Financial institutions are at a pivotal moment. As customer expectations evolve and AI reshapes digital engagement, leaders in marketing, CX, and IT must rethink how they deliver value.

Adobe’s report, “State of Customer Experience in Financial Services in an AI-Driven World,” reveals that only 36% of the customer journey is currently personalized, despite 74% of executives acknowledging rising customer expectations. With transformation already underway, financial leaders face five imperatives that demand immediate action to drive relevance, trust, and growth.

1. Make Personalization More Meaningful

Personalization has long been a strategic focus, but today’s consumers expect more than basic segmentation or name-based greetings. They want real-time, omnichannel interactions that align with their financial goals, life stages, and behaviors.

To meet this demand, financial institutions must evolve from reactive personalization to predictive, intent-driven engagement. This means leveraging AI to anticipate needs, orchestrate journeys, and deliver content that resonates with individual context.

Perficient Adobe-consulting principal Ross Monaghan explains, “We are still dealing with disparate data and slow progression into a customer 360 source of truth view to provide effective personalization at scale. What many firms are overlooking is that this isn’t just a data issue. We’re dealing with both a people and process issue where teams need to adjust their operational process of typical campaign waterfall execution to trigger-based and journey personalization.”

His point underscores that personalization challenges go beyond technology. They require cultural and operational shifts to enable real-time, AI-driven engagement.

2. Redesign the Operating Model Around the Customer

Legacy structures often silo marketing, IT, and operations, creating friction in delivering cohesive customer experiences. To compete in a digital-first world, financial institutions must reorient their operating models around the customer, not the org chart.

This shift requires cross-functional collaboration, agile workflows, and shared KPIs that align teams around customer outcomes. It also demands a culture that embraces experimentation and continuous improvement.

Only 3% of financial services firms are structured around the customer journey, though 19% say it should be the ideal.

3. Build Content for AI-Powered Search

As AI-powered search becomes a primary interface for information discovery, the way content is created and structured must change. Traditional SEO strategies are no longer enough.

Customers now expect intelligent, personalized answers over static search results. To stay visible and trusted, financial institutions must create structured, metadata-rich content that performs in AI-powered environments. Content must reflect experience-expertise-authoritativeness-trustworthiness principles and be both machine-readable and human-relevant. Success depends on building discovery journeys that work across AI interfaces while earning customer confidence in moments that matter.

4. Unify Data and Platforms for Scalable Intelligence

Disconnected data and fragmented platforms limit the ability to generate insights and act on them at scale. To unlock the full potential of AI and automation, financial institutions must unify their data ecosystems.

This means integrating customer, behavioral, transactional, and operational data into a single source of truth that’s accessible across teams and systems. It also involves modernizing MarTech and CX platforms to support real-time decisioning and personalization.

But Ross points out, “Many digital experience and marketing platforms still want to own all data, which is just not realistic, both in reality and cost. The firms that develop their customer source of truth (typically cloud-based data platforms) and signal to other experience or service platforms will be the quickest to marketing execution maturity and success.”

His insight emphasizes that success depends not only on technology integration but also on adopting a federated approach that accelerates marketing execution and operational maturity.

5. Embed Guardrails Into GenAI Execution

As financial institutions explore GenAI use cases, from content generation to customer service automation, governance must be built in from the start. Trust is non-negotiable in financial services, and GenAI introduces new risks around accuracy, bias, and compliance.

Embedding guardrails means establishing clear policies, human-in-the-loop review processes, and robust monitoring systems. It also requires collaboration between legal, compliance, marketing, and IT to ensure responsible innovation.

At Perficient, we use our PACE (Policies, Advocacy, Controls, Enablement) Framework to holistically design tailored operational AI programs that empower business and technical stakeholders to innovate with confidence while mitigating risks and upholding ethical standards.

The Time to Lead is Now

The future of financial services will be defined by how intelligently and responsibly institutions engage in real time. These five imperatives offer a blueprint for action, each one grounded in data, urgency, and opportunity. Leaders who move now will be best positioned to earn trust, drive growth, and lead in the AI-powered era.

Learn About Perficient and Adobe’s Partnership

Are you looking for a partner to help you transform and modernize your technology strategy? Perficient and Adobe bring together deep industry expertise and powerful experience technologies to help financial institutions unify data, orchestrate journeys, and deliver customer-centric experiences that build trust and drive growth.

Get in Touch With Our Experts

The days of measuring marketing success by impressions and engagement are over, especially in financial services. Today, marketing leaders are being asked to do more than build brand awareness. They’re expected to drive top-line growth. 

According to Adobe’s report, “State of Customer Experience in Financial Services in an AI-Driven World,” 90% of financial services marketing leaders say they’re now expected to directly contribute to revenue. And 96% are being asked to become more efficient while doing so. 

This new mandate requires not only a change in metrics but a mindset transformation as well. 

Marketing is Now a Growth Engine

Modern financial institutions are retooling their marketing functions to prioritize: 

• Pipeline creation 

• Product adoption 

• Customer lifetime value

Campaigns are no longer judged by vanity KPIs. Success is measured by conversion lift, wallet share, and ROI. That means marketing must operate with the same precision and accountability as sales and finance. 

Performance-Driven Marketing Requires New Infrastructure

To meet these expectations, marketing teams need: 

• Attribution models that tie spend to outcomes 

• Automation platforms that enable real-time optimization 

• Journey tracking that connects every touchpoint to business impact 

Along with the right tools, financial services marketers will also need to build a culture of continuous improvement and commercial fluency. 

Business Fluency is the New Financial Services Marketing Skillset

To lead in this environment, marketers must speak the language of finance. That means understanding: 

• Unit economics 

• Acquisition cost 

• Profitability metrics 

Winning teams are breaking down silos between marketing, sales, and product to drive aligned, data-informed execution. Financial services marketing is moving beyond a support function to a strategic partner in growth. 

Precision, Accountability, and Impact

By embracing data-driven strategies, building the right infrastructure, and fostering commercial fluency, marketing teams can move from a support function to a strategic driver of revenue. The organizations that succeed will be those that align marketing with business outcomes and lead with precision, accountability, and agility. 

Download the full Adobe report to learn more about the top insights shaping financial services marketing and the industry as a whole. 

How Perficient and Adobe Help Financial Services Marketers Lead

We help financial services firms modernize their marketing operations from journey orchestration to performance measurement. Together with Adobe, we’re enabling marketing teams to become growth architects, not just brand custodians. 

Let’s connect and uncover new ways to drive measurable impact together.

In financial services, trust has always been foundational. But today, it’s being redefined, not by brand reputation or policy language, but by how customers experience speed, control, and transparency in real time. 

According to Adobe’s report, “State of Customer Experience in Financial Services in an AI-Driven World,” 96% of financial services executives say customers value privacy and data protection, and 63% say they expect transparent pricing. These have become operational expectations, and they’re shaping how trust is built moment by moment.

Trust Is Built in the Details Customers Can See

A face-ID login. A real-time transaction alert. A personalized financial nudge. These micro-moments now carry more weight than any static privacy policy. Customers judge trustworthiness by how responsive and secure their digital experiences feel—especially when managing sensitive tasks like wire transfers, credit approvals, or investment decisions. 

In this new landscape, trust is engineered, not assumed. 

Designing for Trust Means Designing for the Customer

Customers today expect more than digital convenience. They want to feel in control of their money, identity, and digital footprint and engage with institutions that respect their time, values, and privacy. Trust is no longer built solely through face-to-face interactions or legacy brand reputation. Trust is earned through every digital touchpoint.

To meet these expectations, financial institutions must deliver on three critical fronts:

1. Mobile-First Journeys With Instant Authentication

Customers expect secure access anytime, anywhere. A mobile-first design can enable frictionless, secure interactions that reinforce a sense of control and safety. Biometric authentication, real-time alerts, and intuitive navigation all contribute to a trustworthy experience.

2. Personalized Recommendations That Reflect Their Financial Goals

Trust grows when customers feel understood. Using AI and data responsibly to deliver tailored insights, whether it’s budgeting tips, investment opportunities, or credit alerts, shows that the institution is aligned with the customer’s financial well-being. Transparency in how data is used is key to maintaining that trust.

3. Seamless, Omnichannel Experiences That Feel Consistent and Secure

Whether a customer is engaging via app, website, call center, or in-branch, the experience should feel unified and secure. Consistency in branding, messaging, and service quality reinforces reliability, while secure data handling across channels ensures peace of mind.

Institutions that fail to deliver these experiences risk losing not just attention but loyalty. In a competitive landscape where switching providers is easier than ever, trust becomes a differentiator and a strategic imperative.

From Compliance Output to Design Input

Trust has become a core design principle. Instead of treating it as the outcome of compliance, financial institutions are embedding it into the very fabric of the customer experience. This shift reflects a broader understanding: trust is emotional, experiential, and earned in moments, not just mandated in policies.

That means:

Aligning products, security, and experience teams.

Trustworthy experiences require collaboration across silos. When product managers, cybersecurity experts, and UX designers work together, they can create solutions that are not only secure but also intuitive and empathetic. This alignment ensures that security features enhance, not hinder, the user experience.

Ensuring Personalization respects boundaries and data use is clearly communicated.

Customers want tailored experiences, but also want to know their data is safe. Leading institutions are adopting privacy-by-design principles, making it easy for users to understand how their data is used and giving them control over personalization settings. Transparency builds confidence; ambiguity erodes it.

Embedding transparency and predictability into every screen and interaction.

From clear language in disclosures to consistent UI patterns, every detail matters. Predictable flows, upfront information, and visible security cues (like encryption badges or session timers) help users feel safe and informed. These micro-moments of clarity add up to a macro-impact on trust.

This evolution requires cross-functional collaboration and a deep understanding of customer expectations.

Ready to Build Trust Through Experience Design?

Download the full Adobe report to explore the top 10 insights shaping the future of financial services, and discover how your organization can lead with intelligence, responsibility, and trust.

Learn About Perficient and Adobe’s Partnership

Perficient and Adobe bring together deep industry expertise and powerful experience technologies to help financial services organizations unify data, orchestrate journeys, and deliver customer-centric experiences that build trust and drive growth.

Get in Touch With Our Experts

In today’s financial landscape, personalization is no longer a luxury; it’s a customer expectation. Yet, according to Adobe’s latest State of Customer Experience in Financial Services in an AI-Driven World report, only 36% of the customer journey is currently personalized, despite 74% of financial services executives acknowledging that their customers expect tailored interactions.

This gap isn’t just a missed opportunity; it’s a trust breaker.

Why Personalization Matters More Than Ever

Financial decisions are deeply personal. Whether a customer is exploring mortgage options, planning for retirement, or managing small business finances, they expect advice and experiences that reflect their unique goals and life stage. Generic nudges and one-size-fits-all messaging simply don’t cut it anymore.

Early-stage interactions—like product discovery or financial education—are especially critical. These are high-value moments where relevance builds trust and guides decision-making. Yet many institutions fall short, lacking the orchestration needed to deliver personalized engagement across these initial touchpoints.

What’s Holding Institutions Back?

The report highlights several barriers:

• Fragmented data systems that prevent a unified view of the customer
• Legacy operating models that prioritize product silos over customer journeys
• Compliance concerns that limit personalization efforts, even when customers expect it

These challenges are compounded by the rise of AI-powered experiences, which demand real-time, context-aware personalization across channels.

The Path Forward: Adaptive, Lifecycle Personalization

To close the gap, financial institutions must evolve from episodic personalization to adaptive, full-lifecycle engagement. That means:

• Investing in unified customer profiles and behavioral insights
• Building real-time content engines that respond to customer signals
• Designing personalization strategies that grow with the relationship and not just the transaction

Download the full Adobe report to explore the top 10 insights shaping the future of financial services, and discover how your organization can lead with intelligence, responsibility, and trust.

Learn About Perficient and Adobe’s Partnership

Are you looking for a partner to help you transform and modernize your technology strategy? Perficient and Adobe bring together deep industry expertise and powerful experience technologies to help financial services organizations unify data, orchestrate journeys, and deliver customer-centric experiences that build trust and drive growth.

Get in Touch With Our Experts

Search is no longer just about blue links and ten results per page. With the rapid adoption of Generative AI, consumers are increasingly turning to AI-written summaries to get quick, contextual answers without ever clicking through to a website. According to Bain & Company, 80% of consumers now rely on AI-generated summaries for at least 40% of their searches. This shift is fundamentally changing how people discover and interact with brands online.

However, the implications extend beyond search behavior alone. AI is now shaping the very pathways through which digital traffic flows, often bypassing traditional entry points, such as homepages and product pages. Instead, consumers engage with AI-generated content that summarizes, interprets, and even recommends on behalf of brands.

U.S. retail sites saw a 4,700% year-over-year increase in traffic from Generative AI sources in July 2025. Source: Adobe Analytics

The Zero-Click Challenge for Brands

This new behavior has given rise to what’s known as the “zero-click search” phenomenon, where users get the information they need directly from search results or an AI interface, without visiting the source site. For brands, this presents a major challenge: how do you measure engagement when the click never happens?

Traditional metrics like pageviews and bounce rates are losing relevance. Gartner projects a 50% decline in organic traffic by 2028, driven largely by the rise of AI-powered search and zero-click experiences. As a result, marketers are grappling with a visibility paradox: their content may be powering AI summaries and influencing decisions, but without direct engagement, it’s harder to attribute value or optimize the experience.

This leads to a critical concern…what happens when AI misrepresents your brand?

When AI Gets Your Brand Wrong

As large language models (LLMs) become the default interface for search and content discovery, brands are increasingly at the mercy of how these models interpret and summarize their content. And the truth is, LLMs don’t always get it right.

AI-generated summaries often strip away nuance, flatten brand voice, and even misrepresent key messages. This is especially risky for brands in regulated industries or those with complex value propositions. When your content is reduced to a few lines in a zero-click search result, you lose control over how your brand is perceived and whether your audience even visits your site.

These risks raise urgent questions for marketers:

• How do you ensure your brand is accurately represented in AI-generated content?
• How do you maintain differentiation when LLMs are trained on the same public data as your competitors?
• And how do you optimize for visibility when traditional SEO signals are no longer enough?

To answer these questions, marketers need a new kind of toolkit that’s designed specifically for the AI era.

Adobe’s LLM Optimizer: A New Approach to Digital Experience

To help brands adapt to this new reality, Adobe has introduced the LLM Optimizer. This innovative solution is designed to ensure that brand content is not only discoverable by LLMs but also accurately represented in AI-generated summaries.

The LLM Optimizer works by analyzing how LLMs interpret and surface brand content, then providing actionable insights to improve visibility and accuracy. It helps marketers:

• Optimize content structure and metadata for AI consumption
• Ensure brand voice and messaging are preserved in AI summaries
• Track AI-driven engagement across GenAI platforms
• Identify content gaps where AI may be misrepresenting or omitting key brand information

In a world where AI is the new interface, Adobe’s LLM Optimizer empowers brands to take back control of their digital presence, even when the consumer never clicks.

Rethinking Digital Strategy for the AI Era

As AI continues to reshape how consumers search, discover, and decide, brands must evolve their digital strategies. It’s no longer enough to optimize for search engines alone; now, you must optimize for the AI models that interpret your content and deliver it to your audience.

Adobe’s LLM Optimizer offers a powerful way forward that helps brands stay visible, relevant, and measurable in a zero-click world. The digital front door may have moved, but with the right tools, brands can still welcome customers in.

Learn About Perficient and Adobe’s Partnership

Navigating the AI-driven digital landscape not only requires the right tools, but it also demands the right partner. Perficient and Adobe combine deep implementation and industry expertise with cutting-edge experience technology to help brands stay visible, relevant, and in control.

Let us help you rethink your digital front door and build experiences that connect, whether your customer clicks or not.

Get in Touch With Our Experts

As customer expectations continue to rise, financial services organizations are under increasing pressure to deliver personalized, seamless, and secure digital experiences. Adobe’s latest report, The Total Economic Impact of Adobe’s Content Supply Chain Solution, reveals how Generative AI and connected data are reshaping the industry and why now is the time for financial institutions to evolve.

A Wake-Up Call for Financial Services

Consumers today expect more than just secure transactions. They want personalized recommendations, consistent omnichannel experiences, and transparency in how their data and AI-generated content are used. Yet, Adobe’s research shows a significant gap between these expectations and what financial services brands currently deliver:

• 90% of consumers rate data privacy as critical, but only 58% feel their data is handled securely
• 79% expect consistent experiences across channels, but just 47% say brands deliver
• Only 33% feel brands anticipate their needs with relevant offers, despite 70% expecting it

This disconnect presents a clear opportunity for financial institutions to differentiate themselves by investing in AI-powered personalization and content delivery.

GenAI Moves From Concept to Competitive Advantage

Generative AI is no longer a futuristic concept; it is now a reality. It’s a strategic imperative. In 2025, 56% of financial services organizations are prioritizing GenAI to improve client interactions and employee productivity. Wealth and asset management firms lead the charge with 60% focusing on AI-driven client engagement compared to 52% in retail banking.

Use cases are expanding rapidly:

• Chatbots are the most mature application, with 49% of organizations already using them
• Journey optimization and data analysis are gaining traction, with over 40% of firms piloting or deploying solutions
• AI is also being used to automate workflows, generate creative content, and personalize customer experiences across channels

Efficiency, Engagement, and Growth

Executives are already seeing tangible benefits from AI adoption:

• 51% report major gains in content production speed
• 50% see improved team productivity
• 47% note freed-up resources for strategic initiatives

These improvements are driving better customer engagement and laying the foundation for scalable, personalized marketing.

Overcoming Compliance, Data Silos, and Culture

Despite the momentum, scaling AI in financial services isn’t without challenges. Governance, compliance, and privacy concerns top the list, especially in retail banking, where 59% of executives cite compliance as the biggest hurdle. Siloed data is another major issue, particularly in wealth and asset management, where 51% struggle to unify customer insights.

To move forward, organizations must:

• Establish cross-functional AI governance committees
• Invest in real-time data platforms
• Prioritize ethical AI practices to protect brand reputation

The Road Ahead

The Adobe report paints a clear picture: financial services organizations must embrace AI and digital transformation to stay competitive. Key trends shaping the future include:

• Hyper-Personalization | Real-time, one-to-one interactions are the goal, but only 33% of firms can update offers based on browsing history.
• Omnichannel Consistency | Practitioners feel pressure to deliver more content across more channels, with 43% citing increased volume demands.
• Sustainable Innovation | Wealth managers are leading the way in sustainable investing, responding to growing consumer demand.

To succeed, financial institutions must take a methodical, compliant approach to AI adoption, balancing innovation with trust. The winners will be those who connect data, content, and customer insights to deliver meaningful, personalized experiences at scale.

Ready to Transform Your Digital Experience Strategy?

Navigating the complexities of AI adoption, data governance, and digital transformation requires more than just technology. It demands deep industry expertise and a strategic partner who understands the nuances of financial services.

Our experts bring together Adobe solutions, generative AI innovation, and financial services experience to help you:

• Deliver personalized, compliant, and scalable digital experiences
• Break down data silos and activate real-time insights
• Accelerate content creation and journey optimization with AI
• Build trust through secure, transparent, and consistent customer interactions

Whether you’re modernizing for next-gen customers, launching new digital offerings, or scaling AI across your organization, we’re here to help you move forward with confidence.

Let’s connect and explore how we can elevate your customer experience together.

If you’re using Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud Service (AEMaaCS), you’ve likely wondered what to do with your existing CDN. AEMaaCS includes a fully managed CDN with caching, WAF, and DDoS protection. But it also supports a Bring Your Own CDN model.

This flexibility allows you to layer your CDN in front of Adobe’s, boosting page speed through edge caching.

The Challenge: Static vs. Dynamic Content

Many AEM pages combine static and dynamic components, and delivering both types of content through multiple layers of CDN can become a complex process.

Imagine a page filled with static components and just a few dynamic ones. For performance, the static content should be cached heavily. But dynamic components often require real-time rendering and can’t be cached. Since caching is typically controlled by page path—both in Dispatcher and the CDN—we end up disabling caching for the entire page. This workaround ensures dynamic components work as expected, but it undermines the purpose of caching and fast delivery.

Sling Dynamic Includes Provides a Partial Solution

AEM provides Sling Dynamic Includes (SDI) to partially cache the static content and dynamic content using placeholder tags. When a request comes in, it merges the static and dynamic content and then delivers it to the customer.

You can learn more about Sling Dynamic Include on the Adobe Experience League site.

However, SDI relies on the Dispatcher server for processing. This adds load and latency.

Imagine if this process is done on the CDN. This is where Edge Side Includes (ESI) comes into play.

Edge-Side Includes Enters the Chat

ESI does the same thing as SDI, but it uses ESI tags on the cached pages on the CDN.

ESI is powerful, but what if you want to do additional custom business logic apart from just fetching the content? That’s where Cloudflare Workers shines.

What is Cloudflare Workers?  

Cloudflare Workers is a serverless application that can be executed on the CDN Edge Network. Executing the code in edge locations closer to the user location reduces the latency and performance because the request does not have to reach the origin servers.  

Learn more about Cloudflare Workers on the Cloudflare Doc site.

ESI + Cloudflare Workers

In the following example, I’ll share how Cloudflare Workers intercepts ESI tags and fetches both original and translated content.

How to Enable ESI in AEM

1. Enable SDI in AEM Publish: /system/console/configMgr/org.apache.sling.dynamicinclude.Configuration
2. Add mod_include to your Dispatcher config.
3. Set no-cache rules for SDI fragments using specific selectors.

Note: Set include-filter.config.include-type to “ESI” to enable Edge Side Includes.

Visit this article for more detailed steps on how to enable SDI, Dispatcher configuration.  

Writing the Cloudflare Worker Script

Next, write a custom script to intercept the ESI tag request and make a custom call to the origin to get the content, either from the original or translated content.

addEventListener('fetch', (event) => { 

  event.respondWith(handleRequest(event.request)); 

}); 

async function handleRequest(request){ 

//You can update the url and set it to your local aem url in case of local development 

const url = new URL(request.url); 

const origin = url.origin; 

// You can modify the headers based on your requirements and then create a new request with the new headers 

const originalHeaders = request.headers; 

            const newHeaders = new Headers(originalHeaders); 

//Append new headers here 

const aemRequest = new Request(url, { 

                    headers: newHeaders, 

                    redirect: 'manual', 

                }); 

// Get the response from the Origin 

try{ 

const aemresponse = await fetch(aemRequest); 

// Get the content type 

const contentType = aemresponse.headers.get("Content-Type") || ""; 

// If the content type is not “text/html”, return the response as usual or as per requirement, else check if the content has any “esi:include” tag 

If(!contentType.toLocaleLowerCase().includes("text/html")){ 

//return  

} 

//fetch the HTML response 

            const html = await aemresponse.text(); 

if(!html.includes("esi:include")){ 

//content doesn’t have esi tag, return the response 

} 

return fetchESIContent(aemresponse, html, origin) 

} 

} 

 

async function fetchESIContent(originResponse, html, origin) { 

    try{ 

   

      //RegEx expression to find all the esi:include tag in the page 

      const esiRegex = /<esi:include[^>]*\ssrc="([^"]+)"[^>]*\/?>/gi; 

   

      //fetch all fragments and replace those 

      const replaced = await replaceAsync(html, esiRegex, async (match, src) => { 

        try { 

          const absEsiUrl = resolveEsiSrc(src, origin); 

          const fragRes = await fetch(absEsiUrl, {headers: {"Cache-Control" : "no-store"}}); 

          console.log('Fragment response',fragRes.statusText) 

          return fragRes.ok ? await fragRes.text() : "Fragment Response didn't return anything"; 

        } catch (error) { 

          console.error("Error in fetching esi fragments: ",error.message); 

          return ""; 

        } 

      }) 

   

      const headers = appendResponseHeader(originResponse) 

      // Add this header to confirm that ESI has been injected successfully  

       headers.set("X-ESI-Injected", "true"); 

   

      return new Response(replaced, { 

        headers, 

        statusText: originResponse.statusText, 

        status: originResponse.status 

      }) 

    } 

    catch(err){ 

      new Response("Failed to fetch AEM page: "+ err.message, {status: 500}) 

    } 

  } 

 

// Function to fetch content asynchronously 

async function replaceAsync(str, regex, asycFn) { 

    const parts = []; 

    let lastIndex = 0; 

    for( const m of str.matchAll(regex)){ 

        //console.log("ESI Part of the page:: ",m) 

        parts.push(str.slice(lastIndex, m.index)); 

        parts.push(await asycFn(...m)); 

        lastIndex = m.index + m[0].length; 

    } 

    parts.push(str.slice(lastIndex)); 

    return parts.join(""); 

}

Bonus Tip: Local Testing With Miniflare

Want to test Cloudflare Workers locally? Use Miniflare, a simulator for Worker environments.

Check out the official Miniflare documentation.

You Don’t Need to Sacrifice Performance or Functionality

Implementing ESI through Cloudflare Workers is an excellent way to combine aggressive caching with dynamic content rendering—without compromising overall page performance or functionality. 

This approach helps teams deliver faster, smarter experiences at scale. As edge computing continues to evolve, we’re excited to explore even more ways to optimize performance and personalization.

This post builds on our original GenStudio for Performance Marketing in 5 Minutes overview. In that post, we explored what GenStudio is, how to get started, and where it fits in the content creation process.
Since then, we’ve continued testing GenStudio and tracking its evolution. Here’s what we’ve learned—and what’s new.

Real-World Use Cases for GenStudio

GenStudio helps marketers scale content creation and personalization. Here are a few high-impact use cases:

• Reuse content from past campaigns across multiple channels
• Personalize content by product, offer, or audience segment
• Localize content for different languages and regions
• Optimize content using performance insights

These use cases make GenStudio a powerful tool for performance marketing teams.

What’s New in GenStudio

Adobe continues to enhance GenStudio with new features and integrations. Since our initial review, here are some of the most notable updates:

• Multilingual content creation in 12 languages
• Video support for LinkedIn and Meta templates
• Rich text formatting in content variants
• Starter templates to accelerate creative production
• Workfront Proof integration for streamlined reviews

You can find the full list of updates and fixes on Adobe’s release notes page.

What’s Working and What We’d Like to See

Development Considerations

GenStudio is primarily UI-based, which makes version control tricky. We recommend managing template versions outside the platform. Keeping multiple versions inside GenStudio can confuse users and clutter the workspace.

However, deleting templates can break experiences built from them. Proceed with caution.

Although rudimentary, it is possible to use the search tool to find a template and then create an experience from that template. It can be used while navigating templates, or when creating new content and prompted for a template, as in the example pictured below. 

Activation Channels Are Expanding

GenStudio now supports activation to Meta, Google Campaign Manager 360, and LinkedIn. Adobe has also announced upcoming support for:

• Microsoft Advertising
• Snap
• TikTok

Integration with Adobe Journey Optimizer (AJO) is now available as well.

Managing Multiple Brands

We’ve added several brands to our GenStudio instance, including the one behind LumaX—our shopping experience site that demonstrates Edge Delivery Services, StreamX, Adobe Commerce, and Adobe Experience Platform integrations.

Adobe has previewed a Unified Branding Service in webinars, but we’re still waiting on official documentation and guidance on how to use it across applications.

Visualizing the Experience

The infographic below shows how we’ve structured GenStudio for performance marketing. Your experience may vary depending on your configuration and rollout stage.

Click the image to enlarge the infographic.

Final Thoughts

We’re excited about GenStudio’s momentum and its growing list of features. As we continue building experiences that align with our clients’ needs, here are the things we’d love to see from Adobe in the future:

• Best practices for image generation
• Guidance on organizing assets
• Faster performance and load times

As GenStudio evolves, so does the opportunity to reimagine how we create, personalize, and activate content at scale. We’re committed to exploring what’s possible—and sharing what we learn—so our clients can stay ahead in a fast-moving digital landscape.

As digital experience platforms (DXPs) evolve, Adobe continues to lead the way in embedding artificial intelligence to help organizations deliver more personalized, efficient, and scalable customer experiences. Forrester’s report, The Impact of AI on Digital Experience Platforms, explores how vendors like Adobe are integrating agentic AI and generative AI (GenAI) to streamline experience operations and empower practitioners. 

Adobe is among the leaders in this space, offering tools that help teams simulate ideas, analyze impact, and activate personalized experiences across channels, all within a unified platform. 

Agentic AI Turns Insights Into Action

Adobe’s DXP ecosystem, including Adobe Experience Platform and Adobe Sensei, is increasingly powered by agentic AI — intelligent agents that support marketers and developers in orchestrating and optimizing customer journeys. These agents are designed to reduce manual effort, surface actionable insights, and automate tasks across the experience lifecycle. 

Perficient Adobe Consulting Principal Robert Sumner has seen firsthand how Adobe’s orchestration capabilities can be extended to deliver more seamless digital experiences across platforms. 

“Adobe’s suite enables orchestration to happen naturally across its tools, but we often help clients go further by integrating these capabilities across platforms to create a seamless journey,” said Sumner.  

Creativity Meets Efficiency With GenAI

Adobe is also at the forefront of GenAI innovation. From generating brand-consistent content to enabling marketers to build data-driven briefs and presentations within Microsoft 365 via Adobe’s copilot, GenAI is transforming how teams create and collaborate. 

Sumner mentioned that Adobe’s GenAI tools are already delivering measurable impact for clients. He said, “We’re seeing Adobe’s GenAI tools help clients scale content creation and experimentation. But success depends on aligning these capabilities with business goals and ensuring strong governance.”  

Perficient Named 2025 Gold Globee® Winner for Best Artificial Intelligence Service Provider | Learn More

Responsible AI Adoption

Adobe’s AI capabilities are powerful, but success depends on strong data foundations, human oversight, and change management. That’s why we work closely with clients to ensure these pillars are in place, enabling responsible and effective adoption of AI. 

We’re honored to have contributed to the research in an interview for Forrester’s report , The Impact of AI on Digital Experience Platforms. We believe it reflects our deep expertise in helping enterprise clients implement and optimize DXPs like Adobe. Whether it’s integrating predictive analytics, deploying cognitive copilots, or improving data governance, our teams are leading the way in enabling AI-powered transformation. 

If you’re exploring how to bring AI into your DXP strategy, we invite you to connect with us and keep the conversation going. 

Access the report here (available to Forrester subscribers or for purchase).  

Learn more about our Adobe expertise here.  

Contact us to learn more. 

We’re proud to announce that we’ve earned our 8th Adobe specialization in Adobe’s Real-time Customer Data Platform. This milestone reflects our continued commitment to delivering exceptional digital experiences and deepens our already robust Adobe partnership.

View our other specializations in the Adobe partner directory.

What is Adobe’s Real-time CDP?

Real-time Customer Data Platform is a powerful solution that enables organizations to unify customer data from multiple sources in real-time, creating actionable profiles that drive personalized, omnichannel experiences. As customer expectations continue to rise, Real-time CDP empowers brands to activate their data with precision, speed, and relevance.

Why This Specialization Matters

Achieving an Adobe specialization is no small feat. Adobe’s rigorous program evaluates partners on their technical expertise, successful implementations, and proven customer impact. This new Real-time CDP specialization validates Perficient’s ability to architect and deploy scalable data solutions that help clients unlock the full potential of their customer data.

Delivering Real-time Impact Across Industries

Our team has already helped leading brands across industries leverage Adobe’s Real-time CDP to:

• Break down data silos and unify fragmented customer information
• Build real-time, privacy-compliant customer profiles
• Activate audiences across channels for personalized engagement
• Drive measurable business outcomes through data-driven marketing

“This specialization is a testament to our team’s deep expertise in Adobe Experience Cloud and our ability to help clients harness real-time data to deliver meaningful customer experiences,” said Lynn Brading, Global Adobe Alliance Director at Perficient.

How We’re Innovating and Growing With Adobe

As we continue to expand our Adobe capabilities, this specialization reinforces our position as a trusted advisor for enterprise organizations seeking to modernize their digital ecosystems. Whether you’re just beginning your journey with Real-time CDP or looking to optimize an existing implementation, Perficient is ready to help.

Let’s Connect

Explore our Adobe partner page to learn more about our specializations, success stories, and how we can help you turn data into a strategic advantage.

As artificial intelligence continues to reshape the digital landscape, organizations are seeking clarity on how to strategically integrate AI into their digital experience platforms (DXPs). In its latest report, The Impact of AI on Digital Experience Platforms, Forrester explores how DXP vendors are embedding AI agents to streamline experience operations and expand toolsets — from copilots to code generators. Perficient was proud to contribute its DXP and AI expertise to this research, joining the group of vendors and service providers interviewed for the report. 

“Generative AI (GenAI) is reshaping digital experience platforms (DXPs) by automating content and campaign creation, powering intelligent copilots for marketers and developers, and boosting customer engagement through predictive insights and personalization.” —Forrester, The Impact of AI on Digital Experience Platforms

Why AI Belongs in the DXP Conversation

Today’s tech leaders face a growing challenge: delivering consistent, personalized experiences across a fragmented landscape of devices, channels, and customer expectations. DXPs are uniquely positioned to address this complexity. As Forrester notes, DXPs are rich in customer interaction data, support high-value business outcomes, and serve a diverse set of practitioners — all of which make them fertile ground for AI innovation. 

“DXP is a trove of trusted customer interaction data… Unleashing AI on this data enables organizations to understand audience intent and respond to that intent with irresistible offers.” — Forrester, The Impact of AI on Digital Experience Platforms

And Perficient’s experts agree that DXPs are a great place to start when integrating AI into experience delivery. 

“Marketing and IT leaders are under pressure to deliver personalized, omnichannel experiences at scale, and that’s exactly where DXPs shine. By embedding AI into the core of these platforms, clients can unlock the full value of their customer data and streamline operations across content, commerce, and campaigns,” said Mark Polly, Perficient Principal, Customer Experience Platforms.  

Agentic AI Ushers in a New Era of Experience Operations

The report highlights the rise of agentic AI and how these intelligent agents operate within DXPs to automate tasks, answer questions, and optimize workflows. These agents are transforming how marketers, developers, and content creators interact with their platforms, reducing friction and accelerating time to value. 

Perficient’s experience with orchestration tools and AI agents reinforces this trend. While many vendors offer orchestration capabilities, Perficient often helps clients integrate these tools across their broader tech ecosystem. 

” For marketing and IT leaders, true orchestration moves beyond linear workflows; it’s about integrating platforms like AEM and Optimizely to create a dynamic, responsive system. This integration is the key to driving operational efficiency and gaining the unified insights needed for deeper customer engagement. AI agents play a critical role here, transforming those rigid workflows into the real-time orchestration that a modern customer journey demands. Adoption is still in its early stages, which is where we help clients build a strategic advantage,” said Perficient digital strategy principal Grant Davies. 

Emerging GenAI Use Cases in DXPs

From brand-aware content creation to code generation and experimentation, GenAI is also rapidly expanding its footprint in DXP environments. Vendors like Adobe, Sitecore, and Salesforce are launching copilots and agents that empower users to create, test, and optimize experiences with unprecedented speed and precision. 

Perficient is already helping clients explore these capabilities and align them with business goals. 

Polly said, “We’re seeing real momentum around GenAI use cases in DXP from brand-consistent content creation to intelligent experimentation. These capabilities aren’t just flashy features; they’re solving real business problems like reducing time to market and improving conversion rates. The key is aligning AI with measurable outcomes and ensuring strong governance.” 

Perficient Wins 2025 Artificial Intelligence Excellence Award for GenAI Integrity Accelerator   Learn More

Strategic Adoption Requires Strong Foundations 

Successful AI adoption in DXPs requires more than just technology. Organizations must invest in strong data foundations, human oversight, and change management to ensure responsible and effective use of AI. These are areas where Perficient continues to guide clients with strategic consulting and hands-on implementation. 

We believe our inclusion in the research for Forrester’s report, The Impact of AI on Digital Experience Platforms, reflects our deep expertise in helping enterprise clients implement and optimize DXPs. Whether it’s integrating predictive analytics, deploying cognitive copilots, or improving data governance, our teams are leading the way in enabling AI-powered transformation. 

We’re honored to be interviewed for this research and proud to contribute to the evolving conversation around AI in digital experience. If you’re exploring how to bring AI into your DXP strategy, we invite you to connect with us and keep the conversation going. 

Access the report here (available to Forrester subscribers or for purchase).

Contact us  to learn more. 

Empathy, Resilience, Innovation, and Speed: The Blueprint for Intelligent Healthcare Transformation

Forrester’s recent report, Becoming An Intelligent Healthcare Organization Is An Attainable Goal, Not A Lost Cause, confirms what healthcare executives already know: transformation is no longer optional.

Perficient is proud to be quoted in this research, which outlines a pragmatic framework for becoming an intelligent healthcare organization (IHO)—one that scales innovation, strengthens clinical and operational performance, and delivers measurable impact across the enterprise and the populations it serves.

Why Intelligent Healthcare Is No Longer Optional

Healthcare leaders are under pressure to deliver better outcomes, reduce costs, and modernize operations, all while navigating fragmented systems and siloed departments. The journey to transformation requires more than technology; it demands strategic clarity, operational alignment, and a commitment to continuous improvement.

Forrester reports, “Among business and technology professionals at large US healthcare firms, only 63% agree that their IT organization can readily reallocate people and technologies to serve the newest business priority; 65% say they have enterprise architecture that can quickly and efficiently support major changes in business strategy and execution.”

Despite widespread investment in digital tools, many healthcare organizations struggle to translate those investments into enterprise-wide impact. Misaligned priorities, inconsistent progress across departments, and legacy systems often create bottlenecks that stall innovation and dilute momentum.

Breaking Through Transformation Barriers

These challenges aren’t just technical or organizational. They’re strategic. Enterprise leaders can no longer sit on the sidelines and play the “wait and see” game. They must shift from reactive IT management to proactive digital orchestration, where technology, talent, and transformation are aligned to business outcomes.

Business transformation is not a fleeting trend. It’s an essential strategy for healthcare organizations that want to remain competitive as the marketplace evolves.

Forrester’s report identifies four hallmarks of intelligent healthcare organizations, emphasizing that transformation is not a destination but a continuous practice.

Four Hallmarks of An Intelligent Healthcare Organization (IHO)

To overcome transformation barriers, healthcare organizations must align consumer expectations, digital infrastructure, clinical workflows, and data governance with strategic business goals.

1. Empathy At Scale: Human-Centered, Trust-Enhancing Experiences

A defining trait of intelligent healthcare organizations is a commitment to human-centered experiences.

• Driven By: Continuous understanding of consumer needs
• Supported By: Strategic technology investments that enable timely, personalized interventions and touchpoints

As Forrester notes, “The most intelligent organizations excel at empathetic, swift, and resilient innovation to continuously deliver new value for customers and stay ahead of the competition.”

Empathy is a performance driver. Organizations that prioritize human-centered care see higher engagement, better adherence, and stronger loyalty.

Our experts help clients reimagine care journeys using journey sciences, predictive analytics, integrated CRM and CDP platforms, and cloud-native architectures that support scalable personalization. But personalization without protection is a risk. That’s why empathy must extend beyond experience design to include ethical, secure, and responsible AI adoption.

Healthcare organizations face unique constraints, including HIPAA, PHI, and PII regulations that limit the utility of plug-and-play AI solutions. To meet these challenges, we apply our PACE framework—Policies, Advocacy, Controls, and Enablement—to ensure AI is not only innovative but also rooted in trust.

• Policies establish clear boundaries for acceptable AI usage, tailored to healthcare’s regulatory landscape.
• Advocacy builds cross-functional understanding and adoption through education and collaboration.
• Controls implement oversight, auditing, and risk mitigation to protect patient data and ensure model integrity.
• Enablement equips teams with the tools and environments needed to innovate confidently and securely.

This approach ensures AI is deployed with purpose, aligned to business goals, and embedded with safeguards that protect consumers and care teams alike. It also supports the creation of reusable architectures that blend scalable services with real-time monitoring, which is critical for delivering fast, reliable, and compliant AI applications.

Responsible AI isn’t a checkbox. It’s a continuous practice. And in healthcare, it’s the difference between innovation that inspires trust and innovation that invites scrutiny.

2. Designing for Disruption: Resilience as a Competitive Advantage

Patient-led experiences must be grounded in a clear-eyed understanding that market disruption isn’t simply looming. It’s already here. To thrive, healthcare leaders must architect systems that flex under pressure and evolve with purpose. Resilience is more than operational; it’s also behavioral, cultural, and strategic.

Perficient’s Access to Care research reveals that friction in the care journey directly impacts health outcomes, loyalty, and revenue:

• More than 50% of consumers who experienced scheduling friction took their care elsewhere, resulting in lost revenue, trust, and care continuity
• 33% of respondents acted as caregivers, yet this persona is often overlooked in digital strategies
• Nearly 1 in 4 respondents who experienced difficulty scheduling an appointment stated that the friction led to delayed care, and they believed their health declined as a result
• More than 45% of consumers aged 18–64 have used digital-first care instead of their regular provider, and 92% of them believe the quality is equal or better

This sentiment should be a wakeup call for leaders. It clearly signals that consumers expect healthcare to meet both foundational needs (cost, access) and lifestyle standards (convenience, personalization, digital ease). When systems fail to deliver, patients disengage. And when caregivers—who often manage care for entire households—encounter barriers, the ripple effect is exponential.

To build resilience that drives retention and revenue, leaders must design systems that anticipate needs and remove barriers before they impact care. Resilient operations must therefore be designed to:

• Reduce friction across the care journey, especially in scheduling and follow-up
• Support caregivers with multi-profile tools, shared access, and streamlined coordination
• Enable digital-first engagement that mirrors the ease of consumer platforms like Amazon and Uber

Consumers are blending survival needs with lifestyle demands. Intelligent healthcare organizations address both simultaneously.

Resilience also means preparing for the unexpected. Whether it’s regulatory shifts, staffing shortages, or competitive disruption, IHOs must be able to pivot quickly. That requires leaders to reimagine patient (and member) access as a strategic lever and prioritize digital transformation that eases the path to care.

3. Unified Innovation: Aligning Strategy, Tech, and Teams

Innovation without enterprise alignment is just noise—activity without impact. When digital initiatives are disconnected from business strategy, consumer needs, or operational realities, they create confusion, dilute resources, and fail to deliver meaningful outcomes. Fragmented innovation may look impressive in isolation, but without coordination, it lacks the momentum to drive true transformation.

To deliver real results, healthcare leaders must connect strategy, execution, and change readiness. In Forrester’s report, a quote from an interview with Priyal Patel emphasizes the importance of a shared strategic vision:

“Today’s decisions should be guided by long-term thinking, envisioning your organization’s business needs five to 10 years into the future.” — Priyal Patel, Director, Perficient

Our approach begins with strategic clarity. Using our Envision Framework, we help healthcare organizations rapidly identify opportunities, define a consumer-centric vision, and develop a prioritized roadmap that aligns with business goals and stakeholder expectations. This framework blends real-world insights with pragmatic planning, ensuring that innovation is both visionary and executable.

We also recognize that transformation is not just technical—it’s human. Organizational change management (OCM) ensures that teams are ready, willing, and able to adopt new ways of working. Through structured engagement, training, and sustainment, we help clients navigate the behavioral shifts required to scale innovation across departments and disciplines.

This strategic rigor is especially critical in healthcare, where innovation must be resilient, compliant, and deeply empathetic. As highlighted in our 2025 Digital Healthcare Trends report, successful organizations are those that align innovation with measurable business outcomes, ethical AI adoption, and consumer trust.

Perficient’s strategy and transformation services connect vision to execution, ensuring that innovation is sustainable. We partner with healthcare leaders to identify friction points and quick wins, build a culture of continuous improvement, and empower change agents across the enterprise.

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4. Speed With Purpose and Strategic Precision

The ability to pivot, scale, and deliver quickly is becoming a defining trait of tomorrow’s healthcare leaders. The way forward requires a comprehensive digital strategy that builds the capabilities, agility, and alignment to stay ahead of evolving demands and deliver meaningful impact.

IHOs act quickly without sacrificing quality. But speed alone isn’t enough. Perficient’s strategic position emphasizes speed with purpose—where every acceleration is grounded in business value, ethical AI adoption, and measurable health outcomes.

Our experts help healthcare organizations move fast by:

• Designing for agility with composable architectures, MVP+ delivery models, and intelligent automation that compliantly accelerates time-to-value while maintaining clinical integrity
• Aligning digital transformation with value-based care goals, enabling organizations to shift from volume to value through strategic investments that integrate cloud platforms, interoperable systems, and advanced analytics
• Operationalizing AI responsibly to support equitable, secure, compliant, and scalable AI adoption

This approach supports the Quintuple Aim: better outcomes, lower costs, improved experiences, clinician well-being, and health equity. It also ensures that innovation is not just fast. It’s focused, ethical, and sustainable.

Speed with purpose means:

• Rapid prototyping that validates ideas before scaling
• Real-time data visibility to inform decisions and interventions
• Cross-functional collaboration that breaks down silos and accelerates execution
• Outcome-driven KPIs that measure impact, not just activity

Healthcare leaders don’t need more tools. They need a strategy that connects business imperatives, consumer demands, and an empowered workforce to drive transformation forward. Perficient equips organizations to move with confidence, clarity, and control.

Collaborating to Build Intelligent Healthcare Organizations

We believe our inclusion in Forrester’s report underscores our role as a trusted advisor in intelligent healthcare transformation. From insight to impact, our healthcare expertise equips leaders to modernize, personalize, and scale care. We drive resilient, AI-powered transformation to shape the experiences and engagement of healthcare consumers, streamline operations, and improve the cost, quality, and equity of care.

We have been trusted by the 10 largest health systems and the 10 largest health insurers in the U.S., and Modern Healthcare consistently ranks us as one of the largest healthcare consulting firms.

Our strategic partnerships with industry-leading technology innovators—including AWS, Microsoft, Salesforce, Adobe, and more—accelerate healthcare organizations’ ability to modernize infrastructure, integrate data, and deliver intelligent experiences. Together, we shatter boundaries so you have the AI-native solutions you need to boldly advance business.

Ready to advance your journey as an intelligent healthcare organization?

We’re here to help you move beyond disconnected systems and toward a unified, data-driven future—one that delivers better experiences for patients, caregivers, and communities. Let’s connect and explore how you can lead with empathy, intelligence, and impact.