DXP Features & Solution Comparison

Take the next steps in digital engagement with a Digital Experience Platform (DXP). Learn about the features of a DXP system and how they compare with each other.

INTRODUCTION

The term ‘digital experience platform’ (DXP) might imply it’s your one-stop-shop that delivers your entire digital experience, but there’s a lot more to it than that.

With thousands of different technologies and solutions on the market, it’s easy to be overwhelmed by all the options. Deciding on the best combination of different solutions, or a ‘suite’ of technologies from one vendor, depends on your goals and what type of customer journey you wish to build or customer engagement to offer.

Creating the DXP that is right for you starts with selecting a set of tools, paired with smart decision-making layers on the front-end. And no matter how advanced these systems may be, you still need the right expertise in order to successfully connect all your data to your smart software.

DXP FEATURES

What elements are part of a DXP?

Clean Data

Without well-structured customer data and segmentation, your software won’t be able to optimize its work. Structuring your data is vital for building a richer and personalized customer experience that is targeted at the right segment. You need to capture the relationships between customers and products, and be aware of which stage of your digital experience they’re in. Fortunately, machine learning will continue to make software smarter.

Digital Asset Management (DAM) system

This element of the DXP is your single point of truth for all images and media. Digital assets should be in high resolution, so they can be easily adapted, transformed, or transcoded for various distribution channels. Metadata for your assets should be detailed and customer-centric.

Web Content Management System (WCMS)

The WCMS an essential part of your presentation layer. The term DXP was originally used for this specific technology sector, but this element alone doesn’t paint the complete picture anymore. With a WCMS you’re able to manage content on both a single channel or on multiple digital channels, by using various management solutions all based on the same core repository.

Product Information Management (PIM) platform

A PIM is comparable to a structured database that stores and manages your product data. And while this element is especially relevant for product companies and retailers, it can be used to present basically anything and everything to your audience. The data it manages will be aligned with your digital assets and customer data, and can be brought together in targeted campaigns.

Customer-Relationship Management (CRM) System

The more you capture and discover about your customers, the better you can target your messaging and craft a digital experience to match their wishes and preferences.

Multi-Channel Campaign Management (MCCM) System

Multi-channel marketing is complicated, but with the right tools you can easily run and manage cross-channel campaigns. The technology also needs to be aware of time and location, so that targeted messages can be delivered while someone is shopping in your store.

Marketing Resource Management (MRM) software

This software helps manage marketing resources, such as content, campaigns, schedules, and budgets.

Mobile Middleware

While your WCMS can support you in the creation of mobile applications (e.g. responsive web applications), more specialised mobile middleware has proven to be "smarter" than your CMS in certain cases. It can connect to your customer data in real-time and deliver tailored messages to a mobile visitor based on their history, GPS location, or other time-related information.

APIs for connectivity

At any given point, you may need to implement new tools for exchanging data. APIs act as brokers of information and deliver content from multiple repositories to multiple channels.

Data Governance

Data governance is the specification of decision rights. It functions as an accountability framework that ensures the appropriate behaviour in the valuation, creation, consumption, and control of data and analytics.

DXP DEMO

With our demo, you will get insights into the use cases we implemented for our customers and their results and see for yourself what a DXP can do for your business.

"Brands with superior customer experience bring in 5.7x more revenue than competitors that lag in customer experience." (Forrester) 

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DXP COMPARISON

The best DXP according to Gartner

Below we go over a comparison of the best vendors according to Gartner, along with their specific strengths and cautions.

Adobe

Adobe is based in San Jose, California, U.S. and can be considered as a Leader in the DXP market. Its DXP is the Adobe Experience Cloud, which includes analytics, personalization, artificial intelligence (AI) and other capabilities. Adobe has a global presence in terms of its internal capacity, partners and system integrator channel. Its DXP is most often used for B2C use cases, and to a lesser extent for B2B.

Strengths

  • Adobe has a strong vision how to provide solutions that support best-of-breed digital marketing and customer experiences.
  • The Adobe Experience Cloud unifies the underlying infrastructure and brings together services, applications, APIs and integration of customer data.

Cautions

  • Premium prices and complexity of implementation and usage remain challenges for Adobe’s customers.
  • To take full advantage of Adobe’s DXP, many organizations may need multiple components of the complex Adobe Experience Cloud This in turn may require additional resources, and often results in a steep learning curve.

Read more about Adobe →


Bloomreach

Bloomreach is based in Mountain View, California, U.S. and is recognized as a visionary vendor in the DXP space. Its DXP is called Bloomreach Experience (brX). It’s available as a hybrid cloud offering – providing some elements as SaaS, others as PaaS – and is used for both B2B and B2C use cases. Bloomreach focuses on positioning its DXP as a front end for digital commerce scenarios.

Strengths

  • Bloomreach has developed a technology partner channel with many digital commerce vendors, such as SAP Commerce cloud, Commercetools, Elastic Path and Salesforce. Integrations with these vendors go through an API-first/headless approach.
  • Bloomreach’s technology makes use of AI for search, personalization and product recommendation. It’s well-suited for commerce-driven scenarios.

Cautions

  • Bloomreach’s strategy focuses on commerce-driven use cases. If this doesn’t match your profile, make sure to carefully examine Bloomreach’s roadmap first.
  • Awareness of the Bloomreach brand remains low. It doesn’t appear very often on DXP shortlists or longlists, even when it would be a good fit.
  • Bloomreach’s DXP is a hybrid cloud solution, with some parts being SaaS and others PaaS. This cloud-native architecture remains a work in progress. 

Read more about Bloomreach →


SAP

SAP is based in Walldorf, Germany. It has a global presence, serves multiple industries, and is a serious contender in the DXP market. However, they lack the vision of the current market leaders and as a result may struggle to fully meet future demands from a technology or business perspective. Its DXP is the SAP Cloud Platform and can be used for B2E (business-to-employee), in addition to certain B2B and B2C use cases.

Strengths

  • SAP’s Cloud Platform Portal and other digital experience capabilities are well-suited for organizations that already run multiple SAP business applications. Large organizations with complex use cases and large IT teams may find SAP’s approach appealing.
  • The SAP Cloud Platform has a broad range of digital experience capabilities, especially for B2E use cases. Differentiating features include mobile software development kits, machine learning capabilities, and SAP Conversational AI.
  • SAP Cloud Platform solutions are cloud-agnostic, so they can be deployed on various public cloud infrastructures.

Cautions

  • SAP rarely appears in shortlists for DXP providers.
  • SAP has very limited native content management capabilities, making the creation of basic content and pages more challenging.
  • Organizations with enhanced digital marketing requirements for B2C use cases will likely require an integration between the SAP Cloud Platform and C/4HANA for capabilities like analytics, personalization, customer journey mapping, and customer data management.

Read more about SAP →

Take the next steps in Digital Engagement with DXP

With more than 25 years of experience in E-commerce and customer engagement, we can support you in evaluating, selecting, and implementing the right platform and solutions for your business, such as a DXP. Read more about our Engagement Technology Services and what we can do to help you grow.

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