Digital Experiences: The New Market Differentiator

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On the era of interconnectivity, companies had to shift their business models to adapt and respond to the population’s new demands, which are based on a need for real-time digital interaction at virtually every moment in life.

In this new panorama, “products alone are not the basis of differentiation anymore,” explained Douglas Montalvao, Experience Cloud General Manager for Hispanic Latam, Adobe. “Businesses must now deliver great experiences to win in an increasingly competitive world and exceed client’s ever-increasing expectations at every point in the journey.”

Creating experiences for the customer requires of personalized approaches, “to date it is not enough to base (developments) on focus groups sorted by gender or age, companies need to know the exact interest of an individual client to offer the experience they would enjoy,” said Montalvao.

The US has seen a gigantic shift in experience-related spending, as individuals spend four times more on experiences than on physical goods, found a study by Adobe. Individuals spent 6.3 percent of their income in experiences, compared to 4.7 percent in services.  

To successfully create an experienced-based product, business conversations need to revolve around audiences, campaigns, journeys and lifetime value. “Consumers' digital days and journeys are much more complex nowadays. They go beyond the control of companies due to the multi-screens, options, social networks, reviews and interaction with other people and brands,” said Montalvao.

According to Adobe, a company’s “must-haves” for customer experience management include actionable experience data, dynamic content, seamless customer care, real-time decisioning, optimization and collaboration. These are the main issues customers and competitors are talking about, said Montalvao. “If you do not deliver on these basic elements, you are not delivering positive customer experiences. In Adobe, we are the only technology company in a position to deliver on this at scale.”

Adobe’s transformation was seen through its flagship product, Photoshop, which went from a single in-person software purchase bought physically to an online subscription-based model that is cloud-based and offers direct contact with the company.

To operate this novel service, Abode developed Adobe Experience Cloud, which Montalvao describes as the industry’s most comprehensive solution for marketing, advertising, analytics and commerce, serving both B2C and B2B customers.

“Experience Cloud allows you to deliver exceptional experiences from creation all the way through monetization and acquisition through renewal. It has played a pivotal role in transforming industry after industry. Whether it is financial services reimagining digital customer journeys or the world’s largest hotel chains delivering personalized hospitality, Adobe Experience Cloud has become the ‘experience fabric’ for the digital world.”

Adobe’s journey has been one of the most globally recognized digital transformations. It was named the second deepest transformation of the decade by Harvard Business Review. Adobe was considered to be the second largest software company in the world by value. The company was named the one that prospered the most during the pandemic. “Our transformation drove our market value to go from US$19 billion to US$222 billion in a period of five to six years,” said Montalvao.

Data is the primary factor behind this successful transformation. “Many companies have huge databases that simply do not get taken advantage of, we call this a data graveyard.” Montalvao said that the smart use of data using new activation channels creates new opportunities to communicate with well-known customers in their preferred channels. “We are turning real-time omni-channel customer experiences into reality; we update 970 million customer profiles in real-time on Adobe Experience Platform and moved from 72-hour data refresh cycle to a 10 seconds period.”

Adobe Experience Platform is leading a multi-industry digital transformation, according to Montalvao, ranging from banking to sports.