On 8 August 2017, over 250 business leaders gathered at the Adobe Experience Forum 2017 to discuss how organisations can transform to become “Experience Businesses”. Adobe also released a new Best of the Best research on website performance across Asia Pacific and Japan. Let’s take a look!
The Adobe Experience Forum 2017
The Adobe Experience Forum 2017 was a whole day event, covering key marketing and advertising technology areas including cross-channel marketing, customer experience, data-driven marketing, and programmatic advertising.
V.R. Srivatsan, Managing Director of Adobe SEA and Scott Rigby, Head of Digital Transformation of Adobe, took some time off to brief us in a more intimate session, covering the two main topics – the new Adobe Best of the Best research findings on website performance, and why it is important for businesses to focus on building an “Experience Business”.
The 2017 Adobe Best of the Best Report
The 2017 Adobe Best of the Best report aggregates anonymous data from approximately 100 billion visits to over 3,000 websites across Asia Pacific and Japan in 2016. In his presentation, Scott Rigby reveals new mobile and desktop usage trends and insights from the report, including overall website engagement and conversion metrics across devices.
Here are some key findings in the 2017 Adobe Best of the Best report :
Southeast Asia (SEA) experienced the largest decrease in time spent on websites – 13% YoY (Year on Year).
At the same time, the SEA region saw a 40% growth in smartphone conversion rates to 0.7%, which still lags the APAC rate of 1.1%.
In SEA, the desktop conversion rates grow 21% YoY, with 25% for the top 20%. This is more than double the conversion rates of smartphones.
The SEA region saw an 18% YoY increase in smartphone traffic to 37%, which still falls below the APAC average of 39%.
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Make Experience Your Business
We last heard from Srivatsan in May, when he talked to us about riding the experience business wave. Now, he reinforces the Adobe message that businesses need to focus on go beyond digital transformation to “establish a seamless, end-to-end, digital-to-physical experience for the consumer“.
In other words – businesses need to focus on creating the best customer experience by leveraging on technologies like cloud services, big data and machine intelligence. Adobe naturally provides all these services through the Adobe Experience Cloud, that is made up of Adobe Marketing Cloud, Adobe Analytics Cloud and Adobe Advertising Cloud, as well as Adobe Creative Cloud and Adobe Document Cloud.
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Last week, we were invited to an exclusive Adobe briefing on the Experience Business Wave. V.R. Srivatsan, Managing Director, Adobe Southeast Asia, flew in to share with us how Adobe’s three cloud services help organisations transform their businesses to ride the experience business wave.
Riding The Experience Business Wave
This is the age of digital disruption. No enterprise is safe from being made extinct or irrelevant in a moment’s notice. It is no surprise that every enterprise out there is talking about, if not already implementing, some form of digital transformation.
One of the major companies helping these enterprises respond to digital disruption is Adobe. While many of us know them as the creators of content creation software like Photoshop and Premiere, they are more than that. They are now a cloud service provider that also help enterprises change to meet the new digital disruptions.
As Srivatsan explains, the world is now riding on the experience business wave. Organisations now have to do more than just run an efficient business or make great products. They also have to focus on delivering the best experience to their customers. Srivatsan summarises the four key points of a great experience from the perspective of the customer :
Know Me & Respect Me
Speak In One Voice
Make Technology Transparent
Delight Me At Every Turn
The food and beverage industry is an obvious example. Just look at how pizzas are being ordered and delivered. So is the automotive industry. But no industry is safe from this new trend.
The Adobe Experience Cloud
To help these enterprises “ride” the experience business wave, Adobe offers the Adobe Experience Cloud. It consists of three different cloud solutions – Analytics Cloud, Advertising Cloud and Marketing Cloud.
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The Adobe Analytics Cloud allows for meaningful measurements of audience analytics, with instant insights. It also offers advertiser analytics and asset insights, as well as automated anomaly detection, contribution analysis and alerts.
The Adobe Advertising Cloud offers enterprises better control of their advertising with cross-channel and cross-device support, as well as tight integration with Adobe Analytics and Audience Manager.
Finally, the Adobe Marketing Cloud enables corporations to manage user experience at scale, with 1-click personalisation and mobile push notifications.
These three Adobe Experience components are all tightly integrated with the Adobe Creative Cloud and Document Cloud services, to allow for easier creation and management of creative content and documents.
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13 July 2016 – Adobe announced that the company was recognized as a Leader in ‘The Forrester Wave : Enterprise Marketing Software Suites, Q2 2016’ report by Forrester Research, Inc. Adobe received the highest scores in current offering and strategy. Through the report, Forrester evaluated the nine most significant enterprise marketing software suites providers across 40 criteria, including current offering, strategy and market presence.
“In today’s digital age, the brands that will be successful must lead with experience and delight customers across touch points,” said Suresh Vittal, Vice President, Adobe Marketing Cloud. “We believe our recognition in Forrester’s reports validates our continued leadership in helping companies transform into Experience Businesses.”
“Adobe balances its direct response marketing capabilities (Campaign, Social and Experience Manager) with advertising capabilities (Audience Manager, Media Optimizer and Primetime), and ties them together with insights (Analytics and Target) as its core services offering. Adobe has assembled a comprehensive portfolio, and B2C marketers have integrated multiple Adobe modules into sophisticated, large-scale marketing technology ecosystems,” stated Forrester in its Enterprise Marketing Software Suites report.
Adobe Marketing Cloud
Adobe Marketing Cloud empowers companies to use big data to effectively reach and engage customers and prospects with highly personalized marketing content across devices and digital touch points. Eight tightly integrated solutions offer marketers a complete set of marketing technologies that focus on analytics, web and app experience creation and management, testing and targeting, advertising, audience management, video, email, campaign orchestration and social engagement.
Adobe Marketing Cloud’s tie-in with Adobe Creative Cloud makes it easy to quickly activate creative assets across all marketing channels and customer touch points.
Forrester defines enterprise marketing software suites as “an integrated portfolio of marketing technology products that provide analytics, automation and orchestration of insight-driven customer interactions to support inbound and outbound marketing” and stated in the report, “In the age of the customer, B2C marketers must assemble their own unique marketing technology ecosystems that drive contextually relevant customer experiences.”
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Thousands of brands rely on Adobe’s digital marketing solutions, including two-thirds of the Fortune 50 and 10 of the 10 largest media, financial services, auto, wealth management and telecom companies. Adobe Marketing Cloud supports 41 trillion transactions and 4.1 trillion rich media requests per year, and managed 100 billion emails in 2015. Customers include Comcast, DuPont, Fairfax Media New Zealand, Hyatt Hotels Corporation, John Lewis, Lenovo, L’Occitane, MGM Resorts International, NBC Universal, National Bank of Abu Dhabi, NetApp, Renault, The Royal Bank of Scotland, Scottrade, T-Mobile, Tumi, Vodafone Ireland and more.
Adobe was also recognized as a Leader in “The Forrester Wave: Cross-Channel Campaign Management, Q2 2016.” Forrester evaluated the 15 most significant cross-channel campaign management vendors and Adobe received the highest scores in current offering and strategy. Adobe Campaign, Adobe’s cross-channel campaign management offering, enables brands to drastically improve customer engagement across email, web, social, display and mobile channels, as well as offline channels such as direct mail and point of sale.
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April 26, 2016 — Adobe today unveiled the first integration between Adobe Sign and Adobe Marketing Cloud, eliminating the cost and frustration of manual, paper-based process for enrollment, onboarding and servicing across the customer journey.
Adobe Sign Integrated With Adobe Marketing Cloud
Adobe Sign (formerly Document Cloud eSign services) features an upgraded and modernized mobile app experience, and works seamlessly with Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) Forms – a key part of Adobe Marketing Cloud – helping organizations to go completely digital with anything from credit card applications to government benefit forms or medical forms.
And building on widespread adoption in Europe, Adobe is rolling out new data centers and meeting the most stringent legal requirements in the EU, part of a global expansion that will continue through 2016.
Adobe also announced new Document Cloud storage integrations with Box and Microsoft OneDrive, which make it easier to access and work on PDF files from anywhere, as well as new features for Adobe Acrobat DC subscribers, delivering on the promise of ongoing innovation and value through Document Cloud.
“Every company and organization should be laser-focused on delivering the best customer experience possible, and the best experience does not involve paper,” said Bryan Lamkin, executive vice president and general manager, Digital Media at Adobe. “Today we further strengthen the value that Adobe Document Cloud and Adobe Sign bring to our global customers as the only complete solution that transforms paper-based transactions into 100 percent digital workflows.”
“Talking to businesses and partners around Asia Pacific, I see a real sense of urgency around transforming customer experience by making it seamless, pain-free, and accessible across all devices and touchpoints,” said Michael Stoddart, Director of Digital Media, Adobe Asia Pacific. “In its annual predictions for 2016, IDC believes that by the end of the year, 60 percent of the top 1000 enterprises in APAC will have digital transformation (DX) at the center of their corporate strategy, with a majority even creating an independent position to oversee the DX strategy implementation. Adobe is working with businesses across the region to help them create points of differentiation by making their core processes more customer-centric.”
At the heart of Document Cloud is Acrobat DC, the world’s best PDF solution; Adobe Sign, the leading e-signature solution that allows anyone to electronically sign and send documents from any device; and powerful companion mobile apps. More than six billion digital and electronic signature transactions are processed through Document Cloud each year, including global businesses like AmerisourceBergen, The Royal Bank of Scotland and Verizon and businesses in Asia Pacific like Stratton, one of Australia’s largest car and asset finance brokers, which rely on Document Cloud and Adobe Sign for fast, secure and mobile e-signatures.
“At Royal Bank of Scotland, we put our customers’ experience first when rolling out new services to make their lives a little easier,” said Ankit Chhajer, Digital Lead – Customer Experience and Sales Innovation, Royal Bank of Scotland. “Building on our broad adoption of Adobe Marketing Cloud, we are now turning to Adobe Document Cloud and Adobe Sign to create an elegant, hassle free customer experience that rivals none other.”
“Electronic signatures have reduced paperwork turnaround time from days to minutes, helping sales consultants finalize financing quickly,” said Andrew Lawrence, Software Development Manager, stratton. “Technology has always been a way for us to set ourselves apart, and we expect the new integrations in Adobe Sign will offer critical business services that we can use to close deals faster.”
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Introducing Powerful New Capabilities with Adobe Sign
Adobe Sign is the fast, easy, secure way to bring trusted e-signatures to every organization and department including HR, sales, IT, legal and procurement, to name a few. New functionality includes:
Transforming digital experiences – The integration between Adobe Sign and Experience Manager Forms turns complex, form-based processes into simple, engaging, mobile-optimized digital experiences across the entire customer journey. This includes how a person discovers the right form that they need, fills it out easily and successfully on any device, electronically signs it, and gets status updates once it is submitted. Using the integration between Adobe Sign and Adobe Marketing Cloud, organizations can provide responsive, adaptive experiences, enable personalization to continually improve the user experience with Adobe Target, and analyze and optimize performance with Adobe Analytics. Government, financial services and healthcare are just a few of the industries that will benefit from this service.
Furthering global e-signature and digital signature adoption – Building on widespread adoption in Europe, and as part of a global rollout, new data centers are now live in the EU. With a secure, standards-based approach, Adobe Sign meets the most stringent legal requirements so European organizations can go digital in compliance with eIDAS, the new EU signature regulation set to take effect in July 2016.
Delivering enhanced mobile signing – Sending, tracking and managing documents on tablets and smartphones is now easier than ever with the Adobe Sign app for iOS and Android (formerly Adobe eSign Manager DC). An updated dashboard and improved send for signature workflow enable users to be even more productive on any device.
Adobe is focused on enabling people to use Document Cloud with solutions they already use as part of their day-to-day work. Document Cloud already offers integrations with industry leaders like Apttus, Dropbox, Salesforce, Workday, and more. Adobe today is unveiling integrations with best-in-class cloud storage providers Box and Microsoft, along with new and expanded Adobe Sign integrations that span key business solutions and workflows.
Box – New offerings integrate Acrobat DC, Acrobat Reader and Adobe Sign with Box to simplify document workflows, as well as e-signature processes for enterprises. Whether users start from Box or Adobe, with just a few clicks they will be able to view and edit PDFs without any downloading, and ensure that the latest version is automatically secured in Box. Additionally, users can open Box files directly in Adobe Sign to provide an electronic signature on important contracts and paperwork, centralizing all updates in Box and streamlining the approval process.
Microsoft OneDrive – New integration with Acrobat DC, Acrobat Reader and Microsoft OneDrive allows organizations to access and work on PDF files stored in OneDrive directly from within the Adobe apps. With a few clicks in Acrobat on the desktop, users can view and work on PDF files stored in OneDrive while ensuring documents always remain synced. In addition, iOS users can access PDFs in OneDrive from the Acrobat Reader mobile app via the universal document picker, enabling them to work with PDF files anywhere.
Salesforce – The latest release of Adobe Sign significantly improves a user’s experience. Expected to be available in beta in May 2016, the update features the enhanced Salesforce Lightning user experience across any device, plus support for customizing the app with the drag-and-drop interface of Salesforce Lightning Components—while also providing compelling new features like signing groups and hybrid signing order. SteelBrick, recently acquired by Salesforce, also has an existing integration with Adobe Sign for helping speed the Configure Price Quote (CPQ) process.
Adobe Sign Ecosystem Momentum – Many new and updated integrations significantly expand the Adobe Sign ecosystem across common enterprise solutions—such as business process automation, contract lifecycle management and enterprise resource planning—and include Advanced Software Concepts (ASC), Buildium, McKesson Contract Manager, Namely, Oracle, SciQuest, SpringCM, and ThinkSmart.
Ongoing Innovation with Subscription to Acrobat DC
At the heart of Document Cloud, a subscription to Acrobat DC delivers instant access to new features and enhancements as soon as they’re available. Today, Adobe introduced:
Updated tools for everyday use – Modernized commenting and annotation tools are now fully updated with an intuitive, touch-friendly interface that makes it easier than ever to give and get fast, clear feedback; a highlighter pen can now mark up scanned documents without the need for optical character recognition (OCR); and paper-to-digital workflows like scanning are now optimized to deliver the best results.
Unrivaled accessibility – Adobe is adding critical menu and dialog updates to enhance the experience for users with visual impairments who rely on Acrobat DC to work with PDFs. The Home view and Save As options can now be read aloud by screen readers for greater accessibility.
Streamlined deployment – Adobe team and enterprise customers can now deploy and update Acrobat DC with Creative Cloud apps using the Adobe Creative Cloud packager.
Adobe Sign Pricing and Availability
The new Adobe Sign capabilities are expected to be available to customers in May 2016. Find out more.
The new Acrobat features will be automatically available to subscribers of Acrobat DC in May 2016. Find out more.
The ability to add a Box account to Acrobat DC and Acrobat Reader on desktop is expected by the end of May 2016. The ability for Acrobat Reader mobile users on iPhone and iPad to select Box as their preferred cloud service from the iOS document picker is expected by the end of June 2016. Initial access to Acrobat DC and Adobe Sign from the Box website is expected by the end of May 2016, with deeper integration expected by Fall 2016.
The ability to add a OneDrive account to Acrobat DC and Acrobat Reader on desktop, and the ability for Acrobat Reader mobile users on iPhone and iPad to select OneDrive as their preferred cloud storage provider from the iOS universal document picker, is expected by the end of June 2016.
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March 23, 2016 — Multiscreen and on-demand viewing have fundamentally changed the TV industry. Today, broadcasters and pay-TV providers are challenged by consumers’ desire to view content in alternative ways to traditional TV. Increasingly, viewers are watching movies, TV programs, live sports and other content via a broad range of internet-based devices and platforms. Audiences are seeking alternatives to cable, satellite and mobile carrier pay-TV packages, and are embracing “over the top” (OTT) TV and film delivered to every screen.
Today at Adobe Summit, Adobe announced an end-to-end offering with Adobe Primetime that extends the solution to help drive audience acquisition, engagement and monetization across every screen and platform. The new offering delivers more personalized TV and ad experiences directly to consumers via mobile, laptops and connected devices such as Apple TV, Sony PlayStation, Roku and Microsoft Xbox.
With the integration of Adobe’s digital marketing tools, TV networks and pay-TV providers can more effectively package and sell subscription- and advertising-based OTT services, offer highly engaging experiences, and build audiences with more personalized content and advertising.
“TV networks and pay-TV providers are eager to capitalize on OTT, but need a comprehensive platform to effectively acquire, engage and monetize viewers,” said Jeremy Helfand, vice president, Adobe Primetime. “By integrating Adobe’s advertising, analytics, data management, ad campaign and personalization engines with the video playback, ad insertion and DRM capabilities of Adobe Primetime, media companies are transforming their businesses with more personalized and engaging viewing experiences across screens.”
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The New Adobe Marketing Cloud
The new Adobe Marketing Cloud and Adobe Primetime offering is helping media companies launch direct-to-consumer services by addressing critical industry challenges, including:
Building an audience: Adobe’s digital marketing tools convert audiences into paying subscribers. Adobe Analytics and Adobe Audience Manager help customers identify specific audience segments based on current content consumption patterns and grow those segments through outreach to similar audiences. Adobe Media Optimizer and Adobe Target increase conversions from trials to paid subscriptions through automated ad campaign buys across search, display, and social channels. To develop consistently effective marketing messages, Adobe Target also offers A/B and multivariate testing and content optimization for both in-app and on-site experiences, which maximize the difficult challenge of audience acquisition.
Engaging audiences: Adobe’s new video personalization engine, Adobe Primetime Recommendations, harnesses Big Data to increase viewer engagement and viewing time. Primetime Recommendations learns from more than 200 billion online video consumption points across most U.S. households that stream TV and film content. Deep contextual insights, such as how much and what content a viewer has watched, yield compelling personalized TV recommendations. To alert viewers to recommended TV content outside of a video app, Adobe Campaign can also orchestrate email campaigns and notifications based on known consumer preferences. Support for instant-on content delivery and dynamic ad insertion through Adobe Primetime offer viewers more personalized TV and ad experiences.
Monetizing audiences: Adobe Marketing Cloud’s monetization capabilities enable TV networks and pay-TV providers to find the right balance among potential revenue streams: monthly subscriptions, rentals, electronic sell-through, and advertising. Together with Adobe Primetime, Adobe Audience Manager and Adobe Target deliver more relevant advertising to viewers, execute and measure dynamic ad insertion across any screen or platform, and create targeted advertising based on the characteristics of identified audience segments.
Measuring audience impact: Adobe Analytics makes it easy to understand how audiences are watching TV – the who, what, when, where, how, and most important, why of a consumer’s viewing decisions across multiple devices. This treasure trove of aggregated and anonymous data improves the acquisition, engagement and monetization of audiences when fed into the rest of the Adobe Marketing Cloud activation capabilities.
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