IT teams power organisations, being depended on to successfully help digitise their businesses. In turn, tools power IT teams. For IT teams to build effective solutions and efficiently complete tasks, help is needed. There are a range of technologies that can help do this. A digital experience platform, otherwise known as DXP, is one of the technologies that is worth keeping an eye out for.
What is a DXP and a Best of Breed Approach?
Gartner defines a DXP as “an integrated set of core technologies that support the composition, management, delivery, and optimisation of contextualised digital experiences”. They’re designed to play a part across multiexperience customer journeys. A best of breed approach refers to businesses getting best of breed solutions from different vendors for each of their application areas.
Using an integration platform, such as a DXP, allows businesses to:
- Utilise key capabilities necessary for the building, deployment, and improvement of websites, portals, and other solutions
- Serve multiple user audiences
- Integrate business tools while allowing for future digital innovation
Evolving Technology and Changes in Customer Expectations
Due to an increased focus on the customer and their needs, a shift towards providing integrated and seamless experiences has become the norm. Customer expectations have shifted and only continue to rise. What’s more, these expectations are carried over into every digital context. The more digital channels we see being added, the more we see expectations rise and customer journeys becoming increasingly complex. When organisations meet these expectations, this inevitably results in customer retention, vital to the success of any business.
To put the evolution of technologies into context with customer expectations, we can take a look at the evolution from content management systems (CMSs) to portals to DXPs. While CMSs helped users to create, edit, publish, and store digital content, the rise of technology and emergence of new digital channels led to customers expecting content to be consistent across all platforms.
Let’s consider portals next. While they are great for nurturing long-term relationships with customers, they can be complex and expensive. This leads us to DXPs, which meet the rise of customer expectations, taking the best parts of preceding technology, while simultaneously addressing their shortcomings.
