to-market and storytelling depth. Global expansion doesn't require sacrificing performance or content quality when your foundation is right.

When you're managing multiple client accounts with international ambitions, you need a platform that handles localization without creating separate silos or performance issues. The right CMS should make global consistency easier, not harder.

Common Patterns Across Successful Digital Evolution

These case studies reveal five consistent patterns that should guide your client recommendations:

• Foundation Over Features: All four brands invested in modernizing their content infrastructure before pursuing advanced capabilities. Agility begins with architecture, not add-ons.
• Speed Enables Strategy: Faster operations freed teams to focus on customer experience innovation rather than operational firefighting.
• Scale Without Complexity: Centralized content models simplified rather than complicated operations, whether managing 200 websites or 8 languages.
• Continuous Improvement: Flexible architectures allowed teams to experiment frequently and iterate based on customer feedback.
• Global Plus Local: Enterprise solutions supported both global consistency and local relevance simultaneously.

As you're advising clients on digital experience evolution, scaling storytelling at speed becomes the core challenge. The right CMS enables your teams to produce content faster without sacrificing quality or brand consistency.

What Changed from 2025 to 2026

The transition into 2026 rewards brands that can adapt quickly, experiment frequently, and bring teams closer to creating great digital experiences. Speed alone isn't enough—sustained agility is the differentiator. This means your clients need platforms that support not just fast publishing, but also intelligent personalization and continuous optimization.

AI personalization and improving customer touch points has become essential for agencies managing multiple clients with different audience segments. Your clients expect recommendations for how to deliver relevant experiences at scale, and the CMS you choose directly impacts your ability to deliver on that promise.

Strategic Takeaways for Your Agency

As you evaluate CMS solutions for your clients, remember that agility doesn't mean just speed—it means teams can adapt, experiment, and deliver without slowing business operations. It's about sustainable velocity, not unsustainable sprints.

Infrastructure improvements create cascading benefits: faster publishing enables more experimentation, which drives better customer insights, which improves targeting, which increases relevance. When you're calculating ROI for a CMS migration or implementation, include these downstream benefits in your analysis.

AI prompting and achieving brand-specific results represents the next frontier for agencies managing multiple clients. Platforms with excellent AI workflows amplify human capability rather than replacing it, giving your teams superpowers for content creation and optimization.

For agencies based in Kuala Lumpur or managing clients globally, customer retention strategies for 2026 increasingly depend on your ability to deliver personalized, continuously evolving experiences. The brands that evolved their digital experience in 2025 built the infrastructure to support this—and your clients need the same foundation.

The best Sitecore alternatives for growing teams often include platforms designed specifically for managing multiple clients and complex content structures. If you're evaluating options, prioritize solutions that reduce operational overhead while expanding your teams' creative capacity.

Moving Forward

The question for 2026 isn't whether to modernize your client's digital experience—it's how quickly you can complete that transformation. The brands that evolved their digital experience in 2025 didn't just implement new tools; they fundamentally changed how their teams work, collaborate, and deliver value to customers. That's the standard your clients now expect, and it starts with choosing a CMS built for agility, not just publishing.