HOW TO SELECT A DIGITAL EXPERIENCE PLATFORM Putting the “experience” back into your digital experience technology BY TONY BYRNE
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critical precondition for any digital transformation strategy is selecting the right technology. Yet, industry surveys suggest that more than half of all projects fail to identify the best solution for the customer’s needs. There’s a reason for this: Too often, enterprise teams follow a “waterfall” method when selecting their technology solutions, often involving long lists of feature requirements but not enough human involvement or
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time spent testing the system. Instead, companies should follow a more agile process that incorporates the latest principles of design thinking. Digital experience (DX) platforms come in many flavors. Most commonly, an enterprise will need to address key services around social media engagement, marketing automation, web content and experience management (WCM), and digital and media asset management (DAM), though there are many other tools that typically make up
a DX technical architecture. Perhaps the biggest irony here is that many organizations leave out the whole experience component of the solution in their own vetting efforts. Companies should be asking: How will customers and prospects interact with the platform? How will employees effectively manage and exploit it? At the heart and soul of any selection process, the key is to create story-based user journeys. By testing vendors through an iterative and adaptive