In November, Liferay announced version 7 of their open source platform, named by Gartner as one of the best portals on the market. At the time, 
Liferay was being billed as a digital business platform to meet customers where they are. Furthermore, Liferay also introduced support for microservices out of plugins and portlets, providing additional functionality. Overall, their North America Symposium had offered a brief glimpse into the future of what they were planning.
These glimpses gained clarity last week at Liferay’s 2016 Partner Conference, held at their corporate headquarters in Diamond Bar. Capitalizing on their momentum from November, the company shared new direction around their intentions for 2016 around what is now called the Liferay Digital Experience Platform, or DXP. As a marketer with a good idea of where the customer journey is headed with social communities, email, inbound marketing, and buyer research, I was very excited to hear their priorities:
Creation of Experiences
Liferay first emphasized the creation of customer experiences consistent across mobile, social, desktop, and other relevant touchpoints, a key theme materializing across all organizations. Realizing that customers no longer want to start over with every interaction, developers sought to create a technology that would seamlessly integrate the customer experience. Integrating these interactions is the intent for creating higher customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Understanding the Customer
Customer visibility can be difficult to track in the digital age since many use a variety of applications and touchpoints to engage with businesses. Liferay is assisting organizations in this regard by offering data and analytics that shed light on customer behavior and trends throughout the customer lifecycle. Whether its sales, marketing, or customer support, having the right data enables better strategic decision-making.
Preparing for Business Changes
Finally, Liferay understood the need to address modern digital engagement needs while adapting for the future. Expanding upon their November symposium, their leadership mentioned the addition of basic campaign management and customer relationship management (CRM) technologies that further enhance the experience. With easy integration between their portal technologies, experience creation, and new business tools, reaching the customer is now seamless and easy.
Closing Thoughts
The customer journey has evolved over the past few years, with content marketing, social communities, email, and inbound tactics becoming popular tactics among organizations looking to stay top-of-mind with their customers. The addition of mobile devices and self-directed research for product discovery has played a part as well, with Forrester reporting that nearly 74% of buyers exploring their options before they make an offline purchase. I am definitely looking forward to seeing how the next few months and weeks will play out.
Learn more about Perficient’s Liferay partnership here.
Learn about Perficient and Volkswagen here.
