Transitioning to a Composable Solution in a Regulated Industry Overcoming Migration Challenges

Many organizations in highly regulated industries, including healthcare, financial services, and utilities, have begun to embrace digital transformation and migrate to modern infrastructure such as digital experience platforms (DXPs) and composable solutions built using multiple SaaS products, including modern CMSs, personalization engines, CDPs and other tools instead of legacy systems.

Their customers expect personalized and engaging experiences, and these solutions can help deliver those experiences and generate more revenue. According to McKinsey, “companies that implement omnichannel transformations report revenue growth of 5 to 15 percent.”

However, doing so doesn’t come without challenges. Companies must contend with compliance and regulatory challenges that make it difficult to simply transition away from legacy solutions and embrace modernization.

In this article, we’ll explore their challenges and explain how they can transition to a composable solution and reap the benefits of improved performance and increased customer satisfaction.

The Current Regulatory Landscape

Companies in regulated industries will face requirements that impact their ability to leverage customer data, migrate to a modern DXP, and deliver an engaging customer experience.

Common Regulatory Requirements

Organizations in regulated industries must comply with stringent compliance and regulatory requirements, particularly regarding data management, storage, and access.

• Data Privacy Laws and Consent Management: Highly regulated enterprises must adhere to laws and regulations, including HIPAA, PHI, GDPR, and others, that govern how they can manage, store, and access customer data. This includes how customers consent to data collection and can withdraw that consent.

• Data Sovereignty: Global enterprises must also be concerned with data sovereignty and regulations across different regions and jurisdictions.

• Security: Organizations must maintain robust cybersecurity measures to protect sensitive data from breaches. Some industries also require compliance with industry-specific security frameworks, such as NIST for federal agencies or PCI DSS for organizations handling credit card data.

CMS Migration Implications

The current regulatory landscape means enterprises that want to migrate to a modern CMS solution will face long-term effects and repercussions.

Maintaining Compliance

Enterprises need to take extra precautions during the migration process. Data is often moved across different environments, which increases the risk of mishandling sensitive information. Violating these regulations can usually lead to hefty fines, litigation, and reputational damage.

Companies in highly regulated industries must ensure that their new platforms offer capabilities to support compliance, such as granular access controls, encryption, content governance, and workflows.

Continuous Maintenance and Updates

While initial migration requirements will focus on maintaining compliance, regulatory landscapes constantly evolve. As such, enterprises in highly regulated industries must ensure their websites comply with new laws and regulations. This often requires frequent updates and maintenance of the DXP and the development of a constant stream of new features.

For example, utility company NW Natural needed to add a new Bill Discount application form to its website due to state regulatory requirements.

Challenges of Migrating to a Modern CMS

During the migration process, enterprises in highly regulated industries will likely face a few specific challenges as they move from legacy to modern composable solutions.

Data Migration and Integrity

Companies often need to anonymize or de-identify data during migration to protect sensitive information, particularly when transferring data between environments. However, it can be difficult for developers working during the migration process to properly accomplish and ensure the security and quality of the CMS implementation.

Security Challenges

Security measures include stringent regulatory requirements, such as rest and transit encryption, multi-factor authentication, and detailed access and modification logs, which add to the migration team's workload.

Disruption to Operations

Even a brief disruption can cause compliance issues for companies in highly regulated industries. This includes failure to provide timely access to data or services as mandated by regulations or interrupted access to data. As such, businesses need to factor this into their migration strategy, as there is little leeway for downtime.

Legacy System Integration

Integrating legacy and modern systems requires careful handling to ensure that historical data remains accessible and compliant. Additionally, in some industries, companies can’t migrate entirely away from legacy systems due to on-premises requirements or the need to retain access to business-critical data.

Testing and Quality Assurance

Proper testing and quality assurance are challenging for developers due to the need to anonymize data. However, beyond functional and performance testing, companies in regulated industries must validate that the CMS supports compliance requirements, such as data retention policies. Additionally, migration must be accompanied by detailed documentation and testing records to satisfy regulatory audits.

How to Plan For a Successful Migration

Highly regulated enterprises that want to migrate to a modern DXP or composable solution need careful planning and execution to ensure compliance and minimize risks. Here are some steps to take:

1. Thorough Initial Planning

Companies should define their goals as part of the initial planning process for a CMS/DXP migration. This will help them determine the right tools to make up their composable solution and evaluate their existing systems and content libraries to understand what needs to be replaced and what can be integrated.

Part of the initial planning process should also involve forming a migration team, including IT, legal, compliance, marketing, and operations, to ensure alignment across departments. The legal department, in particular, will be responsible for determining a company’s risk exposure and helping to balance compliance requirements with the user experience.

Read More: Creating a Content Inventory for Content Migration

2. Take a Compliance-first Approach

Next, thoroughly review the regulatory requirements specific to your industry or geography, such as HIPAA for healthcare, GDPR for data privacy, or FINRA for financial services. These regulations will inform how you handle data, user access, security, and potential implications for the migration.

A compliance-first approach will often require focusing on the processes, security standards, and workflows rather than the products selected to execute various marketing tasks.

3. Deciding on a Migration Strategy

Next, depending on your industry, compliance requirements, and business goals, you will need to decide on the migration strategy, whether a big bang or a phased approach. Ideally, a phased migration works best for companies in regulated industries. It moves content and functionality in stages, which allows for better testing, less downtime, and the ability to fix issues as they arise.

Additionally, for companies moving toward a SaaS-based solution, such as those migrating from Sitecore XP/XM to XM Cloud, a phased approach allows them to rebuild websites using a headless approach over time and complete the final migration much faster with less downtime, rather than having to rebuild websites post-migration.

4. Selecting the Right Technology Solution

Businesses in highly regulated industries must select a robust solution that enables them to remain compliant following the migration and provides the advanced features necessary to maximize the benefits of a composable approach and a modern tech stack.

Vendors such as Sitecore, Optimizely, and Adobe can offer advanced solutions that meet the needs of companies in highly regulated industries and provide the functionality they need to deliver engaging customer experiences. However, not every vendor’s products will meet all the compliance requirements for every regulated industry.

For instance, Sitecore, Optimizely, and Adobe offer HIPAA-ready products, but other CMS and DXP vendors might not. In such cases, companies will need to spend more time working with their legal, marketing, and tech teams to add additional layers of security or workarounds to readily meet regulatory requirements.

5. Finding the Right Technology Partner

An experienced technology partner will understand the complexities of compliance and can help ensure that your migration strategy adheres to your industry's requirements. Additionally, they should offer ongoing support post-migration, including security updates, compliance checks, and regular system audits. This ensures that your CMS and other critical tools in the marketing stack stay up to date with technological advancements and evolving regulations.

Build a Compliant Migration Strategy with Oshyn

Businesses in highly regulated industries that want to deliver engaging omnichannel experiences to their customers need the right toolset. This often includes leveraging modern DXPs and composable solutions from leading vendors. However, migrating to these systems requires careful planning and the proper support.

Oshyn is a certified Sitecore, Optimizely, and Adobe partner with over two decades of experience helping enterprises deliver exceptional digital experiences via marketing technology.

Our build and implementation services help you realize your strategic vision as you migrate to a modern solution.

Our continuous development and maintenance services also ensure you receive ongoing site support, code maintenance, and new feature development to meet regulatory requirements.

Get our Content Migration Guide to prepare effectively for a DXP migration.