Top Takeaways from Adobe Summit 2019

Adobe Summit 2019 once again delivered the ultimate digital experience show that we all know and love. Thanks for exciting us about what’s to come and teaching us to make every experience EPIC! Blue Acorn iCi’s team of experts was onsite in Vegas to meet with some of the top industry leaders and be a part of the widespread information sharing. Keep reading to find out what their biggest takeaways were from Summit.

Data-Driven Customer Experiences

Adobe Summit 2019 was the largest ever in attendance. The first Summit we attended had about 4,500 attendees, and this year there were 17,000. Amidst all the noise, cases, and rollout, the common theme at Summit revolved around how companies use data to deliver customer experiences that provide a measurable return. The Adobe Summit content spanned the customer experience through the buyer’s journey, from awareness to consideration, to purchase and renewal.

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The content also covered a range of channels and advanced strategies required to deliver the customer experience and capture their business, including algorithmic paid media against segments, dynamic websites/mobile apps, augmented reality store shopping experiences, and personalization in loyalty programs. In short, Adobe continues to advance its product and services strategy on multiple fronts, bringing innovation and leadership to the entire customer experience.

Mark Kelley
Chief Growth Officer

Community Collaboration

As a first-time Adobe Summit attendee, I was amazed to see the depth and collaborative nature of the community. My biggest takeaway is how valuable Adobe views commerce and the efforts it has made to embed the new commerce cloud into its business. The Magento acquisition remained a buzzworthy topic throughout the event—numerous brands asked how they can leverage commerce cloud. On the other end, Magento users wanted to know how to integrate Adobe Analytics, Adobe Target, and generally how to further utilize the Adobe ecosystem.

Chris Guerra
Chief Growth Officer

Using Adobe to Accomplish Business Goals

One commonality among all attendees at Adobe Summit is that everyone is there to learn something new. Prospective customers are there to learn about new technologies. New customers are there to learn how to best implement the technology they have purchased. Existing customers are there to learn tips and tricks to continue to grow their digital maturity. Adobe is there to learn about what is important from their customers and how they can continue to develop technologies that help set their customers apart from their competitors by providing capabilities to deliver captivating experiences.

As an Adobe Partner attending Summit, it is so exciting to chat with people in varying locations on the digital maturity curve. Each customer’s business is unique, which presents an intriguing set of challenges for my team and I to strategize on solutions. I enjoy learning new business cases across different industries and how to leverage the latest released technology from Adobe to accomplish business goals in intelligent ways.

It is clear that the power of Adobe Sensei is a large part of the Adobe road map. Sensei will allow people to continue honing in on the metrics and goals important to their businesses. It will also let the machines “learn” while providing solutions at rates well beyond what humans are capable of doing. This will ultimately change the industry and companies will either be embracing these new capabilities and realizing incredibly high rates of ROI, or they’ll be left in the dust.

John Zeren
VP, Software Development

Personalization Is Only As Good As the Data

Delivering consistent and truly personalized experiences is more critical than ever to engaging and retaining customers. That’s why the Experience Platform was talked about so much at Summit this year — a single platform where companies can collect, curate, and combine data from various sources into a single unified profile about a customer is becoming an absolute necessity.

A platform that’s already integrated with the marketing technology solutions that companies are already using (such as Adobe Analytics and Adobe Target) adds tremendous value while decreasing the time and effort required for deployment. However, it’s important to keep in mind that personalization is only as good as the data powering it. That means companies must prioritize data quality initiatives to ensure that data collected and stored in various systems is comprehensive and accurate.

Shawn Reed
Director, Analytics Enablement

Experience Driven Commerce

The key themes of the Adobe Summit keynotes and general sessions were Adobe Sensei and Experience Driven Commerce. Adobe Sensei was talked about across a wide spectrum of sessions and keynotes at Summit, from the General Session to Summit Sneaks. In fact, all of Summit Sneaks demos were around Adobe Sensei and AI. I especially enjoyed the Labs session where we played around with Smart Cropping capabilities in Dynamic Media using Adobe Sensei.

Adobe also launched the Adobe Commerce Cloud in efforts to streamline and integrate Magento in the Adobe products suite. I expect Magento to become a core offering this year with easier integration capabilities between AEM and Magento going forward; utilizing Adobe I/O micro-services architecture. I am excited about the many new features being introduced in AEM 6.5; like the SPA (Single Page Application) editor, updates to the headless AEM capabilities, etc.

Sagar Sane
Technical Architect

Adobe Assets (DAM)

The biggest takeaway I have from Summit 2019 is that there are many, many different ways companies are trying to use parts of Adobe’s product offerings to achieve their business goals; whether they are related to end users or internal users. I was involved in a number of conversations involving both using and integrating the Assets product. Assets (the DAM) has been a part of AEM for so long that we can forget it has quite a few capabilities to offer. With Adobe also building more aspects of Sensei into Assets and the capability of using Assets in a headless architecture, it can do even more. That is opening up a variety of use cases with one of their long-standing product offerings.

Fundamentally, every company is continuously undergoing some kind of digital transformation. Adaptation and flexibility will be key factors moving forward for all parties in this space.

Josh Woods
Digital Solutions Manager

Customer Experience is King

Adobe Summit 2019 epitomized the importance of customer experience in the multidimensional world we live in.

By nature, customer experience is a series of never ending impressions in the human mind. It’s about creating meaning/satisfying emotional needs and driving the greater good for our consumers.

We live in a technologically advanced world where customers have full control of their buying journey. According to Satya Nadella (Microsoft CEO), having the right learning culture is key for being able to keep up with customer expectations and staying on the cutting edge of digital.

Digital innovation is born in the minds of customers, and it is those customers who disrupt industries and indirectly drive digital transformation. This new digital culture is founded on the premise of seamless memorable experiences. And while we are all different, at the end of the day we are all customers capitalizing on digital as the new future. How will you help shape that future?

Eve Korun
Sr. Account Executive, Digital Engagement

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