Transforming CX: insights from our Adobe Experience Cloud experts - a summary.

It has been a transformative year for experience business. In today’s experience economy, the insights shared by Netcentric’s community of Adobe Experience Cloud experts throughout the year will be vital to staying competitive in those to come.

In this article, we bring you a summary of the most important takeaways we shared with you on delivering cutting-edge customer experiences. Let’s take a look:

2019 was the year that a holistic approach to asset management became a requirement for brands to compete in the experience economy. Studies show businesses that adopt enterprise digital asset management (DAM) solutions can boost their revenue by an average of 24%. Businesses need an approach to managing their assets that allows them to react dynamically within an increasingly volatile digital environment. That’s where a digital asset management (DAM) system comes in. Prepare your business with the framework for more seamless asset management and the rewards speak for themselves: organizations that leverage an intelligent DAM solution see an average three-year ROI of 366%, according to new data. For more insights into how to revolutionize asset management, download our white paper on how to achieve smarter assets today.

Personalization is by no means a new trend: it’s a business buzzword that’s been circulating for years. However, 2019 was the year that personalization in real-time became critical. Buyer journeys are far from linear: constantly changing technologies, such as voice recognition, are affecting consumer habits. This means traditional customer journey mapping is no longer useful, so how can companies effectively make real-time engagement possible using personalized content?  The core idea here is defining what a customer needs, when they need it, and via which channel.

This means brands need a digital marketing stack that allows them to take advantage of customer data, to offer more streamlined and enjoyable user experiences by precisely defining audiences. That’s why we unlocked a fully targeted platform for Miles & More which, thanks to the capabilities of Adobe Target, allows their teams to carry out real-time experience targeting without transitioning between different tools. We also brought you insights into our Adobe Target implementation for Swiss insurance giant, Helvetia. This client needed access to advanced analytics to visualize customer behavior across touchpoints. Thanks to our solution, they’ve built a state-of-the-art personalization, powered by Adobe Target, that’s driven a 10% increase in mobile traffic. “We now have the set of tools that will help us drive data-driven optimization and experience targeting, thanks to Netcentric’s expertise,” says Mirko Paci, Lab Leader Digital Communications and Digital Analyst at Helvetia.

As brands move towards a more data-centric operating model, many are creating data lakes. However, organizations lack the tools to use that data in real-time, or to stitch together data streams to gain a complete customer picture - combining transactional data with behavioral data for instance. This year, Adobe announced global availability of the Adobe Experience Platform, the first purpose-built customer experience management platform. Its powerful CDP has the capacity to address both data in-motion and at-rest, enabling live activation of customer profiles on-the-fly. The result is robust data ingestion, governance and visualization, so brands can provide the right experiences at the right time, to the right customers. What’s more, AEP enables businesses to access the full power of business intelligence and Adobe Sensei, the innovative intelligence layer for AEP. We’ve brought you our expert insights into how the new AEP will open doors for experience business and unlock real-time personalized interactions. 

Recent years have seen a transition within the IT industry to more cloud-based infrastructures. During such transformations, the chosen provider plays a big factor in the success of the project, as does the location of the datacenter. When we needed to migrate a large AEM-based web portal to a new infrastructure setup, the choice of Amazon Web Services was a straightforward one. To get the most out of your cloud infrastructure, follow a DevOps approach, and automate where possible whilst ensuring the infrastructure is still maintainable. This year, Netcentric became an Amazon Web Services Consulting Partner, an addition to our portfolio of business-critical solutions which will allow us to build future-proof flexible infrastructures for our clients. 

An innovative technological foundation for next-level customer experience is critical for success. However, to truly succeed in making CX a business driver, brands need an ideological reconsideration of how they work too. To fully execute your brand strategy, customer experience must be built into the fabric of the business’ culture and operations. Therefore, in 2019 it became more vital than ever to align the entire business around the importance of data analytics, and install a customer-centric mindset from the kickoff of each project. For instance, when approaching a large-scale Adobe implementation for a leading financial services company, the key pillars of the transformation included changing mindsets, facilitating collaboration, becoming more transparent and more agile. The success of the new AEM platform relied on diverse parties coming together behind a single vision. 

In the experience economy, winning brands will be those that embrace change, establishing a creative and agile foundation from which they can adapt fast and evolve constantly. An innovator’s work is never done, so get ready to test and optimize constantly. 

Delivering exceptional customer experiences is an ongoing journey, and Netcentric has the expertise to support your brand on its way. Our key insights of 2019 are:

• Invest in asset management to allow you to react dynamically to customer needs. 
• It’s time to take personalization real-time. Assess whether you have the tools to create live data-driven experiences, on the fly. 
• You need a robust data ingestion, governance and visualization strategy, and the right tools to access a comprehensive picture of your customers.
• A flexible infrastructure provides a vital foundational basis for responding to evolving expectations, but choose your provider wisely. 
• It’s not all about technology: to convert brand interest into revenue, you’ll need an ideological rethink that aligns your entire business around customer experience. 

This year, Netcentric became the only Adobe Solution Partner worldwide with five Adobe Specializations. We continued to develop our close relationship with Adobe, being named their Delivery Partner of the Year EMEA at the Adobe Summit in London, where our very own Dirk Rudolph won the AEM Rockstar award, and presented how to achieve state-of-the-art responsive email templating in the Adobe Experience Cloud (AEM). Not only that, but we were honored to be awarded the 2019 Audience Choice Award Best Innovation Experience for implementing an innovative asset management system for Siemens. 

Netcentric sits at the right hand of Adobe, and at the cutting edge of customer experience. We’re ready and waiting to make your digital vision a reality.