Feature
The Gist
- Digital customer experience software evolution. From traditional CMS to sophisticated DXPs, offering personalized, AI-enhanced customer interactions.
- Generative AI's emergence. Signals a potential paradigm shift in digital customer experience, yet its practical application and full impact remain unfolding.
- The DXP concept. Once seen as a unified solution, now embraces a composable approach, reflecting the complex, multifaceted nature of modern digital customer experiences.
The transition from traditional content management systems (CMS) to digital experience platforms (DXP) and the adoption of headless architecture mark a new era of content delivery and customer interaction. It's an era for the digital customer experience software space that's been underway well before the 2020s.
This transformation, according to industry expert Mark Demeny, or a "CMS OG," as the kids may say, signifies a move beyond mere content management to a sophisticated, personalized digital experience strategy.
Is the landscape poised for another shake-up with the introduction of generative AI? Are we truly at the transformational stage for the digital customer experience software space? Amidst these advancements, questions still emerge about the authenticity of the DXP hype and its practical impact.
We caught up with Demeny, who’s held roles at vendors such as Uniform, Optimizely, Contentful, Sitecore and SAP and also served as a web systems analyst for the Canadian government. He delves into these shifts, questioning the motivations behind them, and pondering the future of digital customer experience software in an AI-driven world.
Evolution From CMS to DXP With a Side of Headless
The shift from traditional Web CMS to DXP is ongoing, according to Demeny. Headless technology — a back end-only content management system where the “body” content is stored separately from the “head,” where it is presented — allowed early-adopting companies, especially those prioritizing unique customer experiences, to overcome limitations of traditional suite tools.
Through this evolution, the digital customer experience software industry has seen a change from building pages to doing structured content because that empowers digital customer experience professionals to reuse content, support multiple channel use cases and operate in a "front-end-agnostic way," according to Demeny.
Enter generative AI. Last November, OpenAI debuted ChatGPT, the generative AI-based chatbot, and every DXP vendor and their mother started to latch on with integrations.
Generative AI could shift the thinking back to where you're just building pages, according to Demeny, who cited Adobe’s Project Franklin, which enables users to publish Adobe Experience Manager pages using Google Drive or Microsoft Office via Sharepoint. This suggests a potential re-balancing where structured content remains crucial but perhaps more on the backend with AI inferring structure that can be reused.
“I've yet to see where the market will evolve, but I think there has always been this tension of the more structured it is, the more you can reuse it, the less structured it is, the more visually interesting it can be," Demeny said. That pits marketers, developers and designers in a bit of a control battle in owning content, he added.
Demeny believes the industry might see a shift in trends. Vendors specializing in DXPs could regain prominence because of their strengths in visual content and workflow management. Adobe stands out with its vast stock photography resources. Other vendors also have valuable customer data that could be insightful.
This is a notable change because, not long ago, people thought that headless systems and multi-tenant Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) were the future. Now, there's a realization that this might not be the case. "It is fascinating," Demeny said.
Related Article: Real Talk With AI and Digital Customer Experience Management
Dissecting the Blurred Lines of Headless CMS
Companies like Uber leveraged headless CMSs to handle content in ways conventional suites couldn't. As these suites evolved, incorporating headless functionalities, the distinction blurred, making headless CMSs less of a niche solution, according to Demeny.
Today, organizations recognize the value in diverse CMS approaches. It's not uncommon for a company to use multiple systems like WordPress, Adobe Experience Manager and Contentful for different purposes. The challenge lies in managing common elements across systems, such as brand consistency or approval workflows.
"I think the real trick is how do you manage these things and choose the right things for the right purposes?" Demeny said. "And how do you manage common stuff like an organizational taxonomy or some approvals or brand elements? I think it's now certainly more clear that there is a balance, and there's advantages and disadvantages to these approaches."
Moreover, the landscape is shifting. Traditional suite vendors are adopting more headless, composable, and SaaS-like features, while headless CMSs are integrating more visual editing tools and even acquiring other companies to broaden their capabilities, according to Demeny. Netlify acquired Gatsby and Stackbit this year. Commercetools bought Frontastic in 2021.
The market is likely heading towards consolidation, especially within the crowded Customer Data Platform (CDP) space. Additionally, the definition of "independent" platforms is evolving, as seen with the MACH Alliance's membership evolving from mainly "scrappy startups" to companies like Amazon Web Services.
Related Article: 25 Best Free or Premium Headless Content Management Systems (CMS)
Exploring the Reality Behind Digital Experience Platforms: More Than Just Marketing Hype?
Composable DXPs drives vendor messaging in this space today. But is the hype around DXPs and composability really software-driven or marketing-driven? Clever marketers and vendors who sell digital customer experience software, after all, coin things to gain favor with prospective buyers. Some don't even believe that a DXP exists and in reality it’s just an amalgamation of different software components that actually exist.
A Digital Experience Platform (DXP) is defined as an integrated set of core technologies whose goal is to support the creation, management, delivery and optimization of customized digital customer experiences (DCXs), according to the CMSWire DXP Market Guide. Core digital experience platform capabilities include:
- APIs for administration, authoring, interoperability, decisioning and delivery
- Content authoring, workflow and collaboration
- Content and experience analytics
- Content indexing, metadata and search
- Content modeling and extensible content types
- Content presentation and delivery
- Content security and access control
- Content versioning and change management
- Customer experience personalization
- Digital asset management (DAM) and/or integration
- Ecommerce or ecommerce integration
- Experience design (low code site or page design)
- Experience personalization
- Experience testing and optimization
- Experience/site versioning and change management
- Forms design, integration and delivery
- Image management and editing
- Multi-lingual support and/or localization integration
- Multi-site, multi-channel, multi-device support
- CRM and digital marketing automation integration
- Platform account and access services
- Platform/back office extensibility
- Social media integration
According to Demeny, the transition from CMS to DXP wasn't merely a marketing name change but represented a genuine technological advancement, expanding from core content management capabilities to encompass layout management and channel personalization.
This evolution, however, was partly spurred by acquisitions where DXP vendors integrated adjacent capabilities to enhance their offerings, such as Sitecore acquiring Boxever and Optimizely acquiring Zaius. The idea of a single-product DXP has morphed into a more composable DXP concept where various tools are assembled to deliver the desired digital experience. When thinking about content management systems, that's the content creation, deployment through APIs, repository services and workflow versioning among other capabilities, Demeny added.
“Now, I think what's ironically happened is a lot of DXP vendors realize we're doing all this stuff that vendors adjacent to us do as well,” Demeny said.
He cited Sitecore taking its Sitecore Experience Database (xDB) product, recognizing the need for a Customer Data Platform and buying Boxever. Adobe bought a Data Management Platform (DemDex) and renamed it Audience Manager. Same for Optimizely's purchase of CDP Zaius, now called Optimizely Data Platform.
“And in the end, a lot of vendors have realized a lot of these capabilities were better off developed elsewhere,” Demeny said. “... At this point, now, pretty much every DXP is actually a composable DXP. It's just that those vendors that I listed, they've gone out and bought those things and really made that work.”
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Does the idea of a Digital Experience Platform exist? The idea does, according to Demeny. Does the idea of a DXP in a single product exist? “Well, it did for a short period of time, it doesn't really anymore,” he said. “But that idea of what it should be ... everybody has gone composable.”
Related Article: Emerging Trends Shaping the Future of Digital Experience Platforms (DXPs)
What's Your Anchor Tenant in Digital Customer Experience Software?
Forrester analyst Ted Schadler eight years ago called Web CMS the backbone of any digital experience delivery system.
The notion of a "backbone" system for digital experiences has evolved, reflecting that no single tool can serve as the centerpiece in today's diverse digital customer experience software landscape, according to Demeny.
Instead, the concept of an "anchor tenant" emerged, implying a primary system around which other tools are organized. This anchor could be content, commerce, or customer data, depending on the nature of the organization and its digital customer experience strategy. This decentralization underscores the increasing complexity and multi-faceted nature of digital customer experiences.
The concept of an "anchor tenant" aligns with the industry's growing emphasis on composable architectures, where organizations pick and choose the best-of-breed solutions to assemble their digital customer experience software stack, as elaborated in publications like CMSWire and analysts’ reports.
“I think backbone is too strong a word, because I think that kind of implies it is controlling the other things,” Demeny said. “I kind of see it as like, what's the anchor tenant in your DXP mall? And I think there does tend to be an anchor tenant. I think for say like 40% of organizations, it's content; I think for another 40% it's commerce; and then I think there's 20% that's customer data-led.”
B2C commerce retail sites begin with a commerce base (an anchor tenant) then assemble things around that, for example.
“So what personalization is going to work with this CMS?” Demeny said. “Can I layer on top to provide that context? What I'm using for my CDP? ... It's really like what's your primary source for customer experience? That's going to be your anchor tenant, and then everybody else builds off of that.”
Related Article: DXPs and CDPs: How to Measure and Improve Your Digital Customer Experience Metrics
Digital Customer Experience Software Vendors: Innovations in Generative AI
Where are the DXP vendors on generative AI integrations? Three of them — Sitecore, Optimizely and Contentstack — shared their updates in a March 2023 CX Decoded podcast, “Road Ahead for DXPs."
Here's how some vendors in the past month explored generative AI integrations into their digital customer experience software stacks:
- Contentful: Contentful unveiled this month Experience Builder and advanced AI tools, streamlining content management. Contentful positions AI as a central pillar of its platform evolution and has released integrations, although these are dependent on a customer subscribing to OpenAI’s services.
- Optimizely: Optimizely partnered with Writer, a generative AI platform for enterprises, and Optimizely Content Marketing Platform (CMP) customers will be able to leverage language learning models (LLMs) within the context of their existing marketing workflows.
- Adobe: Adobe announced the launch of the new Firefly web application, a playground for exploring AI-assisted creative expression. Firefly-powered capabilities are now integrated into creative workflows across Adobe Creative Cloud, Adobe Express and Adobe Experience Cloud and available for commercial use.
- Contentstack: Contentstack announced the integration of Amazon Bedrock into Contentstack Automation Hub and AI Assistant. Customers get access to Amazon's newest AI capabilities. Amazon Bedrock is a fully managed service that offers foundation models from Amazon and AI startups.
- Sitecore: At DX Minneapolis 2023, new generative AI features were announced that enhance content creation, management and delivery of digital experiences.
DXPs and the Future: Impact of Generative AI
Generative AI holds promise in revolutionizing the CMS and DXP realms, but its transformative impact might not materialize in the short term due to the complexity of scenarios it could address. For instance, Demeny said, AI could potentially manage multiple variations of content to enhance personalization, but the operational and technological hurdles to realize such scenarios are substantial.
Demeny said AI's impact will likely be akin to the internet's gradual evolution, where the initial use cases will give way to more profound and complex applications over time. However, realizing these advanced use cases will require substantial evolution in how digital customer experience software vendors design and implement their products to accommodate AI-driven processes.
Demeny cited the quote, “A lot of technology changes are overestimated in the short term and underestimated in the long term.”
“I think the real true revolution will come, but it will take a lot longer than we think,” Demeny said. “And that will be how can AI enable the scenarios that are prohibitively difficult to do today? So things around managing multiple variations of content. … One of the biggest gaps to personalization is you've got to manage all these content variations. You've got a ton of different language variations, a ton of different audience variations.”
It’s complex. It's a future where advanced tools will handle the complex process of content creation and management. These tools could control the entire flow of content creation, from managing various content sources to translating content into different languages based on what languages customers speak.
“That's going to require all of these things going back and forth and managing not individual content items, but really managing the process of how these things work,” he said. “And that's going to be a big necessary change in how CMS vendors actually build and implement their products, and that's not going to come overnight.”
