Interview with Phil Dunlop, General Manager, EMEA, of Progress

The Evolution of Digital Experiences: New Necessities & Preparing for What’s to Come

The value of agility and flexibility have never been more apparent than they were over the past year. When the coronavirus pandemic changed the rules on how many organisations operate, businesses had to take matters into their own hands in response.

Technology like digital experience platforms (DXP) help enable that response, providing businesses with the tools they needed to thrive in a digital-first world. A comprehensive DXP empowers the delivery of world-class digital experiences via a diverse set of capabilities that equip businesses to:

• Manage multiple sites, and at any scale
• Serve personalised content across any digital touchpoint
• Integrate with critical enterprise and martech apps
• Pull valuable customer insights from myriad data sources
• Support the customer across the entire journey

Evolving alongside customer expectations

Of course, part of the challenge of competing in the modern digital world is that customer expectations are always changing. They were changing a year ago, they changed again as the world responded to the coronavirus pandemic and they’ll continue to change over the next year and beyond as well.

Businesses have had to quickly adapt and adopt new ways of doing businesses with the vastly reduced physical opportunities. This puts more stress on enterprises. On the one hand, every business is more acutely aware of the importance of digital experiences than ever before. On the other, many companies are dealing with reduced budgets as they emerge from a year of crisis. This is especially the case for small businesses and startups.

This has meant that the importance of delivering exceptional experiences has put even more focus on building, maintaining and optimising a connected digital estate. However, it is not only about delivering lasting customer experiences, it is crucial to consider those who are responsible for delivering them. With workforces having to work remotely, it is crucial for businesses to ensure the creation and maintenance of these experiences are done in a secure environment 

The right digital strategy, combined with the a flexible digital experience platform, is necessary for balancing the need to innovate quickly with the cost of investment required to do so. This starts by evaluating the underlying technology stack and ensuring it’s equipped to scale and purpose-built for competitive different ion in a world that demands agility, speed and flexibility.

Moving on from the monolith to the composable future

Traditionally, digital experiences were created using monolithic applications—walled gardens that were designed to provide everything a business needed to manage their digital footprint. 

However, as customer expectations evolved and technology improved, these monolithic applications couldn’t be updated fast enough since they were so tightly interwoven at the technological level. A change to one part of the application could have ramifications to the rest, making it difficult to add capabilities or broaden the scope of existing ones. This left businesses unable to respond to market changes.

A composable technology stack enables businesses to address this by breaking down monolithic digital experience platforms into individual core capabilities that can be assembled as needed. This has several key advantages, including:

• Providing companies with the ability to use their preferred tools
• Decoupling the backend from the frontend to enable new types of experiences
• Accelerating implementation of new experiences and capabilities

A composable DXP strategy expedites the speed of delivery. It enables businesses to not only launch digital experiences faster from the ground up, but it also enables them to create a digital strategy that is deeply personalised to their specific business and audience needs.

Composability is complimentary

Predicting the future is impossible. No one could have foreseen the coronavirus pandemic nor the massive implications it would have on how many businesses operate.

However, businesses can set themselves up to succeed through the unpredictable by choosing technology solutions that complement their ability to respond to shifts in the market. A composable DXP strategy is one of the best ways moving forward to not only compete in but win in an increasingly digital world. By taking a modular approach, enterprises are granted more flexibility and agility with how they approach the creation of modern digital experiences.