What Cross-Functional Teams Actually Need from Their Experience Platform

By Adam Picker, Senior Director, Business Development at Material

It might seem that marketing, digital, data and technology teams all want different things from the experience platform. But in reality, they all seek the same outcomes: faster publishing, smarter personalization, cleaner data, reliable performance, easy updates.

What’s preventing them from achieving those outcomes isn’t competing or conflicting goals. It’s that most experience platforms weren’t built or set up for how teams work today. And no matter how many features you add, if the foundation isn’t flexible, progress stays slow.

What teams actually want is a system that meets them where they are. One that supports different priorities, moves at different speeds and adapts without starting over. If you haven’t got that in place, here’s what you’re probably looking for.

One Place to Tell a Consistent Story

Marketing runs a campaign. Leads come in. But when it’s time to show impact, three teams have three different numbers.

Marketing pulls one report from Marketo. Sales pulls another from Salesforce. Analytics pulls a third from GA4. And no one’s sure which number is right, or if any of them are.

The basic ability to align on what happened is a requirement for all teams. For marketing, this misalignment slows down the ability to prove value. For analytics, it creates mistrust in the numbers. For IT, it means yet another request to “make these systems talk to each other.”

What teams actually want is a shared layer where campaign data can be connected enough to tell a consistent story. Not a new platform. Not another dashboard. Just one place where the pieces line up and where everyone can move on with the work.

Content Workflows That Don’t Slow Down the Work

A product launch is coming. Marketing wants to update five pages to reflect the new messaging. The pages live in different templates. The content team needs to request changes from the development team. A few updates get held up in legal. One goes live late. One never makes it at all.

No one dropped the ball. The system just wasn’t built for this kind of speed.

For marketers, it feels like unnecessary delay. For content teams, it adds pressure to an already messy workflow. For developers, it’s one more task in a queue that keeps growing.

What teams want is a content system that can adapt quickly. Reusable components. Clear rules for who can edit what. The ability to update without opening a ticket. Not total freedom, just enough flexibility to keep up with the pace of work.

Personalization That’s Realistic to Execute

Everyone wants to personalize. The strategy deck says it’s a priority. The tech stack says it’s possible. But six months later, nothing’s live.

The CMS requires dev help. The data model doesn’t match the segmentation strategy. The rules are too brittle. The team can’t test anything without pulling in three other groups.

For marketing, it feels like personalization is always stuck in planning. For digital teams, it’s more complexity without clear payoff. For IT, it’s another use case blocked by misaligned systems.

What all teams want is a simple way to run a small test. Show different content by region. Swap a module for known customers. Tailor a CTA by product interest. If the platform can support that without creating a new initiative, personalization becomes part of the workflow.

Investments That Show Up in the Work

The martech stack looks impressive on paper — big-name platforms, enterprise licenses, plenty of features. But in practice, the work still feels manual and overbearing. Campaigns move slowly. Content isn’t audience-aligned. Personalization never scales. Reporting takes hours.

For marketing, it’s hard to justify the spend. For digital, it’s unclear which tools are actually pulling their weight. For IT, it’s another audit of overlapping systems and underused features.

What all teams want is value they can feel in the day-to-day. Faster publishing. Easier testing. Fewer handoffs. Not more features, just more payoff from the ones already in place.

Visibility into What’s Live, What’s Working and What Needs Attention

Over time, large digital ecosystems become difficult to track. Pages get created by different teams, in different regions, on different templates. Some perform well but are buried. Others are outdated or broken but still live. New content goes live, but no one’s sure who approved it or whether it’s being used.

For marketing, it creates gaps in brand consistency and performance. For digital, it’s hard to prioritize updates or improvements. For IT, it’s a long list of systems that are technically “working” but operationally fragile.

What teams want is a clear view of the experience footprint. What content is live, who owns it, how it’s performing and where it might be undercutting user trust or campaign results. Not a full audit, but enough visibility to make smart decisions and stay ahead of issues.

Maybe It’s Not the Team. Maybe It’s the System.

None of these problems are extreme. They’re just persistent. And they tend to show up in teams that are capable, strategic and motivated but stuck using systems that weren’t designed to flex.

Modernizing doesn’t have to mean replatforming, however. Sometimes it means reorganizing. Sometimes it means creating smarter connections among what you already have. Sometimes it means picking one part of the stack and making it more usable, more modular or more intelligent.

That’s the kind of work we do at Material. Not just experience redesign but also platform evolution that gives teams more control, more visibility and more momentum. If that sounds like what you’re looking for, we’d love to talk.