Adobe Summit EMEA 2019: Unveiling the Future of Customer Experience Management

Strate­gic part­ner­ship with Soft­ware AG unveiled; new com­merce inno­va­tions announced

We wel­comed more than 6,000 cus­tomers and part­ners to Adobe EMEA Sum­mit this morn­ing to dis­cuss the future of Cus­tomer Expe­ri­ence Man­age­ment (CXM) and how dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion is dis­rupt­ing busi­ness­es across the world. The EMEA region, in par­tic­u­lar, is faced with an explo­sion in con­tent, as well as a frag­ment­ed and dis­rupt­ed media land­scape. The abil­i­ty to pro­vide com­pelling dig­i­tal con­tent and cus­tomer expe­ri­ences is more crit­i­cal than ever, but for brands to cut through the noise, they must make dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion a pri­or­i­ty and put cus­tomer expe­ri­ence at the cen­tre of all that they do.

To help our cus­tomers on their jour­ney, we’re kick­ing off Adobe EMEA Sum­mit by giv­ing guests the oppor­tu­ni­ty to hear, first-hand, from Adobe cus­tomers who are already in the process of trans­form­ing – includ­ing illy­caf­fè, Unilever, BT, and hun­dreds more over the course of the next two days in break­out sessions.

We’re also unveil­ing the lat­est in our tech­nol­o­gy inno­va­tions and have announced a new strate­gic part­ner­ship with Soft­ware AG, a col­lab­o­ra­tion that will help brands dri­ve enhanced cus­tomer engage­ments and increase sales pro­duc­tiv­i­ty by bring­ing togeth­er cus­tomer data from mul­ti­ple enter­prise sys­tems into one cus­tomer profile.

Giv­ing our cus­tomers access to a robust cus­tomer engage­ment platform

By stitch­ing togeth­er cus­tomer data from across mul­ti­ple enter­prise sys­tems, includ­ing Soft­ware AG’s web­Meth­ods Inte­gra­tion, brands now have access to cen­tralised and action­able real-time cus­tomer pro­files. This is an exten­sion of our grow­ing part­ner ecosys­tem in Europe, which already includes over 12,800 agency, solu­tion and tech partners.

Pow­er­ful advances for commerce

This week, we’ve also intro­duced new inte­gra­tions to Magen­to Com­merce Cloud: Ama­zon Sales Chan­nel and Google Shop­ping Ads Chan­nel. Both inte­gra­tions will enable brands to offer seam­less shop­pable expe­ri­ences across plat­forms and chan­nels, now includ­ing two of the world’s largest shop­ping plat­forms. Addi­tion­al­ly, with the launch of an Ana­lyt­ics exten­sion via the Expe­ri­ence plat­form, we’re help­ing brands gain a more com­plete under­stand­ing of cus­tomer behav­iour in a mat­ter of minutes.

Expe­ri­ence Index: The dis­con­nect between expec­ta­tions and experience

Ear­li­er this year, Adobe’s Dig­i­tal Trends Report found that CXM was a num­ber one pri­or­i­ty for 2019. Research released at Sum­mit EMEA has fur­ther under­lined the extent of this shift, reveal­ing that brands aren’t cur­rent­ly deliv­er­ing the cus­tomer expe­ri­ences that con­sumers expect. The Expe­ri­ence Index showed that UK con­sumers gave brands a score of just 54% in deliv­er­ing excep­tion­al cus­tomer expe­ri­ences, which dropped to 50% for Ger­many and France. This is despite the fact that over two-thirds of con­sumers expect per­son­alised expe­ri­ences as a bare min­i­mum. These find­ings were based on research under­tak­en in the UK, Ger­many and France.

From B2B and B2C to ‘Busi­ness to Everyone’

Anoth­er Adobe report, Cre­at­ing Epic Cus­tomer Expe­ri­ences, has shown the behav­iours of B2B buy­ers are increas­ing­ly merg­ing with those of B2C buy­ers. B2B buy­ers are demand­ing qual­i­ties typ­i­cal­ly prized by B2C buy­ers, like trans­paren­cy, brand pur­pose and per­son­al­i­sa­tion. The report pre­dicts the emer­gence of a ‘Busi­ness to Every­one’ approach, where­by mar­keters seek to engage with audi­ences at an indi­vid­ual lev­el rather than through the clas­sic B2B/B2C lens. The report sug­gests tech­nol­o­gy will play a key role in help­ing mar­keters per­son­alise expe­ri­ences con­sis­tent­ly and at scale.

Inspir­ing Adobe Expe­ri­ence Makers

It wouldn’t be Sum­mit with­out a day of inspi­ra­tion, and tomor­row, guests will hear from inter­na­tion­al human rights bar­ris­ter Amal Clooney, who is at the pin­na­cle in dri­ving pos­i­tive change, and Acad­e­my Award win­ning actor Eddie Red­mayne, who has super charged his career with diverse role choic­es. Our famous Sum­mit Sneaks ses­sion will also be host­ed by come­di­an Jack White­hall – and aside from the enter­tain­ment, our cus­tomers and part­ners will see the lat­est inno­va­tions com­ing out of Adobe R&D labs in areas such as AI, mixed real­i­ty and voice.

To keep up to date with every­thing hap­pen­ing at Sum­mit fol­low #Adobe­Sum­mit.