Transition to Adobe Experience Platform to boost your cross-channel marketing

Getting new products adopted in any team can be tough, but it’s important to remember that software is only as successful as the team that’s using it. What’s more, if a team can harness that technology and unleash its true potential, that’s where the real value — and transformation — lies.

All of that holds true with our very own technologies. In this case, Adobe Experience Platform and Adobe Journey Optimizer.

It’s true that change is often difficult. But just as often, change can represent opportunity, optimism, and immediate outcomes. Transitioning to Experience Platform and Journey Optimizer comes with key considerations, and we have the keys to making that transition easy.

With our tips, you can upgrade to a faster, stronger solution than old legacy technologies, which in turn will help you drive faster time to market and reaction times to evolving business needs. Let’s dive into some things to consider, as well as the steps you can take to face them head-on.

Modernizing your tech stack

An organization’s ability to adapt is a key aspect of investing in new technology, like Experience Platform and Journey Optimizer. Teams must balance keeping up with evolving business demands and spending time and resources learning new technology.

Besides that, there’s a big mindset shift whenever new tech is in the picture. Both Experience Platform and Journey Optimizer are cutting-edge solutions, which means teams may need to shift the way they think about marketing automation applications — from traditional to modern. Specifically, teams will need to move from a traditional relational database to using a NoSQL database to improve scalability and accelerate execution. They’ll also need to get used to event-driven triggers, a heavy focus on APIs, and a pipeline- and event-driven architecture instead of batch-and-blast marketing.

Finally, teams will need to develop the right skillset, as Experience Platform and Journey Optimizer require a certain level of expertise to operate. As a result, teams may need to spend time being coached on the new technology — or else additional people with the right know-how may need to be hired.

Key steps to take to get ramped up

Despite these factors, the payoffs of transitioning to Experience Platform and Journey Optimizer are well worth the effort. And we have a few tips on how to make it happen smoothly.

From the get-go, it’s crucial to invest in both your teams and your products. You should especially support your implementation team from start to finish so that they feel empowered to deliver results when it comes to project delivery. You can also encourage them to collaborate with other teams and participate in cross-functional activities.

It’s also vital to establish your long-term vision. Define your business goals, and then consider how this new tech stack will help you achieve them. For example, our solutions will help you be more agile so you can respond to business demands quickly, as well as improve workflows to make your employees’ jobs easier. Plan how you would roll out the technology, establishing clear timelines and milestones.

As part of that plan, you can outline how you’re going to provide teams adequate time to migrate to Experience Platform and Journey Optimizer. It’s also helpful to make sure they’re comfortable using the products every day by holding proper training and time to answer their questions.

Be sure to create a migration plan that’s gradual, ideally done in phases, and include any details around changes to the process. And because keeping people updated is essential to any change, try to maintain two-way communication between leadership and employees. This will help you keep track of all pertinent feedback, highlighting both benefits and issues so you know what to improve.

You can also identify early adopters in each team so that they can help train the rest of the people on their teams and get everyone up to speed.

And one last step you can take is to build out different teams to handle the various aspects of Experience Platform and Journey Optimizer. This will help you break down any silos and encourage them to collaborate — all with the common goal to deliver better customer experiences.

Here’s the breakdown of each team:

Technology team

• The data pipeline team makes sure data is sent to Experience Platform in the correct format to support current and future use cases.
• The data architect builds and maintains schema- and dataset-related activities.
• The Journey Optimizer specialist is responsible for building and delivering customer journeys and experiences.
• The assets team builds assets and other creative content.
• The analytics and BI team conducts data analytics and reporting.
• The data scientist performs machine learning and builds scoring models, algorithms, and more.

Business and marketing team

• The business team builds business strategies that define customer journeys across multiple campaigns and programs (i.e., loyalty, retargeting).
• The marketing team conducts user testing and research to inform and build consistent and effective journeys.
• The business analyst understands business and technology and helps bridge the gap between the two.

Overcome adoption hurdles and get up to speed

Ultimately, change is inevitable. But with it comes new opportunities for success. With a transition to Experience Platform and Adobe Journey Optimizer, you get a more enriched data model that teams can easily share, which helps them coordinate quickly and deliver more personalized experiences. As a result, you’ll retain more customers — all while building more stable models for future success and adoption.

If you’re ready to start your journey with Adobe Experience Platform, contact Adobe Professional Services. Or if you’d like to keep learning more about how Adobe Professional Services helps businesses like yours succeed, check out more of their blog articles.