Returning a Marketing Team to the Market: A Contentful Optimization for nCino
nCino builds intelligent banking software, and their marketing operation had outgrown the way their Contentful implementation was set up. We optimized it so the team could publish against the strategy rather than against the CMS.
The work
The Challenge: A Marketing Operation That Outgrew Its CMS
nCino builds intelligent banking software for more than 2,700 financial institutions in over 25 countries, from community banks and credit unions to the largest global lenders. It is also a company arguing a new category in public: ncino.com now leads with agentic banking, and a repositioning is made page by page, on the site.
The Contentful implementation underneath that site fit the nCino that stood it up, and the company grew past it. Nothing was broken, so nothing raised an alarm; the cost showed up as marketers spending their week operating the CMS instead of working the market — at exactly the moment the market needed arguing with.
The Strategy: A Contentful Optimization, Not a Replatform
Optimized the Contentful implementation around how the team works now. A replatform would have spent a year rebuilding what already worked; the models underneath were the constraint.
- Content models sized to the current operation. What fits a smaller marketing team becomes friction at a larger one.
- A publishing path that stopped being a queue. The route from having something to say to having it live got shorter; hiring against a queue only makes the queue longer.
- A site that keeps pace with a moving strategy. Synchronized with what marketing is arguing this quarter.
The Outcomes: Marketing Time Returned to the Market
A marketing team in a category where content is the competitive position, with its week spent on the position.
- Growth | The gap between having something to say and having it live came out of the process | Time returned to the work that grows the business
- Intelligence | An implementation matched to the operation it actually serves | Publishing paths and models that scale with the team
The detail
Why it mattered
- The setup fit the company that stood it up. This is the failure mode of an implementation that was right on day one. Content models that fit a smaller marketing operation become friction at a larger one, and publishing paths that were adequate at one volume turn into queues at another. nCino grew; the models underneath its site did not.
- Nothing was broken, so nothing raised an alarm. There is no error state for a platform that merely costs more than it should. The bill arrives as marketing weeks spent inside the CMS.
- It looks like a resourcing problem and is not one. The obvious response is to hire against the backlog, and that makes the queue longer. The constraint is the implementation, and headcount does not touch it.
- Marketing is the product surface in this category. nCino sells into financial institutions — 2,700+ of them, in more than 25 countries — where the buying cycle is long, the buyer is technical, and the competitive position is argued in public through content. In that model, marketing is how the market forms its view, and a company repositioning around agentic banking is making that argument page by page.
How it was built
- Content models sized to the operation that exists now. Rebuilt around how the marketing team actually works today, years of growth after the platform was first stood up.
- A publishing path that stopped being a queue. The route from having something to say to having it live got shorter, with no one hired to stand in it.
- A site that keeps pace with a moving strategy. The website stays synchronized with a marketing strategy that changes, closing the lag that had it arguing last year’s position.
What changed
- The bottleneck came out of the process. It came out of the machinery between the headcount and the ambition, which is where it lived.
- The team’s time went back to the market. Which in a category defined by technical credibility means the content itself.
Contentful optimization questions
What is a Contentful optimization?
Re-modeling an existing Contentful implementation around the operation it now serves — content models, publishing paths and editorial workflows — without replatforming. For nCino, the models were rebuilt around how the marketing team works today, so the site keeps pace with a strategy that changes.
How do you know a CMS implementation needs optimization?
Nothing is broken, so nothing raises an alarm — the cost arrives as marketers spending their week operating the CMS. The signals are queues: content models sized to the operation the platform was first set up for, and a publishing path where the route from having something to say to having it live keeps getting longer.
Is a slow publishing pipeline a staffing problem?
Usually not, and hiring against the backlog makes the queue longer. When the constraint is the implementation — models sized to a smaller operation, publishing paths adequate at a lower volume — headcount does not touch it. The fix is re-modeling the platform to the operation that exists now.
What does optimizing a CMS implementation actually change?
For the nCino engagement by Pare & Co: the bottleneck came out of the process with no headcount added, and the marketing team’s time went back to the market — which in a category where technical credibility is argued in public through content means the content itself. The firm continues to work alongside nCino’s team.
Client leadership
Doug Sisko
Doug Sisko’s specialty is growth and conversion strategy. He has led platform work that gives a marketing team back the ability to ship campaigns.