Adobe UK Enterprise Blog

Next week will be an exciting milestone in the development of CEM (Customer Experience Management) at Adobe. We are delighted to be the lead sponsor at the Gartner CRM Conference and are sponsoring the CEM track at the conference

In 2009 almost 40% of CIOs agreed that boosting customer experience was the most important way for technology to contribute to the long-term survival of their company.  Two years on, this instinct proved to be absolutely correct. The explosive growth of digital marketing has continued to evolve and is driving significant organisational transformation.

This event is a fantastic opportunity for Adobe to help CIOs, technology decision makers and marketeers to better understand the importance of CEM to their business. In the modern, online, connected business environment, it is essential that organisations – of all sizes – can deliver a new online experience which will drive brand awareness, customer loyalty, revenue, and market share; whilst also meeting the challenge of delivering a consistent high-quality experience across multiple channels and geographical regions – no small task.

Kevin Cochrane, VP product marketing for Adobe, is one of a number of Adobe execs travelling to the conference. Kevin will participate in a seminar debate on Monday 14^th March, 10.15 – 10.45 – A New Era of CRM. In this discussion Kevin, joined by  Reza Soudagar, Annie Weinberger and Brad Wilson will cover a broad range of topics from current day best practices to futuristic scenarios that could dramatically impact customer relationships and experiences in years to come.

Elsewhere at the conference on Tuesday 15^th March, 9.15-9.45, Yohan Founs from Adobe partner SQLI will be giving a seminar. This presentation – Delivering improved Customer Experience to enhance business value – will give an overview of how improving customer experience can also impact positively on areas such as employee performance, productivity, quality of services and employee/customer satisfaction.

Adobe is working with SQLI on some incredibly innovative projects across Europe, particularly within the financial services sector, keep watching this blog for more details in the coming months.

Finally, this conference is a great opportunity for Adobe to talk about how its business is evolving and to explain why Adobe believes it is at the forefront of innovation and thought leadership within CEM. Acquisitions in 2010 of Day Software  and Omniture, combined with Adobe’s already formidable enterprise capabilities, mean that Adobe is better placed than ever to provide end-to-end services and expertise which can transform the way a company engages with it customers. 

CEM is not a matter of simply replacing costly call centre and in-person interactions with self-service and online applications, consumers still demand high quality personal service. Instead there is a significant opportunity to revamp the way companies interact with customers and to improve margins while doing so. Digital channels like online and mobile are becoming the preferred method for clients to sell their products and services. Organisations that can deliver customer-centric services through these lower cost channels – while improving the services delivered through traditional channels – will not only capture market share and loyalty, but they will reap bottom-line rewards as well.

We look forward to seeing you at Gartner CRM Conference. Remember you can also follow Adobe at the conference through Twitter @AdobeEnterprise where we’ll be tweeting live from some of the keynotes and we’ll be posting more updates right here on the blog. You can also follow Gartner on Twitter @Gartner_inc/gartner-events and @Gartner_inc.

Following the launch last Tuesday of our Web Experience Management platform, that included significant enhancements to CQ5 and integration with the Adobe Online Marketing Suite, many have asked what is new in CQ5. To answer this, David Nuescheler, VP of Day products and technology here at Adobe, had a short Q&A with our sister blog, Experience Delivers. The video is below and if have any questions let us know.

This week has been a busy one for us here at Adobe as you may have seen that we announced a significant milestone in our customer experience management (CEM) platform, notably the arrival of our new web experience management (WEM) solution. The ability to truly deliver a multi-channel experience, integrating mobile, social communities, is now a reality for the digital enterprise.

Why we see this important is in today’s world is because marketers need to get into the mindset that a good customer experience correlates to customer loyalty and resulting in increased sales. With consumers researching and buying using multiple channels, often blending paths for a single purchase, the smart marketer has been faced with a real conundrum. They need to have the ingredients for a successful web experience strategy across all consumer touch points.

Enterprises online need to be able to deliver localised and relevant content for targeted multi-channel campaigns if they are to remain competitive. It’s because of this need to join the dots of digital content that we have reinforced our position in the Web Experience Management market.

Check out the short video from Kevin Cochrane below that goes into a little more detail on what web experience management means for business and we’d love to hear what you think.

Thanks to everyone that joined us for the recent Adobe government webinars with ITU Live. It was another really interesting debate. It’s great to see a panel of eminent experts from the industry who are also so “hands-on” in shaping the future of government IT, expressing their opinions in an open and challenging forum.

The topic was Cloud Computing and sparked a lively discussion about the barriers to innovation that are created by the public sector procurement process. A full video of the webinar is available here please do take the time watch.

I’ve also pulled out a few bullets below from the session which I thought were particularly insightful. Do feel free to add your own thoughts about this via the comments section within this blog. We always keen to hear what you have to say.

• Liam Maxwell, IT specialist and Conservative councillor at the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, argued that government needs to focus its attention on transparency, personal identity and cross-platform in the cloud to reduce IT spend in local government. A pioneer in his own constituency Liam is championing cloud computing with a view to moving most of Windsor and Maidenhead’s IT into the cloud within the next three years – a bold ambition to say the least.
• Liam states that one of the key things about localism and the localisation of services is that “it should be possible for someone to set up a trestle table in the town centre and open a government office providing services where and as they are needed”. I agree that cloud technology is certainly an enabler for that vision.
• He was also discusses that the public sector can do ‘Better for Less’ – a sentiment which Mark O’Neill, CIO at the Department of Communities & Local Government, and lead on the government’s new ‘skunk-works’, also felt.
• Mark explained how he believes the Comprehensive Spending Review has become a catalyst enabling local and central government to “rethink the business model”, and that this is an opportunity which comes along very rarely in IT.
• Alan Banks, MD for Adobe, completed the panel. Alan brought an IT vendors perspective to the proceedings. Alan commented that, “the model for government IT is changing and there will be no more monolithic IT projects.” He also led the panel in a discussion about the need for open standards and innovation. This a topic also close to Liam Maxwell’s heart, who said that a staggering £51m saving could be achieved by moving to an open document format within government.

Here in the UK, the minds of everyone in government and public sector have been duly focused on the Comprehensive Spending Review, as well as ongoing budget cuts and the undoubted effect that it will have on how services are delivered to UK citizens. It is sometimes difficult to look beyond ‘this Sceptred Isle’ and easy to feel that the issues which we have to overcome are unique. The reality is that local authorities and government bodies across Europe face the same issues and pressures as we do in the UK.

We recently hosted a very insightful seminar with colleagues, partners and customers from the Nordics. The topic for discussion was customer experience, customer engagement and the role that technology plays in redefining the experiences users have. You can view the whole webinar via the video below and a short summary of the topics covered is below.

A problem shared…

Just like in the UK, central and local government departments across the Nordics have to economise – searching for cost savings and efficiencies across their operations. New technology processes which incorporate tools such as rich internet applications, content management and electronic document management are being investigated as a means with which to not only reduce costs, but to increase the quality and efficiency of the way services are delivered.

Niels Tapdrup, citizen service manager, Municipality of Skanderborg in Denmark is heading a project which will streamline the ways in which citizens contact the council more efficiently, collating postal mail, email, online and telephone enquiries. Tapdrup explains how efficiency and cost saving are essential. The challenge they faced was how to change their channel strategy, and move expensive traditional channels of communication, to cheaper online methods whilst at the same time improve services for citizens.

The citizens changing demands

The customer, or citizen, is king and their needs must be met. Johan Salenstedt managing director, Adobe Nordics explains how the demand on how we use and access information has changed dramatically – people are familiar with just ‘using’ applications, rather than being trained on how to access them. Facebook is a perfect example of this – no one has ever been trained to use Facebook, yet implicitly millions of people use it every day. The same now applies to business or public service applications.

Barriers to implementation

In the discussion familiar barriers to change were identified, which concentrated on the internal operation of a department or authority:

• How do you tackle the initial business process?
• How do you manage the inevitable cultural shift within the organisation caused by doing things differently?
• And finally, overcoming the elephants in the room – those things which have always been seen as too expensive or difficult to change.

How to succeed

Rule number one for a successful IT implementation is to plan with the customer in mind. The needs of the end user must drive the new system. For example, any new technology or process which is delivering information and services must be delivered in exactly the way that the end users wish to receive it. Salenstedt confirms that public sector services must replicate consumer applications – they need to be easy and intuitive to use, whilst available 24×7 on mobile and PC and must be personalised to the individual users needs.

Secondly, developers need to involve all stakeholders in a collaborative consultation process. It is vital that they ‘show’, rather than ‘tell’ how new functions and solutions will operate. Taking a brand new approach to processes which have been set in stone for years is not easy – overcoming cultural barriers could make or break the project. For example, if the users don’t see the benefit in electronic documents, then they’ll always revert back to paper documents. Involving stakeholders at the outset will help to address these cultural issues.

Authorities can reap the benefits

The benefits are clear as at Skanderborg they reduced the cost of a single ‘traditional’ citizen contact point from 145DKK (£16.50) to just 10DKK (£1.15) by using an online interaction point – this is a huge saving.

Taking a business minded, commercial attitude to public sector reform is perhaps the best approach to managing this difficult process of business transformation. Local authorities can fundamentally change the dynamic within an organisation and the way it interacts with its customers. This can be an un-nerving process but is often essential – a new way of working in which customer experience and customer centricity are embedded in the organisation.

Two important dates to put in the diary next week for anyone interested in customer experience management (CEM). Adobe, in partnership with Local Government IT in Use, will be hosting two live webinars exploring the importance of CEM and providing real, practical advice into how CEM should be integrated into everything an organisation does.

Details of the webinars are listed below. Both webinars will be broadcast live over the internet using Adobe Connect simply click here to register to watch the interviews live, specify which webinar you are interested in and link will be sent to you on the morning of the webinar.

We’re also keen to make these sessions as interactive as possible, so if you have a question which you’d like to put to a member of the panel in advance of the webinar then now is the time to ask -  just click here to submit your question and the panel will endeavour to answer it. You can also submit questions during the live webinar itself.

Tuesday 28 September. 2pm (UK time). Customer Experience Management and the Citizen – Can a focus on citizen experience drive down costs in public service delivery?

With budget cuts in the public sector a continuing reality and next month’s Spending Review on the horizon, the panel will explore how technology and a focus on customer insight, or experience, can cut through organisational silos, drive up service standards and deliver much needed efficiency savings.

The panel will include:

• Dr Paul William, Basildon & Thurrock NHS Trust and Electronic Medical Records
• Nigel Kelly, Ministry of Justice’s e-Working Programme
• Johan Salenstedt, Managing Director Nordics, Adobe
• Helen Olsen, Managing Editor, LGITU magazine and UKauthority.com

Wednesday 29 September 2pm (UK time). Customer Experience Management – What makes a great customer experience?

Three factors – usefulness, usability, and how enjoyable the experience across all interaction channels – are key to creating happy customers, says Forrester. The analyst’s research also concludes that these three indicators are not only measurable, but critical to an organisation’s success.

The panel will include:

• Jonathan Browne, Senior Analyst, Forrester Research
• Jon Atkin, Scandocs,
• George Neill, Experience Architect at Adobe UK
• Helen Olsen, Managing Editor, LGITU magazine and UKauthority.com

We’ll also be tweeting live from @AdobeEnterprise and if interested in following the conversation the tag is #LGITUlive.

Last week we announced that Adobe entered into a definitive agreement to launch a public tender offer to acquire Day Software. Rob Tarkoff, SVP and GM of our Digital Enterprise Solutions business, and Day CEO Erik Hansen offer more perspective on this announcement, what it means, why we are doing this, in the below video.

Earlier this month Alan Banks, managing director for Adobe UK, got together with a number of top players from three of the Governments ‘super-sites’ to discuss the role that online government will play in helping to address the public spending budget cuts.

The discussion entitled Government websites, budget cuts and public services involved, in addition to Alan, David Dinsdale, programme director at businesslink; Guy Ker, publishing director, Directgov; Bob Gann, head of strategy at NHS Choices; and was hosted by Helen Olsen, editor of Local Government IT in Use (LGITU).

The group explored the implications of the Government’s review of its website domain and whether online citizen and business self service can help the public sector continue to deliver high quality services in the face of unprecedented budget cuts.

It was streamed live through LGITU Live with viewers encouraged to vote on a series of questions posed throughout the debate. The poll showed that viewers unanimously agreed that online services can maintain public sector service quality whilst at the same time reducing costs. Although, the role of an online brand as an essential element in delivering cost effective online services or as a way to encourage a sense of place and community was more divisive. More details of the poll can be found here.

A summary of the discussion can be viewed below, and we’d love to hear what you think.

According to stats from the recent Gartner Customer 360 conference there are about 400 people in the world with the job title head/director/VP of Customer Experience. And the number keeps on growing, in fact you can make that 401 with the announcement in late June that global car giant Vauxhall is to appoint a customer experience director.

Any organisation will tell you that customer experience is important, but how many are able to give an accurate and concise definition of what this entails? Is it how well your website performs? How quickly your company reps answer the phone? How long a customer remains a customer?

With so many possible definitions, it was refreshing to hear Gartner’s VP and distinguished analyst, Ed Thompson, provide some clarity on customer experience, defined as: “The customer’s perceptions and related feelings caused by the one-off and cumulative effects of interactions with a supplier’s employees, systems, channels or products.”

So how does that translate into the realities of the job for the 401 customer experience tsars across the globe? For Andy Gilson (the new man at Vauxhall) the role, “will focus on driving (no pun intended, their words not ours) Vauxhall customer satisfaction and developing new strategies for the company.”

Providing a good customer experience is now becoming a point of differentiation for organisations making them more competitive. But, it must also deliver tangible results with a clear financial return.

On our recently launched Adobe Experience Delivers blog, John Knightly, VP of enterprise marketing, who also attended the Gartner Customer 360 Conference, offers further thoughts on the importance of customer experience.