New data from the latest Storyblok Global Speed-to-Market Benchmark report reveals the biggest causes and costs of slow delivery to market (GTM) today — with technology limitations at the center of the problem.
The world has shifted gears in recent years, and the speed of change has increased beyond anything we have seen before. Rapid advances in AI and technology, combined with the constant emergence of new digital channels and trends, have transformed the delivery of GTM.
The expectations of the customer and the organization are clear: deliver great work quickly or lose.
The problem is that although the expectations of acceleration in the market are up, only 22.5% of the groups say that they always deliver the quality that the market wants. That gap between intent and execution is clear.
So, what makes teams slow?
In the Global Speed-to-Market Benchmark survey, hundreds of GTM teams shared when the go-to-market process slows down — or, in some cases, stops altogether — what’s causing the delay, and what’s needed to achieve true speed-to-market today. Here’s what they had to say.
Constraints destroy the speed of GTM
Four major issues stand out from the survey’s findings – and each one traces back to technology limitations or dependencies.
1. Approval process
The approval process is the single biggest bottleneck in the GTM workflow, cited by over 50% of teams. More than half go through three or more rounds of content review, and nearly one in five endure five or more.
This rigorous review process is not driven by high standards. Usually, it is the result of a stack split.
When feedback is spread across tools, with no single source of truth, unclear exit ownership, and no hard deadline, reviews become a bottleneck that silently kills momentum. Technical failures are like process failures — and that adds significant unnecessary time to the GTM process.
A well-configured CMS is often the most efficient option here – and for GTM campaign delivery, that increasingly means a headless CMS. Because the content is disconnected from the presentation, a headless CMS keeps everything in one organized place that everyone involved (marketers, engineers, legal, and others) can review. There is no confusion of version. Just one content record for every reviewer.
Pair that with a built-in visual editor and in-app commenting, and you eliminate two major points of contention for content review. Participants can comment on specific items while directly seeing what’s going live, and feedback stays centralized and trackable instead of scattered across inboxes and tools.
The takeaway
The report’s data supports that conclusion: only 50% of teams say their CMS supports speed to market. For MarTech leaders evaluating their stack, the content review layer deserves the same consideration as automated platforms and analytics infrastructure if the goal is to deliver faster, more accurate results.
2. Over-reliance on engineers
Thirty-eight percent of marketing and digital teams need engineering support for most or all campaigns, according to the survey. More than one-third of engineers spend between a quarter and a half of their working time supporting GTM campaigns. And 42% say their technology platform makes that support more difficult than it needs to be.
When publishing a landing page, updating campaign assets, or changing a simple content block requires a developer ticket, two things happen: marketers lose speed and developers lose focus. No team can perform at their best, and every presentation takes longer than it should.
The takeaway
The solution is not to give marketers and other groups access to the entire technology stack and codebase. It’s about building a stack that allows each team to work independently where appropriate.
For marketing teams, that means owning the work that’s basically theirs: creating campaign pages, reviewing content, launching publications, and managing assets. For engineers, it means giving back time to focus on high-value technical work.
Once again, this is where a headless CMS proves its worth for teams trying to improve speed to market. Separating content from code gives marketing teams a dedicated space to create, edit, and publish without touching the code base. Developers define the architecture, advertisers own the content, and implementation is no longer dependent on developer support at all times.
3. Incorporating technical limitations
This finding is not surprising based on the data to date. About a third of GTM teams cite technical limitations as the main cause of slow delivery. The main problems are complicated deployment processes (39%), problems integrating tools (25%), and different or outdated systems (14%).
What makes this ban so expensive is how invisible it is. Missed deadlines are marked. Approval delays are increasing. But technical limitations are quietly building as developers work out ways to work, vendors wait for tickets, and teams begin to accept that “this takes a long time.”
The takeaway
A comprehensive assessment of where technology limitations are limiting speed to market – especially in the upstream areas – is essential for GTM teams today, as well as exploring alternatives that can support modern delivery requirements.
The data is clear: the group can move as fast as their technology allows.
4. Firefighting after launch: The hidden speed tax
Even when groups get campaigns out the door, the work is often not done. Post-launch adjustments affect 79% of teams at least sometimes. When projects go live with mistakes, the fallout happens quickly and publicly: user experience is broken, results are compromised, and engineers are pulled from planned work to firefighting.
For teams that are already heavily reliant on developers to publish anything, that’s where the damage comes together. Disparate, outdated tools often make developers a critical part of every GTM launch, and when post-launch maintenance piles onto that workload, the ticket queue quickly backs up.
The takeaway
Teams that break the cycle address the source of the problem: the technology stack – and specifically the CMS.
A headless CMS reduces risk by allowing teams to deploy and preview content changes outside of the codebase, so code updates can accidentally break page layouts, and approvals are the only thing that goes live. The result is fewer surprises, faster delivery, and more time spent running campaigns instead of fixing them.
Slow GTM delivery charges
The Global Speed-to-Market Benchmark survey examined the causes and costs of slow speed-to-market. The data is clear:
- Lost income (22%)
- Missed market opportunities (18%)
- Reduced marketing effectiveness (15%)
These three best results are already affecting many GTM groups, almost the part that says their competitors are moving faster than them. At the same time, only 22.5% feel they consistently deliver at the pace that today’s market demands.
Data shows that teams are already feeling the impact of these issues – and the cost of slow delivery doesn’t stop there. It affects your people, too.
The gap between what teams know how to do and what their processes and technology stacks allow them to deliver can be a silent, persistent source of disjointedness. It often leads to low morale and growing frustration in all groups, creating the ultimate risk – which is reflected 58% for engineers considering leaving their jobs due to inadequate or outdated technology stacks.
A growing leadership gap
A key conclusion from the report was a clear disconnect between leadership priorities and the investment needed to achieve them.
Fifty-six percent of executives rate speed to market as important or critical to growth. However only 36.5% of respondents believe that senior leadership is doing enough to support and develop us. The urgency is there, but the commitment to enable delivery often isn’t.
But data is changing that conversation.
When constraints are identified, quantified, and tied directly to revenue risk and competitive disadvantage, speed to market ceases to be an abstract priority and becomes a tangible business.
In leadership, that means knowing where to act. For GTM teams, it means having the evidence and focus needed to drive meaningful progress.
How to close the speed-to-market gap
Most of the bottles and results in this article and report are not new. What has changed is the cost of indifference.
In a market where AI has compressed timelines, audience expectations are sky-high, and competitors are moving fast, a slow or fragmented technology stack is no longer just a distraction – it’s a strategic imperative.
The teams that always get to market at the right speed don’t do it by working hard or hiring big teams. They have built a technical foundation that creates confidence, independence, and efficiency throughout the organization. Advertisers manage their work, developers are freed from regular GTM tickets, stakeholders know exactly what will go live, and the whole process becomes easier.
The full Storyblok Global Speed-to-Market Benchmark Report describes comprehensive data, analysis, and an actionable framework for closing the speed-to-market gap.
