The impact of keeping outdated systems in place extends well beyond IT. Time to market is slowed and responsiveness to customer demands is limited. On top of that, the fragmented nature of the overall ecosystem, with content scattered across multiple platforms and managed by separate teams, makes it nearly impossible to maintain consistency or deliver a true omnichannel experience.

Consider the situation one organization in the mortgage servicing segment faced before starting its CCM modernization journey. The company’s communications were spread across multiple legacy CCM platforms, each with its own content library and change management workflow. Hundreds of duplicate templates were required to account for state, product and client variations. Every change, no matter how small, had to be coded in by IT, which meant even routine updates could take months to implement.

Modernizing to a next-generation CCM platform offers a way to break free from these manual processes, mounting technical debt and outdated technology. Yet many organizations still hesitate, concerned about the perceived complexity, cost and risk of migration — even as the business case for change grows stronger by the day.

The complexity of legacy CCM environments can make migration feel like an expensive gamble. Years of accumulated content, targeting logic and one-off client or product customizations create a daunting task. Organizations face tough questions: Which content should be kept, rewritten or retired? What needs to be improved? Who will review, standardize and approve it all?

Traditionally, migration has meant developing standards, then assigning large teams to review and rewrite each document one by one. Depending on the size and scope of the project, it can take years and consume millions of dollars. Faced with that reality, many organizations postpone modernization indefinitely. Others take the path of least resistance: A “lift-and-shift” approach that moves all existing content into the new platform as-is, carrying forward the redundancies, inconsistencies, outdated content and complex workarounds from legacy systems that caused problems in the first place.

If organizations don’t find ways to improve and optimize their content during migration, they risk compromising the efficiency and customer experience gains investing in a new system is meant to deliver. So, what is the best way to tackle this process to ensure all goals are met?

The right approach to tackling CCM modernization isn’t throwing more resources at the problem or outsourcing to third-party agencies unfamiliar with your industry. It’s AI. Purpose-built CCM migration tools now leverage AI to automate the most difficult and time-consuming aspects of the process, while also improving the quality and consistency of the content being migrated.

These tools provide powerful rationalization capabilities. They are capable of ingesting thousands of documents and templates from a variety of legacy systems and breaking them into smaller, logical components. Dashboards and reports then provide organizations with clear visibility into the attributes, patterns and commonalities across their entire communications library.

Using semantic analysis, AI identifies duplicate and near-duplicate content, such as a disclosure repeated across hundreds of documents and consolidates it into shared content objects which can be reused across communications. At the same time, outlier content, like a clause that only appears once or twice in a library of 1,000 communications, can be flagged for removal unless there is a compelling reason to retain it.

The most advanced tools also embed AI-assisted optimization directly into the migration process. They highlight content that is unclear, overly complex or off-tone, and can recommend rewritten alternatives aligned to internal readability or sentiment benchmarks, or even to ISO plain language standards. They also detect brand guideline violations, such as incorrect fonts or design elements, to ensure all communications used throughout the customer journey deliver a consistent, cohesive experience.

The impact these tools can have is significant. For the organization referenced earlier, AI-assisted migration reduced their template library by more than 85%, cutting their content management burden dramatically. The project was completed in a fraction of the time a manual process would have required, leaving behind a streamlined, standardized content library as the foundation for their new platform.

Ultimately, the capabilities of the system you migrate to will determine how much value you can capture from modernization. Not all CCM platforms that call themselves “modern” are created equal. In today’s ever-changing omnichannel landscape, the ideal system functions as a centralized content hub supporting all channels. In these systems, content is managed independently from channel-specific templates, meaning the same approved component can be delivered to print, email, SMS, web and mobile without duplication. This eliminates the need for channel-based silos, reduces the risk of inconsistencies, and makes it easier to support new channels as business needs evolve.

Within the hub, content sharing and reuse capabilities are critical. Common elements like disclosures or contact information should be managed from a single control point and reused across multiple communications and channels. This change in approach is not only far more efficient, but it also improves the accuracy and consistency of the end-customer experience.

The hub should support full cloud deployment, with both content management and composition running in the cloud. Cloud-native platforms lower ownership costs by reducing infrastructure and maintenance needs while delivering automatic upgrades, new features and security updates as soon as they are available. They should also be highly scalable, able to handle spikes in communication volume without disruption, and provide a secure, fault-tolerant environment that ensures stability.

Finally, look for no-code solutions that maximize control for business users. Non-technical teams should be able to manage the end-to-end process — from creating and updating communications to defining business rules and even adjusting composition templates — through a single, intuitive UI. When the change management process is no longer bottlenecked by IT availability, change cycles shrink from months to minutes, giving the business the agility to launch products faster, respond to client needs in real time, and meet regulatory deadlines with ease.

CCM modernization is no longer optional for organizations that want to stay competitive, control costs and deliver the modern, digital-first experiences customers expect. The barriers may seem daunting, but with a clear strategy and the right technology, organizations can finally tackle modernization with confidence and realize lasting business value.