Adobe Summit Highlights 2021

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Adobe Summit 2021 featured keynotes from industry leaders, Adobe executives and market experts around the world graced the conference with their presence.

As 2021 brings a new set of challenges pertaining to the pandemic, adjusting to the new normal has become a part of our lives. Looking over all the hurdles, Adobe rolled out its annual, and the world’s largest, free digital experience conference. It’s the second year that the conference took place virtually and created just the right kind of buzz all over the industry.

 

If you couldn’t be a part of the conference, we suggest you to check out the on demand content available at https://business.adobe.com/

Here is a quick touchdown of the major takeaways from the event.

1- Uncovering the future of Digital Businesses

As the world moves from the times when eCommerce was a more convenient way to shop to it being the only way to procure essentials in the pandemic, lots have changed.

Shantanu Narayen Chairman, President, CEO, Adobe, takes on the keynote talking about how Adobe partnered with brands like Pfizer, to deliver data-driven experience for patients and healthcare providers on critical information. Also, Adobe got into an association with FedEx to supercharge their website with new content and help their mutual customers compete in the digital economy. 

This past year eCommerce spent $844 billion dollars and Adobe is taking every step to enhance experiences from end to end, chasing a trillion-dollar economy in the coming year.

Adobe Experience Cloud, AEP continues to be the highlight by powering the digital businesses of all sizes giving them everything they need to design and deliver great customer experiences at scale. It is the most comprehensive solution for content and commerce, data insights and audiences, customer journeys, and marketing workflow. It is for sure the next generation platform facilitating modern digital businesses.

CEO Shantanu Narayen shares what it takes for brands to succeed in our digital-first reality. https://t.co/5tnbuNsc2X #AdobeSummit pic.twitter.com/Q6kSeIowsH

— Experience Cloud (@AdobeExpCloud) April 27, 2021

2- Personalised Digital experiences

In the unpredictable times, the world has seen since last year, digital became the new way for people to connect, shop, work, and keep themselves entertained and brands had to be constantly on their toes delivering what could only be imagined at best at some point.

Anil Chakravarthy, EVP, GM Digital Business Experience, Adobe, stressed the fact that personalized digital experiences, delivered to customers in real-time are the key. Basically, to drive business growth, customer personalization has to be right, there are no two ways about it. Real-time personalization that leverages AI and machine learning could be the backbone behind the operation.

Speaking of innovations across the adobe portfolio in the past year, Adobe Experience Cloud, AEP, powered by Adobe Sensei, machine learning, and AI framework is at the heart of Adobe experience Cloud.

To help businesses create, optimize, manage content, AEM now supports a complete set of headless content management capabilities. Headless has been reimagined with Adobe Sensei, ML, and AI to optimize content for commerce.

Giving your customers what they want, when and where they want it is imperative to exceptional experiences. Tune in to @achakravarthy12 at #AdobeSummit now: https://t.co/5tnbuNsc2X pic.twitter.com/6atQhHAxXh

— Experience Cloud (@AdobeExpCloud) April 27, 2021

3- Figuring Business growth with the digital economy

There has been over three years’ worth of eCommerce growth in a span of just one year. As Jason Woosley, VP of Commerce and Developer Experience, Adobe, puts it, Companies must pivot to digital for all aspects of the customer journey. Companies serving business buyers saw a massive change as well, 85% of B2B companies shifted their models to include digital models in 2020. Digital commerce is now the driving channel for business growth, with new requirements being:

• Agility
• Opening of new channels
• Enabling buyer journeys across industries
• Bringing international markets online 

 4- The power of Headless

Headless technology is eventually making it easier and better than ever before to manage the content management on the frontend along with GraphQL to deliver the exact content you want to show on your website to your clients, which will result in a great experience for your customer and easier to work for your developers. Sean Steimer, Technical Architect, Adobe Customer Solutions, Adobe emphasized how Headless is facilitating ease of content management at the front end along with GraphQL diminishing lines between what you’d want to show on your website & what can be actually delivered, contributing a great deal to fine experiences.

Experience Manager offers a dynamic and modern unified solution for business’s content needs, supporting web and modern apps, such as single-page applications, and native mobile, mobile, and IoT apps.

Covid has changed business forever. With competition heating up focus is largely on experience-driven eCommerce. Sizable acceleration of eCommerce adoption calls for constant innovations in these times.@AdobeSummit @AdobeCommerce #AdobeSummit #CustomerExperience @ChrisHedge4 pic.twitter.com/QKlyfoWBIb

— Mudit Shukla (@mudits87) April 27, 2021

5- The drastic shift in buying patterns

We couldn’t have agreed more with Marion Freijsen, Strategic Business Advisor, Commerce Strategy Lead EMEA, Adobe, when she put the stats straight.97% of the Millenials are actually buying their personal goods via marketplaces instead of direct stores, and right now most of the buyers i.e. 26% of the buyers are millennials. Which certainly explains the demand of marketplaces in the near future. 

Also, B2B companies today are also turning their head towards digitalization very fast. Ever since the pandemic they need to help their distributor network and connect with them. This will allow them to choose where they want to interact with them, so for this marketplaces are often time is a fast and easier method allowing them not just doing B2B but also B2B2C. Digitalization has opened doors to ease of accessibility during COVID making ordering an imperative part of life. The B2B sector as well plans to match steps. It is a welcome step, given that 97% of millennials are actually buying goods via marketplaces.

6- Key Trends in Marketplaces

Marion Freijsen, Strategic Business Advisor, Commerce Strategy Lead EMEA, Adobe, put it out very clearly that 97% of the Millenials are actually buying their personal goods via marketplaces instead of direct stores and right now most of the buyers i.e. 26% of the buyers are millennials which certainly explains the demand of marketplaces in the near future. 

Also, B2B companies today are also turning their head towards digitalization very fast ever since the pandemic as they need to help their distributor network and connect with them, allowing them to choose where they want to interact with them, so for this marketplaces are often time is a fast and easier method allowing them not just doing B2B but also B2B2C. 

Digitalization has opened doors to ease of accessibility during COVID making ordering in an imperative part of lives. B2B sector as well plans to match steps, a welcome step, given that 97% millennials are actually buying goods via marketplaces.#AdobeSummit @AdobeCommerce pic.twitter.com/iHNXytM4b2

— Apurva Anand (@anandapurva18) April 28, 2021

7- Future of Developer Experience at Adobe

Through the pandemic, brands have worked diligently to make pivotal shifts at an unimaginable speed, all of which was made possible with developers at the core. The strategic rise in the role of developers has risen and how so! They are now playing a much more important and dynamic role. Hence, not just limited to their skill set but also crucial in creating new revenue streams. 

Jonathan Roeder, Director of Developer Experience, Experience Cloud and Sherrie Rohde, Developer Relations, Experience Cloud put out recognition for the immense value generated by Developers during the pandemic to enhance core capabilities of not just Adobe but organizations across the world.

Project Firefly takes the capabilities of Adobe Experience Cloud to the next level

Adobe introduced Project Firefly. It is a complete framework for building custom apps. Also, tailor-made to the unique needs of any business and its workflow requirements. This was done in order to make developers flexible and capacitate business capabilities on Adobe Applications.

Project Firefly arms developers with open source development and automation tools. Moreover, additionally gives them access to design and develop custom apps leading to business agility.

8-Magento Commerce Champions

Magento Commerce Champions is a brand new program crafted for top Magento community contributors. It takes forward the success of Magento Masters and welcomes people. These people would actively participate with the community, create an encouraging environment and build on its value. 

Moreover, the program commits to better and improved engagement with local commerce leaders. In a way, making room for inclusion and the much-needed, diversity.

Applications welcome from anyone in the Magento community. Individuals identification  from each region who in addition to benefiting from this program utilize the opportunity to empower their local communities as well.

If you’re interested you may submit the application at https://info2.magento.com/Magento_Commerce_Champions.html by June 1, 2021.

Final Thoughts

There is an absolute and urgent need for businesses to take on the digital-first eCommerce approach at the earliest opportunity. With the pandemic around, there has been tremendous change affecting businesses across the spectrum. The only way out is to go digital. The primary stress need to be on extreme vitality of delivering customer experiences that stand out.

Adobe is looking at strengthening commerce by tapping into the world of customer experiences. As a result, Live Search and Product Recommendations powered by Adobe Sensei will help in easy creation of new experiences. Hence making it easy to scale, reduce time-wasting manual tasks, and use insightful data to further optimize results. Live search, a newly launched SaaS-based service by Adobe Sensei. It will result in an ultra-fast, ultra-quick, and ultra-easy experience for customers. Merchants can also boost any specific product or brand they want to focus on by pinning it by. Thus, it will strengthen the Adobe commerce through breakthrough ideas. It gives your customers everything they need and deserve to maintain their privacy . It is a digital world and now there is no going back from it.