Interview
The Gist
- AI adoption is happening — cautiously but steadily. Executives agree that while AI is promising, it hasn’t yet been fully embedded across organizations. Companies are still testing use cases and learning where it fits.
- Data silos and tech stack sprawl remain major hurdles. Connecting the dots across tools, teams, and channels is the biggest barrier to delivering seamless digital experiences.
- Personalization is the goal — but must be balanced with privacy and feasibility. Leaders are debating whether true one-to-one personalization is possible or even necessary — and how to avoid crossing the "creep" line.
At this year’s Adobe Summit in Las Vegas, I spoke with executives across industries who are deep in the trenches, trying to balance innovation with reality.
What emerged was a candid look at where things stand: AI is promising but not yet fully embedded, data silos still slow down progress and everyone’s tech stack is a work in progress. But there’s one thing they all agree on — the future of digital experience depends on how well companies can connect the dots.
David Parker, Manager of Online Optimization and Personalization at Cox Communications
David Parker, who leads site optimization at Cox Communications, shared his take on what’s working — and what still needs fixing — when it comes to delivering modern digital experiences.
While many brands are chasing hyper-personalized, one-to-one digital interactions, Parker questioned whether that goal is truly feasible — or even necessary.
“I don't see one-to-one truly being achievable unless you have a certain company with loads of data, loads of knowledge of your customer base and have the ability and the manpower to tailor the one-to-one personalization,” he said.
The Omnichannel Challenge
With customers interacting across multiple channels — web, email, SMS, phone and in-store — companies need seamless communication across every touchpoint. But organizational silos continue to stand in the way. “Siloed work is very much a core component of corporate culture,” Parker noted. “Breaking the silos…is vital to making sure all those touchpoints can be aggregated.”
The fix: data democratization and cross-functional collaboration, which requires opening the doors.
“You can still have product managers, you can still have owners… If you keep all the doors closed, nobody can see in and nobody can understand who's there, what's there, what's going on,” Parker said. By encouraging transparency and shared ownership, companies can start to align data strategies across departments.
AI Adoption Is Cautious — But Coming
Cox is beginning to explore how AI can support both business operations and customer satisfaction, but Parker described the current phase as exploratory. “People are still kind of getting their feet wet. They're trying to figure out, am I gonna stay in the little baby pool or am I gonna go dive off the deep end.”
Ultimately, Parks said AI is a good tool to have. “You should explore it. You should try to understand, how does it enhance my business, my operations, does it improve customer satisfaction in their communication or their dealings with us, and evaluate and go from there.”
Looking ahead, Parker sees a return to the fundamentals: “Making sure you have the ability to solve your customers’ problems in whatever touch point they may have.”
Related Article: Creating Real Connections: AI’s Role in Modern Omnichannel Strategy
JR Scott, Senior Manager of Digital Marketing, Operations & Analytics at Edwards Lifesciences
One topic dominating conversations? AI agents. And for good reason. As companies move from experimentation to implementation, the use cases are multiplying, the questions are getting more complex and the stakes are getting higher.
JR Scott, a marketing professional at a large California-based medical device company and a tech consultant for SMBs, said that AI is no longer something companies are considering — it’s already in use.
At his company, Microsoft Copilot is helping employees streamline tasks. “We’re seeing people use it for some small things, like notetaking during meetings, asking AI to give a summation of all the points, the action items that people need to take away from those meetings,” he said. Others use it to simplify technical tasks in Excel and Tableau.
Outside the enterprise, experimentation is faster — and freer. In his consulting work, Scott faces fewer compliance hurdles and sees broader, more creative applications. “I have it write everything from blog entries to help me optimize websites, things like that,” he said. The pace of innovation is faster, and the benefits are more immediate.
Strategic Clarity Is Still in the Works
Despite increased usage, many organizations are still trying to map out exactly where AI fits. “We’re still in the discovery phase,” Scott said. “It’s almost like a relearning of like, all right, here’s all the things I used to do. What are all the ways that I can plug AI into those things?”
He added that, at his organization, he didn’t see any reluctance from employees due to fear of AI taking over jobs. Instead, one barrier is security.
“They were blocking the ChatGPT website, just because they weren't sure if it presented any corporate-wide vulnerabilities, if it could lead to a breach of some sort. And that was the initial start.”
Instead of AI taking over jobs, Scott said, “I think the future is going to belong to the people who can leverage AI.” It’s not AI that will take people’s jobs, he added, “It's the person who learns how to leverage AI that's going to take your job.”
Choosing the Right Tech Stack Is Still a Gamble
Whether to go all-in-one or best-of-breed? Scott says it depends. “I still think we’re very early on, and I don’t know if there’s one right way to do it just yet.” The right solution varies by industry, especially in tightly regulated spaces.
Looking ahead, he predicts more standardization, better long-term visibility into which vendors are here to stay and entirely new use cases we can’t yet imagine — at least not yet.
For now, one thing is clear: organizations are past the hype phase and deep into the learning curve.
Related Article: What to Expect at Adobe Summit 2025: GenAI, AEM Upgrades and More
Vivek Pandya, Director of Adobe Digital Insights
As AI continues to reshape how brands interact with customers, the pressure to deliver meaningful, lasting digital experiences has never been greater.
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According to Adobe’s Vivek Pandya, today’s consumers are coming to retail and travel sites already primed by their AI interactions elsewhere. “There’s a much more bespoke understanding of what they’re looking for and then what they end up with when they get to these web properties,” he said. The line between AI-powered discovery and branded digital experiences is blurring, and companies are being challenged to keep up.
Early GenAI Adopters Already Seeing Results
Though it’s still early days, performance metrics suggest that AI-enabled experiences are gaining traction. “What we’re finding already is the performance metrics are working in the benefit of many of these retailers who embrace generative AI,” Pandya explained.
And AI isn’t just a customer tool — it’s powering employee productivity, too. Pandya emphasized the dual impact of generative AI across both customer and employee experience. “They can really think about how productivity is driven across different work streams for their employees, and then what that enables them to do to drive impact for customers and their audience,” he said.
What’s Next? Deeper Integration, Smarter Agents
Looking ahead, Pandya predicts richer experiences powered by AI copilots embedded across platforms. “Ultimately, consumers want efficiency and urgency, and so the ability for… agentic copilots to help on that front will allow delivery to really be expedited and just stronger experiences across the board.”
As AI agents grow more capable, users will expect them to take on increasingly complex tasks — like fully booking travel. But as brands push further into personalization, they must tread carefully. “There’s a lot of inroads brands have made to ensure that customers are opting in to these different levels of engagement,” said Pandya. Still, he warned, “It can get a bit challenging if the experience is far too personalized.”
Related Article: Is Your Data Good Enough to Power AI Agents?
Tony Ferrara, Senior Director of Enterprise Applications at Wrench Group
Conversations about digital experience inevitably circle back to AI and the growing complexity of the tech stack. So how are enterprise leaders navigating vendor choices, data challenges and evolving customer expectations?
One trend: best-of-breed is in, but integration is everything. Tony Ferrara, senior director of enterprise applications at Wrench Group, has seen the shift firsthand.
“It used to be about ten years ago people were going on with one company, but now what they’re trying to do is… take the best that they do in each of their categories and try to bring them together.”
With platforms like Adobe, Microsoft, Salesforce and Google increasingly working well together, many companies are stitching together a flexible tech ecosystem that works across functions.
AI Vendors Come and Go — Data Is Forever
When asked how to evaluate long-term AI vendors, Ferrara said the real priority should be data compatibility. “If things don’t work with your data or the way that you’re building data, then it’s going to be really difficult to scale.” Whether it’s a startup or a tech giant, what matters most is whether the platform can “support your data model... because data’s always going to grow over time and the tools have to be able to facilitate that.”
The root issue, Ferrara explained, is that data strategies often lack business alignment. “There always needs to be this more… cross-functional partnership of what is the business outcome that you’re trying to accomplish.” Without that, developers build data that misses the mark, and there’s a “constant loop of iterations.”
AI at the Edge: Real-Time Help for Urgent Needs
While many companies focus on hyper-personalization, Wrench Group is leaning into immediacy. Ferrara described AI use cases designed for field technicians, like delivering equipment manuals and lifecycle data right to their tablets.
“Our digital experience is truly about moment of need and pulling all of the data points together… how do we get you what you need when you need it and get you through the experience as easy as physically possible?”
While AI is on the table, Ferrara said his team hasn’t mandated AI training — yet. Instead, they’re choosing to observe how employees naturally experiment.
“Our fear was if we make people learn a specific way, then their use cases get gated.” In the next few years, however, he anticipates rolling out more structured training and governance.
Bennie Boone, Senior Technical Lead, Marketing Technologies, at HGA
While his organization hasn't yet adopted AI Agents, Bennie Boone, who previously worked as a computer scientist for Adobe's AEM, said he's keeping a close eye on them. “Agents is where we're going, because that's the future."
He explained agents' potential to reduce the rigidity of current systems: “They can basically take information, process it in natural language and then delegate the work to other agents and communicate back and forth… I think agents are going to revolutionize the way we do things.”
The Dawn of New Careers
Still, he continued, it will be a delicate balance. “The more technology progresses, the less work there is for people to do. But I do think that that will spawn new careers and new things that will emerge as a result of that.”
Boone said he can’t see a future where humans are completely out of the loop with AI and AI agents. “At least I hope not,” he added. "We’ll need humans to keep these agents in check, make sure organizations are following compliance and have some sort of ethical standards."
Achieving True One-to-One Personalization
Looking ahead, he predicted a dramatic shift in how content is created: “In the next three to five years… the way we create content is going to be just as simple as talking to an agent.”
AI and AI agents may also be the key to achieving true one-to-one personalization, something Boone believes is on the near horizon. “I do see this as being something that will be very viable… it's not like a linear thing… it's exponential.”
He emphasized the need, however, to personalize content effectively, pointing to the differences in marketing to a soccer mom from Nebraska versus a business professional. “The challenge is going to be… targeting the right segments with the correct content.”
Another challenge? Avoiding the creep factor. “I don't want an entity to know everything about me… that's going to be one of the biggest challenges.”
Moving the Digital Experience Forward
Across industries, digital leaders are pushing past the hype and getting real about what it takes to deliver smarter, faster and more connected experiences. There’s no one-size-fits-all playbook.
But the organizations willing to experiment, adapt and stay aligned on business goals will be the ones that lead the next wave of digital transformation.
