At this week’s San Francisco-based customer event SDL Innovate, web content management and globalization vendor SDL sported a range of improvements in their product line.
From improved machine translation technology to a new SDL Digital Experience Accelerator that promises to shorten the time necessary for global web development teams to deliver great customer experience (CX), to social media-centric business intelligence solutions that leverage big data to help brands measure purchase intent and brand advocacy, SDL appears well positioned to drive their customers’ digital transformation efforts forward.
For the customers in the room, however – many of whom work for large, recognizable brands – SDL’s digital leadership fell mostly on deaf ears. For this crowd, “digital” largely meant “web,” indicating a mentality squarely ensconced in the 1990s.
The Digital Disconnect
This disconnect clearly didn’t reflect any shortcomings with SDL’s sophisticated product line. Their technology seamlessly supports responsive web sites, empowering web professionals to support the full range of mobile interfaces customers favor today. And yet, when one speaker asked the audience how many of them were building mobile apps, nary a hand went up.
It’s important to note that there’s more to digital than simply adding mobile sites and apps to your marketing mix. Digital represents an end-to-end shift in how enterprises provide value to their customers, beginning with the realization that customer preferences and behavior drive enterprise technology decisions.
Today those preferences are largely for mobile interactions – but CX goes well beyond any particular touchpoint. CX involves the entire customer journey: the customer lifecycle from the initial interaction with the brand through the purchase and on to using the product, getting support if necessary, and hopefully buying more over time.
Read the entire article at http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbloomberg/2015/05/14/digital-challenges-at-sdl-innovate/.
Intellyx advises companies on their digital transformation initiatives and helps vendors communicate their agility stories. As of the time of writing, none of the organizations mentioned in this article are Intellyx customers. SDL covered Jason Bloomberg’s travel expenses to the recent SDL customer event in San Francisco, a standard industry practice. Image credit: SDL.
