Digital Experience Articles / Blogs / Perficient https://blogs.perficient.com/category/services/customer-experience-design/digital-experience/ Expert Digital Insights Fri, 05 Dec 2025 06:48:04 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://blogs.perficient.com/files/favicon-194x194-1-150x150.png Digital Experience Articles / Blogs / Perficient https://blogs.perficient.com/category/services/customer-experience-design/digital-experience/ 32 32 30508587 Salesforce Marketing Cloud + AI: Transforming Digital Marketing in 2025 https://blogs.perficient.com/2025/12/05/salesforce-marketing-cloud-ai-transforming-digital-marketing-in-2025/ https://blogs.perficient.com/2025/12/05/salesforce-marketing-cloud-ai-transforming-digital-marketing-in-2025/#respond Fri, 05 Dec 2025 06:48:04 +0000 https://blogs.perficient.com/?p=388389

Salesforce Marketing Cloud + AI is revolutionizing marketing by combining advanced artificial intelligence with marketing automation to create hyper-personalized, data-driven campaigns that adapt in real time to customer behaviors and preferences. This fusion drives engagement, conversions, and revenue growth like never before.

Key AI Features of Salesforce Marketing Cloud

  • Agentforce: An autonomous AI agent that helps marketers create dynamic, scalable campaigns with effortless automation and real-time optimization. It streamlines content creation, segmentation, and journey management through simple prompts and AI insights. Learn more at the Salesforce official site.

  • Einstein AI: Powers predictive analytics, customized content generation, send-time optimization, and smart audience segmentation, ensuring the right message reaches the right customer at the optimal time.

  • Generative AI: Using Einstein GPT, marketers can automatically generate email copy, subject lines, images, and landing pages, enhancing productivity while maintaining brand consistency.

  • Marketing Cloud Personalization: Provides real-time behavioral data and AI-driven recommendations to deliver tailored experiences that boost customer loyalty and conversion rates.

  • Unified Data Cloud Integration: Seamlessly connects live customer data for dynamic segmentation and activation, eliminating data silos.

  • Multi-Channel Orchestration: Integrates deeply with platforms like WhatsApp, Slack, and LinkedIn to deliver personalized campaigns across all customer touchpoints.

Latest Trends & 2025 Updates

  • With advanced artificial intelligence, marketing teams benefit from systems that independently manage and adjust their campaigns for optimal results.

  • Real-time customer journey adaptations powered by live data.

  • Enhanced collaboration via AI integration with Slack and other platforms.

  • Automated paid media optimization and budget control with minimal manual intervention.

For detailed insights on AI and marketing automation trends, see this industry report.

Benefits of Combining Salesforce Marketing Cloud + AI

  • Increased campaign efficiency and ROI through automation and predictive analytics.

  • Hyper-personalized customer engagement at scale.

  • Reduced manual effort with AI-assisted content and segmentation.

  • Better decision-making powered by unified data and AI-driven insights.

  • Greater marketing agility and responsiveness in a changing landscape.

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5 Imperatives Financial Leaders Must Act on Now to Win in the Age of AI-Powered Experience https://blogs.perficient.com/2025/12/02/5-imperatives-financial-leaders-must-act-on-now-to-win-in-the-age-of-ai-powered-experience/ https://blogs.perficient.com/2025/12/02/5-imperatives-financial-leaders-must-act-on-now-to-win-in-the-age-of-ai-powered-experience/#respond Tue, 02 Dec 2025 12:29:07 +0000 https://blogs.perficient.com/?p=388106

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

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AI and the Future of Financial Services UX https://blogs.perficient.com/2025/12/01/ai-banking-transparency-genai-financial-ux/ https://blogs.perficient.com/2025/12/01/ai-banking-transparency-genai-financial-ux/#comments Mon, 01 Dec 2025 18:00:28 +0000 https://blogs.perficient.com/?p=388706

I think about the early ATMs now and then. No one knew the “right” way to use them. I imagine a customer in the 1970s standing there, card in hand, squinting at this unfamiliar machine and hoping it would give something back; trying to decide if it really dispensed cash…or just ate cards for sport. That quick panic when the machine pulled the card in is an early version of the same confusion customers feel today in digital banking.

People were not afraid of machines. They were afraid of not understanding what the machine was doing with their money.

Banks solved it by teaching people how to trust the process. They added clear instructions, trained staff to guide customers, and repeated the same steps until the unfamiliar felt intuitive. 

However, the stakes and complexity are much higher now, and AI for financial product transparency is becoming essential to an optimized banking UX.

Today’s banking customer must navigate automated underwriting, digital identity checks, algorithmic risk models, hybrid blockchain components, and disclosures written in a language most people never use. Meanwhile, the average person is still struggling with basic money concepts.

FINRA reports that only 37% of U.S. adults can answer four out of five financial literacy questions (FINRA Foundation, 2022).

Pew Research finds that only about half of Americans understand key concepts like inflation and interest (Pew Research Center, 2024).

Financial institutions are starting to realize that clarity is not a content task or a customer service perk. It is structural. It affects conversion, compliance, risk, and trust. It shapes the entire digital experience. And AI is accelerating the pressure to treat clarity as infrastructure.

When customers don’t understand, they don’t convert. When they feel unsure, they abandon the flow. 

 

How AI is Improving UX in Banking (And Why Institutions Need it Now)

Financial institutions often assume customers will “figure it out.” They will Google a term, reread a disclosure, or call support if something is unclear. In reality, most customers simply exit the flow.

The CFPB shows that lower financial literacy leads to more mistakes, higher confusion, and weaker decision-making (CFPB, 2019). And when that confusion arises during a digital journey, customers quietly leave without resolving their questions.

This means every abandoned application costs money. Every misinterpreted term creates operational drag. Every unclear disclosure becomes a compliance liability. Institutions consistently point to misunderstanding as a major driver of complaints, errors, and churn (Lusardi et al., 2020).

Sometimes it feels like the industry built the digital bank faster than it built the explanation for it.

Where AI Makes the Difference

Many discussions about AI in financial services focus on automation or chatbots, but the real opportunity lies in real-time clarity. Clarity that improves financial product transparency and streamlines customer experience without creating extra steps.

In-context Explanations That Improve Understanding

Research in educational psychology shows people learn best when information appears the moment they need it. Mayer (2019) demonstrates that in-context explanations significantly boost comprehension. Instead of leaving the app to search unfamiliar terms, customers receive a clear, human explanation on the spot.

Consistency Across Channels

Language in banking is surprisingly inconsistent. Apps, websites, advisors, and support teams all use slightly different terms. Capgemini identifies cross-channel inconsistency as a major cause of digital frustration (Capgemini, 2023). A unified AI knowledge layer solves this by standardizing definitions across the system.

Predictive Clarity Powered by Behavioral Insight

Patterns like hesitation, backtracking, rapid clicking, or form abandonment often signal confusion. Behavioral economists note these patterns can predict drop-off before it happens (Loibl et al., 2021). AI can flag these friction points and help institutions fix them.

24/7 Clarity, Not 9–5 Support

Accenture reports that most digital banking interactions now occur outside of business hours (Accenture, 2023). AI allows institutions to provide accurate, transparent explanations anytime, without relying solely on support teams.

At its core, AI doesn’t simplify financial products. It translates them.

What Strong AI-Powered Customer Experience Looks Like

Onboarding that Explains Itself

  • Mortgage flows with one-sentence escrow definitions.
  • Credit card applications with visual explanations of usage.
  • Hybrid products that show exactly what blockchain is doing behind the scenes. The CFPB shows that simpler, clearer formats directly improve decision quality (CFPB, 2020).

A Unified Dictionary Across Channels

The Federal Reserve emphasizes the importance of consistent terminology to help consumers make informed decisions (Federal Reserve Board, 2021). Some institutions now maintain a centralized term library that powers their entire ecosystem, creating a cohesive experience instead of fragmented messaging.

Personalization Based on User Behavior

Educational nudges, simplified paths, multilingual explanations. Research shows these interventions boost customer confidence (Kozup & Hogarth, 2008). 

Transparent Explanations for Hybrid or Blockchain-backed Products

Customers adopt new technology faster when they understand the mechanics behind it (University of Cambridge, 2021). AI can make complex automation and decentralized components understandable.

The Urgent Responsibilities That Come With This

 

GenAI can mislead customers without strong data governance and oversight. Poor training data, inconsistent terminology, or unmonitored AI systems create clarity gaps. That’s a problem because those gaps can become compliance issues. The Financial Stability Oversight Council warns that unmanaged AI introduces systemic risk (FSOC, 2023). The CFPB also emphasizes the need for compliant, accurate AI-generated content (CFPB, 2024).

Customers are also increasingly wary of data usage and privacy. Pew Research shows growing fear around how financial institutions use personal data (Pew Research Center, 2023). Trust requires transparency.

Clarity without governance is not clarity. It’s noise.

And institutions cannot afford noise.

What Institutions Should Build Right Now

To make clarity foundational to customer experience, financial institutions need to invest in:

  • Modern data pipelines to improve accuracy
  • Consistent terminology and UX layers across channels
  • Responsible AI frameworks with human oversight
  • Cross-functional collaboration between compliance, design, product, and analytics
  • Scalable architecture for automated and decentralized product components
  • Human-plus-AI support models that enhance, not replace, advisors

When clarity becomes structural, trust becomes scalable.

Why This Moment Matters

I keep coming back to the ATM because it perfectly shows what happens when technology outruns customer understanding. The machine wasn’t the problem. The knowledge gap was. Financial services are reliving that moment today.

Customers cannot trust what they do not understand.

And institutions cannot scale what customers do not trust.

GenAI gives financial organizations a second chance to rebuild the clarity layer the industry has lacked for decades, and not as marketing. Clarity, in this new landscape, truly is infrastructure.

Related Reading

References 

  • Accenture. (2023). Banking top trends 2023. https://www.accenture.com
  • Capgemini. (2023). World retail banking report 2023. https://www.capgemini.com
  • Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. (2019). Financial well-being in America. https://www.consumerfinance.gov
  • Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. (2020). Improving the clarity of mortgage disclosures. https://www.consumerfinance.gov
  • Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. (2024). Supervisory highlights: Issue 30. https://www.consumerfinance.gov
  • Federal Reserve Board. (2021). Consumers and mobile financial services. https://www.federalreserve.gov
  • FINRA Investor Education Foundation. (2022). National financial capability study. https://www.finrafoundation.org
  • Financial Stability Oversight Council. (2023). Annual report. https://home.treasury.gov
  • Kozup, J., & Hogarth, J. (2008). Financial literacy, public policy, and consumers’ self-protection. Journal of Consumer Affairs, 42(2), 263–270.
  • Loibl, C., Grinstein-Weiss, M., & Koeninger, J. (2021). Consumer financial behavior in digital environments. Journal of Economic Psychology, 87, 102438.
  • Lusardi, A., Mitchell, O. S., & Oggero, N. (2020). The changing face of financial literacy. University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School.
  • Mayer, R. (2019). The Cambridge handbook of multimedia learning. Cambridge University Press.
  • Pew Research Center. (2023). Americans and data privacy. https://www.pewresearch.org
  • Pew Research Center. (2024). Americans and financial knowledge. https://www.pewresearch.org
  • University of Cambridge. (2021). Global blockchain benchmarking study. https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk
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How to Approach Implementing Sitecore Content Hub https://blogs.perficient.com/2025/11/26/how-to-approach-implementing-sitecore-content-hub/ https://blogs.perficient.com/2025/11/26/how-to-approach-implementing-sitecore-content-hub/#respond Wed, 26 Nov 2025 20:38:38 +0000 https://blogs.perficient.com/?p=388649

Content chaos is costing you more than you think

Every disconnected asset, every redundant workflow, every missed opportunity to reuse content adds up, not just in operational inefficiency, but in lost revenue, slower time-to-market, and diminished brand consistency. For many organizations, the content supply chain is broken, and the cracks show up everywhere: marketing campaigns delayed, creative teams overwhelmed, and customers receiving fragmented experiences.

Sitecore Content Hub can help solve this, but here’s the truth: technology alone won’t solve the problem. Success requires a strategic approach that aligns people, processes, and platforms. Over the years, I’ve seen one principle hold true: when you break the process into digestible steps, clarity emerges. Here’s the five-step framework I recommend for leaders who want to turn Content Hub into a competitive advantage. It’s what I wish I had before my first implementation. While Content Hub is extremely powerful for a Digital Asset Management (DAM) platform, and there could be entire books written on each configuration point, my hope in this post is to give someone new to the platform a mindset to have before beginning an implementation.

 

Step 1: Discover and Decode

Transformation starts with visibility. Before you configure anything, take a hard look at your current state. What assets do you have? How do they move through your organization, from creation to approval to archival? Who touches them, and where do bottlenecks occur?

This isn’t just an audit; it’s an opportunity to uncover inefficiencies and align stakeholders. Ask questions like:

  • Are we duplicating content because teams don’t know what already exists?
  • Where are the delays that slow down time-to-market?
  • Which assets drive value and which are digital clutter?

Document these insights in a way that tells a story. When leadership sees the cost of inefficiency and the opportunity for improvement, alignment becomes easier. This step sets the foundation for governance, taxonomy, and integration decisions later. Skip it, and everything else wobbles.

 

Step 2: Design the Blueprint

Once you know where you are, define where you’re going. This is your architectural phase and the moment to design a system that scales.

Start with taxonomy. A well-structured taxonomy makes assets easy to find and reuse, while a poor one creates friction and frustration. Establish naming conventions and metadata standards that support searchability and personalization. Then, build a governance model that enforces consistency without stifling creativity.

Finally, map the flow of content across systems. Where is content coming from? Where does it need to go? These answers determine integration points and connectors. If you skip this step, you risk building silos inside your new system, which is a mistake that undermines the entire investment.

 

Step 3: Deploy the (Content) Hub

See what we did there?! With the blueprint in hand, it’s time to implement. Configure the environment, validate user roles, and migrate assets with care.

Deployment is more than a technical exercise. It’s a change management moment. How you roll out the platform will influence adoption. Consider a phased approach: start with a pilot group, gather feedback, and refine before scaling.

Testing is critical. Validate search functionality, user permissions, and workflows before you go live. A smooth deployment isn’t just about avoiding errors. It’s about building confidence across the organization.

 

Step 4: Drive Intelligent Delivery

Content Hub isn’t just a repository; it’s a strategic engine. This is where you unlock its full potential. Enable AI features to automate tagging and improve personalization. Create renditions and transformations that make omnichannel delivery seamless.

Think beyond efficiency. Intelligent delivery is about elevating the customer experience. When your content is enriched with metadata and optimized for every channel, you’re not just saving time. You’re driving engagement and revenue.

Governance plays a starring role here. Standards aren’t just rules. They’re the guardrails that keep your ecosystem healthy and scalable. Without them, even the smartest technology can devolve into chaos.

 

Step 5: Differentiate

This is where leaders separate themselves from the pack. Implementation is not the finish line—it’s the starting point for continuous improvement.

Differentiation begins with measurement. Build dashboards that show how content performs across channels and campaigns. Which assets drive conversions? Which formats resonate with your audience? These insights allow you to double down on what works and retire what doesn’t.

But don’t stop at performance metrics. Use audits to identify gaps in your content strategy. Are you missing assets for emerging channels? Are you over-investing in content that doesn’t move the needle? This level of visibility turns your content operation into a strategic lever for growth.

Finally, think about innovation. How can you use Content Hub to enable personalization at scale? How can AI-driven insights inform creative decisions? Leaders who embrace this mindset turn Content Hub from a tool into a competitive advantage.

 

Final Thoughts

Your current state may feel daunting, but clarity is within reach. By breaking the process into these five steps, you can transform chaos into a content strategy that drives real business outcomes. Sitecore Content Hub is powerful—but only if you implement it with intention.

Ready to start your journey? Begin with discovery. The rest will follow. If Perficient can help, reach out!

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Sitecore Content SDK: What It Offers and Why It Matters https://blogs.perficient.com/2025/11/19/sitecore-content-sdk-what-it-offers-and-why-it-matters/ https://blogs.perficient.com/2025/11/19/sitecore-content-sdk-what-it-offers-and-why-it-matters/#respond Wed, 19 Nov 2025 15:08:05 +0000 https://blogs.perficient.com/?p=388367

Sitecore has introduced the Content SDK for XM Cloud-now Sitecore AI to streamline the process of fetching content and rendering it on modern JavaScript front-end applications. If you’re building a website on Sitecore AI, the new Content SDK is the modern, recommended tool for your development team.

Think of it as a specialized, lightweight toolkit built for one specific job: getting content from Sitecore AI and displaying it on your modern frontend application (like a site built with Next.js).

Because it’s purpose-built for Sitecore AI, it’s fast, efficient, and doesn’t include a lot of extra baggage. It focuses purely on the essential “headless” task of fetching and rendering content.

What About the JSS SDK?
This is the original toolkit Sitecore created for headless development.

The key difference is that the JSS SDK was designed to be a one-size-fits-all solution. It had to support both the new, headless Sitecore AI and Sitecore’s older, all-in-one platform, Sitecore XP/XM.

To do this, it had to include extra code and dependencies to support older features, like the “Experience Editor”. This makes the JSS SDK “bulkier” and more complex. If you’re only using Sitecore AI, you’re carrying around a lot of extra weight you simply don’t need.

The Sitecore Content SDK is the modern, purpose-built toolkit for developers using Sitecore AI, providing seamless, out-of-the-box integration with the platform’s most powerful capabilities. This includes seamless visual editing that empowers marketers to build and edit pages in real-time, as well as built-in hooks for personalization and analytics that simplify the delivery and tracking of targeted user experiences. For developers, it provides GraphQL utilities to streamline data fetching and is deeply optimized for Next.js, enabling high-performance features like server-side rendering. Furthermore, with the recent introduction of App Router support (in beta), the SDK is evolving to give developers even more granular control over performance, SEO, bundle sizes, and security through a more modern, modular code structure.

What does the Content SDK offer?

1) App Router support (v1.2)

With version 1.2.0, Sitecore Content SDK introduces App Router support in beta. While the full fledged stable release is expected soon, developers can already start exploring its benefits and work flow with 1.2 version.
This isn’t just a minor update; it’s a huge step toward making your front-end development more flexible and highly optimized.

Why should you care? –
The App Router introduces a fantastic change to your starter application’s code structure and how routing works. Everything becomes more modular and declarative, aligning perfectly with modern architecture practices. This means defining routes and layouts is cleaner, content fetching is neatly separated from rendering, and integrating complex Next.js features like dynamic routes is easier than ever. Ultimately, this shift makes your applications much simpler to scale and maintain as they grow on Sitecore AI.

Performance: Developers can fine-tune route handling with nested layouts and more aggressive and granular caching to seriously boost overall performance, leading to faster load times.

Bundle Size: Smaller bundle size because it uses React Server Components (RSC) to render components. It help fetch and render component from server side without making the static files in bundle.

Security: It helps with security by giving improved control over access to specific routes and content.

With the starter kit applications, this is how app router routing structure looks like:

Approute

 

2) New configs – sitecore.config.ts & sitecore.cli.config.ts

The sitecore.config.ts file, located in the root of your application, acts as the central configuration point for Content SDK projects. It is replacement of the older temp/config file used by the JSS SDK. It contains properties that can be used throughout the application just by importing the file. It contains important properties like sitename, defaultLanguage, edge props like contextid. Starter templates include a very lightweight version containing only the mandatory parameters necessary to get started. Developers can easily extend this file as the project grows and requires more specific settings.

Key Aspects:

Environment Variable Support: This file is designed for deployment flexibility using a layered approach. Any configuration property present in this file can be sourced in three ways, listed in order of priority:

  1. Explicitly defined in the configuration file itself.
  2. Fallback to a corresponding environment variable (ideal for deployment pipelines).
  3. Use a default value if neither of the above is provided.

This layered approach ensures flexibility and simplifies deployment across environments.

 

The sitecore.cli.config.ts file is dedicated to defining and configuring the commands and scripts used during the development and build phases of a Content SDK project.

Key Aspects:

CLI Command Configuration: It dictates the commands that execute as part of the build process, such as generateMetadata() and generateSites(), which are essential for generating Sitecore-related data and metadata for the front-end.

Component Map Generation: This file manages the configuration for the automatic component map generation. This process is crucial for telling Sitecore how your front-end components map to the content structure, allowing you to specify file paths to scan and define any files or folders to exclude. Explored further below.

Customization of Build Process: It allows developers to customize the Content SDK’s standard build process by adding their own custom commands or scripts to be executed during compilation.

While sitecore.config.ts handles the application’s runtime settings (like connection details to Sitecore AI), sitecore.cli.config.ts works in conjunction to handle the development-time configuration required to prepare the application for deployment.

Cli Config

 

3) Component map

In Sitecore Content SDK-based applications, every custom component must be manually registered in the .sitecore/component-map.ts file located in the app’s root. The component map is a registry that explicitly links Sitecore renderings to their corresponding frontend component implementations. The component map tells the Content SDK which frontend component to render for each component receives from Sitecore. When the rendering gets added to any page via presentation, component map tells which frontend rendering should be rendered at the place.

Key Aspects:

Unlike JSS implementations that automatically maps components, the Content SDK’s explicit component map enables better tree-shaking. Your final production bundle will only include the components you have actually registered and use, resulting in smaller, more efficient application sizes.

This is how it looks like: (Once you start creating custom component, you have to add the component name here to register.)

Componentmap

 

4) Import map

The import map is a tool used specifically by the Content SDK’s code generation feature. It manages the import paths of components that are generated or used during the build process. It acts as a guide for the code generation engine, ensuring that any new code it creates correctly references your existing components.
Where it is: It is a generated file, typically found at ./sitecore/import-map.ts, that serves as an internal manifest for the build process. You generally do not need to edit this file manually.
It simplifies the logic of code generation, guaranteeing that any newly created code correctly and consistently references your existing component modules.

The import map generation process is configurable via the sitecore.cli.config.ts file. This allows developers to customize the directories scanned for components.

 

5) defineMiddleware in the Sitecore Content SDK

defineMiddleware is a utility for composing a middleware chain in your Next.js app. It gives you a clean, declarative way to handle cross-cutting concerns like multi-site routing, personalization, redirects, and security all in one place. This centralization aligns perfectly with modern best practices for building scalable, maintainable functions.

The JSS SDK leverages a “middleware plugin” pattern. This system is effective for its time, allowing logic to be separated into distinct files. However, this separation often requires developers to manually manage the ordering and chaining of multiple files, which could become complex and less transparent as the application grew. The Content SDK streamlines this process by moving the composition logic into a single, highly readable utility which can customizable easily by extending Middleware

Middleware

 

6) Debug Logging in Sitecore Content SDK

Debug logging helps you see what the SDK is doing under the hood. Super useful for troubleshooting layout/dictionary fetches, multisite routing, redirects, personalization, and more. The Content SDK uses the standard DEBUG environment variable pattern to enable logging by namespace. You can selectively turn on logging for only the areas you need to troubleshoot, such as: content-sdk:layout (for layout service details) or content-sdk:dictionary (for dictionary service details)
For all available namespaces and parameters, refer to sitecore doc – https://doc.sitecore.com/sai/en/developers/content-sdk/debug-logging-in-content-sdk-apps.html#namespaces 

 

7) Editing & Preview

In the context of Sitecore’s development platform, editing and preview render optimization with the Content SDK involves leveraging middleware, architecture, and framework-specific features to improve the performance of rendering content in editing and preview modes. The primary goal is to provide a fast and responsive editing experience for marketers using tools like Sitecore AI Pages and the Design Library. EditingRenderMiddleware: The Content SDK for Next.js includes optimized middleware for editing scenarios. Instead of a multi-step process involving redirects, the optimized middleware performs an internal, server-side request to return the HTML directly. This reduces overhead and speeds up rendering significantly.
This feature Works out of the box in most environments: Local container, Vercel / Netlify, SitecoreAI (defaults to localhost as configured)

For custom setups, override the internal host with: SITECORE_INTERNAL_EDITING_HOST_URL=https://host
This leverages a Integration with XM Cloud/Sitecore AI Pages for visual editing and testing of components.

 

8) SitecoreClient

The SitecoreClient class in the Sitecore Content SDK is a centralized data-fetching service that simplifies communication with your Sitecore content backend typically with Experience Edge or preview endpoint via GraphQL endpoints.
Instead of calling multiple services separately, SitecoreClient lets you make one organized request to fetch everything needed for a page layout, dictionary, redirects, personalization, and more.

Key Aspect:

Unified API: One client to access layout, dictionary, sitemap, robots.txt, redirects, error pages, multi-site, and personalization.
To understand all key methods supported, please refer to sitecore documentation: https://doc.sitecore.com/sai/en/developers/content-sdk/the-sitecoreclient-api.html#key-methods

Sitecoreclientmethods

9) Built-In Capabilities for Modern Web Experiences

GraphQL Utilities: Easily fetch content, layout, dictionary entries, and site info from Sitecore AI’s Edge and Preview endpoints.
Personalization & A/B/n Testing: Deploy multiple page or component variants to different audience segments (e.g., by time zone or language) with no custom code.
Multi-site Support: Seamlessly manage and serve content across multiple independent sites from a single Sitecore AI instance.
Analytics & Event Tracking: Integrated support via the Sitecore Cloud SDK for capturing user behavior and performance metrics.
Framework-Specific Features: Includes Next.js locale-based routing for internationalization, and supports both SSR and SSG for flexible rendering strategies.

 

10) Cursor for AI development

Starting with Content SDK version 1.1, Sitecore has provided comprehensive “Cursor rules” to facilitate AI-powered development.
The integration provides Cursor with sufficient context about the Content SDK ecosystem and Sitecore development patterns. These set of rules and context helps to accelerate the development. The cursor rules are created for contentsdk with starter application under .cursor folder. This enables the AI to better assist developers with tasks specific to building headless Sitecore components, leading to improved development consistency and speed following same patterns just by providing few commands in generic terms. Example given in below screenshot for Hero component which can act as a pattern to create another similar component by cursor.

Cursorrules

 

11) Starter Templates and Example Applications

To accelerate development and reduce setup time, the Sitecore Content SDK includes a set of starter templates and example applications designed for different use cases and development styles.
The SDK provides a Next.js JavaScript starter template that enables rapid integration with Sitecore AI. This template is optimized for performance, scalability, and best practices in modern front-end development.
Starter Applications in examples

basic-nextjs -A minimal Next.js application showcasing how to fetch and render content from Sitecore AI using the Content SDK. Ideal for SSR/SSG use cases and developers looking to build scalable, production-ready apps.

basic-spa -A single-page application (SPA) example that demonstrates client-side rendering and dynamic content loading. Useful for lightweight apps or scenarios where SSR is not required.

Other demo site to showcase Sitecore AI capabilities using the Content SDK:

kit-nextjs-article-starter

kit-nextjs-location-starter

kit-nextjs-product-starter

kit-nextjs-skate-park

 

Final Thoughts

The Sitecore Content SDK represents a major leap forward for developers building on Sitecore AI. Unlike the older JSS SDK, which carried legacy dependencies, the Content SDK is purpose-built for modern headless architectures—lightweight, efficient, and deeply optimized for frameworks like Next.js. With features like App Router support, runtime and CLI configuration flexibility, and explicit component mapping, it empowers teams to create scalable, high-performance applications while maintaining clean, modular code structures.

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Driving Measurable Impact: Rochester Regional Health Earns Dual Industry Honors https://blogs.perficient.com/2025/11/11/driving-measurable-impact-rochester-regional-health-access-to-care/ https://blogs.perficient.com/2025/11/11/driving-measurable-impact-rochester-regional-health-access-to-care/#respond Tue, 11 Nov 2025 15:30:47 +0000 https://blogs.perficient.com/?p=388288

Healthcare leaders face a critical mandate: deliver seamless, patient-centered experiences while boosting efficiency and measurable outcomes. Lasting transformation happens when strategy, data, technology, and experience converge—and Rochester Regional Health’s recent recognition proves what’s possible.

We’re proud to share that our work with Rochester Regional Health earned two 2025 eHealthcare Leadership Awards and the Sitecore Digital Impact Award for Business Impact, underscoring the power of strategic digital investments in healthcare.

Why This Matters for Healthcare Leaders

Patients expect frictionless access to care, personalized experiences, and real-time engagement. Our recent Access to Care research outlines how these priorities drive competitive advantage for healthcare organizations. More than 50% of respondents who encountered friction when scheduling an appointment took their care elsewhere. That’s not just lost revenue—it’s lost continuity, lost data, and lost trust. To deliver on consumers’ expectations, leaders need a unified digital strategy that connects systems, streamlines workflows, and gives consumers simple, reliable ways to find and schedule care.

Rochester Regional Health and Perficient embraced this challenge, consolidating dozens of disparate websites into one seamless experience and implementing a mobile-first design that mirrors the simplicity of modern commerce. The results speak volumes.


Sitecore Digital Impact Awards 2025

Business Impact

Sitecore Digital Impact Award: Business Impact | Recognized for removing friction and focusing on experience, this award demonstrates how digital transformation accelerates growth and improves care access. Sitecore shares, “The Business Impact winners remind us that digital transformation only matters when it delivers real results for people and the business. Rochester Regional Health and Perficient turned 24 disconnected websites into one seamless experience, helping patients get to the care they need faster.… These stories show what happens when great brands remove friction, focus on experience, and grow because of it.” | Learn more about this award


eHealthcare Leadership Award 2025 WinnerBest Mobile Experience

eHealthcare Leadership Award, Gold, Healthcare System | A mobile-first redesign delivers intuitive navigation, regional personalization, and real-time appointment scheduling, boosting accessibility, engagement, and conversions. This award recognizes the best examples of healthcare mobile experience, whether via installed app or mobile website via a browser. Judges evaluated usability, design, branding, quality of content, clarity of purpose and consumer ratings. | Learn more about this award


eHealthcare Leadership Award 2025 Winner

Best Use of Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare Marketing

eHealthcare Leadership Award, Distinction, Healthcare System | Rochester Regional’s new site offers smart search, dynamic filters, and real-time booking making it easy for patients and their caregivers to discover and schedule care that best supports patient needs. It drove a 26% boost in appointment scheduling and $79K+ monthly saving in call center costs. This category awarded the successful application of AI and Machine Learning (ML) to achieve marketing goals, including customer acquisition and retention, online content personalization, digital experience, understanding user intent, physician search, call center optimization, and more. | Learn more about this award


What This Signals for 2026

The next phase of digital priorities will focus on scalable personalization, AI-driven operational efficiency, and connected ecosystems that extend beyond the hospital walls. Leaders are investing in platforms that integrate clinical, financial, and consumer data to deliver proactive care and predictive insights. Digital-first models, intelligent scheduling, and automation will become standard. Organizations that build flexible, cloud-based architectures now and leverage AI for personalization and resource optimization position themselves to improve access, reduce costs, and strengthen patient loyalty in a competitive market.

Explore the full case study to see how Rochester Regional Health partnered with Perficient to make this vision a reality.

Reimagine Access to Care with Confidence

These awards validate the impact of our approach and reinforce the urgency of digital innovation as a strategic imperative for healthcare leaders.

More importantly, it reflects what we’re hearing across the industry: the need to prioritize consumer-centric transformation is accelerating. Leaders are looking for solutions that improve access, personalize engagement, and deliver measurable outcomes for both patients and the business.

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 health care consumers, streamline operations, and improve the cost, quality, and equity of care.

  • Business Transformation: Activate strategy for transformative outcomes and health experiences.
  • Modernization: Maximize technology to drive health innovation, efficiency, and interoperability.
  • Data + Analytics: Power enterprise agility and accelerate healthcare insights.
  • Consumer Experience: Connect, ease, and elevate impactful health journeys.

We are trusted by leading technology partners, mentioned by analysts, and Modern Healthcare consistently ranks us as one of the largest healthcare consulting firms.

Discover why we’ve been trusted by the 10 largest health systems and the 10 largest health insurers in the U.S. Explore our healthcare expertise and contact us to learn more.

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Trust Is the New Currency in Financial Services and Customers Are Setting the Terms https://blogs.perficient.com/2025/11/05/trust-is-the-new-currency-in-financial-services-and-customers-are-setting-the-terms/ https://blogs.perficient.com/2025/11/05/trust-is-the-new-currency-in-financial-services-and-customers-are-setting-the-terms/#respond Wed, 05 Nov 2025 11:16:09 +0000 https://blogs.perficient.com/?p=387890

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.

Build Trust In Financial Services

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

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Building for Humans – Even When Using AI https://blogs.perficient.com/2025/10/29/building-for-humans-even-when-using-ai/ https://blogs.perficient.com/2025/10/29/building-for-humans-even-when-using-ai/#comments Thu, 30 Oct 2025 01:03:55 +0000 https://blogs.perficient.com/?p=388108

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is everywhere. Every month brings new features promising “deeper thinking” and “agentic processes.” Tech titans are locked in trillion-dollar battles. Headlines scream about business, economic, and societal concerns. Skim the news and you’re left excited and terrified!

Here’s the thing: we’re still human – virtues, flaws, quirks, and all. We’ve always had our agency, collectively shaping our future. Even now, while embracing AI, we need to keep building for us.

We Fear What We Do Not Know

“AI this… AI that…” Even tech leaders admit they don’t fully understand it. Sci-fi stories warn us with cautionary tales. News cycles fuel anxiety about job loss, disconnected human relationships, and cognitive decline.

Luckily, this round of innovation is surprisingly transparent. You can read the Attention is All You Need paper (2017) that started it all. You can even build your own AI if you want! This isn’t locked behind a walled garden. That’s a good thing.

What the Past Can Tell Us

I like to look at the past to gauge what we can expect from the future. Humans have feared every major invention and technological breakthrough. We expect the worst, but most have proven to improve life.

We’ve always had distractions from books, movies, games, to TikTok brain-rot. Some get addicted and go too deep, while others thrive. People favor entertainment and leisure activities – this is nothing new – so I don’t feel like cognitive decline is anything to worry about. Humanity has overcome all of it before and will continue to do so.

 

.

 

Humans are Simple (and Complicated) Creatures

We look for simplicity and speed. Easy to understand, easy to look at, easy to interact with, easy to buy from. We skim read, we skip video segments, we miss that big red CTA button. The TL;DR culture rules. Even so, I don’t think we’re at risk of the future from Idiocracy (2006).

That’s not to say that we don’t overcomplicate things. The Gods Must Be Crazy movie (1980) has a line that resonates, “The more [we] improved [our] surroundings to make life easier, the more complicated [we] made it.” We bury our users (our customers) in detail when they just want to skim, skip, and bounce.

Building for Computers

The computer revolution (1950s-1980s) started with machines serving humans. Then came automation. And eventually, systems talking to systems.

Fast-forward to the 2010s, where marketers gamed the algorithms to win at SEO, SEM, and social networking. Content was created for computers, not humans. Now we have the dead internet theory. We were building without humans in mind.

We will still have to build for systems to talk to systems. That won’t change. APIs are more important than ever, and agentic AI relies on them. Because of this, it is crucial to make sure what you are building “plays well with others”. But AIs and APIs are tools, not the audience.

Building for Humans

Google used to tell us all to build what people want, as opposed to gaming their systems. I love that advice. However, at first it felt unrealistic…gaming the system worked. Then after many updates, for a short bit, it felt like Google was getting there! Then it got worse and feels like pay-to-play recently.

Now AI is reshaping search and everything else. You can notice the gap between search results and AI recommendations. They don’t match. AI assistants aim to please humans, which is great, until it inevitably changes.

Digital teams must build for AI ingestion, but if you neglect the human aspect and the end user experience, then you will only see short-term wins.

Examples of Building for Humans

  • Make it intuitive and easy. Simple for end users means a lot of work for builders, but it is worth it! Reduce their cognitive load.
  • Build with empathy. Appeal to real people, not just personas and bots. Include feedback loops so they can feel heard.
  • Get to the point. Don’t overwhelm users, instead help them take action! Delight your customers by saving them time.
  • Add humor when appropriate. Don’t be afraid to be funny, weird, or real…it connects on a human level.
  • Consider human bias. Unlike bots and crawlers, humans aren’t always logical. Design for human biases.
  • Watch your users. Focus groups or digital tracking tools are great for observing. Learn from real users and iterate.

Conclusion

Building for humans never goes out of style. Whatever comes after AI will still need to serve people. So as tech evolves, let’s keep honing systems that work with and around our human nature.

……

If you are looking for that extra human touch (built with AI), reach out to your Perficient account manager or use our contact form to begin a conversation.

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Perficient Wins Silver W3 Award for Mobile Innovation in Travel & Tourism https://blogs.perficient.com/2025/10/23/perficient-wins-silver-w3-award-for-mobile-innovation-in-travel-tourism/ https://blogs.perficient.com/2025/10/23/perficient-wins-silver-w3-award-for-mobile-innovation-in-travel-tourism/#respond Thu, 23 Oct 2025 15:35:54 +0000 https://blogs.perficient.com/?p=388024

We’re pleased that Perficient has been honored with a second award for our transformative work with a budget-friendly international airline. The Silver W3 Award in the Mobile Apps & Sites – Travel & Tourism category from the Academy of Interactive and Visual Arts (AIVA) celebrates our commitment to delivering exceptional digital experiences that drive real-world impact.

The W3 Awards, now in their 20th year, spotlight the best in digital creativity across websites, mobile apps, video, social media, and emerging tech. With thousands of global entries, only the top 20% earn Silver distinction—making this achievement especially meaningful.

A Budget-Friendly Airline, Reimagined

Our award-winning submission showcased how Perficient partnered with the international airline to modernize their digital experience and better serve budget-conscious travelers. The project focused on:

  • Enhancing mobile usability for travelers booking international flights
  • Streamlining the user journey from search to checkout
  • Improving accessibility and performance across devices

The result? A mobile experience that’s not only intuitive and visually engaging but also aligned with the organization’s mission to offer affordable travel without compromising quality. You can read the full success story here.

Celebrating Digital Excellence

The W3 Awards are judged by AIVA, a prestigious panel of experts from top-tier organizations including Disney, Netflix, Deloitte Digital, and IBM. Entries are evaluated against a standard of excellence, not each other, ensuring that every winner truly represents the best in their category.

Looking Ahead

This award is a testament to the talent and dedication of our teams who consistently push boundaries to deliver impactful digital solutions. We’re proud to be recognized among the industry’s top innovators and look forward to continuing our work with clients to elevate digital experiences across industries.

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The Personalization Gap Is Hurting Financial Services, Here’s How to Close It https://blogs.perficient.com/2025/10/15/the-personalization-gap-is-hurting-financial-services-heres-how-to-close-it/ https://blogs.perficient.com/2025/10/15/the-personalization-gap-is-hurting-financial-services-heres-how-to-close-it/#respond Wed, 15 Oct 2025 15:22:25 +0000 https://blogs.perficient.com/?p=387848

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.

Adobe State of CX In Fs in an AI-Driven World Report Stat 2025

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

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Acquia’s Vision for Accessible, AI-Enabled Digital Experience Creation  https://blogs.perficient.com/2025/10/06/acquias-vision-for-accessible-ai-enabled-digital-experience-creation-2/ https://blogs.perficient.com/2025/10/06/acquias-vision-for-accessible-ai-enabled-digital-experience-creation-2/#respond Mon, 06 Oct 2025 12:49:42 +0000 https://blogs.perficient.com/?p=386924

Acquia is known for its open-source roots and marketer-friendly tools, and its approach to AI reflects that ethos. As digital experience platforms evolve, Acquia is embedding agentic and Generative AI to make experience creation more accessible, intuitive, and scalable, especially for teams without deep technical resources. 

Forrester’s report, The Impact of AI on Digital Experience Platforms, discusses how vendors like Acquia are using AI to simplify workflows, automate content generation, and empower practitioners across roles — and Acquia’s recent innovations reflect its commitment to democratizing digital experience delivery. 

Supporting Marketers Behind the Scenes With Agentic AI

Launched earlier this year, Acquia Source allows marketers to build web pages using AI prompts that generate code behind the scenes and eliminate the need for developer intervention. These agentic capabilities are designed to reduce friction and accelerate time to market for digital experiences. 

Perficient DXP Practice Director Josh Hover and his team have been helping clients take advantage of these capabilities to streamline experience creation.  

Josh said, “Acquia’s agentic AI tools are helping marketers take control of experience creation. We’re working with clients to integrate these capabilities into their workflows so they can move faster without sacrificing quality.” 

Simplifying Experience Creation with GenAI

Acquia has been embedding GenAI into its platform for years. For example, it partnered with Clarifai to provide image auto-tagging. Today, however, GenAI is powering more advanced use cases. From generating page layouts to summarizing customer interactions, teams can deliver relevant experiences with less manual effort. 

Reflecting on these innovations, Josh notes how GenAI is helping teams scale without adding complexity.  

“Acquia’s GenAI features are especially valuable for teams with limited resources. We’re helping clients use these tools to scale content and streamline operations without being complicated,” he said.  

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

Enabling Responsible AI Adoption Across Teams

Successful AI adoption requires strong data foundations, human oversight, and change management. Acquia’s focus on accessibility makes these considerations even more critical. That’s why we partner with clients to ensure AI tools are deployed responsibly and aligned with business goals. 

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 Acquia. Whether it’s orchestrating personalized journeys or deploying intelligent agents, we’re helping brands embrace AI responsibly and effectively. 

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 Acquia expertise here 

Contact usto learn more. 

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Closing the Gap Between Expectations and Experience in Financial Services https://blogs.perficient.com/2025/10/06/closing-the-gap-between-expectations-and-experience-in-financial-services/ https://blogs.perficient.com/2025/10/06/closing-the-gap-between-expectations-and-experience-in-financial-services/#comments Mon, 06 Oct 2025 12:09:20 +0000 https://blogs.perficient.com/?p=387620

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.

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