Adobe Named a Leader in New Forrester Wave Report on Enterprise Marketing Software Suites

Don’t you love it when a plan comes together? Pretty much every action movie or TV show ever made has a montage where the A Team prepares. I mean, even The Swiss Family Robinson has to spend a few days preparing for the pirates.

Adobe’s plan has been coming together for quite a while. We invented the Marketing Cloud (after which some very large companies followed suit) way back in 2012. And last year we launched Adobe Experience Cloud, the evolution of marketing into the experience age. Now, Forrester has released The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Marketing Software Suites, Q1, 2018 and we have been named a leader_._

We were building today’s leading technology six years ago, and we are building the technology of six years from now today. Forrester defines an Enterprise Marketing Software Suite as “An integrated portfolio of marketing technology products that provide analytics, orchestration, and execution of insight-driven customer interactions to support inbound and outbound marketing.” And while that’s a high bar, we have set our sights even higher.

We mean to be the de-facto platform at the heart of all enterprise customer experience. That means not only being a leader in cross-channel marketing engagement, but being the system of intelligence that powers the experience business. As Forrester says in its report, _“_By coordinating data flows, analysis, targeting, and orchestration, EMSS is in position to create a consistent data layer for insights and engagement and drive customer engagement across delivery systems.”

The Forrester report goes even further: _“_Ultimately, EMSS isn’t just about marketing. Progressive B2C marketers and vendors see that EMSS isn’t a standalone entity; it is part of a larger body of business technology. This starts with customer experience and the intersection of EMSS with sales, service, and commerce. In the longer term, EMSS incorporates back-office connectivity such as finance, supply chain, and security and risk.”

We couldn’t agree more. Enterprises face myriad of challenges when it comes to realizing the complete value of their enterprise data, creating an actual, actionable, unified profile of their customers. From solving integration issues across their enterprise systems, to an incomplete view of their customers, to harnessing their data for data science and machine learning, they are falling short. Even sophisticated customers struggle with bridging the gap between insights and action.

At Adobe, we are answering that challenge. Adobe Experience Cloud provides what enterprises have been trying to solve with disparate and inadequate technologies, delivering the real-time, actionable, and comprehensive customer profile that enables true in-the-moment experiences.

As Forrester writes about Adobe: “Adobe sits at the nexus of content, media, and marketing. Adobe provides an EMSS offering spanning marketing, advertising, analytics, and content management capabilities. Of the vendors included this study, Adobe maintains the highest degree of overall strategic focus on marketing and consumer engagement. Adobe is investing heavily in its platform’s core services to unify data, content, and shared functionality across products. Adobe stands out for its digital intelligence, content handling, and aggressive rollout of AI features.”

Forrester gets pretty detailed in its analysis of the vendors in the new Wave. Adobe received the highest scores in the current offering and strategy categories, and among the highest in the market presence category. Adobe also received the top scores (or tied for the top scores) in the artificial intelligence, digital advertising, content and asset management, measurement and optimization, user experience, consumer privacy, services, product vision, planned enhancements, performance, partner ecosystem, and revenue criteria.

Part of my job at Adobe is to not only address today’s mandate to create seamless, contextual experiences, but to see around the corner and plan for tomorrow. Along with an army of talented folks here at Adobe, we were doing it six years ago, and we are doing it now. And while I couldn’t be more excited about where we are today, leading the industry, I can hardly contain myself when I think about where we will be in another six years. We are just getting started.

Download the full report to learn more: The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Marketing Software Suites, Q1, 2018.