If you’ve never attended Adobe Summit, you’re in luck this year. The conference is typically held in Las Vegas, requiring travel, a pass, and a significant time commitment. However, this year’s conference is virtual – and free – for all to attend.
Adobe didn’t exactly skimp on sessions either. There are more than 400 to choose from, including keynotes with celebrity speakers like Dan Levy, Serena Williams, and Malcolm Gladwell. There are also focused sessions and training workshops. You can network with other attendees and join relevant communities. Register today and add sessions to your calendar, as the two-day event starts tomorrow, April 27.
As a leading Adobe Platinum Partner, we’re excited to announce that we’ll again be an Adobe Summit sponsor. We’ll also have a session with MonkeySports on a successful Magento upgrade and the results of that migration. The session, Upgrading to Higher Ecommerce Sales and Efficiency with MonkeySports, will take place on Wednesday, April 28, at 2 p.m. PT.
Perficient partnered with MonkeySports to complete the migration for both the Canadian and U.S. websites and integrate the websites with Product Information Management (PIM) software to centralize product data and disseminate it across channels. Additionally, Perficient and MonkeySports streamlined the product management and reward points processes and incorporated a configurator to allow customers to tailor their equipment when shopping online. The integrated website now features advanced functionality that reduces the time to introduce new products, improves the inventory update process, and enables more customization.
Within a few weeks of launching the optimized commerce experience, MonkeySports realized significant revenue growth, including a 50-percent sales increase in Canada and a 10-percent increase in the U.S.
“This migration has been the most stable website implementation our company has ever had,” said Ki Song, director of ecommerce, MonkeySports. “Our customers expect an intuitive digital experience with features designed with their convenience in mind, and this commerce solution delivers by providing an efficient and streamlined experience.”
In addition to the session, you can also find us on our sponsor page and follow along with @Perficient on Twitter. From the sponsor page, you can learn more about Perficient (from our customers’ perspectives). You can also schedule meetings to talk to our team of Adobe experts during the conference (just like a visit to our booth in past years) or schedule a time to meet once Summit wraps up.
What session are you looking forward to? Personally, we can’t wait to tune in and hear from our friend, Adobe’s VP of Adobe Experience Manager, Loni Stark, during her session on Fueling the Digital Economy with Content Everywhere.
At Perficient, we continually look for ways to champion and challenge our talented workforce with interesting projects for high-profile clients, encourage personal and professional growth through training and mentoring, and celebrate our people-oriented culture and the innovative ways they serve Perficient and the community.
Learn more about what it’s like to work at Perficient at our Careers page.
Go inside Life at Perficient and connect with us on LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram.
Perficient was recently included as a marketing technology integrator in Gartner’s Marketing Technology Vendor Guide, 2020. This inclusion marks the second time Perficient has been listed as a sample martech integrator in the report. The Marketing Technology Vendor Guide helps marketing leaders traverse the current martech vendor landscape, identify the right marketing technology solutions to achieve specific business goals, and understand which partnerships to consider when advancing martech maturity.
According to Gartner’s CMO Spend Survey 2020-2021, marketing technology currently accounts for 26% of budgets – a larger percentage than media, in-house labor, and agencies. Despite budget cuts due to the COVID-19 pandemic, 68% of CMOs expect their martech spend to increase in the coming year. Given the economic climate, CMOs are under significant pressure to make the most of these investments, demonstrating martech ROI and ensuring new and existing investments are delivering value. Selecting the right martech solutions for your needs – and finding partners to aid in strategy, implementation, integration, and managed services – is critically important to overall success.
Inclusion in this report highlights Perficient’s expertise in implementing and integrating marketing technology. Perficient has capabilities across content management, digital asset management, customer experience orchestration, marketing automation, email marketing, data solutions, and analytics.
As an award-winning Adobe Platinum Partner, Oracle Platinum Partner, Gold Salesforce Consulting Partner, Sitecore Platinum Partner, and partner to vendors such as Acquia and Episerver, we’ve helped to implement and integrate martech solutions for customers like HP, Symantec, and Houston Methodist, among others.
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Having a digital experience platform (DXP) that’s just “good enough” doesn’t cut it anymore. Whether you’re responding to shifts in the economy, society, or just customer preference, being able to deliver a robust omnichannel commerce experience is now the cost of doing business.
Perficient and Episerver partnered with IDC, a leading industry research organization to explore what successful digital experience management looks like in 2020 and beyond. The trends identified align exactly with what we’ve been seeing the marketplace, and we’ll highlight a few here. Be sure to download the paper for the full report!
When done right, a modern DXP drives not only engagement but sales. There are huge benefits to the business when technology, people and process align around a strategy that is well-crafted. Companies benefit from:
Download the full paper and learn more about how Perficient’s unique digital consulting approach, powered by Episerver’s market-leading DXP, can drive a truly customer-focused commerce experience.
]]>We are excited to share the news that Perficient has acquired Brainjocks, a leading digital consultancy with a strong Sitecore platform focus.
Brainjocks is well-known in the Sitecore ecosystem for their outstanding skills and expertise. The team is a trusted advisor to leading Fortune 1000 customers, enabling them to maximize ROI through digital strategy, technical, content, creative, and managed services solutions. These solutions include Brainjocks SCORE: a highly regarded methodology for CMS success and platform accelerator that dramatically reduces website buildout time and cost. The SCORE methodology drives operational success and empowers marketers to manage the customer experience independently.
Customer experience is paramount to the sustained growth of a business. It’s a key driver of customer loyalty, satisfaction, and ultimately, revenue. Today’s marketers strive to deliver experiences that turn customers into loyal brand advocates, and Sitecore delivers on that, with a digital experience platform that empowers the world’s brands to build lifelong relationships with their customers.
As an award-winning Sitecore Platinum Implementation Partner with the most Sitecore MVPs in North America, Perficient has built a fast-growing, highly skilled Sitecore practice with 12 Sitecore MVPs and more than 80 certified Sitecore developers. We have more than a decade of experience designing, building, and delivering enterprise-level sites powered by the Sitecore Experience Platform.
Recently recognized for the third year in a row as a leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Platforms, Sitecore shines as a fully integrated digital marketing platform that enables brands to connect with customers through relevant experiences and leverage omni-channel content, seamless commerce, and personalization. By acquiring Brainjocks, we are deepening our ability to help our customers effectively engage with their own customers through the delivery of end-to-end, Sitecore-powered solutions.
Perficient is elated to expand its presence in the Atlanta market and expand our global presence, and welcome 80 talented professionals and three Sitecore MVPs to the team. Together we will continue to enable and empower our clients to deliver relevant and personalized experiences at scale.
You can learn more about Perficient’s announcement here.
Perficient continually looks for ways to champion and challenge our workforce, encourage personal and professional growth, and celebrating our people-oriented culture. Work on interesting projects for some of the world’s most recognizable clients and enjoy life while doing so.
Visit our Careers page to see career opportunities and more!
Go inside Life at Perficient and connect with us on LinkedIn and Twitter.
]]>Last week, Perficient was announced as the first Adobe partner globally to achieve the Marketo Engage Specialization as part of the Adobe Solution Partner Program. Today, we’re sharing more exciting news. We’ve achieved our Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) – Run & Operate Specialization.
With existing specializations in Adobe Analytics, Adobe Advertising Cloud, AEM – Sites, and recently, Marketo Engage, AEM – Run & Operate marks our fifth specialization – the most of any Adobe partner in the Americas region.
This distinction demonstrates our commitment to being the best of the best in the Adobe partner ecosystem. Specialized partners are certified by Adobe following rigorous skills testing, consistent customer success in a specific solution, and client references.
“We’re thrilled to earn our second AEM specialization for AEM – Run & Operate. It reinforces our standing in the AEM DevOps space, where we have been managing ongoing Run and Operate programs for our largest customers for many years,” said Greg Dawson, General Manager, Adobe at Perficient.
The AEM – Run & Operate Specialization is awarded to Adobe Solution Partners who engage with an AEM customer deployment once the project has reached the Run & Operate phase of the deployment. Often, these partners will handle every aspect of operating the system for the customer in a “managed services” or outsourced manner.
We’re proud of what our specializations say about our Adobe partnership and our level of expertise across Adobe solutions. Even more, specialized partners must demonstrate proven customer success. We’re grateful for clients that helped us achieve this recognition.
We use Adobe Experience Cloud solutions to support our clients in delivering exceptional experiences to their customers. One of those clients, Symantec, was recognized for doing just that. Symantec recently won two awards for its new customer support experience, support.symantec.com.
]]>“Being the only partner to hold five separate Adobe specializations in the Americas is a huge accomplishment,” said Lynn Brading, National Alliance Director at Perficient. “We’re honored to rank among the top Adobe partners in the world in terms of breadth and depth of Adobe implementation expertise.”
Two years ago, twenty-four women gathered for breakfast during Adobe Summit 2017 to share their insights and discuss how they could support each other in a primarily male-dominated industry.
Several of these women were in attendance last week, as we hosted our third annual Women in Digital breakfast at Adobe Summit 2019. The event has quickly grown in size from a small group in a hotel suite to a packed restaurant filled with women eager to band together and learn from one another.
Our discussion was led by a panel of four women who shared a number of stories, tips, and also made us laugh (a lot):
As the conversation began, the panelists told us about the women and people who inspired them. The answers ranged from “balls of spitfire” grandmothers to artists to powerful women in leadership.
A key takeaway came when Kathy Leeman shared what really stood out to her after watching the movie Notorious RBG. She discussed how Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and late Justice Antonin Scalia – although often bitter opponents professionally – maintained a deep friendship. “That’s something I aspire to because I think there are times lines get blurred if someone disagrees with you. It’s really hard to not let that bleed into some of your personal relationships.”
RBG and Scalia were able to engage on ideas and respect each other’s opinions, all the while maintaining their friendship through the years. Kathy went on to discuss that women need to empower and respect each other, even when we don’t agree.
Loni Stark, a returning panelist from last year’s event who is also an artist in her spare time, was recently in Europe for work and attended a lecture in London at the Tate Modern around Dorothea Tanning. Dorothea was a self-taught artist who painted until she was 94 years old. While regarded as a Surrealist artist, she persisted, developed her own artistic style, and defined her own path. Loni said that it’s women like Dorothea who paved her own way and continued to evolve throughout her career who motivate her each morning to get out there and “armor up.”
Sidenote: I was impressed to learn, after reading more on Dorothea, that she took up writing in her 80s, publishing a collection of poems alongside a short novel well into her 90s.
Our panelists all agreed that mentors (as well as sponsors) are vital to have no matter what stage you’re at in your career.
Kathy shared that she has benefitted from a mentor, particularly during times of transition like Adobe’s recent acquisition of Marketo. “I think there are times where she helped me balance my approach. She was a good sounding board and could share candidly from a management perspective, giving me insights on how my actions would be perceived by senior management. Sometimes you have to back off a little bit and not be a bull in a China shop to get your ideas on the table.”
This concept shifted the conversation to how women can introduce their ideas and get them on the table in more creative ways. Again, our panelists all concurred that this is where the right mentors can be a huge asset.
Kathy discussed watching her mentors navigate up and realizing this would be a struggle at every level. “It happens across the board. It’s not just you. And watching someone manage it with grace and professionalism, even despite some of the things we’ve all seen, are the situations where you can really take it to heart the way they step back yet move the business forward.”
Loni recalled that throughout her career, her mentors taught her how to be empathic to where someone else is coming from to enable better communication. Ironically, she’s grown the most from managers who she did not get along with. “When I think about where my growth came from and where I became a better leader, it’s from the managers who had a different opinion than me. I remember being told I need to develop my EQ. And I was at first offended until I realized if I could develop it, I could improve my relationship with him.”
Loni also reminded us that it’s important to have someone who simply believes in you, whether it’s a spouse, sibling, or friend.
For Rachel Truair, it’s important for her to seek mentors in places where she feels like she has a gap. Her current mentor is CMO of a manufacturing company with tons of CPG experience. Rachel, on the other hand, has always worked in technology on the services side.
Rachel continued, “If I feel like there’s something I need to grow or develop, it also helps me to be around people that have different personalities or styles than me. I can watch them in action, spend time with them, and see how they try to lead me. This allows me to better understand what it feels like to be on the opposing side, and I can take what I learn back to my team and apply it.”
Like Rachel, Cheryl Miller discussed the importance of finding people who have the skills that you want to develop – she refers to them as her “Board of Directors,” with each person having a trait or capability she wishes to grow. This example spoke to the entire room because we all have those people, our circle of trust, who we rely on to help guide and direct us.
Cheryl also mentioned the importance of finding sponsors in your work environment, which serve a different purpose than mentors. Your sponsors are the ones who will advocate for your growth and push you forward.
The final question posed to our panelists was “What is the biggest challenge for the next generation of women?”
This topic naturally pivoted into cross-generational challenges. Loni brought up something that’s a good reminder for anyone, as careers grow and demands grow. “Your most valuable asset is your time. It’s a thing that no money, no anything will change…. so you need to figure that out. What sacrifices do I want to make?”
I think it was Oprah Winfrey who once said, “You can have it all. Just not all at once.” How true is that.
What are you willing to give up? As each of us grows in our respective careers, there will be more and more demands. Things in your personal life may need to shift, be it responsibilities at home or time spent on hobbies. Loni spends a lot of her free time painting, and because of that, knows she can’t dedicate time daily at the gym. She instead devotes three hours each week to high-intensity workouts (that are also highly intense, with her trainer yelling/keeping her motivated).
The panel also brought up an issue that women have struggled with for generations. Trying to balance their career while simultaneously being there to support their spouse and family at home. Loni mentioned, “I have people who will go on business trips and they’re stressed out. Why? Because before the business trip they have to get everything packed up thinking ‘Oh my gosh will the kids be okay if I don’t do these things?’ But you know what….. no one dies. The worst case is that they start to appreciate you a lot more.”
The group appreciated this honesty and continued to discuss using time wisely, setting expectations with managers, and having a support system in place.
As the conversation drew to a close in order for us all to head to the general session, Loni put it into perspective. “I think about what happens to people in other parts of the world and the obstacles that they have and you start to realize. Life is not fair… So I use that as a way of not staying bitter about disappointment or things that don’t go my way. I’m not using this as a way to pacify. But to try to bring out the best in who I am so that I let it go. How do I become the best version of me? Because doing that is what attracts success. I call it ‘armor up.’ You’re going to be judged more critically, scrutinized, put under a microscope. So every morning, armor up and make sure you’ve got everything you need to get into battle.”
As they wrapped up, the panel reminded the room to stand up for what’s important to you. Be strong when you know you deserve something, yet be prepared to get knocked down a few times (and of course, get right back up). And above all, find your mentor in armor!
Read all about last year’s breakfast here.
Image recognition is an increasingly popular topic. Not exactly surprising, since artificial intelligence (AI) can improve the efficiency and accuracy of your digital asset management. There are a number of AI vendors to choose from. How do they stack up when it comes to identifying the information in your images?
Our image AI comparison tool lets you find out. Use it to view image recognition data from several popular AI vendors and, based on the data that comes back for your images, determine which one may work the best for your needs. You can see how it works in this short video, then try it out at smartimages.prft.rocks.
If you are attending Adobe Summit next week, swing by our booth #931 and chat with us. We’d love to talk more about image recognition and AI. My colleague, Dan Klco, will be around to share more specifics on this tool (after all, he created it).
]]>The past year has been a busy one for Adobe. The digital experience leader acquired Magento, a leader in digital commerce, and more recently, Marketo, known for its powerful B2B marketing automation software. We have expertise in helping our customers get the most of out their investments in Magento and Marketo, and are looking forward to bringing those experts to Adobe Summit 2019, taking place March 25-29th in Las Vegas.
We’ll be exhibiting at booth #931, just inside the Community Pavilion main entrance. We’ll have Adobe, Magento, and Marketo experts there to discuss how you can use the solutions to drive business through experiences. And, while you say hello, you can see how Adobe Experience Cloud can be used to manage voice experiences.
We are also super excited to cheer on our colleague, Dan Klco, during his presentation at Adobe Summit.
The finalists of Adobe’s globe-wide Experience Manager rock star search share their best tips, tricks, and strategies. No doubt, these tips will positively impact your business. Each participant gets a fixed number of minutes to talk about a business challenge and do a live demo of how they used Experience Manager and other Experience Cloud solutions to solve it.
A little backstory: Dan won the competition in 2017, which was the session’s inaugural year. In 2018, he was invited to return as a judge. This year, Dan submitted another one of his tips – and he’s back as one of four finalists. Each finalist will share their top Adobe Experience Manager tip, trick, or best practice, and a winner will be chosen during the session. The session fills up fast, so make sure to add it to your schedule via the link above.
#AEMRockstar session description now has details on the topics that @klcodanr @MarkAdamcin @ryandellolio and Shivangi Malot are going to present. Register for S201 today! https://t.co/q5w8kQZQDR
— Kaushal Mall (@_kaushalmall) February 26, 2019
Are you attending Adobe Summit? Reach out to schedule time with our team, or to join one of our events throughout the week.
Perficient and Sitecore go way, way back. We’ve been working with Sitecore for well over a decade – even prior to the company opening its first office in the United States in 2004. And by growing and partnering together through the years, we’ve been able to help our clients transform digitally and drastically improve the customer/patient/member experience using the Sitecore platform.
Sitecore’s CMS flexibility, scalability, and security make it a popular choice among our enterprise customers (and our team). We believe so strongly in Sitecore’s capabilities that we chose to build Perficient.com and PerficientDigital.com using the Sitecore® Experience Platform
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This is why I’m incredibly excited to share the news that Perficient has elevated Sitecore to an ‘Enterprise’ partner, a distinction given to our largest partnerships with the most growth potential. And as one of Sitecore’s top partners, a Platinum Solution partner, we are equally excited to be recognized by Sitecore for our work on the platform.
We’re also honored to have won a number of Sitecore Experience Awards for our Sitecore work – most recently, a 2018 Sitecore Experience Award for best-in-class use of Sitecore as a Digital Experience Platform with Dignity Health.
Our Sitecore team is second to none (10+ MVPs!), but it takes a village to deliver end-to-end experiences. We are also a gold-certified partner in Microsoft’s cloud competencies and a National Solution Provider, and have a ton of experience deploying, hosting and managing Sitecore environments on Azure (as well as support other cloud providers).
With technology at our core, when fused with a team of talented content strategists, visual designers, and experience architects in our 400+ digital agency, we deliver on the complete vision and bring experiences to life.
Learn more about our partnership and work with Sitecore on our newly updated partner page.
Have you ever searched online in question format, only to be blown away that people have posted the same question as you on a platform like Quora – verbatim? Alternatively, you land on a blog post that spells out exactly what you are looking to find [insert ecstatically thankful emoji].
These scenarios help to make content (usually educational in nature) stand apart from the droves of pages available. While our team published hundreds of blog posts throughout the last 365 days, the following resonated most with the masses (thank you, readers!).
The most popular posts, in ascending order, with the last on this list being the most viewed Adobe post published in 2018:
AEM Assets Series: Creating a Taxonomy
How to Control Access with Closed User Groups in AEM Assets
Introducing Apache Sling 10
Adobe Experience Manager on Microsoft Azure: Better Together
Building a Zero Cost Website with Apache Sling CMS
Is the AEM Architect Exam Difficult?
Single Page Application Approaches in AEM
FYI: Seismic Changes Coming in AEM 6.4
Thanks to our team of bloggers for a great year on the Adobe blog, and congrats to the authors of these tops posts: Greg Dawson, Prakash Venkatesh, Dan Klco, Jessica Karasek, and Mohammed Ahmed. Subscribe to our weekly digest to get all the 2019 posts delivered to your inbox.
]]>Today, Perficient announced that it has acquired Elixiter, Inc., an award-winning marketing consultancy that specializes in Marketo marketing automation services.
Perficient Digital is already delivering exceptional digital marketing and marketing automation programs for our clients. In September, Adobe announced it had entered into a definitive agreement to purchase Marketo, the market-leading cloud platform for B2B marketing engagement. Perficient is one of the few Adobe Premier partners in North America, and with Adobe’s plans to purchase Marketo, we’re excited to enhance our ability to help clients deliver exceptional end-to-end, omni-channel experiences.
By acquiring Elixiter, we are deepening our ability to help our clients build lasting relationships and grow revenue. Exiliter enables companies to leverage more from Marketo and deliver revenue faster by proving what works.
Adobe and Marketo have a number of commonalities, including their firm belief in the power of content and data to drive results and exceed business goals. Digital-first companies with a dual focus on content and data continue to reap the benefits of data-driven marketing, and the creation and effective use of compelling content.
In Adobe’s “2018 Digital Trends” report, the three top-ranked priorities for marketers were:
Great digital experiences are not possible without a solid foundation in data and analytics, to make certain content is being used effectively – at the right time, and through the right touchpoint and digital experience.
In this same study, the need to orchestrate experiences effectively across different channels and points of engagement was deemed a “very important” digital marketing priority for companies over the next few years.
Whether B2C or B2B, coordinating experiences across channels and touchpoints is unachievable without a keen focus on content and data.
B2B marketers recognize Marketo as the leading management solution and the choice platform to help those sales and marketing teams find leads, effectively nurture those leads, and subsequently, convert them into closed business.
With so much marketing automation talent and Marketo expertise, we are elated to add Elixiter to our team. Welcome!
Sitecore recently announced its Sitecore Experience Awards 2018 category winners, and the competition was intense. There was an unprecedented number of submissions. From those submissions, the selected category winners represent an increasing focus on digital transformation, mobile optimization, and excellent customer service.
We are proud to announce that we, alongside our client, Dignity Health, are regional recipients of a 2018 Sitecore Experience Award for Best Use of Sitecore as a Digital Experience Platform (DXP). The Sitecore Experience Awards recognize organizations that have gone the distance and built truly customer-centric digital experiences with Sitecore.
The Best Use of Sitecore as a DXP awarded to Dignity Health, one of the nation’s largest healthcare systems with 40 hospitals in Arizona, California, and Nevada, recognizes the organization for its new web experience that simplifies and streamlines the patient and provider experience.
In today’s announcement, Stephen Tynes, principal of Customer Experience Platforms at Perficient Digital elaborates. “To carry out their mission to increase access to high-quality, affordable patient-centered care, Dignity Health is continuously looking for the latest innovations to help transform the way it interacts with consumers and patients. In leveraging the Sitecore Experience Platform, we’ve ensured Dignity Health continues to have the right technologies and systems in place to deliver engaging, contextual, and personalized experiences for all.”
This week in Orlando, at Sitecore’s customer event, Symposium, four regional winning entries will be recognized with Ultimate Sitecore Experience Awards. We are thrilled to be a gold sponsor of Sitecore Symposium 2018, as this year, the regional winners will be announced mainstage. Sitecore’s CMO, Paige O’Neill, will invite the regional winners to join her on stage so we can all give them the recognition they deserve.
In addition to the exciting award news, our talented Sitecore team is presenting several sessions. We will also be available at booth #305 throughout the conference. Read the full announcement for more details on the award, our sessions, and our overall presence at Symposium.