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Adobe Offers Experience Manager as Cloud Service

January 16, 2020 CRM News and Info

Adobe on Monday announced the availability of Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud Service for B2B and B2C companies of all sizes.

The service provides “a globally scalable, agile and secure digital foundation that optimizes marketer and developer workflows across the entire content lifecycle, and connects to data insights to deliver personalized experiences across the customer journey,” said Haresh Kumar, director of product marketing for Adobe Experience Manager.

“It allows companies to be far more nimble and scale at any point, because Experience Manager is always on, always current, always at scale, and always learning,” he told CRM Buyer.

Built-In Intelligence

Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud Service integrates scalable, secure and agile content management; digital asset management; digital signage management; and customer communication applications.

It eliminates the need to build in downtime to accommodate version upgrades.
The production environment is configured and constantly maintained to be consistent with Adobe’s standard security practices and controls.

Brands can combine insights from a customer’s previous purchases and interest in emails about particular products using Adobe Sensei, the company’s artificial intelligence and machine learning framework, to recommend items the customer is likely to purchase. Adobe Sensei also lets brands automatically tag images and videos.

Brands can create and deliver experiences across any channel, device or app, using built-in Adobe Sensei capabilities to automate the adaptation of content for different channels.

Teams can work simultaneously on multiple assets for multiple channels, saving time.

Pricing scales seamlessly and the solution can be scaled based on usage metrics.

Early results from mid-market companies to large enterprises using the application show ingestion time is 50 percent faster, administrative efficiency increased 40 percent and author productivity increased by more than 20 percent, Adobe said.

Good for Customers, Good for Adobe

“This is a good move for Adobe, and one that should have considerable benefits for its customers,” remarked Nicole France, principal analyst at Constellation Research.

By redesigning Adobe Experience Manager to operate through a microservices architecture, the company “is making it significantly easier for its customers both to integrate various sources of digital assets and content, and to present that content across digital channels,” she told CRM Buyer.

In general, offerings that manage multiple sources of content and information across multiple channels with a consistent, easy-to-use interface make it possible for companies to streamline and improve the way they interact with their customers, France observed.

They therefore let staff focus on the messages or sentiments they’re trying to communicate and how to do that most effectively rather than on the minutiae of which assets and channels to use, she noted.

“Focusing on the higher-order customer interaction, rather than the mechanics of how to make it happen, certainly improves a company’s ability to create positive customer experiences,” France said.

However, the term “experience manager” is a misnomer, in her view.

“This really isn’t a tool for managing customer experiences — not least because no one can ‘manage’ customer experiences — but one for dynamically managing the assets that form a large part of digital customer interactions,” France explained.

“Experiences are, by definition, subjective. It’s impossible to manage a customer’s experience, but it is possible to stack the deck to make it more likely that the experience is a good one. Having the right tools is an important step in that direction,” she said.

Continuous Innovation

“This really is a matter of speed and ease rather than a revolutionary shift in offering, allowing for an acceleration of delivery of omnichannel assets,” said Liz Miller, principal analyst at Constellation Research.

For both B2B and B2C companies, the modernization of the Experience Manager architecture “enables the power of the cloud to meet the power of creativity, allowing for a broad range of assets to be quickly accessed, updated, personalized or modified on the fly with strong uptime and availability,” she told CRM Buyer.

Access to Adobe’s continuous innovation means customers do not have to wait for the next update or round of releases, Miller said.”Innovation can be made available on the fly and without lag.”

For B2C companies in particular, the rapid scale up and down based on their needs means the assets they need and the experience they want to deliver through their content “is just as robust in points of uptime crunch as it is in low traffic moments,” she added, which “empowers performance at the scale of a customer, versus the scale and uptime availability of how the Adobe platform is implemented.”

Edge on the Competition

Oracle and Salesforce have been offering service clouds for years, and SAP is working with Accenture to develop vertical service clouds for industries.

Adobe’s heritage in content development gives it the edge, because “Experience Manager empowers the engagement process from creative ideation all the way through to optimized asset delivery,” Miller said. Adobe is “looking to eliminate the creative gap between asset creation and engagement.”

Richard%20Adhikari Adobe Offers Experience Manager as Cloud Service
Richard Adhikari has been an ECT News Network reporter since 2008. His areas of focus include cybersecurity, mobile technologies, CRM, databases, software development, mainframe and mid-range computing, and application development. He has written and edited for numerous publications, including Information Week and Computerworld. He is the author of two books on client/server technology.
Email Richard.

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CRM Watchlist Winners with Distinction 2019 part one: Adobe

May 18, 2019 CRM News and Info

In February I announced the winners of what was arguably the most difficult CRM Watchlist to win. For example, fewer winners by 50% than ever before. No elite winners, and only a couple of winners with distinction. Really hard. Yet, there were winners, and two of them were with distinction.

I was busy flying around, so I wasn’t able to start writing up the winners as I have done for most of the 13 years I’ve had anything even resembling a Watchlist winners group. I had to get out my book (400 pages on customer engagement, and it’s called the Commonwealth of Self Interest: Business Success Through Customer Engagement). I had clients to tend to, and endless conferences to attend. All that — except getting the book out — is still my excuse, but I’ve decided it’s time to give you the whys when it comes to what made the 13 total companies the Watchlist winners, and the what — each of the conversations about the company will come with a limited set of suggestions on what they need to do next to sustain their impact.

Before I get to the actual analysis of the two 2019 CRM Watchlist Winners with Distinction, Adobe and Salesforce, over the next week or so, I want to give you some idea of what I have to deal with when doing this — which also addresses something that, if you ever think about what analysts do, can be interesting unto itself.

Must read

Bias in service of the work

One thing that any honest analyst will tell you is that there is a bit of science, a bit of art, and a bit of pre-existing bias that impacts the development of these analyses. For example, it was once put to me by an institutional analyst from one of the larger analyst firms that he tended to do more for free for the companies that have good people and that have a good relationship with him. Not a paid relationship. A good relationship.

This is a simple and unencumbered example of how human bias — the very same ones that make or break a customer’s long-term experience with a company — have an impact on even the most seemingly unbiased thinking. If you as a company or as an individual show that you value someone, they will feel valued and respond accordingly. No one is entirely emotionally agnostic when it comes to how they relate to being made to feel important or at least wanted.

If I’m a customer, that is what I want of you. Make me feel valued and in return your company will receive value from me. If I’m an analyst and thus write about companies, if I like the company I’ll tend to lean toward the positive. If I don’t, I’ll tend to lean toward the negative. If all other analysts want to deny this, fine. Go right ahead. I won’t question you. But I will, at least, speak for myself.

Also: Impressions #1 (2019): Random thoughts on the customer-facing world in the new year

The initial question I asked — after spending weeks trying to get on my radar — was: How do I put my bias aside to do the cold-blooded, left-brained research to come up with a judgment that was devoid of emotion about the companies that I covered?

The feedback I got from myself was: I can’t. Not going to happen.

I realized I had asked the wrong question. The real question was not “How do you put the bias aside?”, because much as I’d like to, I know I’m not really doing that by saying I am, but instead, “How do I use the biases to help me in the analysis of the companies I cover?” It took me a while, but I figured it out. What’s funny is that it was obvious. While I’d love to have called it an epiphany, which would have made me sound like I was really smart and prone to important breakthroughs, it was more like “Duh! Why didn’t I think of this years ago?”

The answer was in the question. The way to step outside the bias was to use them by looking at why they existed in the first place. Why is it that I like this company for that or dislike that company for this in the first place? What are they doing or not doing that gives me that emotionally positive or negative patina when I think of them, deal with them, or write about them? In other words, what are the actions, policies, programs, and who are the people that were the molten material that forged the biases to begin with? What was it that created the biases? For example, in the case of the two current Winners with Distinction, it is probably no coincidence that both have exceptionally good analyst relations programs run by people who I respect, personally like a great deal, and who, in a few cases, have become my personal friends.

“OMG,” you might be thinking (though I’m not sure you think in acronyms, do you?), “He is so prejudiced that the Watchlist can’t be trusted.”

Hold up, buster. Don’t take this too far. I’m telling you things that impact me as an actual person, not a persona. And how I can use those things that are quarrelsome potentially to make what I do work even better. There are a lot of caveats to this — and a lot of other factors that go into every decision I make when it comes to serving the public, which is who I see myself responsible to as an analyst.

The first broad framework that I operate from is, in the tech company world, I don’t give a hoot as to who wins the competitive wars. Client or not, company I like or not, people I love at the company or not, I don’t care. The market is huge. CRM alone is $ 40 billion, and if you take the larger, still somewhat amorphous customer engagement technology potential (I hesitate to call it a market yet), it’s so much bigger than that. Plenty of room for all the companies out there to do remarkably well without trashing each other or without me and others making them our knights. That is one way I am utterly agnostic. Human bias to this end is irrelevant. I can love you or hate you (though that is far too powerful a level of emotion than I have for any company), but I wish you well in the market.

Also, the bias is not the conclusive reason that any of the companies who win or don’t win the Watchlist win or don’t win the Watchlist. Adobe and Salesforce might have great analyst relations programs, but that is one of an incredible number of factors that are determinant in victory or loss.

For example, there is one winner, who I will leave anonymous out of respect for their win, who’s AR department I don’t think does a great job at all, but they still won and scored extremely well all in all. Another winner has an AR department with a person I don’t really care for because of their arrogance, but I have no real proof that this is anything beyond their relationship with me, because I am an independent. This individual thinks independents are meaningless in the world of influencers. Only Gartner and Forrester “count.” But the company that they represent won. “They” are not the company. There are several companies with excellent analyst relations people and/or programs who didn’t win because they were deficient in other areas that carried more weight.

I am always going to try to be fair. I can use the bias I do have because, when I examine their origin, I often find that they show me what led to them. It could be the culture of the company or the way that they have institutionalized a process or procedure or the effort that they make, which I can then corroborate because other analysts I use as a sounding board confirm it to me. I make decisions not only upon reflection, but upon inspection.

The reason I am telling you this is because I am the sole judge of the CRM Watchlist, and I would like you to understand what goes into making the decisions I make. I need to be at least honest with you. (I hate using the word “transparent” or “transparency” — so overused and so not actually the case with so many of those using it). I peruse thousands of pages of submissions and score everything myself. I’ve had 13 years to hone the criteria and the methodology and to reduce the amount of subjectivity in the decisions. I am proud of that. But I am a human being, and over the years I had to deal with those things that could change an outcome due to personal bias. I have done that by putting those biases in service of the effort as I described above. They become servants of the effort rather than the arbiter of the effort to choose the winners. The reasons for the biases become factors in the decisions. Regardless, I must be ruthless — the final weighted score, which I don’t know until I’ve plugged in all the numbers (a lot of numbers) is the final score. If your company loses by a tenth of a point, whether I love you or not, you lose. Even if you are my best friend and saved me from a fire years ago. By the way, that never happened. There was no fire. And very few of you are my best friends. Though I like you.

There you have it. Some definition of my thinking, my decision making, and my behavior — and how they impact the final choices I make in the Watchlist. A truly long-winded introduction to the actual reason for this post. But one that had to be said.

OK, with that clarified, on to the winners with distinction — and since Adobe was the highest scorer this year, let’s start with them. Next week, Salesforce.

Adobe

Many years ago, probably a decade ago, I got a request from Adobe to have a 90-minute conversation on something that they wanted my thinking on. They were not my client, but then again, I’m honored that any company cares about my opinion, so I had the conversation. To be candid, it was a horrible conversation — one of the most annoying ones I ever had. It was on whether positioning their technology as customer experience technology was a good idea in the context of a broader discussion on whether or not there was a customer experience technology market.

Also: Best Buy, the worst buy: Lessons from the field and online

At the time, I said emphatically there is no such thing as customer experience technology. And to this day, given what I meant and possibly what they asked I remain adamant. What I meant at the time (and still mean) was/is simple. There is no way to enable the larger idea of a customer experience via technology. Customer experience — the overarching kind ––is how a customer feels about a company over time. You cannot enable via technology how a customer feels about anything, including their feelings about your company.

That said, Adobe made the right decision to ignore me. Maybe I misunderstood what customer experience they were talking about and in deference to their victory in the Watchlist, I’m willing to say that I did. Maybe they weren’t evolved to where they are now, and I wasn’t misunderstanding that. But either way, they have evolved to what Joe Pine defined in his seminal book The Experience Economy as far back as 1997 as modular experiences — and what I call consumable experiences. In this case, what Adobe has done is create an almost unstoppable engine for the creation and distribution of those monetizable, consumable experiences.

What do I mean by consumable experiences? To put it simply — think Disney or American Girl stores or Baseball Fantasy Camp. They are not products or services; they are events marked by time that evoke a memorable emotion. You’ve had them. I don’t know what they are since I have no clue at all who is reading this, but it is just like the one that you’re thinking about now. It’s a potential ‘wow’ and, minimally, a satisfied content memory. Oh, and you’ve paid for it. A lot, usually. Someone of my generation who goes to a Baseball Fantasy Camp is going there to basically make believe they are playing major league baseball — not because the environment is holographically reproducing a stadium with a screaming crowd, but because you are being taught and playing with a ball player who you watched when you were a kid, even idolized. And you are paying $ 3,000 for the weekend. You might come out of there with a product — some physical souvenir — but you paid for the experience and the memories and the revivification of your youth. That’s what I mean when I say consumable experience.

Adobe, to their great credit, is actually one of the only, if not the only, company that can make a real claim and prove the claim that they have the technology to create and distribute those consumable experiences. That not only makes them possibly unique but, given all the other things they do in the context of the 21st century connected customer, makes them a powerhouse that has done nothing but grow once they made several of the truly right decisions over the last four or five years — starting with their purchase of Neolane in 2013. They have grown to become one of the most important and interesting technology companies on the planet.

The CRM Watchlist is an impact award and it is hard not to see Adobe’s impact on the market and on how people use tools to create and distribute that aren’t strictly just marketing related. For example, for years, they’ve owned one of the two standards for digital documents, PDF, used by almost every business in the world as their standard for legal digital print. Meaning not only is it in the format that they want people to read when they send it to them, but also it is used as the base format for documents that need legal verification be it a (digital) signature or an audit trail. But they go much further than that. Photoshop is the industry standard for photography and imagine production and manipulation to the point that Photoshop is used as a verb for changing an image in some way. You know you are embedded in the infrastructure when your products name is a verb for an action or for a generic use of a product (i.e., tissue is Kleenex). It’s actually a big deal.

But none of that would get Adobe the CRM Watchlist Winner with Distinction. What took them to the promised land on the Watchlist (well, at least the entry at the River Jordan) is a change in their strategy and business model in 2017, when they realigned the company to the requirements of the market.

Platforms and Ecosystems

One thing that has characterized the communications revolution of the past decade and a half and all the successful efforts at digital business transformation over the last five years has been a vision, mission, strategy, programs, and worldview, governed by platforms and ecosystems.

Also: Conversational experiences: Building relationships one conversation at a time

What do I mean by that? First, let’s start with definitions and then we’ll continue with Adobe. The definition I’m using here for ecosystem is the original one that James Moore posited back in 1993 in an article entitled “Predators and Prey: A New Ecology of Competition” (Harvard Business Review):

“An economic community supported by a foundation of interacting organizations and individuals—the organisms of the business world. The economic community produces goods and services of value to customers who are themselves members of the ecosystem. The member organizations also include suppliers, lead producers, competitors and other stakeholders. Over time, they co- evolve their capabilities and roles and tend to align themselves with the directions set by one or more central companies. These companies holding leadership roles may change over time, but the function of ecosystem leader is valued by the community because it enables members to move toward shared visions to align their investments and to find mutually supportive roles.”

What I mean by platform is defined in a vastly oversimplified way by Techopedia as:

“… a group of technologies that are used as a base upon which other applications, processes or technologies are developed.”

Again, vastly oversimplified but for the purposes of this post, fine.

Adobe figured this out that the business world was moving toward customers and the platforms and ecosystems that were there to serve them. They began to retool and revamp their entire company to this end in 2017. It began with a semi-public announcement and discussion at the 2017 Adobe Digital Marketing (Now Adobe Experience Cloud) Summit. Abhay Parasnis, Adobe’s CTO, announced to a group of analysts that they were going to move the company to a model defined by platforms and what he called an Open Ecosystem. What that meant in practical terms is that the three clouds they have — Creative Cloud (Photoshop, Premiere Pro, Lightshop, Audition, etc.,), Document Cloud (Acrobat, etc.,), and the then Digital Marketing Cloud (Campaign, Target, Experience Manager) — were going to be integrated to a single platform. The clouds would of course still exist, but a platform that would integrate them all and allow you to build across and through them would be a priority for the engineers to accomplish by 2019, and thus, for the 2019 Watchlist, they had accomplished that.

The best reflection of the platform was/is the evolution of Adobe Experience Manager into a solution worthy of its name. If you take it back several years ago, it was a good product, but it was very misnamed for what it did. It was a digital asset management tool. An effective one, but not an “experience manager.” They even had cool demos around it (e.g. showing them how to drag and drop a video file in Salt Lake City that on a live screen changed a video being shown on one of those big screens in Times Square). But ultimately, all they really did, as cool as it was, is swap assets.

But that changed in 2018, when they showed a demo of Experience Manager integrated with Campaign, Photoshop, and their remarkably mature AI, Sensei. They were able to design experiences, create experiential marketing campaigns, deploy the campaigns, and get results using Experience Manager and Adobe Analytics. What made it even more valuable was the use of Sensei to identify the elements, assets, and attributes that were likely to be most effective and appealing in those campaigns meaning get the best results. Sensei, which had been announced in 2016, turned out to be remarkably mature for a two- or three-year-old product.

But that still left the ecosystem. What made their idea of an Open Ecosystem — specifically, not just an ecosystem — powerful was their perception of what that meant for their business model and technology offerings. They defined their ecosystem in terms of the customer: What do Adobe customers (of varying sorts) need end to end? They understood, as anyone dedicating to an ecosystem perspective does, that they already provide some of that, are building other aspects of that, can acquire a company or two to fill in gaps, and can partner with other companies to fill in the remaining gaps. But what made them even more progressive in their thinking was that they also realized, while they might offer something, someone else might offer a better version of it, and thus they would be willing to partner with them. No one else that I’ve come across was willing to take what was called in the late 90s coopetition as a model — meaning partner with your competitors for the betterment of the customers and the benefit of the partners.

This came to fruition in the Adobe-Microsoft partnership announced in 2017, one which I’ve written extensively on, because in my eyes at least, this is a paradigm for how a strategic go to market partnership should be run. If you want to read more on this from me — read this here. I call this the GARP — Get a Room Partnership (remember the movie the World According to Garp? No? What! It was also a book by John Irving. Still no. Hopeless. Adobe and Microsoft are intimate. They are sharing code, products, infrastructure, sales teams, leadership, and much more. This was a huge step for Adobe (and for Microsoft — which managed to fully integrate significant pieces of the Adobe Experience Cloud into their Dynamics 365 offering).

Recently, as part of Adobe extending their Open Ecosystem, they announced a partnership with ServiceNow will extend their impact into the world of customer experience and customer engagement, though most likely from its operational side. Its well worth reading these couple of paragraphs from the press release on the partnership, because this breaks new ground for both Adobe and ServiceNow.

Adobe and ServiceNow will enable integrations between Adobe Experience Platform and the ServiceNow Now Platform to enhance Adobe’s real-time customer profiles with rich customer data. This will create a more comprehensive view of a customer across their entire digital journey — from acquisition to service.

Additionally, Adobe Experience Cloud solutions will integrate with the ServiceNow Now Platform, including its Customer Service Management (CSM) solutions to enable better customer and employee experiences across both companies’ applications. Adobe and ServiceNow will partner to enable their mutual customers to integrate and leverage digital workflows, service catalogs, intelligent content, and knowledge management capabilities.

Will this rise to the level of GARP? I can’t say that though to be entirely candid, I doubt it. There are certain elements not present in this relationship such as the closeness as friends of the CEOs that are in the Microsoft relationship. Regardless, it will still be a valuable partnership if both sides execute on the commitment to it.

The other partnership that is worth mentioning here is the Open Data Initiative — a partnership between Adobe, Microsoft, and SAP to create a common data standard for interoperability. To be clear, this isn’t meant to be, to my knowledge (which I think is pretty accurate) for now at least, a universal common data standard — that would involve a different approach. This is meant to be for the companies that use any or all of the three companies’ technologies — each of which has its own specific data type(s).

Acquisitions

The extension of their impact and their ecosystem doesn’t stop with the partnerships though. In 2018, they made two acquisitions — both incredibly smart. Magento, a capable mid-market ecommerce platform and Marketo, an enterprise ready B2B Marketing Automation (or if you listen to them — customer engagement marketing) platform.

Also: Impressions on SAP CX Live, SAP during a walk on Calle de Vendedor

What made these interesting — and risky — is that both are in areas that Adobe had little-to-no experience in or even historically an appetite for. E-commerce was hardly at the center of their thinking when they made their last major acquisition — Neolane. At that time, they were interested in filling out their B2C marketing offer, and Neolane’s core became Adobe Campaign. But e-commerce is an area that the major players — Oracle (ATG via acquisition for on premise and more recently their capable cloud offering, Commerce Cloud); SAP (acquisition of hybris, which was the best of the e-commerce platforms), Salesforce (acquisition of Demandware — B2C e-commerce and now Cloudcraze for B2B e-commerce), and Microsoft (at least so far, via partners like Episerver, et al.,) were all interested in for extending their platforms and, with engagement and experience at the forefront, their entry into that part of the world of customers. Initially, some of them tried to justify the acquisitions by calling it “the fourth pillar of CRM,” which, of course, it wasn’t and isn’t). After some fast pushback, they dropped that silly idea and recognized that it is an important avenue to and for customers on its own. Adobe, thankfully, never took that messaging up and instead recognized that their acquisition of Magento simply made sense — e-commerce transactions are typically not just the product of the utilitarian nature of the transaction but of the experience that the customer is having in the course of that decision to buy and the actual transaction. But Adobe’s customers were enterprise B2C marketing, so the question of being able to scale Magento still remains just that — a question. That isn’t something that they have resolved yet. But will have to. But they have the additional capability and it definitely increases their footprint in the customer-facing markets.

The acquisition of Marketo gave Adobe something they didn’t have: B2B Marketing, which, again, places them nearly on the level of the Big Four in their impact and scope. Marketo was the last remaining major independent player at the time of the acquisition. With both acquisitions in hand, new markets and greater impact in the market are both starting to be realized. But before you all get too giddy with glee over Adobe’s growing impact, please make sure you see the things they need to do to sustain and/or grow that impact below. There are three I’m identifying, but there are more than three needed. Three is all you get in the Watchlist posts. The rest is off-book.

But before we get there, there is another reason that Adobe was this year’s highest scorer and an impact player in the foreseeable future — and that’s their continued thought leadership.

Thought Leadership — Creativity in the Service of Thinking

Adobe, for the past several years, has been a consistent force when it comes to providing genuinely valuable thought leadership. Their CMO.com site has been the center for high quality content that ranges from thinking at the conceptual and framework level for customer experience to the how-to level when it comes to Adobe Experience Cloud products. Their approach to thought leadership is diverse. It is delivered in multiple formats via multiple media. The reports, and the site is well designed, not surprising given the creative side of the company. CMO.com itself is I think the second-best thought leadership central site in the industry (slight edge to SAP’s future-of-commerce site for reasons explained when I write up SAP). Look at this example. It shows the quality and diversity of the content and the look and feel:

cmo com CRM Watchlist Winners with Distinction 2019 part one: Adobe — Adobe’s CMO.com Thought Leadership Site

That level of thought leadership and attention to engaging design makes this an industry “Go-To” site — one that enhances Adobe’s reputation as not just a leader in the market but a trusted adviser to their customers — present and future.

But there is also one more area in which Adobe excels that pretty much will guarantee their future impact.

Outreach

Adobe is very good at Analyst Relations and Public Relations. Their outreach to analysts and their establishment of a regular “cadence” (their word, not mine, though if I use it, its mine too, I guess), is complete and consistent. When analysts need something, they get it. When news goes out, analysts hear about it. They don’t kiss the analysts’ butts, but they make sure that the analysts get what they need to do their job. They understand the nature of the influencer world (for the most part though they could do incrementally better if they choose to) and thus the institutional, boutique, and independent analysts and influencers who aren’t necessarily analysts, all slurp at the same trough. Their small AR team is among the best in the biz.

Also: Microsoft-Adobe’s amazing partnership: Creating a new category?

That continues on the PR side, too. The combination of internal PR and agencies they work with get hundreds of placements every year. Shantanu Narayan, Adobe’s CEO, is available and out in the market as often as he needs to be. What makes that part interesting is that most other CEOs are tied up by operations and think they can’t leave or the ops will fall about. Shantanu Nayaran thinks the opposite. He will handle what he can, but others can handle the ops, and he needs to be out amongst the people — and the impact of that decision is obvious in the impact they have on the market.

Summary

What does this all mean so far for the Watchlist? Think of it this way. The Watchlist is an impact award, and it is based on the impact you’ve just had in the immediate year that has passed and the likely impact you will have roughly three years from that date. Adobe, through these alliances and the evolution of its platform, is becoming not just a unique player in its ability to create consumable experiences and deploy and manage campaigns (i.e. experiential marketing); not just a thought leader in the customer engagement world, but a market maker — one with a vastly increased distribution network for its efforts via the strategic partnerships that either have been announced or they may have in the works (though to be clear, I am unaware of any others beyond Microsoft and ServiceNow). From 2017 to now, they have increased their impact in the markets they are part of — and continued their alignment with customer needs and demands as the markets have evolved/matured. A year ago, they were the 0.5 of the Big 4.5 (Salesforce, Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP being the 4.0). This year I called it in January the Big 4.8, because of the almost visceral increase in Adobe’s power/impact/influence. They were the No. 1 scorer this year on the Watchlist because of all the attributes that I have identified here. I only see it continuing but they have other things they need to do to be able to sustain that impact — and grow it.

Here they are:

Three Things to Consider

Scale up their “Good Works” — and make it known: They do some good — spending more than $ 36 million around the world donating time and money, but at their scale and size, it would be wise to increase the efforts and organize programs to support organizations that are doing good. Part of the world that they (and we all) live in is governed by the good that companies do — and the demands from employees and customers that the companies that they deal with do more than just sell stuff is becoming increasingly strident. Plus, companies (and individuals) owe the world more than just a residence in it. Adobe, for its size, needs to scale up their efforts in the social sphere.
Marketo cultural and company integration: At the Adobe Experience Summit in March, Marketo had a nearly independent presence. It was almost as if there were co-located conferences for Adobe and Marketo. The lack of integration of the companies was apparent. While this may be a strategy, not just a slowly evolving effort, it is not something that should be allowed to occur a lot longer. Take the Magento model — an effective not terribly long-term integration of the two companies — and reproduce it with Marketo. I recognize that Marketo is a lot more difficult, but at this point given the forces in the market that are driving the idea that B2C and B2B are going away as separate categories (“at the end of every B is a C”), one which I agree with but think it has a slower arc that most analysts think, is going to require Adobe to get Marketo into the fold sooner than later.
Vertical strategies: Adobe has a vertical strategy. You see it when they speak about retail and entertainment/media, but it seems to be somewhat limp. With the acquisition of Marketo, their industries reach becomes greater by the acquisition, and the opportunity around vertically specific solutions significantly increases. They need to not only organize a broader, more encompassing vertical strategy, but they should be more public about their penetration into the industries. Their customer references, their public stage customer speeches and discussions all indicate vertical penetration, but their messaging around that doesn’t indicate any recognition of it (meaning the customers on the stage are not seen or spoken about at all as reflective of Adobe’s penetration into an industry). The net net? Develop a vertical strategy. Talk about it.

OK enough about Adobe. Next week, we move on to the other CRM Watchlist 2019 Winner with Distinction: Salesforce.

If you are interested in participating in the CRM Watchlist 2020, send me an email at paul-greenberg3@the56group.com requesting a registration form. Registration has been open since February 2019.

Previous and related coverage:

Modernizing B2B sales: Here’s a formula for winning the race

Today’s Formula 1 car is a high-speed data hub covered in sensors that measure every performance detail as well as the driver’s biometrics. Meanwhile, B2B sales is stuck in first gear. Here’s how to get to the top step of the podium.

Customer engagement: Context, meaning, and measurement

Industry expert practitioner Elizabeth MacAuley-Italiano gives her take on customer engagement, its definition, framework, and its practicality. Pay close attention — this can help define what you do moving forward.

ABM is good, but CBM — courage-based marketing — is better

Shail Khiyara, CXO of UIPath writes of something that is different and interesting and important for marketers and pretty much everyone to understand in the 21st Century: Taking chances, innovating, showing some courage in how you address the marketplace.

Adobe buys Marketo: Who wins, who to watch

Chris Fletcher, founder of the Aegean Group, former senior analyst at Gartner Group, and now an independent, opines on Adobe’s Marketo acquisition. You’d do well to read and listen. Chris has the chops. And the knowledge. And the experience.

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Adobe previews connected car platform with maintenance tips

March 27, 2019 Big Data

At its annual Summit conference in Las Vegas this week, Adobe took the wraps off of a cloud-based app designed to anticipate — or mitigate, worst-case scenario — serious mechanical issues. It made its debut during the eighth annual Adobe Sneaks, an internal program that offers Adobe engineers, researchers, product managers, and designers the chance to submit proposals for an opportunity to demonstrate them in front of an audience of thousands.

The service in question — which doesn’t have a name yet — leverages vehicle telemetry to provide predictive recommendations on maintenance needs. By capturing key data points like battery performance and engine health, it’s able to suggest part repairs that might save hundreds in costs. Moreover, it enables users to send aggregated and anonymous reports automakers can use to identify problematic patterns in car fleets.

The app’s user-facing dashboard calculates and collates metrics like fuel economy, battery voltage, average rotations per minute (RPM), and percentage engine load. Recommendations appear both in the form of natural language notifications — for instance, “Your car’s performance can be improved significantly by making minor changes to your driving style” — and a Driving Status icon in the upper-right corner. Nifty shortcuts surface charts that plot acceleration and engine usage over time, along with a geographic map of recently completed routes.

Adobe previews connected car platform with maintenance tips

Above: The automaker dashboard.

Image Credit: Adobe

As for carmakers, they get a UI that highlights vehicles at medium, low, and high risk of engine and battery failure. Stats like voltage and RPM are averaged across makes and models (e.g., SUV, hatchback, sedan, and crossover) and accompanied by a pie chart breaking down fleet composition.

“When cars are taken in for maintenance, consumers have minimal control in the interaction,” Adobe said in a statement. “With little data to draw from, recommendations on repairs and upkeep are largely taken at face value. [This app] allows users to be more proactive.”

It’s hardly a new idea. Canadian platform provider Moijo recently partnered with Bosch to deploy what it calls an “integrated internet of things platform for connected vehicles” — one that can detect when an accident occurs and evaluate its severity, and transmit data via Moijo’s cloud to emergency services. Meineke Car Care Centers sells the Meineke Revvy, a 4G-capable dongle that connects to a car’s OBD-II port to perform diagnostics, monitor performance and driving style, and deliver insights. San Francisco-based startup Automatic, which was acquired by SiriusXM in 2017, offered a similar service, as does Munic and pay-per-mile insurance provider Metromile.

Why the explosion in aftermarket automotive telematics? Cash — and lots of it. By 2025, it’s estimated that there will be 116 million connected cars in the U.S. And according to McKinsey, vehicle telematics could create USD $ 1.5 trillion — or 30 percent more — in additional revenue potential by 2030.

Adobe, of course, isn’t pivoting away from its bread-and-butter businesses. On Monday, it debuted a collection of new AI-centric services (in beta) in Experience Platform (formerly Cloud Platform) — its sprawling family of content, development, and customer relationship management products — designed to drive customer engagement and highlight key points in client relationships, including a tool that recommends ways marketing engagements might be tailored to target specific user segments.

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Big Data – VentureBeat

Adobe buys Marketo: Who wins, who to watch

October 2, 2018 CRM News and Info

This is the first of two posts related to Adobe — the first one is by Chris Fletcher, and the second one is by me from more of an Adobe-Microsoft partnership standpoint. I know Dreamforce just passed us by, and you want to hear my take on it. But first, these two posts. I figured I’d wait until Dreamforce was over — since no one in the tech world would pay attention to anything except around Dreamforce.

Chris is eminently qualified to speak on this topic. Chris was a Gartner analyst, and martech was one of the domains he covered for years. It in fact predates Gartner to when he was an analyst at AMR, a company that Gartner acquired in 2009.

He has more than a decade in the space. So, Chris, now an independent analyst, knows from what he speaks. He, knowing him, would be too humble to tell you how trusted he is as an analyst to give a fair assessment of a company — good or bad. But, trust me, he’s trusted.

Not only all that, but he is a truly good person who is nothing but kind-hearted and honest to a fault. I welcome him here. If you want to reach him, email him: Chris.Fletcher@AegeanGroup.tech

Take it away, Chris.

Featured stories

Adobe just announced its acquisition of Marketo, a leading marketing automation SaaS platform that supports (mostly) B2B marketing campaigns and lead management. Although the acquisition price is an eye-popping $ 4.75 billion (Vista Equity Partners acquired Marketo for about $ 1.8 billion not long ago), the acquisition is a net positive for Adobe and for its customers, but possibly not so positive for Marketo competitors. I’ve been covering Marketo and its competitors in the B2B marketing segment since about 2013, when I researched and wrote the inaugural Magic Quadrant for CRM Lead Management (and four follow-on MQs in 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017).

Also: Adobe releases patch out of schedule to squash critical code execution bug

Here’s what you need to know

Marketo competes mostly in the B2B marketing automation/campaign management segment (although it also showed its ability to scale the Marketo platform and compete in the crowded B2C marketing segment a couple of years ago).

Marketo’s primary competitors include: Salesforce (mostly Pardot, but also parts of the Marketing Cloud); Oracle (mostly Eloqua, but also BlueKai, Responsys, and Content Marketing); IBM (currently called Watson Campaign Automation, but in reality a mash-up of the former Unica product, Silverpop, analytics from multiple platforms, and, of course, Watson); and in some use cases, SAP. Non-direct competitors include HubSpot (B2B marketing and lead management, but focused on SMB and mid-sized companies), Pegasystems, bpm’online, and a few others.

Surprisingly (to me, at least), Microsoft has mostly been a no-show in this segment; Its acquisition of MarketingPilot did little to strengthen its offerings, and while Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a strong CRM product, it lacks native marketing automation capability that can compete with the leaders, though it does provide it B2C via the Adobe partnership.

Also: Adobe adds new email marketing features to Campaign

The B2B marketing segment has been incredibly hot over the past five to seven years, building in part on the investments in CRM and specifically SFA that companies have made. After investing millions in CRM/SFA platforms, and fueling a multi-billion-dollar CRM market, companies are now looking to maximize their investments by feeding the sales machine.

The B2B Marketing/Lead Management market is still under-penetrated, leaving Adobe, Salesforce, Oracle, et al., a lot of room for growth. The single most dominant B2B marketing platform continues to be a home-grown combination of email marketing, SEO/SEM, database tools, postal mail (yes, paper…), and Microsoft Office/Office 365. By the way, Marketo and its competitors also sell into business segments that sell to consumers: Financial services, insurance, and other considered purchases (think: large financial investment, complex product, emotional, or significant decision) all act very much like B2B sales and leverage the same technology.

Also: Adobe continues innovating storytelling with AI TechRepublic

Who wins?

Users. Marketo is a solid product and arguably one of the top three marketing products on the market today (I deliberately left out the “SaaS” designation, because any/all of the interesting marketing products today are SaaS — that is now a given). While Marketo is a good/great product company, I have heard consistently from user organizations that Marketo was not as strong a “customer company” as some of its competitors, notably Salesforce and Adobe, which consistently score very highly in this area. I believe the Adobe acquisition will change this.

Adobe. Adobe has (finally) grown its product breadth to include digital commerce (note its recent acquisition of Magento) and B2B marketing. While its Adobe Campaign product (based on Neolane, which it acquired about five years ago) claimed to support B2B marketing, it was mostly a B2C marketing product and Adobe shied away from B2B deals. Adobe sales teams and partners now have a highly competitive B2B marketing/lead management product to compete with offerings from Salesforce, Oracle, and similar CRM vendors.

Vista Equity: $ 4.75 billion? Enough said.

Also: Adobe brings new AI features to Experience platform

Who to watch?

Salesforce. Salesforce now has a direct competitive threat from Adobe. Prior to the acquisition of Marketo (and of Magento), Adobe and Salesforce previously competed mostly in the consumer marketing/B2C space, which thrives on high volume, consumer-facing tech like email marketing, digital ads, and content marketing. Note that Marketo has historically been very dependent on Salesforce, with a majority (I believe north of 75 percent) of its customers using Sales Cloud. Note also that, because Marketo sells into Salesforce customers, the Salesforce Pardot product is a competitor in almost every Marketo deal.

Also: Adobe AI learns to spot the photo fakery Photoshop makes easy CNET

Oracle: Oracle’s Eloqua product is a direct competitor to Marketo and has both the marketing technology and the corporate presence of Oracle to compete effectively with Adobe/Marketo. Oracle has invested heavily in the marketing segment, acquiring Eloqua, Responsys, BlueKai, and Datalogix (as well as ATG and Endeca for commerce and intelligence) and will continue to be a Top 3 competitor in the segment.

Microsoft: As noted, Microsoft’s lack of presence in marketing is surprising, both because of the size and growth of the segment as well as because of its strong Dynamics 365 product. On the other hand, Adobe lacks SFA and customer contact/support technology in its product line; it will be interesting to see what happens with the Microsoft/Adobe partnership on the heels of this acquisition.

HubSpot: While HubSpot competes almost exclusively in the SMB and mid-sized business segments, tit has a product that works well for its target market and a very strong and enthusiastic partner network. HubSpot will likely benefit from the increased visibility on B2B marketing/lead management that the Marketo acquisition will generate.

Also: Adobe launches AI Assist, weaves it through analytics, clouds

What to do?

Current Marketo customers can sit tight, secure in knowing that Adobe will continue to support, and over time extend, the Marketo product. Expect deeper integration with Microsoft Dynamics 365, as both Adobe and MSFT continue their alliance. (And watch for further development based on the recently announced Adobe/Microsoft/SAP Open Data Initiative announced about a week after the Marketo announcement). Marketo users can expect more sales calls from their Adobe rep, as Adobe looks to expand their account presence.

Salesforce Sales Cloud customers using Marketo can also sit tight: Integration with Salesforce Sales Cloud will not go away. Despite the co-operation scenario with Adobe and Salesforce, too many major customers are using Sales Cloud + Marketo for that to change. Expect more sales calls from your Adobe rep as per above.

Microsoft Dynamics 365/CRM/CRM Online customers and partners may see the biggest change, and the biggest improvements in integration between MSFT and Marketo. Plan for current integrations between MSFT CRM and Marketo to continue (and likely adding better support for MSFT Azure along the way). Watch for additional integration between Marketo and Adobe Marketing Cloud products, track progress with ODI, and evaluate whether this is useful for your organization. Cross-vendor data models and the elimination of “customer data silos” has been talked about since the early days of CRM, but they have mostly benefited only a small number of user organizations. It’s a great idea, but I recommend a “wait and see” position on ODI.

Also: Uproar after Adobe winds down Magento rewards-based bug bounty program

Bottom line:

Watch for Adobe to become more active in the B2B market and to develop integration with Adobe Marketing Cloud and other marketing tools in their portfolio. Expect Salesforce to double down on Pardot by proposing it in every B2B Sales Cloud deal. Microsoft will likely stress its current integrations between Dynamics 365 and Adobe, and will put more resource and attention on integration between Marketing and Dynamics. We will continue to see consolidation in the B2B marketing segment over the coming year, but we will also see new investment as vendors and end user organizations look to maximize the value of their CRM and SFA platforms.

Thank you, sir! You will be seeing more from Chris here as time goes on. His knowledge is deep and his insights so worth it.

NOTE: Registrations for the CRM Watchlist 2019 and the Emergence Maturity Index 2019 are now closed. No exceptions. Thanks to all of those who submitted. For the rest of you: Well, maybe next time.

Previous and related coverage:

Marketo taps Google AI for new and enhanced marketing tools

AudienceAI is a new Marketo program that uses Google’s infrastructure and AI tools to help marketers expand their targeted audiences.

Adobe buys Marketo for $ 4.75 billion

The deal is Adobe’s largest ever and puts the company in more direct competition with Oracle and Salesforce.

Marketo to migrate to Google Cloud as part of multi-year deal

As part of the deal, Marketo will integrate its Engagement Platform with Google’s G Suite and data analytics.

Marketo buys sales engagement platform ToutApp

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Adobe: In the weeds, in the zone (part two)

June 8, 2018 CRM News and Info

Video: Adobe to acquire Magento Commerce for $ 1.68 billion

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OK, this section, part two of the Adobe Digital Marketing Summit has been weighing on my mind for weeks. I’ve been procrastinating in part because Adobe is such a damned complex company. And now that they bought Magento for e-commerce, even though that wasn’t discussed at the Digital Marketing Summit, I have to discuss it here, because it has a potential bearing on one of the things that I’m going to bring up, making this even more complex.

First, to recap:

In Adobe part one from a couple of weeks ago, I ran you through two different “tracks”: First, how did Adobe do when it came to their actual event? Then, how do you distinguish the kinds of customer experience out there, and which one is Adobe actually focused on? That was important to set the context of Adobe’s current and next phase — where they are, where they are going, and what they need to do to get there.

I hope, after you read part one (and this part), that you’re clear on why I wouldn’t typically support a technology company’s messaging around customer experience, especially since time and time again. I’ve railed against the whole idea of customer experience technology under the umbrella trope — “You can’t enable how someone feels” — via technology, which, not so incidentally, I still maintain.

However, that said, I am going to actually do something that I literally told Adobe was a bad idea about 10 years ago and support their messaging around the Adobe Experience Cloud (the experience part, not the cloud part so much. Explanation to follow).

But let’s dig in based on what I saw and learned from both the Digital Marketing Summit 2018 and what has been supported/supplemented by the acquisition of Magento, which I am feeling a bit mixed — though mostly positive — about right now.

Open Ecosystems and Platforms: Wave of the… Present

To explain why the Digital Marketing Summit was of pivotal importance in Adobe’s evolution in the market, I have to reiterate something that I think was the most important pronouncement that Adobe made — and they made it in 2016, too. Adobe CTO, Abhay Parasnis, spoke with analysts about a major turn that Adobe would be taking that involves knitting the Document Cloud, the Digital Marketing Cloud (now the Adobe Experience Cloud), and the Creative Cloud into a single platform, and at the same time, building what he called an “open ecosystem.” That meant systematically defining what Adobe’s customers and (I hope, though he didn’t say this) their potential customers needed, identifying Adobe’s core capabilities to-be as a platform from end to end, what they were willing to build, what they needed to partner on, and, interestingly enough, if there were things that their competitors did better than they did, and thus, possible partnerships with them as a result — all in the interests of the customer-driven “open” ecosystem.

It was a bold move and, honestly, unexpected since Adobe never particularly seemed to be a candidate for thinking about ecosystems. They seemed content to be a leader in the B2C markets. Comfortable in their domain — and, when it came to it — willing to extend their capabilities within its own confines, but not much beyond that. But announce it they did in 2016 to the analysts, and by 2017, it was a much more well-known strategic imperative at the company — both internally and publicly. It was one of the reasons that Suresh Vittal, an industry star, was elevated to run all the Experience Cloud’s product. The platform and the ecosystem were front and center at Adobe by 2017 and he was one of the people there best qualified to handle that effort — and the thinking that goes with it.

The implications of this kind of thinking are considerable. First, it takes you to markets that you have never been. Second, it identifies gaps that you didn’t realize you had. Third, it forces you to rethink everything in terms of overall business transformation from the perspective of the domain you are in, without losing the broader focus of the total needs of a customer, including those you can’t possibly meet, which, of course, means that you need to consider fulfilling those needs via partners, which means a partner program that gets beyond just Value Added Resellers (VARs) and marketplaces/exchanges. Partner ecosystems are strategic because they are focused around partners who are part of the core company offering. That means a strategic relationship — a true partnership — that involves co-creation, mutual investment, and go-to market strategies. That means that the sales teams of each company are trained to sell the partner’s particular offering and the sales people of each company are compensated for that.

If you look at Adobe’s behavior the last couple of years since the announcement, one thing is clear — they are sticking to plan and sticking the landing as they proceed to execute.

I’m going to detail that with proofs of concept. But, to set the stage, I need to show you how Adobe is (successfully) repurposing their company and gaining market ground (I don’t mean that as a substitute for market share).

Livin’ the Dream…

If you haven’t guessed it by now, enterprise-focused companies, especially tech companies, when it comes to how to be a competitive success, need to be thinking about platforms and ecosystems. Customers are no longer just demanding products and services, but they are looking to companies to provide them with consumable experiences and they are looking to feel valued as a customer. That means that not only is it important to provide the fundamentals — products and services, but also the kind of personalized knowledge of the customer that makes them feel as if they are important to the company. In order to do that, you have to provide as a company the range of products, services, experiences that the customer expects from a company like yours. Plus, the customer has to be able to perceive your company as a place that he or she cares to return to for whatever it is you provide for them when they are in the market. That means the environment, the vibe, the context, the feeling about the company has to be, to keep it super simple, warm and comfy enough for the customer to feel good about the return visit to you. When they are involved with you, they need to feel as if, and this may be the most important point of all, the interactions they are having are convenient. And I do mean “convenient,” which is the most important “experience” that any company can actually offer a customer.

To provide the appropriate things that the customer is looking for from end to end, the company needs to do what I said above, figure out who is going to provide what that the core company is offering to the customers. Will it be (in this case) Adobe or one of its strategic partners? Will it be Adobe and a strategic or even point solution partner? Regardless of who the provider is, customers are expecting a range of choices that pretty much need to be available, or those customers will begin to look elsewhere for what they need.

Adobe in 2016 claimed that they were working toward this idea — and given their unique kind of B2C audience — they also wanted to address the needs of a different B2B audience at some point too. But, intent and outcomes are two very different things. Once Adobe announced its intent, the verification of the commitment to this significant change in model, structure, and outlook was signaled by their announcement jointly about their partnership with Microsoft. And the intent of the company went from speculative and important to game changer.

Ecosystems: Adobe and Microsoft — and Magento?

In 2017, Adobe and Microsoft announced their relationship. Rumor had it, it was driven by the friendship of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen, who were college mates and have been friends ever since. Whatever the reason, I liked what I saw and how it was presented.

Microsoft Dynamics got something it desperately needed in two areas: An enterprise-grade, highly competitive marketing automation solution that was evolving toward an experiential marketing solution, which played well with (but wasn’t identical to) Microsoft’s messaging around intelligent customer engagement. It was also an entrée into the B2C market, which, by no means was Dynamics’ forte, but it was still somewhere they needed to go. Adobe was getting the muscle of Microsoft. More importantly, they got a significant addition to the customer-facing operational portion of their ecosystem — sales, service, and the engine behind it, plus an enterprise-grade cloud infrastructure. And some traction in the B2B market. Little did I know that this burgeoning strategic friendship would quickly blossom into something so deep that I now call it the “Get a Room” partnership. I can tell you, after conversations with Dave Welch, the vice president and Solution Leader Microsoft Solutions at Adobe, and also due to my own investigations, that Adobe and Microsoft are deeply committed to the partnership, and it is arguably one of the best strategic partnerships I have ever seen. I am not saying that lightly.

Briefly, I was able to see the willingness of each party to actually work with the other to sell into the market. That means committing dollars to co-marketing, training the sales teams to sell each other’s products as part of an overall solution set, and compensating accordingly. It also means several real deals won under their belt so that it’s a partnership both in name and deed.

But there was one other piece that was powerful enough to be viscerally striking — the depth of and collaboration around the technical integration between the Adobe Experience Cloud, and not only Microsoft Dynamics products but Azure as the infrastructure wrapper. The teams at both companies involved in this were working night and day to get the integration of the two solutions and Azure so compact and tight that it was metaphorically down to the object level — and, if I knew enough about the technical side to ask, possibly actually down to that level. This is not an easy task because Microsoft Dynamics was making strong technical improvements on a regular basis (e.g. a common data model), and for Adobe Digital Marketing to work, those improvements had to be taken into account as they occurred.

They were and are to this day.

An interesting new wrinkle was thrown into this particular mix about two weeks ago, when Adobe acquired SMB e-commerce platform Magneto. The reason that I think makes the most sense for this is actually posited in the TechCrunch article by the awesome journalist Ron Miller. Between Ron Miller and analyst/influencer Brent Leary (you heard from him here last week), the condensed version of the argument goes like this (all completely paraphrased):

Magento was acquired because it is an e-commerce platform that plays in both B2B and B2C and was a missing piece for Adobe and their experience cloud. They now have an opportunity to close the loop so that what began with Adobe digital marketing can end with the transaction via Magento e-commerce.

E-commerce technology plays the role of being the core transactional piece of a larger customer engagement technology matrix, the same way CRM is the core operational piece. So, there is a larger strategic value, too.

It does raise interesting question for the Microsoft Adobe partnership. Microsoft, even more so than Adobe, in order to compete with Salesforce, SAP, and Oracle, had a major deficiency — and that was e-commerce. Even though their e-commerce needs might be better served via partnership with companies in their existing partner ecosystem like Episerver, the intriguing thing is that Magento could potentially work. However, Adobe is going to have to scale Magento to make this a truly worthwhile acquisition. because they play a lot in the upper end of small business and lower end of the midmarket — not at the enterprise, and Adobe is an enterprise company. But I will leave you, and me, and Adobe and Microsoft with this question: Is this going to also help Microsoft? I don’t know the answer, only the question.

But all in all, this was big evidence of Adobe following through on building their ecosystem. What about the platform? They did promise both, you know.

Platforms: Adobe Banks on the Consumable

I had a conversation with Adobe about seven years ago (If my memory serves me) where I told Adobe that positioning themselves around being a customer experience technology wasn’t the smartest move. That’s the polite version of the story. Needless to say, they didn’t listen to me. You would think since I still firmly believe when it comes to the greater customer experience outlined in part one of this post a few weeks ag, that you can’t enable how a customer feels. But that goes to the definition of the broader customer experience (i.e. how a customer feels about a company over time). In other words, technology cannot support the manipulation of the customer’s feelings about a company. What drives that is much more complex and has far more to do with the way that the company treats the individual customer than it does what technology it uses.

However, why I’m glad that Adobe didn’t listen to me is because they did figure out — recently — what you can do with technology in service of customer experience(s). You can create them, distribute them, and let them be consumed. These are the modular experiences that Joe Pine posited all the way back in 1999 when he showed how mass customization had evolved and what that meant in his seminal work, The Experience Economy. Plus, they fully understand because of the way they built their technology, that there is a symbiosis between customer experience and customer engagement. That means, simply put, that the more effectively you engage customers in an ongoing way, the more they feel good about your company, which then impacts the interactions with you they have and the behaviors they manifest when it comes to your company. So. if you provide them with the consumable kind of experiences that, at the end of the day, make them happy in some way and makes them want to engage further, then, over time, they become increasingly positive toward you. That said, if they are not that positive, a bad interaction or a poor immediate experience can lead to customer churn because the overarching experience is already negative.

I’m not going to dwell on this. The point is that Adobe is cognizant of the difference, which makes their approach to customer experience(s) on point.

What this led to originally when it came to Adobe product strategy was to transform Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) from what it was — a very good digital asset manager — and not much else — to a platform and toolset to both create experiences and manage the assets. The name became a true product description rather than the name. The asset management became features identified in AEM as AEM Assets. This meant the place to identify, share, and/or use the Create Cloud assets (e.g. photos, videos, other graphic pieces) for the creation of the content (i.e. the experiences). In fact, with the new release of AEM Assets 6.4 announced at the Digital Marketing Summit, they were able to include 3D models, VR, and panoramic properties. But what made this DAM different than in the past was the in the past, while it was cool to see, the tools weren’t really there to assemble the consumable experiences except in a painstakingly tedious way. For example, watching an earlier incarnation of AEM at, I think, the first Adobe Digital Marketing Summit I ever attended in 2014, they showed us a split screen of a site at their HQ in Utah and a Times Square Jumbo Video Screen. They then showed someone removing the existing video playing in Times Square and swapping it into the same location within AEM and the video changed at Time Square. While it was a genuine “oooh ahhhh” moment, it was still just swapping out one video for another — meaning it was managing a pair of digital assets — with Adobe’s level of flare. But it was DAM, nothing else.

But what I saw at the 2018 Digital Marketing Summit, it was not only “oooh ahhh” but “oh yeah” when I realized that Adobe, within the past year, had built what had been the missing piece: Platform proof of life. They showed the approximately 14,000 attendees how to build a specific experiential “campaign” using Creative Cloud, Experience Cloud, and ultimately Document Cloud, with the glue being Adobe Sensei. Here’s a pic that shows you what they were doing.

adobesummit2018 1493 Adobe: In the weeds, in the zone (part two) — Adobe demos the platform — the intersection of Campaign, Experience Manager, Sensei.

Source: Adobe

Here is a link to the video demoing this amazing solution based on the new platform. I highly recommend you watch it.

There are two things of importance related to Adobe Sensei.

First, the strategic implications. Sensei is being treated as both a layer in the platform and — via what will seemingly become a ubiquitous blue button in Sensei activated applications — Sensei will be easy to use, though I’m not sure how easy it will be to deploy. Setup can’t be as simple as its made out to be. But its strategic importance is the first consideration. This is the first evidence I’ve seen that Adobe is realizing their promise that they will be “merging” the clouds into a single platform — just as they said they would. What makes this even more exciting is that it is being realized via actual output — and that the output is based on outcomes and specific use cases that are visible manifestations of the platform in production, not just action. I like this; I like this a lot.

Ecosystems and platforms, baby. Ecosystems and platforms.

Second, Sensei is among the most mature, most advanced AI platforms I’ve ever seen. While I don’t pretend to be “the” AI expert, I know enough about what the vendors are doing with AI and where they are in the fulfillment of their promise and promises to make that statement. Sensei in action is both elegant and substantial. It is fast, for example, via Adobe Smart Tag, processing, and identifying the handful of the millions of images that are appropriate to the creation of a specific campaign; it is remarkable in how effectively it learns the environment it needs to operate in and acts accordingly. There is a Sensei-powered feature in AEM called Smart Crop that can take any image, identify the focal point (i.e. point-of-interest) — say, a picture of you in the middle of bungie jumping — and, regardless of screen size, bandwidth, device type, and optimizes the size, resolutions, and compression of the single image so that it never loses its focal point and is fully optimized to lose zero visual acuity, though there can be up to 70 percent image size reduction (slow bandwidth, etc). This is all done at breathtaking speed, too. It seems to be instantaneous, yet if you think of the number of calculations going on via the Sensei algorithms, it is a truly amazing feat.

Sensei’s most interesting application — though they are all fascinating — is not with the Creative Cloud’s images, videos, and illustrations and content, but is how it is applied with what Adobe calls “experience intelligence” (in line with their messaging and narrative — see below for more on this). Adobe claims that Sensei is already capable of the following (within varying products e.g. Target, Campaign AEM), some of which is table stakes and some of which is leading edge (watch parentheses here). Note, it is interesting that these are being offered as services that have been created via the Sensei AI platform.

Attribution AI Services: Determining the incremental marketing impact “driven by owned, earned, and paid media” (table stakes); determining best allocation of spend across channels (table stakes); and understanding the demographics of your customers being converted via marketing (table stakes).
Customer AI Services: Customer individual and group churn propensity (table stakes but hard to do well); personalized nurture campaigns for individual prospects “based on behaviors and interests” (claimed by many but mostly on road maps, done by Adobe); and upsell propensity (table stakes).
Journey AI Services: Personalize the timings of emails for both prospects and existing customers (table stakes but done by a very few); knowledge of individual customer behavior for predictive insights i.e. individual likelihood of email open and clickthrough (table stakes); and predictive messaging cadence (leading edge).

Are there missing pieces? Sure. I think the Journey AI services are far too focused on email to call this journey AI services, since there are so many other components of what constitutes a holistic look of a dynamic customer journey. But what they do offer on the core marketing side, focused behavioral insights that are based on continual and deep learning — in other words, that are supporting dynamically engaging the customer as the conditions, behaviors, and contexts change — are a helluva start to something a year ago seemed to be more of a dream to be than a reality, and its now a delivered reality, not just a demo fantasy.

The other interesting aspect of Adobe’s drive to platform is their expanded personalization offerings via Sensei, as manifested via Adobe Target. This is more “pedestrian,” but it’s a really sharp dressing pedestrian. What Adobe delivers as their personalization offerings are mobile, scalable, and, of course, optimized — a cornucopia of industry buzzwords that, despite their vast overuse, are meaningful. Meaning, if you promise them, you’d better deliver them or you are full of —. Adobe does deliver all three. The most interesting particular piece is their Personalization Insights Report, coming to you thanks to Adobe Target. Here is the Adobe blog MarTech speak weeds description: “The algorithm’s analysis of all profile attributes of each individual visitor over time produces exponential conversion lift, along with a deep analysis — equivalent to the results of hundreds of concurrent tests — in real time and self-optimizing over time.” What this ultimately means is that their algorithms are able to isolate the most important aspects of a customer’s behavior and deliver optimized offers — offers tailored to that individual’s most apparent desires and interests. This was determined by how the individual was behaving. What makes this particularly useful is that it can be done in real time and scales to concurrent thousands and even millions of users.

A momentary aside…

In the same blog post that I found the prior quote I also found this one and this goes to something that I think is extremely important and has nothing to do with Adobe, except as one of almost all companies who make the same fundamental mistake. It is one that reflects what I think needs both a clarity of definition and a more active discussion in the industry and beyond. Here’s the quote, “There’s a discussion across the industry that algorithms used by AI are very accurate and valuable, but they are also highly complex and not human readable… To solve for that, we’ve created a patented algorithm that sits on top of our AI-based personalization used in Auto-Target and Automated Personalization. The algorithm, which is cutting edge data science, generates human understandable insights from the from the output of AI-driven activities.” So close.

What I’m hinting at rather broadly here is that there is a significant difference between personalization and humanization. I’m not saying that the technology companies I deal with daily don’t get it. In fact, I would say that the quote above shows that they do distinguish between that. The work going on with chatbots (here’s a brand spanking new white paper I did on chatbots for Pitney Bowes that might be of interest) shows that the difference is understood. But the use of personalization is often misunderstood to be humanization, and it isn’t the same. To put it simply here (and I will write a post on this very, very soon): Personalization is associated with the best possible promotion/offer to a customer given the digital — and occasionally digital behavior of that customer and customers like him or her. It allows the customer to make a meaningful individual choice. This is not humanization. Humanization is an interaction between a real or computer generated representative of a company, and a customer that feels real and warm enough to that individual customer and has enough of a truly conversational flow to make it seem as if it is a real human being. The “feeling” of the customer is that this is someone who understands me and gets what I’m looking for. And speaks to me in my metaphor.

A customer’s idea of value is feeling valued. Humanization, because it means that “you” are concentrating on “me,” is part of the path to that customer feeling valued in a world that is nonstop more mobile and digitally driven and more demanding of the human touch, as it seems to be getting more and more away from us.

That’s kind of the awkward version of the difference. I will refine this a great deal, but I want you to know what I’m thinking now because I think humanization and thus all the technologies that are necessary to “humanize at scale” is a next big leap that is greatly aided by conversational interfaces, chatbots, AI, machine learning, and NLP-related activities — and, of course, actual people.

Its also Adobe’s next big step and opportunity. But let’s not go there quite yet.

Narrative: Purpose Built for the Experience Business

OK, Dr. Watson, we see concrete evidence of both ecosystem (Adobe-Microsoft partnership) and platform (Creative Cloud, Experience Cloud, Sensei working in unison) as significant progress to the evolution of the company. But this is a company that is both deep in the technical weeds and broad in the creation of brilliant creative art. How do you reconcile this progress, these rather disparate sets, into a single corporate narrative that reconciles the sets, increases the trust of the market and the once and future customers in the company, and sets the stage for the business value proposition that Adobe offers? What’s the story, morning glory?

Well, they are onto it, but not quite there. It’s a charming but awkward attempt. It is a pirouette but without the elegance of the turn being fully realized.

They call it “The Experience Business,” which is, in reality, the (consumable) experiences business. Its actually a pretty good name for what they do and kind of a repurposing or, more accurately, a strengthening of the company’s brand and purpose. It is also what distinguishes the company from its competitors. They are arguably the only company who can make this claim genuinely at the enterprise level (or at any level really). They have changed the name of the Digital Marketing Cloud to the Adobe Experience Cloud — a solution set, so a cloud works, though oddly, they haven’t changed the name of the user conference to The Experience Cloud Summit, which they really should for 2019. They are also creating Experience Data Models (XDM) that are designed to create and support reference-able common semantics across all data, platforms. and channels. In fact, Adobe calls XDM “a formal standard, published in JSON schema, enabling data interoperability in Adobe Cloud Platform”

So far, so good. They are aligning their mission and vision with their strategy and the evolution of their technology — as Adobe always does down in the weeds. They also have an appropriate — to them and in reference to the markets — message and positioning.

Where I’m still not sold, though Adobe makes a compelling case is on their idea of an Experience System of Record. Let’s say I’m open to listening but I’m not convinced.

The components of the Experience System of Record seem to be:

All relevant customer data (as Brad Rencher, EVP of marketing at Adobe defines it) from behavioral to CRM (with the intent to make it actionable).
Define a common taxonomy for all the data regardless of where it is sourced from and defining specific treatments for personal (individual) data.
Apply machine learning geared to specific business cases — again, in Brad Rencher’s words, “attribution analyses, audience segmentation, customer scoring and journey prediction” what he calls the “fundamentals of the experience business.” (Source: DMN)
From this develop a constantly refreshed unified experience cloud profile for the individual customers so that responsiveness can not only be almost instantaneous, but can be contemporary and relevant.

Here’s why I’m skeptical — none of what he said, except one thing, is all that different than the many systems of record I see in CRM and in related areas. CRM data — the transactional and operational data — is not all that’s stored in CRM related systems of record. Social data, conversational data, journey data can all be centralized in what is dismissed by Adobe as a CRM system of record. If the system of record is NOSQL, the ability to handle high volume and real time transactions is there, so this is not a convincing argument. Plus the application of machine learning doesn’t have to be endemic to the system of record. The data from the system of record has to be made available and the machine learning can be applied. I’m not a technical person, so I may not be expressing this in the best possible way but what I am saying is that this is not the thing that makes me or should make anyone go “wow.”

But it’s the “one thing” that makes me willing to listen. Adobe’s creation of a common “experience” taxonomy and the special but related taxonomies for individual data. That is where something different is going on and, to my knowledge, Adobe is the only company doing it. But I need to investigate this further to see if they can actually show me something. Also, if they are doing this, it would be an important step for high degrees of personalization at scale and honestly, a first step toward humanization at scale too. Possibly. But more on that humanization thing some other time.

So, I’m listening but not convinced.

Chto Delat: What is to be done?

There are two things that I think that Adobe has to do. One is simple, the other not so much.

The simple one: Change the name of the Digital Marketing Summit to Adobe Experience Cloud Summit or something much more creative than that. It is no longer about marketing for them. I found this really good article by DMN Editor-in-Chief Kim Davis. He makes this point incredibly concisely:

“Adobe offered what was, by common consensus, the first marketing cloud; and what was then regarded by influential analysts as the best, with Salesforce coming up hard on the rails. And it still exists today, in the sense that its main components — Experience Manager, Target, Campaign, etc — still pull together to drive marketing operations. Rencher gives it a brief nod, with his habitual remark that ‘we created the category.’

That’s about all you’ll hear about a marketing cloud at an Adobe event. The customer experience, the thinking goes, exceeds marketing (and advertising). It encompasses sales, service, loyalty, of course, but ultimately, it’s more than that. It’s about brand affinity; potentially lifetime brand affinity. That’s where all the themes of the conference — including data protection and privacy — come together.”

So, new name. If marketing is no longer the focus, then they need to change the name of the summit. Not even an option. A necessity.

The other thing, and I never thought I’d say this when it came to Adobe, they need to step up the thought leadership on customer experience(s). They are not in the “how-a-customer-feels-about-a-company-over-time” Experience Business. They are in the “create-distribute-consume” Experience Business. But their thought leadership isn’t geared to this — or anything about the customer experience. Case in point — go to CMO.com right now and tell me what your view of their landing page suggests. I can tell you what it gives no indication of really at all. Customer experience. A classic CRM thought leadership page could be identical. And, as an aside, given the May 31 featured post, How the Sharing Economy is Transforming Travel, no one calls it the “Sharing Economy ” anymore. Its pretty much the Gig Economy. Because it isn’t a sharing economy. No one is sharing anything. You are paying people who have the time to do something for a service that they can provide via site that aggregates similar offerings. They drive for Uber or Lyft — and you pay for the ride. No sharing. You rent an Airbnb property. They aren’t sharing with you. They are renting to you.

Aside over.

Regardless of bad feature headlines, Adobe needs to revamp the overall content and the look and feel and patina of their main distribution site for thought leadership, if they are seriously realigning their entire company around customer experience. And they need to be clear what kind of experience they actually provide — or rather, they are pretty clear I think in their own heads — they need to make it clear to the world on what kind of experience they provide tools for. They have an opportunity to be the runaway market leaders in this area and even to “make” a market and establish a category in an area that I thought a decade ago was impossible to do. Now, I’m older and wiser, and Adobe’s actually starting to do it. Though are not by any means there yet.

But all in all, the journey they started two years ago actually is moving quickly to realization of its earliest stages — and that is a lot to be proud of. I’m not in awe of them, since I’m rarely in awe of companies, but I do applaud them for not just laying down a vision and then stepping all over it but instead building the highway to the mission and to the execution of that vision. Take care of the things that I lay out at the end here and this company that is deep in the weeds and at the same time the most creatively bright company I’ve seen in the industry so far might just pull this off and make me say, “I stand corrected.” Might. I’m tough.

Previous and related coverage

Zoho at a crossroads: Stepping up means stepping out

Zoho has been one of the great successes in the world of small business technologies. Few companies have been able to succeed with a similar business model, yet Zoho has been wildly successful. But they are also enshrouded in mystery. Read on to see what’s under their veil and what they have to do next — if they want to.

Infor Innovation Analyst Summit 2018: I totally get it and yet, I don’t see it

Infor is a company on the fast track, though you wouldn’t know that. It is among the most design-focused, progressive companies in the technology world, and it has an offering that can go to head-to-head with anyone’s out there. Yet, it is a best-kept secret. I’m now going to show and tell. Read on — Infor is now in the sunlight.

Conversations are precisely what we need to think about

Thought leader Mitch Lieberman takes the conversation about conversations from personalization to precision. What the hell is the benefit for business of that level of deep thinking? Listen — precisely. Personally, you’ll learn something.

How to fix your brand experience from the outside in

Johann Wrede: To bring real consistency to the brand experience, leaders should stop slicing the problem into pieces that they try to solve independently.

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

ZDNet | crm RSS

Adobe: Experiencing the experiential, part one

May 9, 2018 CRM News and Info

Video: Adobe rolls out updates to Experience Manager

what’s hot on zdnet

I know I’m late on this one by a couple of months. But, hopefully, the wait is worth it.

First, I apologize for taking so long to get this out. My other excuse is that I had six client-related projects to do in the course of the past few weeks. Plus, I’m reviving the Event Scorecard for 2018 with this post, and I had to tweak the weights and the categories. In fact, there is so much to this post, it’s going to be published in two parts.

So, I’m sorry, this is part one, and let’s get to it.

Event Scorecard: A few changes

After all these years, I’ve made some changes, and I’m sure most of you have also forgotten about it completely. So, as I always do for the very first scorecard of the year, I provide an explanation of the scorecard itself. If you know it from my distant past, you’ll possibly note the changes.

As many analysts, I travel to a lot of conferences over a year. I have either been engaged as a speaker who also is an analyst or am there strictly as an analyst to find out what’s going on with the company. Either way, I’m a participant at the event.

The thing is, the event itself is of real importance to the company putting it on, because, if its a user event, and it usually is, it shapes the perception of the company for a 12-month period until the next event. It’s an overarching, powerful creator of an impression that lingers a long time after the knowledge of the specific event fades. Something on this order is what the attendee might say about the event 10 months after the fact: “What was it about? Oh, something to do with marketing I think but it was a great event, and it’s a great company.” The lingering feeling is more powerful than the content presented. Obviously, I’m exaggerating a little at both ends of what’s remembered and what isn’t, but it shapes the perception of the company in the months to come. Its how the users and prospects and analysts and everyone attending gets a feel for not just the products and services but the company and its people and culture.

So, I score the events. However, I am more lenient in my scoring than I am with the CRM Watchlist, because I know how hard it is to produce an event, and then actually do it, with a boatload of moving parts to pay attention to that could veer off in the wrong direction at any given moment.

But score it, I do.

Here is how the scorecard works, and how Adobe, as the first of this season, did. The second part of this post will be on the analysis of Adobe’s direction, actions, future, and opportunity. This post is the event scorecard, the Adobe ratings, and setting the stage on customer experience — so that I can show you what I think Adobe is doing in context in part two.

Event Scorecard: Criteria/Categories

Crowd Size: This is a new category about the size of the crowd. But the actual grade is based on the size and impact of the company holding the event (revenue, etc.); the impact of the company holding the event; the size of the crowd relative to other like company events; and the size relative to the previous year. It isn’t just a number that is graded. It’s what that crowd represents to the outside world. There is a lot of subjectivity in this rating, because I have a number that I think represents a minimum threshold, a likely ceiling (though this is not much more than a paper ceiling and can be easily busted), and a percentage of growth relative to the last year (minimum).
Keynotes (Content): This is the messaging, the focus, the details, the presentation, and in this particular case, the presenters who work for the conference host — all taken into account in the assessment. That means how visionary, how practical, how detailed, and what it said to an audience given its mindset, etc.
Conference (Staging): This is the rest of the main stage speakers (e.g., the celebrities, the lighting, the screens on the stage, the video content shown, the music, the quality of the demos given, the feel of the main stage effort, among other things). The reason that the non-keynote speakers (those who don’t work for the host but are on the stage, like at this conference, Steve Young or Michael Keaton, for example) are included is that they are only ancillary to a message — not the message purveyor. How effectively do the ancillary speakers either represent the company’s messaging (e.g., this year, for Adobe, there was Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia) or support the brand image and culture and enhance crowd engagement (e.g., SNL’s Leslie Jones, during Sneaks)?
Tracks/General Sessions: Did the content of the tracks and general sessions cover what the attendees needed and what the host needed to say? Did the titles meet the expectations of the attendees? For example, at CRM Evolution last year, we had a couple of glitches where the titles of the track didn’t really follow the actual content of the presentation. What was the level of the presentations? Did the content get presented in a way that left something for the attendees to chew on?
Analyst/Press Relations: How were the analysts and press treated? Did they have a working environment that allowed them to get out the coverage they needed on the conference? Did they have the materials they needed? Were the AR/PR teams responsive to requests? What was the general environment? Friendly? Standoffish? Neutral? Were the “asks” of the analysts or press met (e.g., one-on-one meetings) as best as possible (Note: It’s not always possible to accommodate everyone for everything they ask, and that is accounted for by me)?
Exhibition Hall: The partner pavilions are critical parts of any event. Prospects, customers, analysts, and journalists get a feel for who is willing to throw their lot in with the hosts of the event. Partner ecosystems are a critical part of a tech company’s particular offering. So, who is represented? How wide are the pathways to walk to make it easy for an attendee to talk to the partner? What about the organization of the hall, the breadth and depth of the partners represented, the quality of the booths, etc.?
Crowd Engagement: How into the conference is the crowd? This doesn’t mean how loud they are, but how involved they are at the event. There is a palpable energy that is highly noticeable over the course of an event. It has an impact on the residual feelings about the experience. Electricity works.
Logistics: This is the conference center environment, the room set up, the hallways, the swag that all the attendees are offered, and the concert that may or may not be part of the event (the lighting and the Wi-Fi). This is the ability to handle crowd movement. This is the security of the conference. All those things that add to a feeling in an environment and to the ease of navigation at a conference.

Event Scorecard: Adobe Experience Cloud Summit 2018

Category	Grade	notes
Crowd Size	B+	The official attendance seemed to increase from the prior event about 40 percent — i.e., from 10,000 attendees to 14,000 attendees, which is a nice leap. But, don’t forget, this is also measured against other conferences of like sized or influence companies. So, B+, which is a solid mark, but not mind-blowing. It would have taken closer to 18,000 to get an A in this one, given Adobe’s influence. But the leap is nothing to ignore either. This was a sizeable increase in conference attendance, and Adobe should be applauded for it.
Keynotes (Content)	A	The keynotes were the best I’ve seen at an Adobe conference. Led by CEO Shantanu Narayen, the speeches were visionary, outcomes driven, and at the same time, were as in the weeds as Adobe classically is — but without the annoyance of geek-speak that goes over the heads of me and most of the audience. All in all, if you take the combination of Shantanu, the demos, the interviews with partner leaders like Jensen Huang of Nvidia, the other leaders who spoke, a consistent, interesting, and balanced narrative kept its thread throughout the entire conference.
Conference Staging	A	This was literally a perfect numerical score in addition to the highest letter grade you can get. Adobe does brilliant staging. The opening videos were both beautiful and inspiring with ultraHD color and flowing movement — a literally moving sometimes Salvador Dali, sometimes Piet Mondrian, sometimes Andy Warhol-type canvas, and other times, during some of the ancillary presentations, montages of the person and the company he/she represented. Additionally, Adobe had momentary flashes of 3D screens when it was making some business point.
Tracks/General Sessions	A-	The best I can honestly say about the tracks overall is that Adobe kept its promise. Keep in mind, here I’m operating from a small sample size (probably 30 to 35) and extrapolating. What was good about Adobe’s tracks is that it didn’t skimp on the right-brained side of its equation, so there were plentiful tracks on things like personalization, building customer experiences, etc. Also, they were true to their descriptions. The presenters and their presentations got somewhat mixed reviews, though overall leaned strongly to the positive. But not entirely. Still, keeping the promise with strong positives is enough to get them the A-.
Analyst/Press Relations	A-	As always, a great job done by the analysts relations team members at Adobe — they’re the top four in the business, as far as I’m concerned. They took care of each of the analysts at the event and made sure that they had a “customized” experience, meaning if one-on-ones were your thing, you had some one-on-ones, for example, though on the lower-volume side. That’s understandable, since they are juggling the needs of dozens of people with a limited group of executives and customers. They had groups of senior executives meetings with groups of analysts — and the executives were candid and encouraged feedback. The only reason they got less than a solid A was the lack of tables and power for the analysts and press during the keynotes in the main ballroom, which is pretty much at this point, table stakes (no pun intended). That disparity makes it more difficult for the analysts and press to do their jobs, since they were working off their laps and they had to concern themselves with the preservation of their battery power. Neither of those should be a concern.
Exhibition Hall	C-	While a marked improvement over some of the past Adobe Exhibition Halls, this one wasn’t that much better. It was somewhat confusing, with poorly labeled booth numbers/names and numbered “rows” (i.e. ,aisles) that at times made no sense as to where they were and which booths were there. The community maps there for directions were so general that at times they were useless. So, as in prior years, they were a mishmash. The walkways were good enough to allow traffic to flow both ways without too much interference, but they weren’t particularly spacious areas. The one thing that was at least pretty good was the recharge areas, where you could do anything from getting water to playing some simple games or just relax. One thing I would suggest, aside from clarity and much better labeling and improved organization, is that Adobe strategic partners should be featured in the central Adobe exhibit space in the hall. That sends a message to those walking the hall that their strategic partners are part of their ecosystem. It’s a message, given Adobe’s publicly announced direction, that’s a very important one.
Crowd Engagement	B	This was odd, because it was highly uneven. For example, there was extremely high audience engagement during the Sneaks session. The interactions with the audience and the presenters, including the MC and Leslie Jones, were exceptional and lively. Oddly, as good as the keynotes were, and as memorable as the staging was, the crowd’s energy and level of engagement was never that high. It took some real effort for those on stage to get a reaction to whatever — ranging from the usual, “Good morning! I can’t hear you. You’re not loud enough. You must have been out late, so I’ll say it again, good morning!” to the level of gasps and applause that you would expect given the quality of what’s happening on stage. The comments about what went on stage throughout the conference were indicative of something being very well received, but that wasn’t evident during the actual presentations.
Logistics	B+	These were solid everywhere: The food was out where it needed to be; the quality of the food was decent, not great; the crowds, while on occasion knotting up, were moving to their appointed destinations without a lot of difficulty; and the security and traffic control people and service desk staff were courteous and well informed and able to keep things moving the way it needed to be. There was nothing exceptional about it, but then, it doesn’t have to be exceptional. It just has to work, and it did.
Overall	B+	Adobe is very good at putting on events that have a lasting impact, and this one continued that tradition. It had areas that could be better — notably, again, the exhibition hall. But, on the whole, in the places where it counts, the content and the presentation of the content shined — and that is what matters. Ultimately, in eight months, when someone asks an attendee about Adobe, the event has to leave enough of an emotional trace for the attendee, even if they don’t remember the content that well to remember enough of how they felt in order to say, “It was great” or “They are a really cool company doing really cool things” or some variation on that theme. Adobe, in my estimation, achieved that — again. Though, probably, given this year, it needs to change the name next year to the “Adobe Experience Cloud Summit” or something a little more creative. Because it now speaks to areas well beyond just marketing.

Scorecard in the books. Now, we move on to what are we actually talking about when we are talking about customer experience — more complicated than you might think. And, in part two, I’ll cover what did the conference tell me about Adobe’s direction, how far it’s come in the achievement of its vision, and what can you expect of it. And, finally, right here and right now: Will the Yankees win the Series this year?

Let’s start with the latter. Given current trajectories, yes. That takes care of that. No room for debate on that one, fans of other teams.

Before I get into the Adobe Experience Cloud and Adobe’s direction, I want to clarify the definitions of customer experience. Note the plural, because there are three kinds of experience that need some definition, since Adobe is focused on one of them. The reason I want to be clear is that, if I thought Adobe was promoting the other two, I wouldn’t be so comfortable with what it’s doing. In fact, I’d blast it.

Customer Experience (x3)

I spend an entire chapter of my upcoming book, The Commonwealth of Self-Interest: Customer Engagement, Business Benefit, on the differences in customer experience(s). The reason I gave it that much time, since the book is about customer engagement, is that entire businesses will succeed or fail based on how they approach customer experience and its symbiosis with customer engagement. Thus, definitions have to be clear so there is no miscommunication between buyer and seller, between customer and company, and between industry and thought leaders about what customer experience is, which version you are talking about, and what you can do programmatically and strategically with each kind of customer experience.

Customer Experience

Customer experience, in this incarnation, is the one that technology companies most talk about and have the least impact (a.k.a., none) on: A customer’s feelings. Two definitions will suffice to explain most of this easily:

First, let me present the definition used by the individual I think is the foremost thought leader in the customer experience space — Bruce Temkin, founder and CEO of the Temkin Group, former Forrester analyst, and a long time influencer. His definition:

“The perception that customers have of their interactions with your organization.”

A small excerpt of a piece he wrote for my upcoming book explains his thinking well:

“The word ‘perception’ is critical, because customer experience is in the eyes of the beholder. It’s not what you do as a company, or how your employees think about what they do. It’s how your customers think and feel about what you do.”

That segues beautifully into the other definition on this kind of customer experience — mine:

“How a customer feels about a company over time.”

As perception is critical in Bruce’s definition, “feels” is critical in mine. When a company is talking about this “big picture” customer experience, it’s the emotional state of the customer at the time that the company either proactively or retroactively becomes aware of it. I’m not going to go into the details of what drives it, how it formulates itself, what changes it, what the value is to a company to know it, and how it impacts the customers engagement with the company. The book covers some of that. But what I am going to emphatically state is:

If a technology company is talking about providing its technology to impact this kind of customer experience directly, then it doesn’t know what it is talking about. You can’t enable how a person feels via technology. Period.

The reason I’m so emphatic about this is that it is a strategic flaw I see repeated in the messaging and promises that some tech companies make around customer experience. What technology can do is — via analytics and by understanding customer behavior individually — identify the customer’s feelings at a given moment in a journey, and that may or may not reflect the overall state of the customer’s feelings toward the company. It may be just how they feel at that given moment. Analytics can ascertain how the customer feels at the point they produced the data that the algorithms are using to draw a conclusion. But the technology can’t enable those feelings. The long-term feeling is something that evolves after engagement and interaction and outcomes are aggregated and filtered and assessed at conscious and subliminal levels by a customer or two or a million.

If Adobe was claiming that it can enable these long-term feelings, then I’d have a problem, but it is not claiming that. So, since this is a post about Adobe, I’ll stop here. Please feel free to query me in the comments if you want to get further information.

More on innovation

Brand Experience

This is another type of customer experience that is, to use the best term I can think of at the moment (I’m pretty tired), “impressionistic.” It is the conscious effort a brand makes to leave a strong impression about the brand. That means that, when customers think about a brand, they are going to have an impression — “coolest company ever,” “what a cutting-edge company,” etc.That isn’t always that easy to articulate, but the feeling associated with coolest, for example, is easy to feel.

I know that’s not a great way to describe it, but let me give you an example, that I’ve used before in an article on customer experience, customer engagement, and CRM.

Teeling Whiskey, a fast-growing Irish Whiskey distiller, about two years ago, opened the first new distillery in Dublin in 125 years. Keep in mind, as new as the distillery was, the Teeling family, has been distilling whiskey since 1782, so its not new to the business. But, unlike the behemoth of Irish whiskey, Jameson’s, it didn’t want to be establish its brand identity as a long-standing, historic icon of distilling. A new distillery was built and designed to imply (leave the impression of) “a new generation of Irish Whiskey” challenging the long-time, seemingly old-school brands like Jameson’s, Bushmills, etc.

The way that it built this impression, was vast amount of experimentation with the distillation of the whiskey itself, with unique casks used to produce wildly different flavor profiles, with names that stepped outside the norm, (Liberties’ 11 year old, etc), and most importantly, a highly orchestrated specific experience at the distillery itself that was designed to cement the impression of a new generation.

When you signed up for the tour at the distillery, you noticed first, from the get go, a hipster sort of vibe in the initial room where you could get a light lunch of artisan sandwiches and salads. But the key was when you stepped into the tour itself. Unlike Jameson’s, which assigned a guide immediately to you who regaled you about the history of the distillery, at Teeling, you were put in a room that had museum like cases (with a lot of light, though) that had whiskey distilling historic items. You were left in the room for about 10 to 15 minutes to wander around and look at the history. Then a guide came out, took you to a thre- minute video from Teeling family members welcoming you, and off you went to the modern distillery, where the gleaming copper pot stills had glass enclosures, so you could see into the process itself as the distillery went about producing the whiskey.

The idea was simple: History, sure, look at what you want of it, but we are the new generation, with new approaches who want to be transparent about our distilling process — no secrets here. We are the ones that meet the needs of 21st century whiskey drinkers — not with our history, but with our exciting whiskey.

For all intents and purposes, it works. That’s the distinct brand impression you have as you emerge from the experience. Teeling is the leading progressive new generation of Irish whiskey distilleries.

That’s brand experience. The experience is designed at multiple levels and orchestrated to create a specific image of a company with its customers. Its not personalized, per se, its just appealing to the bulk of the customers who interact with the company.

Is Adobe doing that? Indirectly, but not directly. If this was solely what Adobe was trying to do, I’d worry about it, though, not be dead set against it. But that’s more the job of the agency to support this, rather than the tech company, per se. To be fair, those lines, between an agency and a tech company, are getting increasingly blurry — and have been for a while. Look at Infor’s Hook and Loop internal agency. However, this is not Adobe’s focus.

Consumable Experiences

This is the sweet spot for Adobe. I’m not going to focus on that (that’s part two, coming either next week or the week after). I am going to explain this a bit though. This is where technology can not just impact experience(s) but actually create them and monetize them, too.

This goes back a long way. For the background, read this interview I did with Adobe’s CMO.com back in 2016 so you get a good sense of where I’m going with this third experience.

Ultimately, this experience is created and consumable. “Created” means a designed commodity that has a purpose to evoke an emotion. This could be seen as a product or service, but it might be a series of one or the other or both. “Consumable” means both available to the customer as an offering, and more likely than not, monetized. Go to a great restaurant and, one way or the other, perhaps built into the cost of the meal ,you have paid for something that, when you leave, you think or say, “That was amazing.” The food was amazing, as well as the service, the ambiance of the restaurant itself, the individuals who are providing the service, the ancillaries (such as a bartender with a flair who puts on a literal show in his/her drink creation), etc. That is a consumable (no pun intended) experience. The entire restaurant is geared not just to providing you with great food, but all in all, a great — and memorable — feeling. Go to Restaurant Daniel in New York City. When you leave, you’ll know what I mean. Trust me.

Back to Adobe (and part two, coming soon)

While I’ll dive much more into where I think Adobe is going, where it is, and what I think it probably needs to do — if my opinion matters at all — in part two of this post (either next week or the week after), I am actually more than comfortable with Adobe’s approach and messaging, which, when it comes to customer experience, as a theme and a meme for a technology company, is something that I never thought I’d say. I will continue to maintain that, when it comes to the customer’s overall experience (how a customer feels about a company over time), you cannot enable that with technology, which is why you have no such thing as a system of experience. You can enable engagement, for sure. But what I think you can enable is the creation of consumable experiences, which are a commodity or at least an actual thing. Adobe is doing just that and can thus justify its messaging and positioning and brand promise. How well it is doing that and what it is doing, I’ll leave to the second part.

See you at Restaurant Daniel.

Previous and related coverage

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Infor Innovation Analyst Summit 2018: I totally get it and yet, I don’t see it

Conversations are precisely what we need to think about

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Johann Wrede: To bring real consistency to the brand experience, leaders should stop slicing the problem into pieces that they try to solve independently.

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Adobe Hones Target's Personalization Tools

March 29, 2018 CRM News and Info

Adobe this week introduced three features to its Target application in an effort to improve customer experiences through increased personalization:

New Personalization Insights reports;
Propensity score model comparisons; and
Real-time customization models.

These new features give users enhanced transparency and customization of Adobe Sensei-powered artificial intelligence for personalization in Target.

“Although not all firms will have the data science expertise to manage their own algorithms, these additions by Adobe give customers more visibility and confidence into how AI-based results are delivered,” noted Rebecca Wettemann, vice president of research at Nucleus Research.

“There’s been a big push for embedding AI in apps such as marketing, but also concerns about user confidence with black box recommendations,” she told CRM Buyer.

Personalization Insights will launch in beta this spring. The propensity score model comparison tool is scheduled for release in June. Real-time customization of customer-owned models in Adobe Recommendations is generally available as part of the Target Standard/Premium 18.3.1 product Adobe released last week.

“There are a lot of niche vendors providing best-in-class marketing personalization, but no one provides this across all elements of retail personalization — price, product, promotion, content and buyer journey,” observed Michael Phelan, principal at
Go-to-Market Pros.

Getting Close and Personal

Personalization is critical, suggests Segment’s 2017 State of Personalization Report. Among its findings:

70 percent of 1,006 adults surveyed in the United States were frustrated by impersonal shopping experiences;
32 percent of shoppers expected to receive a personalized discount one hour after identifying themselves;
54 percent expected to receive a personalized discount within 24 hours of identifying themselves; and
22 percent of consumers found their retail shopping experience to be highly personalized.

Adobe’s new Personalization Insights reports show the basis for the models Adobe Target builds — that is, the visitor attributes considered most influential in the model built by Adobe Target; how it grouped customers together into the audience segments used; and how it decided what offers would resonate most with those customers.

The goal of this approach is to let marketers create experiences specifically for any group of visitors.

“Providing marketers with greater transparency empowers them to benchmark their results with others, and find patterns on how to improve engagement with customers in various segments,” noted Cindy Zhou, principal analyst at Constellation Research.

“Marketers want transparency,” Go-to-Market Pros’ Phelan told CRM Buyer. “Smart companies like Adobe try to demystify AI and not hide it in a black box. I support that.”

Reading the Customer’s Mind

Propensity score model comparisons let marketers, developers, product owners and data scientists bring their own models with custom propensity scores into Adobe Target.

This feature lets Target compare multiple propensity scores for visitors on the fly; place those visitors into an audience based on the highest propensity score; and deliver the most relevant experience.

It would be a useful tool for companies of all sizes, because “advanced marketing personalization is really 1:1 marketing at scale,” Phelan pointed out. “Propensity scores are tangible ways to evaluate next steps to convert and what’s needed to convert.”

Organizations “have a treasure trove of first-party data on their customers, and the propensity score comparison solution lets them add their own data models to provide better next-best offers,” Constellation’s Zhou told CRM Buyer.

Customizing the Model

Real-time customization to customer-owned models can be accessed through the Custom criteria option in theRecommendations activities of Adobe Target Premium.

This feature lets brands pass the results of their own models to Adobe Target for use in the Recommendations algorithms. Users can execute real-time filtering rules, weightings and customizations on top of custom criteria. For example, if something changes at runtime — say, an item is out of stock — users can account for it in the recommendations Target delivers.

“Your actual real time on-site behavior is a much better predictor” of customer behavior,” Phelan pointed out. “A woman who was expecting a year ago and looking at buying an online baby item is looking for something different today.”

Richard%20Adhikari Adobe Hones Target's Personalization Tools Richard Adhikari has been an ECT News Network reporter since 2008. His areas of focus include cybersecurity, mobile technologies, CRM, databases, software development, mainframe and mid-range computing, and application development. He has written and edited for numerous publications, including Information Week and Computerworld. He is the author of two books on client/server technology.
Email Richard.

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Why Email Marketing is More Important Than Ever: Adobe Campaign & Microsoft Dynamics 365

March 18, 2018 Microsoft Dynamics CRM

It’s hard to believe the first email ever sent was nearly 47 years ago on June 8, 1971. This channel of communication has undergone massive change over the years. Email marketing has exploded, ushering in an entirely new industry in digital marketing technology. Businesses continually look for ways to enhance their digital footprint and reach their customers with a personalized, compelling story, and the momentum behind email marketing shows no signs of slowing down. Adobe reported at the end of 2017, over 150 billion emails were sent with Adobe Campaign. For the fifth consecutive year, Adobe was recognized as a leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Multichannel Campaign Management report. Needless to say, email is still king!

A marketing department’s mission is to engage prospects. Success of that objective is achieved by unlocking email marketing’s full potential. The key is great content. Great content sells better than a great deal in business-to-business selling. Analysis of email marketing campaigns consistently shows 90% of emails with call to action text “more info” wins over call to action text like “try me now” or “buy now.” What does this tell us? B2B buyers are seeking to be educated.

When businesses are shopping, they typically have problems, they need to fix those problems, and need to know if you can fix it. Effective email marketing messaging follows these powerful steps. To educate, provide the solution and the necessary credentials. This formula, when implemented in a timely fashion to individuals seeking to solve a problem, can be and is incredibly effective. However, messaging alone doesn’t close the loop. CEOs are looking for an ROI. Where are the dollars going and how can resources be fine-tuned? The allocation of marketing dollars needs to be a science not an art.

Enter Sandman – AKA Dynamics 365

A CRM platform plays a critical role in personalization and segmentation of the message as well as the prompt action from the individuals “reading the tea leaves” of data provided by marketing technology to close out the engagement. This is the secret sauce! The integration of the messaging with the master database and life blood of the sales organization, CRM. The integration of Adobe Campaign and Dynamics 365 makes this possible. The bi-directional sync of this information and mirroring each database was the first step to this end and empowers sales. This connection is the first step to true ROI.

Here we stand, a year later, Adobe Summit 2017 in the rear-view mirror, and Adobe Summit 2018 is just around the bend. Version 1.0 of the integration accomplished quite a bit. What improvements might we expect a year later? Well, Joe D365 has seen the Road Map and I’m here to tell you exciting developments are inbound! Stay tuned!

Series to return in April post-Summit 2018.

Headed to Adobe Summit 2018? Let us know – we’d love to connect! PowerObjects will be at the Microsoft and HCL booths showcasing the Dynamics 365 and Adobe Marketing solution.

Happy Dynamics 365’ing!

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Digital River, Adobe Strengthen Cloud Commerce Alliance

June 24, 2017 CRM News and Info

Digital River on Wednesday announced it has expanded its ties with Adobe Experience Manager to offer an end-to-end cloud commerce solution targeting the high-tech industry.

The new solution, which is based on a 2015 agreement to integrate Digital River’s cloud-based Global Commerce Platform with Adobe Experience Manager, offers brands a fresh approach for bolstering their direct channel strategy and operating more competitively online.

It lets brands tailor every element of the commerce journey while addressing the C-suite’s priorities, according to Digital River.

The solution is available in the Adobe Experience Manager Package Share.

The new tool gives high-tech brands the ability to respond to online consumers’ demand for a consistent, dynamic shopping experience anywhere, any time, and on any device, said Errol Denger, Adobe’s director of commerce strategy.

Brands can use their in-house resources or a preferred system integrator to take advantage of the offering.

“This deal’s about expanding e-commerce presence for Adobe and distribution for Digital River,” remarked Ray Wang, principal analyst at Constellation Research.

“Many Digital River customers already have Adobe, but in newer markets this agreement makes it easier for integration and account management,” he told CRM Buyer.

An Adobe-approved reseller, Digital River provides services in several countries in Asia, Latin America, Russia and Eastern Europe, and the Middle East.

It also provides global online subscription services for Adobe’s Creative Cloud across 19 geographic regions.

What the Companies Offer

The Adobe Marketing Cloud, which includes Experience Manager, offers the following:

Integrated digital marketing solutions to organize, access and personalize marketing content;
Deep insights into what’s working with customers; and
The ability to deliver the best experiences to every customer across every channel.

Digital River Commerce Cloud features include the following:

Payment processing;
Subscriptions and recurring billing;
In-app purchasing and smart wallet management;
Order management;
Experience management;
B2B and reseller channel engagement; and
Global fulfillment.

Shaking a Fist at the Giants

Salesforce and Oracle are major players in the e-commerce and e-marketing arenas, and Adobe may be trying to take them on.

“It makes sense for Adobe to take advantage of Digital River’s local expertise and presence rather than investing in building out itself,” remarked Rebecca Wettemann, VP of Research at Nucleus Research.

Adobe is “competing with a lot of big players here, and local expertise is important in any tech market — particularly when you’re dealing with individual developers,” she told CRM Buyer.

CRM packages and digital marketing clouds from Oracle, Salesforce and Microsoft, as well as smaller players that offer multichannel and omnichannel capabilities, already are widely available.

Whether Adobe and Digital River will succeed is questionable. “The customer takes on some integration risk,” noted Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group.

The risk is that the two offerings may not necessarily be designed to go together, and customers may have to navigate twin support and sales organizations, he told CRM Buyer.

“Peer partnerships don’t have the greatest history of working out, largely because you don’t have one throat to choke,” Enderle said. “It’s generally far better to get a solution like this from either one firm, or from one firm that’s clearly acting as the general contractor.”

Granted, the Adobe/Digital River solution is an extension of an existing one, but all new solutions need extensive production testing before release. That raises the question of why anyone should go with what appears to be an untested solution.

“Adobe and Digital River own the issue,” Wang noted. “They will test and own.”

Further, “CRM is dead,” Wang said. “The future is e-commerce.”

The Lure for High-Tech Firms

Given that high-tech companies pioneered e-commerce, how likely is it that the Digital RIver-Adobe offering might be of any use to them?

“High-tech firms are often victims of the ‘cobbler’s son has no shoes’ syndrome,” Wang said. “The integrated offering is the valuable piece.”

Richard%20Adhikari Digital River, Adobe Strengthen Cloud Commerce Alliance Richard Adhikari has been an ECT News Network reporter since 2008. His areas of focus include cybersecurity, mobile technologies, CRM, databases, software development, mainframe and mid-range computing, and application development. He has written and edited for numerous publications, including Information Week and Computerworld. He is the author of two books on client/server technology.
Email Richard.

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Adobe brings AI-powered Virtual Analyst to Analytics Cloud

May 10, 2017 Big Data

Adobe will today announce the introduction of Virtual Analyst, powered by its Sensei AI.

The analyst runs 24/7 in the background to monitor data and detect and find the root cause of anomalies in online activity. This replaces the painstaking process of an engineer or data team manually searching analytics reports for insights, which can diminish in value over time.

“Insights we do believe have a shelf life and to have a system be automated and can handle these on its own is really key, I think,” Adobe marketing manager Nate Smith told VentureBeat in a phone interview.

Sensei was first introduced last fall as an artificial intelligence service trained by massive amounts of data gathered from Adobe Creative, Marketing, and Analytics cloud software.

Sensei can do things like auto-caption images, deliver data insights, or talk people through how to use Adobe software. Adobe ultimately wants the AI to also train novice creatives how to use Photoshop and other software like a professional.

In time, as future versions of the analyst are released, Sensei will remove humans from the loop to automate the completion of actionable insights, Smith said.

“That is the direction we’re going now. We’re in the initial stages of that with integrations with other products,” he said. “We’ve been working closely with the Adobe Target team so, for things like basic A/B testing, those are things we’re exploring right now, and we’re going to continue down that path.”

While in beta for the past six months, the virtual analyst has been able to unearth things like intellectual property theft as well as human or machine errors that cost companies money.

The alert system for Virtual Analyst solves a problem that existed in the previous version of Analytics Cloud, Smith said. By learning a company’s seasonality and patterns, the Virtual Analyst is able to reduce the number of false flag push notifications the team that manages company marketing data receives.

Also on the way, the analyst will incorporate Sensei’s natural language processing in order to function more like Alexa or Cortana, in much the way Sensei now works with Photoshop.

Other enterprise players in the bot-AI-team collaboration space, like Hipchat and Cisco Spark, are also working to develop or have already developed voice assistants to deliver answers to questions about company (or competitor) data in a meeting or office setting.

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