Partner Day Launches Adobe Summit EMEA

Thanks to all of our part­ners who helped kick off Adobe Sum­mit EMEA today in style. The day began with world­wide field oper­a­tions EVP Matt Thomp­son deliv­er­ing a review of our lead­er­ship in dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing solu­tions — in ana­lyst rat­ings, rev­enue, growth, and the size, depth, and sophis­ti­ca­tion of its Part­ner Pro­gram. In his review of 2016 go-to-mar­ket plans, Matt reaf­firmed Adobe’s com­mit­ment to part­ners at every pro­gram lev­el: Adobe is count­ing on part­ners for a full two-thirds of pro­ject­ed dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing book­ings, and to extend the company’s pen­e­tra­tion into key ver­ti­cal mar­kets like finan­cial ser­vices, retail, gov­ern­ment, and travel.

Fol­low­ing Matt, EVP and Mar­ket­ing Cloud Gen­er­al Man­ag­er Brad Rencher showed part­ners how “Expe­ri­ence Mat­ters,” in a top-lev­el vision of how dig­i­tal expe­ri­ences are trans­form­ing entire indus­tries and mar­kets, fol­lowed by Adobe’s unique posi­tion in dri­ving those transformations.

Then, EVP and CTO Abhay Paras­nis took the stage to give part­ners an in-depth look at how the Adobe plat­form and part­ner inte­gra­tions are sup­port­ing those trans­for­ma­tions in the back office, the front office, and the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. With help from Adobe EMEA solu­tions teams, Abhay gave the part­ners a look at Adobe’s tech­nol­o­gy vision for retail, includ­ing demos of mobile shop­ping bag and vir­tu­al store concepts.

Brief­in­gs, break­outs, and deep dives

Part­ners also received main-stage brief­in­gs from Adobe lead­ers and experts including:

• John Travis, our VP of mar­ket­ing for Europe, who dis­cussed the Adobe brand in EMEA
• Julie War­bur­ton, man­ag­ing direc­tor for Adobe Glob­al Ser­vices EMEA, who pro­vid­ed an overview on sales align­ment and 2015 strate­gic wins, and also inter­viewed top Adobe cus­tomer Bet­ty Bakkali, head of CRM at Nestlé Switzerland
• Tama­ra Gaffney, prin­ci­pal Ana­lyst and direc­tor, who co-pre­sent­ed with me on the client and part­ner val­ue cre­at­ed by Adobe Dig­i­tal Index

Final­ly, Gar­rett Ilg, in his new role as SVP for the glob­al part­ner and alliances pro­gram as well as glob­al enter­prise sales, explained Adobe’s “Build and Run” vision, and the oppor­tu­ni­ties it opens for part­ners to move up the val­ue chain beyond imple­men­ta­tion to man­aged ser­vices, con­sult­ing, and beyond.

New to Part­ner Day this year was a well-received set of break­out ses­sions — oppor­tu­ni­ties for tech­ni­cal, busi­ness, adver­tis­ing, and ISV/data spe­cial­ists to take a “deep dive” into top­ics espe­cial­ly rel­e­vant to their work.

Part­ner awards

Of course the day also gave part­ners plen­ty of time in the spot­light, with the 2015 Adobe Mar­ket­ing Cloud “Part­ner of the Year” awards for EMEA. Select­ed from a broad field of excep­tion­al can­di­dates, the year’s win­ners are:

Inno­va­tion Part­ner of the Year: Gigya

Gigya’s Cus­tomer Iden­ti­ty Man­age­ment plat­form engages unknown web­site and mobile apps users, and per­suades them to reg­is­ter and pro­vide first-par­ty iden­ti­ty data — a first step toward one-to-one per­son­al­iza­tion using Adobe Mar­ket­ing Cloud. More than 700 of the world’s lead­ing busi­ness­es already rely on Gigya to build iden­ti­ty-dri­ven rela­tion­ships in com­pli­ance with pri­va­cy regulations.

Growth Part­ner of the Year: SapientNitro

Sapi­ent­Ni­tro, part of Pub­li­cis Groupe, is Adobe’s only three-time Glob­al Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing Part­ner of the Year, and the only part­ner with Glob­al Spe­cial­iza­tion in both Expe­ri­ence Man­ag­er and Ana­lyt­ics. Its more than 200 Adobe Mar­ket­ing Cloud imple­men­ta­tions to date include some of the most com­plex and sophis­ti­cat­ed solu­tions for clients across a wide vari­ety of industries.

Region­al Part­ner of the Year: Netcentric

From its Switzer­land base and offices across Europe, Net­cen­tric designs, opti­mizes and imple­ments mar­ket­ing plat­forms built exclu­sive­ly on Adobe Mar­ket­ing Cloud. They were the key part­ner in two strate­gic cus­tomer trans­ac­tions last year – UBS and Miles & More. Net­cen­tric is an Adobe Pre­mier Part­ner, and will soon be the first EMEA Part­ner to achieve Spe­cial­iza­tion on mul­ti­ple products.

Part­ner of the Year: Accen­ture Interactive

This is Accenture’s fourth time as EMEA Part­ner of the Year. They have grown their license influ­ence and deliv­ered more than 500 sites in more than 30 lan­guages across 56 coun­tries in the last 4 years alone. Build­ing on their suc­cess work­ing with Adobe ver­ti­cal sales teams, the two com­pa­nies launched a Joint Ini­tia­tive to cre­ate solu­tions for clients in FSI, Life Sci­ences, and Healthcare.

Close of a great day

Even Adobe’s hard-work­ing part­ners need some time off, and Part­ner Day did not dis­ap­point. The Part­ner Mix­er gave part­ners and Adobe a great chance to relax, get to know each oth­er in an infor­mal set­ting, and get ready for Adobe Sum­mit the next day.

Adobe part­ners now num­ber more than 3,000 agen­cies, sys­tem inte­gra­tors, and tech­nol­o­gy part­ners — and hun­dreds of thou­sands of devel­op­ers. Part­ners are essen­tial to Adobe’s ambi­tions for devel­op­ment and growth of Adobe Mar­ket­ing Cloud. This year’s EMEA Part­ner Day — the largest ever — was a great demon­stra­tion of the strength of Adobe’s col­lab­o­ra­tive sell­ing mod­el, and the val­ue it con­tributes to both the com­pa­ny and its part­ners. Thanks to all who attended.