From an industry that’s fond of its acronyms, here’s another added to the list of CMS, ECM, WEM, DMS, EDMS, DI, CSP, and now DXP. It’s kind of overwhelming, isn’t it? Well maybe not for the people from the IT industry but certainly for those who are still trying to catch and keep up with the ever evolving, emerging information management technology. There are many more added every day certainly deserving of a dedicated space, that’s a story for another time.
The global DXP market size is currently valued at USD 14.08 billion in 2024 and is poised to grow to USD 26.50 billion by 2029 during the forecast period.
So, let’s just say when a brand plugs into and harnesses your mind space providing you with an elevated digital marketing experience by anticipating what the wants are and delivering them at the precise moment a decision is to be made, you have unknowingly faced the power of a Digital Experience Platform (DXP).
What's in The Article
The Predecessors and the Evolution.
The digital age has led to major organizational changes across industries, driven by connected and empowered consumers with rising expectations. ‘Intent’ being the common thread to maximize customer user experience, led the technology behind customer experience and the rise of Content Management Systems (CMS) in the early years.
The increased venture into digital space by customers and businesses called for a system to organize content, data, and images for enterprises and the answer was CMS. Soon the much sought after ‘answer’ presented challenges, kind of a double-edged sword, on one edge their ability to; create, manage accurate content, consistent in appearance and message, less costly to produce held great promise for organizations. But on the other edge, it presented a myriad of challenges, control and management, migration, and more importantly the introduction of silos in organizations.
Enter Web Experience Management (WEM) with the evolution of the internet, platforms that helped leverage web technologies and integrate them with existing enterprises, brought in a better way of content management with centralization. In order to ensure exceptional user experience for the customer, a key driver behind profit, businesses needed to send unique content to targeted audiences.
WEM not only allowed enterprises to organize and create content but also introduced rule-based personalization to the experience, helping build personas and bespoke content.
These predecessors gave rise to digital experience platforms that combined the power of WEM and the benefits of open platforms reducing the complexities of IT.
All behold the next generation, DXP: Gartner defines it as an integrated set of technologies, based on a common platform, that provides a broad range of audiences with consistent, secure and personalized access to information and applications across many digital touchpoints.
Combining and coordinating applications, content management, search and navigation, personalization, integration and aggregation, collaboration, workflow, analytics, mobile and multichannel support, all this can be achieved by the use of DXP. It manages the presentation layer based on the security privileges, role and preferences of an individual.
Organizations can use it to build, deploy and continually improve websites, portals, mobile and other digital experiences. What CMS did for brochures and websites, say 20 years ago, DXPs are doing it for every other customer touch point, including retail stores.
CMS, WEM, and DXP all in use by one organization or the other with the sole purpose of making the interaction between customer and brand meet both party’s needs, however, the way they do it has evolved.
Digging deeper into CMS, WEM & DXP and their Limitations
The immense pressure on organizations to stay relevant in an age of ‘bits and bytes’ revolves around their capability, adaptability and scalability in accordance with the growing trend for more devices, touchpoints and sensors. The only way to rise above the din and be noticed in a world of disrupting market segments and supply chains is by keeping up with technology.
The storm of content deluge by the competition for market superiority, there are opportunities for one to create their own by removing data silos, automation, optimizing various internal business processes.
It’s understandable that content management would be the cornerstone and the extent of their digital experience for many, but if the focus is on growth and ROI then efforts should be on interconnecting multiple systems, managing data and revising internal processes.
Content Management System (CMS)
Now, the CMS platform is a pretty basic system helping enterprises organize content, images, data, collaterals to boost their identity and online presence, some simplistic and some with a range of complex tools. It also provides version management and authoring workflow, keeping large global sites consistent. CMS such as Magento (now Adobe Commerce), WordPress, HubSpot, Joomla etc.
It fulfills the fundamental purpose of simplifying the process of sharing content with the online audience.
Consistent brand voice and image with features such as version management and multiple user access.
The ease of use, with or without technical acumen, with recognizable features.
But as a standalone system and in terms of personalization, are not that advanced to support the challenges of omnichannel marketing that requires complex integrations with other soft-wares which at times proves to be costly and time consuming.
Other key hurdles in implementing CMS are content structure variations, migration, silos, modeling metadata hierarchy, defining site taxonomy, publishing delays etc. all affecting content performance, reduced efficiency and duplication of content.
With digital becoming the major facet of brands, the reliance on cross department collaboration to share consistent digital information became imperative, new customer channels popped up, and lo! The WEM emerges.
Web Experience Management (WEM)
The painful years post Dot Com Bust in 2001 through 2002 caused sufferings, but there was a silver lining, the Cluetrain Manifesto, a book proclaiming ‘end of business as usual’ and that ‘markets are conversations and then in 2005, Tim O’ Reilly formalizing the term web 2.0 and the launch of the conference, heralded the onset of web engagement.
WEM’s facilitates companies to share data, logic, content and other elements across channels consistently.
With digital customer experience and engagement to the fore, WEM introduced rule-based personalization.
With the ability and the use of advanced analytics to collect user behavior, define personas, provided for the creation of unique content for the targeted audience.
It goes beyond just managing content, instead offers comprehensive solution to enhance user experience and its management.
Adaptive content, audience management and responsive designs, a tailored online experience with the right content, format and design helps in increasing conversions.
The limitations to begin with, WEM tends to generalize audience type and hinders content personalization. Not all environmental settings are relevant to all Operating Systems. It’s not a profile management tool and falls victim to the profile technology it’s driving. Creates complexities if an environment requires significant difference in profile creation, however works well if it’s a simple deployment.
This is where DXP exceeds both CMS and WEM in offering extensive to both, users and enterprises.
Digital Experience Platform (DXP)
The factors that can be attributed to the rise of an agile DXP, internal and customer facing, are connectivity and consistent experience. It was obvious that digital experience was no longer just marketing terminology but critical to growing customer satisfaction and ensuring loyalty post acquisition.
Combatting the limitations of a traditional CMS and built on content personalization features offered by WEM, DXP’s presents a fully integrated experience. With integrated backend systems, businesses can now share any type of asset, across any digital touchpoint – online, customer portals in-store, kiosk, billboards, e-commerce systems, and more. Designed to handle content and asset management on a larger scale, that’s something a traditional CMS struggled to offer without financial and time investment.
In both B2C and B2B worlds, the call for relevance and customer experience have been around for some time now. Managing all-round user experience across various touchpoints, connecting new digital channels such as mobile apps and social media are just few of the many advantages of DXP. Few top DXP’s in the market; SAP Fiori, OutSystems, Progress Sitefinity, Sitecore and more.
Retail Industry: Companies like Amazon and Walmart use DXPs to manage and personalize customer interactions across websites, mobile apps, and in-store kiosks. This integration has led to a 30% increase in customer satisfaction and a 20% boost in sales.
Banking Sector: Financial institutions like JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America utilize DXPs to provide consistent and secure access to banking services across digital touchpoints. This has resulted in a 35% increase in mobile banking adoption and a 25% reduction in customer support calls.
Healthcare: Healthcare providers like Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic use DXPs to streamline patient interactions, from appointment scheduling to telehealth services. This has improved patient engagement by 40% and reduced appointment no-show rates by 30%.
Advantages that DXP brings to the Table.
1. Being in Control of Every Touchpoint:
Managing the increasing number of interaction points, as quickly as a customer expects while maintaining consistency across content, feel and logic this is where the application programming interface (API)- first design shines.
It presents raw information in a pre-defined way so that every touchpoint can hand out information in a structured manner. Just not limited to content and data, it also presents entire elements of service.
For instance, “buy me” buttons with defined pricing logic can be share with apps or third-party retailers, wherever consistent information is needed to be made available.
Another instance would be of FAQ document created once can be shared across any digital touchpoints of choice, be it mobile, customer portals, web, chatbots, kiosks or voice assistant-once updated, it’s updated everywhere.
2. Connecting Internal Business Processes
DXP not being the only tool that businesses rely on, a marketing platform to bring in customers, a commerce platform for transactions and inventory, a support system for existing customers and of course, the liberty to choose other solutions that they deem fit to suit their needs.
With the use of API’s to aggregate and orchestrate data, DXP takes center stage, creating a perfect symphony of right experiences at every step of the customers’ journey. Internal departments using a preferred tool can simply connect with DXP with APIs and add or remove tools with ease. Making experimentation less daunting, an open DXP can bring a best-of-breed tool that enhances experiences with minimal interruption and fuss.
3. Architectural Flexibility
Building and deploying custom components or integrations with other best-of-breed systems, the underlying structure of the DXP needs to be flexible. Some DXPs turn to microservice architecture (a technique that arranges an application as a connection of loosely coupled services) where back-end logic is decoupled from front-end presentation and developers and marketers can make changes to both, quickly and independently.
Improvements to the platform can be made modular or segmental, so that changes made and its deployment does not disrupt the rest.
4. Reduced Silos and Added Flexibility:
A traditional CMS can produce and upload content on any platform but it also tends to create silos in organizations. DXPs coupled with intuitive knowledge management tools reduces silos within the workspace and offers a fully integrated digital experience.
With better collaboration, communication and efficiency, these platforms not only improve but also adds flexibility to build components and make the way one wants. The end result leads to increased customer satisfaction as they get to see what they want in a faster and more efficient manner. DXPs delivers exceptional personalized digital experience at the right time to the right person.
5. Is User Friendly and provides Reliable Data Analytics
DXPs being very user friendly reduces the dependency on IT support as it creates a connected, consistent digital experience for employees and customers. With in-depth analytics data, makes way for informed decisions driving growth.
Imagine a single repository with data from countless services and the ability of DXP to make sense of it all in real-time, further enriched with prior interactions customers have had with support and marketing teams.
Furthermore, the ability to create individualized experience based on reactions to previous recommendations or campaigns. All these helps to take better business decisions and in turn paves the way for loyalty and customer retention.
6. Engaging today’s Customers
In form of actionable insights, DXP connects with internal operational systems across digital channels enabling customer data capturing, processing and profiling, giving a unified 360-degree view of the customer. Companies are reengineering business practices by tracking, mapping and identifying bottlenecks of a customer’s journey to provide a superior customer experience.
Companies that have been using technologies proven to be best suited in the past can now with DXP as an open platform connect to preexisting solutions. That makes marketing agile with relevant and manageable personalization.
Quality content comes at a cost especially personalized ones, DXP by decoupling the presentation layer from the content and its metadata allows you to coordinate content and reuse of it across multiple environments thus content investments yields better results.
Albert Einstein (or was it Leo Cherne?…read on) “Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid; humans are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant; together they are powerful beyond imagination.” Doesn’t matter who said it, but rings true and apt given the AI revolution in every facet of existence.
7. Workings of DXP hand in hand with AI
With data flowing in from multiple sources, experiences spanning over a number of touchpoints, a growing customer base, various products and services on offer the question, true to all expanding businesses, arises how to improve and maintain momentum. AI as an intrinsic part of the DXP, with access to data from every tool and touchpoint can help to understand and improve experiences, from acquisition to loyalty. Saving the grunt work required for personalization to unearthing hidden insights within data.
Performing semantic searches, not humanly possible with millions of search terms for a single item, delivering most relevant results, at scale for any search query within a fraction of seconds. Manual personalization for every micro journey of the customer via hand written rules takes an eternity and with misses.
Conceptual personalization is at a much deeper level that takes into account every piece of content, device use, customer behavior, and successful conversion paths to learn, deliver, and repeat patterns that leads to better outcomes, not possible without AI.
The DXP at the center and AI as its nucleus, orchestrating the entire solutions toolkit, learning about your visitors and continuously, automatically, improving their experience. The humans behind your brand with focus and efforts on creativity, ethics, and original ideas and AI fine tuning your search, logic that powers personalization that’s what would really give your digital experience that unique competitive advantage.
Concluding with a Question-Do you need a DXP?
Digital experience platforms will soon be necessities. Touchpoints and customer interactions that would require a dynamic content management solution to access any number of channels, including computers, tablets, smartphones, wearables, nearables, augmented and virtual reality technologies, embedded devices, shared devices, and smart devices and present an exceptional CX. The people and process aspects of digital transformation will enable you to get and stay ahead of your competition! So do you need a DXP?
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