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Kentico, leader in the digital experience industry with its composable hybrid headless digital experience platform (DXP), threw its Kentico Connection 2023 conference in Nashville, TN on October 25 and 26. CEO Dominik Pinter traveled from the Czech Republic to be there; another guest of honor was newly minted Chief Revenue Officer Bill Cunningham. Attendees included Kentico’s North American partners and clients.
The big question on everyone’s mind going into this conference was, “What is the future of Kentico?” — and Pinter has a clear vision to answer this question. The future revolves around Xperience by Kentico, the hybrid headless, multichannel solution that clients began adopting in 2022. Since then, Kentico has been working to improve it further with consistent additions and new capabilities.
In his opening keynote, Pinter stressed the composability benefits that come with Xperience by Kentico. As a single vendor DXP, users have access to all the foundational capabilities they need in one place, including features like personalization and multichannel support. The flexibility this provides allows customers to respond to market changes faster and rely on a more flexible marketing strategy.
A Boom in Marketing Technology
In his opening keynote, Pinter stressed how much complexity is exploding in the martech market. The number of martech solutions has grown over 7,000% in the past 12 years. The result of this has been challenging in many ways. Organizations often achieve suboptimal results, “achieving less with the same amount of resources as a few years back,” Pinter said. As a CEO, one of his goals is to truly help organizations do things more quickly.
In another session, Scott Brinker, editor at chiefmartec.com and VP of platform ecosystem at HubSpot, also stressed the trend of growing complexity in marketing technology — as well as the growing complexity in every other software market. “It’s not just marketing that’s changing. It’s really the whole industry of software,” Brinker said.
As of 2023, there are 11,038 companies in the martech space, up from 150 in 2011 and 9,932 in 2022. Interestingly, this rise is happening even though martech companies are also consolidating. There are so many new startups, that the number of new companies is by far surpassing any decrease that comes from market consolidation.
One of the most important facts that Brinker stressed was that while technology may move at an exponential pace, organizations don’t — and they never will! There’s always going to be a gap, and organizations need to be strategic in the way they adopt and prioritize new solutions.
Inside Xperience by Kentico
Many speakers explored various features and innovations of the Xperience by Kentico platform. Debbie Tucek, director of product at Kentico, took attendees on a journey through Xperience by Kentico’s roadmap, product strategy and SaaS offerings. Tucek stressed that Xperience by Kentico is not Kentico 14. It’s something new with different capabilities. It does more, and it’s lightweight and scalable. It was created with the realities and complexities of the broad digital ecosystem in mind.
It includes features such as a content hub that allows users to house all content in one central location — content that can then be shared across any channel. This helps companies more easily achieve a seamless multichannel experience. “We think consolidation can help address the challenge of complexity,” Tucek said. That means consolidating tools, consolidating content and consolidating channels.
Tucek also spoke about how the platform helps increase speed and productivity. Kentico is utilizing AI in Xperience by Kentico in exciting ways. The platform has a content hub that acts as the single source of truth for content, and users can use AI tools to easily summarize the chosen articles needed for a campaign. Essentially, AI will repurpose content for you, so you don’t have to. This was a decision made very carefully, Tucek said, adding that it’s important for Kentico to invest in AI not just for the sake of AI. It needs to serve a specific business case.
Finally, Tucek highlighted Xperience by Kentico’s SaaS offering. It’s especially beneficial for companies who can safely rely on a more standard model rather than something that must be heavily customized. Some key benefits include troubleshooting support from people who know the product, predictable package pricing and faster execution time, Tucek said.
In the present day, she added, the SaaS offering can be deployed in various countries and areas throughout the Azure network.
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What to Expect From the Future of Multichannel
Many of Xperience by Kentico’s key features relate to its multichannel capabilities. This begs the question, what does the future of multichannel look like, and how can the software company give its partners the features they need to succeed in a multichannel environment?
A fascinating panel about the future of web in a multichannel environment closed out day one of the conference. Jasmine Martirossian, chief marketing officer and the chief people officer at Mercury, Becki Dilworth, chief strategy officer at BlueModus, and Dean Dorazio, CEO and partner at Wakefly, discussed this topic, under the guidance of host Wesley McChristian, Kentico practice director at Americaneagle.com. Martirossian stressed that while multichannel is great, it means nothing without a good main website. “If it’s not on the website, it doesn’t exist,” she said.
Meanwhile, Dilworth stressed the importance of considering the organization's main KPIs and figuring out how they relate to each major channel the marketing team uses. This will help the organization decide what their content strategy will be for each channel.
Wrapping Up the Kentico Connection Conference
Pinter is excited and optimistic about the future of Xperience by Kentico, and many partners have already adopted it in their organizations. The conference shined the light on some existing companies already embracing the platform, including the Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau and The Parking Spot, which will no doubt encourage others to follow suit. For those still using Kentico Xperience 13 or Kentico 12, Pinter and the company want to maintain flexibility and ease of use — while still developing exciting new capabilities in their latest model. Xperience by Kentico is their future, Pinter said, and they’re continuing to improve and add to it. As a solution that’s easy to use, easy to maintain, and delivers a great ROI, the DXP will help organizations “escape from complexity,” he said.
Closing the conference was Brian McKeiver, Kentico partner and MVP and co-owner of digital agency BizStream. His experience moving from Kentico Xperience 13 to Xperience by Kentico was an effective way to wrap up all the types of information attendees received throughout the week. McKeiver was amazed at how quickly Xperience by Kentico was able to go through the upgrade and equally impressed at the speed at which pages loaded on the platform. He realized benefits such as enhanced security, lower total cost of ownership and a more pleasant developer experience.
“Honestly, it’s a joy to work with,” McKeiver said.
