Solving Integration Challenges for Digital Experience Success

(Based on Forrester’s Report)

The rise of the word “Digital Experience” over the last couple of years has been undeniable. Managing digital customer experiences involves having to deal with complex integrations. And mostly (Although not all the time) different technologies are adopted to create seamless customer experiences. This means organizations do not adopt single-vendor solutions in most cases.

Not just this, Painful integration slows down time-to-market, increases the budget, and still ends up being a subpar digital solution.

Want to know the perks of going for a Digital Experience Solution?

· Rich and responsive interface.

· Lean platform approach with Web-Oriented architecture

· A single pre-integrated platform, which offers a variety of features out of the box.

· Readymade integration with presentation, content, and commerce systems

· Offers flexible and modular integration options (Theoretically)

· Enables reusability through extensions and plugins.

All this sounds good. Doesn’t it? To get all this up and running is not a simple process and especially integrations are a huge challenge.

Some of the characteristics one should look into before selecting a Digital Experience Solution:

· Easy to integrate with front-end components

· Aligns with compliances, privacy and security standards

· Satisfies Corporate Policies

· Relatively low cost compared to other platforms

· Vendor should have significant experience in the chosen solution

High priority items for Digital Experience Initiatives:

· Redesign user experience

· Deliver contextually relevant content

· Add/ Improve analytics

· Improve Digital Customer Experience

· Embrace Agile Development Methodologies

· Improve integrations with back-end services

Despite investing a lot of time and resource on integrations, most companies have it figured out all wrong. Basic integrations are pretty easy while integrations between CRM and Targeting tools are especially complex and too expensive to implement.

While Integrations start at the architecture level, they need to be constantly verified and updated to minimize any faults. How to simplify integration efforts going forward, you ask? An enterprise-wide approach can be implemented to 3 key areas namely:

· Identity Management

· Customer Data

· API first architecture

This will make it easier to plug-in new experiences and tools going forward. A scalable platform requires a robust, sustainable, customizable, and innovation-friendly architecture that helps organizations enhance their capabilities without actually altering the code.

Some of the core building blocks of site architecture are:

· Site information Architecture: Identification and Implementation of a site’s content and functionality

· Multisite Architecture: Creating multiple distinct websites to cater to different segments/markets

· Code and Module Structure

· Panel based architecture: Creating reusable pages

· Platform localization

Architecture Designers must consider some of these factors:

· Point-to-point Integrations are considerably difficult to manage and lightweight integrations are easier and less expensive

· Loss of specialization as one vendor cannot (in some cases) provide the best software in every area. (Eg: content vs commerce software)

· All-in-one platform is almost not possible: Single DX platform is impossible to build what with legacy investments, limited budgets, and all.

· The challenges in integration and upgrades may stifle improvements in technology or the ability to meet new customer needs immediately.

· Importance of core capabilities: Solid core capabilities help to anchor a DX portfolio.

And now, what do you think is the glue that is required to hold all these components together to function in harmony?

· Extensive, stable and comprehensive API’s: This provides the foundation for connecting different platforms together and integrating different systems to make them function seamlessly

· Micro-services based architecture: Architecture should support scaling and extensions wherever needed forming the building blocks of an agile development methodology.

· Business Level Enablement: DXP needs to enable seamless integration with 3rd party tools, this quite literally means minimal or no IT involvement.

4 Important Integration Principles for enhancing customer experiences: (According to a Forrester Report)

· Data Connectivity: Back-end systems need to enable bidirectional communication with core DX systems like CMS’s and Point solutions like testing tools. This way, customer experience can be optimized across more than just the website and can also provide personalization and information aggregation capabilities.

· Use pre-built capabilities: Avoid customizations unless completely necessary.

· Identify and implement modular application structures: Most people these days prefer open source to proprietary solutions. But this could be a wrong attitude as some of these proprietary CMS’s embrace service-oriented architecture across their portfolio and will not usually show monolithic legacy solutions.

Simplify backend systems and drive code re-use: The current system demands that DX Projects and the core technology teams invest in abstract layers and reusable services.