2021 Adobe Summit: Perspectives (Part 2)

Impressions from our Adobe Experts, Emily Galway and Mayowa Adeyemi.

Emily Galway – Adobe Experience Manager Expert

This is my second time attending the Adobe Summit, both of which have been virtual experiences. Despite not being able to attend in person both summits have offered a wealth of knowledge from experts around the globe

When selecting talks to attend my main focus was on new features in the products we commonly use with our clients, like AEM and Analytics. There are sessions dedicated to product innovations and new tooling which help me to identify opportunities for my project and ultimately help me to ensure we continue to deliver a high value product for our client and end users. Let me give you an example:

Smart tagging text-based assets – this new AI-powered feature fully automates the tagging of text-based assets in the DAM; meaning our editors can upload these assets and smart tags will be applied in bulk. This helps us to organise and re-use content whilst also augmenting our search functionality; allowing our editors to quickly identify relevant text assets (without having to open and read lots of documents individually) – a time saving masterpiece.

Aside from learning about the products, something else I really enjoy about the Adobe Summit is hearing from other business’ about their own use cases, in their own words. It was great to hear from companies like AstraZeneca and CatBird NYC on their own experience of their technology stack and other prevalent topics.

The talk delivered David Simpson (Head of Global Commercial IT (Digital, Respiratory & CVRM)), from AstraZeneca gave an insight into how AEM supported the time to market of the Covid-19 vaccine by providing both a flexible and robust platform to disseminate information on a global scale. The solution used a single global gateway where users could then self-drive to country specific content like product information. You can watch for yourself here.

Also interesting was a talk delivered by Marketing & Communications Manager, Sriya Karumanchi from CatBird NYC with Adobe partner, Imagination Media. In response to the pandemic CatBird NYC had to reimagine how they delivered their ‘high touch’ in-store buying experience and move it online. The talk focussed on how data insights were used to deliver a targeted and personalised experience through marketing content, reduce friction in unique purchasing journeys (like buying engagement rings) with educational content and using predictive analytics to understand customer buying patterns. You can hear more in their talk here.

I always learn so much at these events and I’m excited for next year.

Mayowa Adeyemi – Adobe Expert

This not-to-be missed event is my 7th Adobe summit and although the virtual events are slick and will form a part of the core offering going forward, I do miss the chance to meet in person other Adobe experts creating amazing things for their customers.

My focus this year was the Adobe Experience Cloud (AEM, Analytics, Target), Commerce roadmap, and the latest innovations with the Adobe Experience Platform (AEP). Adobe’s ability to develop their product architecture has not lost momentum with the purchase of Workfront to provide enterprise workflow management especially for the B2B customers who crave a unified experience.

The top talks that I attended are as follows:

1) CX Avengers: The Adobe Alliance for CXM Innovation

(Great showcase for Adobe Experience Cloud and AEP working in tandem together)

2) The Future of Personalization in Adobe Experience Cloud

(The evolving technology landscape and what it means for performance, privacy, and how personalization can work in a cookieless world)

3) The New Commerce Imperative

(How customers can be more agile to reach new buyers, open new channels, enable new buyer journeys across industries; and quickly bring new international markets online)

I see the upcoming Magento releases supporting Capgemini clients need to deliver hybrid (B2C, B2B, and Subscriptions) commerce experiences. Visual AI for product recommendations and “Live Search” for hyper-relevant search results should do for commerce what digital asset management did for content management systems.

I will be back next year for the 20th anniversary which I hope will be in person – having the opportunity to network, listen, and learn from all the great customer experience conversations happening across EMEA and the world.

Mayowa Adeyemi

UK Adobe Practice

Emily Galway

UK Adobe Practice