Shantanu Talks Experience Business at TiEcon
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At TiEcon, our CEO Shantanu Narayen took the stage to share his perspective on enterprise disruption and the dawn of the Experience Era. Dubbed the world’s largest conference for entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs, the event drew roughly 5,000 attendees to Silicon Valley to share ideas, inspiration and talk hot tech trends.
You might wonder if enthusiasm at the confab would be tempered this year given reports the “unicorn era” is over, but that was hardly the case. Shantanu kicked off by saying that it’s a great time to be an entrepreneur, citing $60B in venture investments was poured into startups last year, second only to the year 2000 at the peak of the dot-com boom.
All this funding is enabling companies and entrepreneurs to innovate how they engage with customers. He mused at how easy it is to swipe for tickets and tap for car and hotel reservations all while binge-watching “House of Cards.”
All businesses are looking to differentiate themselves through the experiences they provide. Shantanu gave examples of how retailers are creating “shoppertainment” to keep customers engaged, or how TV viewing is going direct to consumer instead of going through cable providers. “Experiences are transforming industries. It’s disrupting the way we do business,” he said.
The Next Wave of Enterprise Disruption: Experience Era
During his talk, Shantanu said we’re embarking on the third wave of enterprise disruption. It’s a concept we first introduced at Adobe Summit this year. He described it this way:
- The Back Office Wave began in the early days of computing and networking when businesses began investing enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems to help move from paper ledgers and inventory records to integrated back office systems.
- The Front Office Wave empowered companies to manage customer information through customer relationship management systems (CRM) and get control of their sales and support processes. The CRM market is over $30B – but like the Back Office, the Front Office systems, too, have become table stakes.
- The Experience Business Wave focuses on the consumer – this is where we are today. Consumers expect every business to give them what they want, whenever and however they want it. Every single touch point needs to be consistent, continuous and compelling – not to mention personalized and secure – to add up to a great experience across the lifetime of the customer’s journey.
Shantanu concluded by saying we are in the early days of an opportunity that is exponentially greater than previous waves – across hardware, software, services. “There is a tremendous opportunity for all of us here the TiE community to drive how it unfolds here and throughout the world.“