Editorial
The Gist
- Strategic updates redefine DXP. Regular, transparent updates in SaaS DXPs improve value delivery and customer control.
- Partners drive DXP success. Strong partner networks essential for implementing and enhancing digiital experience platforms (DXPs).
- Customer-centricity leads market. Frequent updates and cloud flexibility enhance customer power in DXP choices.
BURLINGTON, Mass. — Upon walking into the conference space for Kentico Partner Day last month, here in this exurban city about 20 miles northwest of Boston, I immediately went seeking — what else — coffee. Turning the corner into the dining area, I happened upon a sizable line of individuals also seeking coffee.
While this is not atypical of a crowded conference when I reached the counter, I found out why things were a bit slow. There were two very impressive, but also quite complex, coffee machines. To operate the machine, you needed to pick a pouch of coffee, from a range of options arrayed in a little storage shelf.
Then you meticulously opened the front of the machine and placed the pouch in an oh-so specific orientation (if you could close it, you placed it right).
Finally, you hit a button to brew the coffee and then removed your pouch so that the next person could secure their cup of coffee. In addition to all of this, there was an employee of the conference center who stood to the side to kindly help in the operation of this process.
Related Article: Kentico Connection 2023: Unpacking SaaS Focus & Leadership Changes
Coffee Machines Mirror DXP Complexity
This whole process of securing my cup of coffee on this mid-March Kentico Partner Day conference morning in Massachusetts got me thinking a lot about Kentico and the overall digital experience platform industry. In the days of yore, DXPs — which are the natural extension of the CMS, or content management system, before them — were as purpose-built as those conference coffee machines.
Built with the best of intentions, strategically bundled and hosted on-premise, these platforms were “monolithic,” with features, enhancements and improvements delivered at once in large, packaged updates typically on an annual (or more) basis. And much like the coffee machine operation, an educated helper — in the form of a technical developer in the DXP world — was required to get many meaningful updates or constantly-evolving core changes to market.
Related Article: Navigating the Evolution: From CMS to DXP in the Digital Age
Key Digital Experience Platform Industry Insights
Here are some of the key digital experience platform industry takeaways from Kentico Partner Day and the industry at large as we near the end of the first half of 2024.
SaaS to the Future
It should come as no shock to see the acronym SaaS, or Software-as-a-Service, appear in a DXP or technology article. The move to the “cloud” is a common strategy and expectation here in 2024 for vendors and customers. Cloud computing frees up hardware costs and resources who otherwise would be deployed toward maintaining and updating on-premise hosting infrastructure.
The SaaS vendors and providers will tell you that this hosting has become commoditized with shrinking margins and diminishing returns, but there are also plenty of services companies and implementation partners with gleaming facilities who still make meaningful recurring revenue by hosting the websites and applications that they build. The transition behind the scenes to, in the words of the Rolling Stones, “Hey, you, get off of my cloud,” will be a potential disruption worth keeping an eye on.
Related Article: DXPs and CDPs: How to Measure and Improve Your Digital Customer Experience Metrics
Updates, Not Upgrades
The monolithic DXP or CMS platforms of the past typically required major upgrade projects conducted by services companies to move from older to newer versions. This also meant that improvements to the platforms and their constituent parts would come out annually (or longer) for each of the version steps.
In the newer aforementioned SaaS world, the platform is continually updated with specific regular improvements, fixes and additions on a regular cadence, typically monthly. Roadmap clarity about the platform’s future is transparent. Updating a platform as a services company or customer is more push-button or turnkey, with these regular, meaningful and more digestible additions bringing value in greater increments.
Related Article: Emerging Trends Shaping the Future of Digital Experience Platforms (DXPs)
Partner-Centricity
On the partnership side of things, digital experience platform industry vendors have been particularly keen especially in the past few years to drive business through and collaborate deeply with their partner networks. It is hard to reach and close new customers directly as a platform vendor, especially when you require implementation partner companies to bring the digital experiences to life atop your solution.
Also, a product vendor in any sphere will by default be perceived as at least somewhat slanted toward themselves when promoting their wares. A partner can be that agnostic, third-party validation for a platform, especially because that partner will potentially be developing the solution for customers and has vetted the solution within the marketplace. “Partner pipeline” has become a meaningful metric.
Customer-Focus
I know, I know, everyone always says that the focus is on the customer. But, with the changes mentioned above within the DXP industry, pertaining especially to the cloud and regular, iterative platform updates, the customer focus is especially vivid today.
“Customer success” teams — whose jobs are to keep existing customers engaged, aware and enthusiastic about the particular platforms — have proliferated within modern technology organizations. It is easier than ever to move between platforms, with so-called migration tool kits and accelerators. Vendor lock has given way to fancy free. Hopping between products in the cloud — as opposed to changing out a platform within your own hosted facilities — is rather frictionless.
Choice abounds within the DXP industry and any number of vendors that constitute its best-of-breed constituent parts. With this, DXPs need to continually deliver value for customers and stay agile to their needs. Monthly — over annual — updates, or refreshes, also provide the opportunity for implementation partners and digital agencies to regularly chat with their customers about their own roadmap alignment. Customers are firmly in control, and DXP and martech providers need to vie everyday to keep them on the platform.
Kentico Partner Day Roadmap
Led by figures like Dominik Pinter (CEO), Debbie Tucek (director of product) and Petr Klouda (vice president of strategic partnerships and enablement), Kentico covered everything from company updates to future roadmaps. Emphasizing a partnership-centric business model, Kentico is particularly focused on promoting Xperience by Kentico, its version-less, SaaS-based offering, which already accounts for about 80% of its new business opportunities.
With a reported 20 new clients on “XbyK” (as of March) and the potential for meaningful partner revenues, the future projections for Xperience by Kentico are promising. The transition toward this SaaS model is further evidenced by the allocation of 95% of Kentico's development resources to Xperience by Kentico and the announcement of the end of life for Kentico Xperience 13 by the end of 2026, marking a definitive shift in the company’s strategic focus.
Webinar
Sep
25
CMS Briefing: A Live Look at What’s Next in AI-Driven Platforms
Learn how leading organizations are using AI‑driven tools to publish faster, personalize smarter and stay secure.
Register
Webinar
Sep
25
Call Spoofing Trends Financial Institutions Can't Afford to Ignore
Don't let robocalls sabotage your customer relationships. Learn how to secure your voice channel.
Register
Webinar
On demand
Ready or Not: How Data-First Organizations Are Unlocking Agentforce Potential
Learn how to cut through the noise, activate Agentforce and build a Salesforce AI strategy that actually delivers.
Watch Now
Webinar
On demand
CX Reality Check: What Your Customers Are Really Thinking
Register now and get the insights you need to not just meet rising expectations, but exceed them.
Watch Now
Webinar
On demand
Content Leaders Collective: What a Good CCMS Actually Looks Like
Discover how content leaders transform clunky systems into growth engines — and why your competitors are ahead.
Watch Now
Webinar
On demand
From Hype to High-Impact CX Strategies That Actually Scale
Turn buzzworthy AI and outsourcing trends into measurable CX wins with fresh 2025 data.
Watch Now
There were also key announcements around the inclusion of — what else — artificial intelligence into the company’s platform.
Final Thoughts on the DXP Industry
Interestingly enough, in closing, we have not even really talked about personalization, something that is always talked about and often not implemented.
Which reminds me to ask: How do you like your coffee?
Learn how you can join our contributor community.
