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A seamless path to centralizing digital content operations 
Since Horizontal Digital started its Sitecore Content Hub learning path about two years ago, we have heard one question asked repeatedly from digital marketers living in cities like Dallas, Minneapolis, and Juneau. 
 
“What do I do after the DAM?”  

DAM refers to the digital asset management module that most clients get first when they buy Content Hub, which has an acronym-rich vocabulary that is confusing for even us “experts” to understand. So, we were relieved to hear at Sitecore Symposium that the software company is simplifying its licensing approach to make everything about Content Hub’s offerings easier to understand. 

It starts with a DAM 

Most people who work in the Sitecore ecosystem already know Sitecore DAM, the core module of the cloud-based Content Hub. It gives marketers a “central source of truth” for content marketing assets that include images, videos, documents, fonts, 3D files and more. The intent is to give creators, designers and developers a “one-stop shop” for all the files they need to do their jobs day in and day out. 

Once in Content Hub, the assets can be used in many different ways. You can create optimized images for a variety of use cases and connect the DAM to various other systems in a company’s digital marketing ecosystem. 

All companies need a digital asset management system and strategy, if you ask me. But once you get all your digital assets in one place, the real fun begins. 
After the DAM: What’s next? 

After you consolidate your marketing assets in one place through Sitecore DAM, your marketing world really opens, but that also means you need a way to navigate through it all. 

    But before you do anything, we recommend you ask yourself a few key questions: 
    How is marketing content prioritized & managed? 
    How are content elements reused across campaigns? 
    How would you categorize your content creation workflow? 
    Do you have a single source of truth for content engagement reporting? 
    How do you test content? 
    What content, marketing and technology team members are involved? 
    What KPIs will be used to measure success? 
    How do you measure and report on success? 

Once you have asked (and hopefully started to answer) those key questions, you should be armed with enough information to talk about extending your Content Hub licensing. Let’s start by talking about content operations, which is of interest to anyone who runs digital content/marketing teams. 
Meet Content Hub Operations 
Content Hub Operations combines the Content Hub modules content marketing platform (CMP) and marketing resource management (MRM) into one bundle. 
For those of you unfamiliar with these modules: 

    CMP allows organizations to use Content Hub as a place to centralize their content operations. That includes social media and content publishing, strategy, calendaring and more. 


    MRM allows resource management and project management from Content Hub, which enables project managers and resource teams to do their work from Content Hub. 

The goal is a software ecosystem that facilitates omni-channel management and personalization strategy in an “atomic content age” for teams wanting to fully embrace centralized digital content operations. Atomic content is content that is structured for digital distribution in a headless delivery world. What is the formula for atomic content? 

							  Ct ÷ Md + Bl + Re = Infinite Content Possibilities 

In other words, content types (Ct) that are broken down into metadata fields (Md) and infused with business logic (Bl) and relationships (Re) give marketers and developers the foundational elements to build great digital experiences whether you are creating a website, kiosk, streaming TV service or whitepaper in a headless delivery framework. 

With Sitecore Connect, Content Hub already ties nicely to Sitecore XM and XP, where editors can retrieve assets from Content Hub in an integrated editing environment. 

When you layer on top Sitecore Content Operations, you add the ability to create structured content types with associated metadata and relationships so that digital marketers can consolidate their workflows in one place and developers can use that creative output to power digital experiences. 

As importantly, companies can ensure only brand-approved assets are used in digital marketing efforts, which is one of the business benefits of centralized content operations. Remember when KFC changed its logo from “Finger Lickin’ Good” at the beginning of the pandemic out of fear the fried chicken lovers would spread COVID? Can you imagine doing that sort of enterprise slogan change without some sort of centralized digital distribution system to control it all? 

Experience Edge for scalability in headless
“Experience Edge makes Content Hub data available in the cloud using distributed data delivery platform with a GraphQL endpoint,” explained Sarvesh Jain, a Sitecore developer and technology lead at Horizontal Digital. In other words, Content Hub makes it possible for developers to take the API-driven output from Content Hub and use it in digital delivery.  

Benefits include: 

    Scalability - Publish content to a highly scalable content delivery network (CDN) 
    Reaches customers across all channels - Publish Sitecore content to any device or channel (watches, phones, tablets, voice-controlled devices and so on) 
    Integrates with any platform - All applications can make application programming interface (API) calls and consume content from GraphQL endpoint 

Creative automation solution 

Creative automation is the process of tying graphic assets and digital data together to create smart templates, which allow companies to produce graphic assets like PDFs at scale. In Content Hub, smart templates are driven by CHILI Publish, one of the nation’s top creative automation providers. 

The end goal is to empower companies by: 

    Allowing designers to stay creative 
    Allowing non-designers to produce professional graphic assets at scale without design assistance 

Under Content Hub’s Print license, CHILI Publish is available in an inline editing experience that allows brand-approved assets from within Content Hub to be exposed within Smart Templates. When you combine those assets with data from Content Hub, the presentation options power outputs that include websites, PDFs and more. The two integrated software systems together power Smart Print Templates that editors can use to create localized publications for regions and languages. 

There is set up involved, so you will want to work with an implementation partner like Horizontal Digital on your initial proof of concept to make sure your teams can learn from the ground up in the right way. 

What about Content Hub One? 

If you work in the Sitecore ecosystem, you have probably heard about Content Hub One, a new product built on top of the Content Hub platform. It is a headless and lightweight content management system (CMS) with some content lifecycle management abilities with a lightweight DAM included. 

Developers can leverage a rich set of software development kits (SDKs) and APIs supporting popular front-end frameworks, enabling enterprises to build cool things quickly, which is the point of all this digital stuff anyway. 

It lacks the other modules that Content Hub includes but can be considered by companies that want a lightweight and straightforward headless publishing solution with trained teams willing to take a leap into headless with a supporting strategy to get there. 

I use the word “strategy” with intention. Building modern digital experiences at the enterprise level requires coordination, creative aptitude, and the ability to technically execute with long-term enterprise-level support. So, if you ask your digital teams what "headless” means and they come back with responses like “horseman?” you should talk to a partner about the road ahead. 

Without the right strategy at the get-go, we promise it will be a bumpy ride.  
Next steps after a Sitecore DAM implementation 
We want to help. 
Are you ready to take a step toward digital maturity?
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A seamless path to centralizing digital content operations 

Content Hub One: An agile Headless CMS 
Is Content Hub One available and ready to use today? 

Although this product is not yet ready, as it will take next few months on the GA (General Availability), we got a sneak peek of the product in Sitecore MVP summit during the Symposium event. The solution is an entry point to Sitecore content portfolio that allows customers to upgrade when they’re ready to the full capabilities of Content Hub.  


Is Content Hub One ready to compete with other Headless CMS vendor in the market? 

Not yet, but they are not far behind. Sitecore is not new to CMS and they have two-decade history of building products, which is why we can say that Future versions have the potential to eclipse competitors. Sitecore is positioning Content Hub One as a true Headless CMS against competitor in the Headless CMS world like ContentStack and Contentful.  
 

Who is potential customer of Sitecore Content Hub One? 
I think Content Hub One may not be a direct match for current Sitecore customers, but it could be best fit for those customers who are looking for rapid microsites or spin up a temporary campaign site or the content engine behind a mobile app. Moreover, it is best match for those marketers who are looking for pure headless CMS having data driven use cases where content is populated by APIs rather than curated by content authors. It’s also a good fit for those customers who typically have in-house front-end developers that work with the marketing team. 
 

How’s Sitecore Content Hub future looking ahead? 

I believe that Sitecore Content Hub One is going to rapidly grow and mature in headless CMS space. The probability of it becoming one of the core products of Sitecore suit in near future, specifically considering Sitecore’s decades of experience building content management services. Sitecore will continue to add features over time but leaning into their other offerings of Sitecore Content Hub. Until that time, we need to patiently wait and watch for further updates from Sitecore. 

If you’d like to know more about Sitecore Content Hub One or any of new additions to the Sitecore family, feel free to get in touch with us. We can help you to know they might help you to craft your composable DXP. 
Sitecore Content Hub 
Content Hub is more suitable for DAM and other content operations 

On the other hand, Content Hub is a complete solution to offer omnichannel experience to brands by providing end to end content life cycle. 


Content Hub provide enterprise capabilities such as: 

    Digital Asset Management (DAM)  
    Content Marketing  
    Marketing Resource Management  
    Content Planning and Strategy  
    Digital Rights Management  

Sitecore Content Hub One 
Sitecore is positioning Content Hub One as Pure Headless CMS 
Content Hub One is an agile Headless CMS platform that enables brand to rapidly launch and manage experience on various digital channels without worrying about underlying technologies. 

Content Hub One provide enterprise capabilities such as: 

    Content Modelling 
    Content Authoring 
    Modern Frontend APIs 

Here are some features of Sitecore Content Hub One: 

    One platform for content modeling, authoring and consumption 
    Pure Headless CMS 
    Cloud native SaaS enabled composable platform 
    Content Modelling 
    Easy Content Authoring 
    Language and framework agnostic 
    Modern APIs 
    Can be used to serve products, campaigns and small markets 

How does Sitecore Content Hub differ from Sitecore Content Hub and CMS? 

While the product has its origin in Content Hub platform, gained through the 2018 acquisition of Stylelabs, it is a completely different product with its own distinct features.  
Realizing the varying need of brands, Sitecore has adapted its robust Content Hub offering for brands looking for entry points into digital experience delivery versus a holistic marketing strategy. The result is Content Hub One
Sitecore 
Each year, the Sitecore Symposium event is known for exciting announcements and updates we can look forward to in the coming year. In continuation to this tradition, Sitecore announced three new product offerings at our event on October 18, 2022.  
These included: 
1. Sitecore Content Hub One 
2. Sitecore Search 
3. Sitecore Connect 
Now we know what you must be thinking- what is Content Hub One, and how does it differ from the existing Content Hub product? We’ll cover all the details in this article for our readers and specifically discuss the benefits of the new Content Hub One product. 

What is Sitecore Content Hub One? 
Sitecore Content Hub One is focused, lightweight, agile headless CMS that allows brands to launch and manage experiences on various digital channels including web, mobile, KIOSK, social media and other IOT channels. It is cloud native and pure headless CMS that allows marketers to quickly create, manage and deliver content that fits to any channel without worrying much about deployments. Moreover, it gives developers the freedom to build frontends using any framework for data-driven content experiences, while allowing marketers to work in parallel to author content. 
 
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Content Hub One: An agile Headless CMS 

Sitecore Symposium 2022: The content experience  
Chief Product Officer, Sitecore
The content experience is the customer experience. Tools to listen, understand, analyze and personalize. If the content is not delivered consistently in a way that resonates with the customer – it just won’t land.
Dave O'Flanagan
So now we understand why Sitecore has doubled down this space, but what do the products do? Here’s a peek into how Sitecore rounded out its content cloud gap. 

XM Cloud  

Although XM Cloud was announced prior to Symposium, it’s important to understand the role that it plays in the Sitecore content cloud. For many going into Symposium, a common misconception was that XM Cloud was the successor to XM, but what Dave brought to light was that XM Cloud is XP’s successor. XM Cloud has been thought of as an enterprise CMS that addressed the content management needs at an enterprise level, but it’s more than that. According to Dave, “For 80% of Sitecore’s customer’s, [they] believe that XM Cloud will provide all the capabilities that they need and more.”  

How, you wonder? Aside from offering content management capabilities, XM Cloud offers personalization, insights, and an easy-to-use page builder in a centralized location called Sitecore Pages. With their ultra-scalable solution, integration is as easy as a tag or a beacon on your sites, allowing marketers to ship sites without the intervention of IT. To top it all off, “customers that need more sophistication can upgrade from XM Cloud to CDP for data management with the click of a button” (Sitecore).  

Content Hub One  

The first of three new product announcements was Content Hub One—the small sibling of XM Cloud. Sitecore XM is known to be a SaaS-based CMS geared towards larger enterprises and complex implementations. But now, with Content Hub One, there’s a headless CMS that is lightweight, agile and does not require an enterprise-wide implementation. Content Hub One addresses a key gap in the market of brands needing a simpler solution to content management. Now, there’s a solution for simple use cases: a short-term campaign or landing page site can be built and live in weeks. 

What’s also great about Content Hub One is that it is built on Content Hub, a proven product with enterprise scale and performance. “You can integrate with XM Cloud, share the same database as an enterprise DAM or MRM with the click of a button, with no additional integrations required. And to top it off, marketers, enterprise and digital teams can work in parallel,” explained Dave.   

Content Search  

Content Search — the second product announcement — is a standalone SaaS search engine. Leveraging the Reflektion’s engine, an acquisition made 14 months ago, Content Search offers an advanced search solution that is intuitive, intelligent and AI powered. “It provides fast predictive search, relevant content as you type, and anticipated intent in milliseconds,” said Dave.  

Content Search can not only be integrated with XM Cloud or Content Hub One but also index content from any CMS. This product is made for technologists and marketers alike, offering relevant and flexible search capabilities. With its intuitive back-office UI, a marketer can easily manage the search experience with limited technical expertise. It also has detailed search and content analytics that makes it easy for marketers to understand search performance. You can now see it in action by visiting Sitecore.com. 

Connect 

Connect is the third product release. “With Connect, Sitecore really wanted to be the gateway for any organization’s composable journey,” said VP of Technology, Horizontal, Sheetal Jain. This product works to integrate data across the enterprise using a plug-and-play tool that allows you to easily connect with any out-of-the-box connectors. Its low code, no code environment allows transfer of data from your digital asset management to almost any other data system. What’s also great is that it can work with any Sitecore app, legacy Sitecore product or any third-party vendor imaginable.  

Connect’s ability to bring flexibility and solve the complexities and length that come with composable integrations is a game changer. Integration in a composable world holds real importance, and this product seamlessly allows data to travel from one system to another in a timely manner. Getting real-time insights in a faster time is what technologists have been looking for because it means faster time to market.  

Content has always been at the epicenter of Sitecore’s product roadmap, but they are focusing their attention on it more than any vendor in the market. Their goal is to be the content platform of the internet and since the content experience is the customer experience, we cannot wait to help our clients unlock the full potential of these products. To learn more about how we can help you harness the power of Sitecore to create connected experiences, contact us.   
Watch our Symposium highlights to learn more about Sitecore’s new product launches  
Sitecore Symposium 2022 was all about Meeting Every Moment and this year’s in-person event was filled with memorable moments with partners, peers and colleagues. However, the most notable highlight was the announcement from Sitecore CEO Steve Tzikakis on their three new product launches – Content Hub One, Content Search and Connect.  

The driving force behind these new products is Sitecore’s mission “to maintain leadership in content and disrupt the engagement and commerce markets. The goal is to help [customers] succeed and convert customers into fans,” said Steve. At Horizontal, we share this sentiment and deliver on it through our connected experience expertise to help clients build momentum with their customers to create long-term relationships. And as a part of this process, we understand the important role that content plays in delivering a truly connected customer experience.  
 
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Sitecore Symposium 2022: The content experience  

Creating a connected patient experience with Salesforce
Within the Health and Life Sciences (HLS) sector, organizations face a plethora of issues, competing priorities and operational pitfalls that slow them down and prevent them from better serving their patients and members. From the perspective of a health care consumer, the journey of finding, receiving and paying for care is still a very complex (and often confusing) process.

More and more consumers of health services (both treatment and care), along with customers of health insurance benefits, are demanding a tailored and simplified experience as a part of their health care journey. 

Here at Horizontal, we call these tailored expectations "connected experiences.” And as an Experience-Forward consultancy, we know that connected patient experiences are what allows HLS brands to build greater possibilities and achieve stronger relationships.

Realizing connected experiences, however, relies on an exceptionally designed, end-to-end patient experience. This experience is activated via a patient data-enabled, integrated tech stack that seamlessly captures patient data, and then funnels it to key systems for continued patient engagement across sales, service and support, and marketing automation. 

A patient’s experience with the health care system starts long before they even need care, and their journey continues long after clinical outcomes or interactions. World-class patient experience programs understand the role of a health care provider before, during, and after care and respond to patients’ needs at every stage along that journey. (Qualtrics)

Patient loyalty can erode if they find it difficult to engage with a provider at any point in the journey. That’s why it’s critical for the patient journey to be seamless and cohesive – across touchpoints, channels and devices – at every step, starting from the moment they search for care to when they get care, to post-visit compliance through to paying for care, and every interaction thereafter.

Salesforce is leading the way in end-to-end connected experience technology

Simply adopting technologies alone won’t drive world-class relationships with your patients/members. But it is the foundation to delivering the friction-free, contextual and anticipatory moments upon which these relationships are based. It comes down to identifying and employing critical technology platforms that marry back-of-house operations with the experiences your customers engage with daily.

At Horizontal, we help health care organizations realize this future vision by delivering on the promise of building connected patient and member experiences. One of the most critical ingredients in the customer experience mix is identifying and using the right tools. We believe that Salesforce’s technology offerings give businesses every edge they need to seize a leadership position in providing exceptional customer engagements.

Salesforce technology suite of offerings can drive superior experiences by:

    Seamlessly fusing purpose-built health care system customer relationship managements (CRMs), like Salesforce Health Cloud, which securely and safely capture HIPAA and PII data for better service and support
    Leveraging marketing automation for relevant messaging — from patient education and compliance to maximizing in-network benefits to driving lower cost of care
    Implementing a digital experience platform (DXP) to create exceptional digital experiences, while activating patient and member data
    Harnessing holistic patient and member data in a centralized repository like Salesforce CDP with Salesforce Genie for organization’s functions, departments and teams to support the continuum of care


    Utilizing the power of a real-time interaction management (RTIM) solution to aid in orchestrating personalization across channels

Want to learn more about how we help create an omni-channel patient experience with Salesforce technology? Let’s chat.
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Creating a connected patient experience with Salesforce

Dreamforce 2022: We dream of Salesforce Genie 
Salesforce Consulting Manager, Horizontal Digital.
Salesforce Genie is empowering almost every cloud with real-time data, intelligence, and automated processes to create a greater connected experience. Now, businesses are even more empowered to make decisions with unified profiles having real-time data updating on-the-fly
Neeraj Sharma
At Horizontal, we believe connected experiences drive greater possibilities between brands and their customers. And that starts by having connected data. Salesforce Genie will not only connect data across platforms but make it automated, intelligent, and real time. 

But what exactly is Salesforce Genie, and how is it different from Salesforce CDP?  
What is Salesforce Genie?  

Salesforce Genie is a real-time data platform that powers Salesforce Customer 360. It integrates data from every step of the customer experience and creates a unified customer profile record, that is automated, intelligent, and real time across every Salesforce cloud and industry solution.  

According to Salesforce, “As the heart of real-time Customer 360, Salesforce Genie ingests and stores real-time data streams at massive scale and combines it with Salesforce transactional data. Genie includes built-in connectors that bring in data from every channel (mobile, web, APIs), legacy data through MuleSoft, and historical data from proprietary data lakes.” 

How is Salesforce Genie different from Salesforce CDP?
With Salesforce CDP, unified customer profiles include AI-driven, cross-channel insights based on engagement behavior to segment smarter and anticipate each customer’s needs at every step of their journey. 
 
Salesforce Genie takes it one step further – by funneling a nearly infinite amount of dynamic data to Customer 360 in real time. This expands the use of Salesforce CDP to more than just the marketing function, but to every department of an organization – sales, service, etc.   
 
Salesforce Genie also allows data to sync (instead of duplicate) making everything about Salesforce CDP even faster (aka real time) than ever before. With the addition of Salesforce Genie, creating and activating 1-to-1 personalized customer journeys throughout the entire organization will be easier than ever before.
“Salesforce Genie is empowering almost every cloud with real-time data, intelligence, and automated processes to create a greater connected experience. Now, businesses are even more empowered to make decisions with unified profiles having real-time data updating on-the-fly.,” Neeraj Sharma, Salesforce Consulting Manager, Horizontal Digital. 
See how our Salesforce CDP expertise can help you unlock smarter connections with your customers. 
Watch our Dreamforce highlights to learn more about Salesforce Genie
Executive Director Digital CX, Enterprise Strategy, Horizontal Digital
The announcement of Salesforce Genie set the tone for the event. I’m super excited to see how we will be able to help our clients raise the bar with Salesforce CDP, powered by Genie
Tom Flint
Salesforce Genie powers real-time data across the Salesforce Customer 360 platform 
Dreamforce 2022 provided many great and memorable moments for attendees – but no moment topped the announcement of Salesforce Genie, a real-time data platform that powers the entire Salesforce Customer 360.  
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Dreamforce 2022: We dream of Salesforce Genie 

Creating a connected customer experience with APIs
We are in the age of digital transformation. For many organizations, that means not only integrating technology systems, but also reshaping a company’s technology stack and data sources to be focused on and around customer needs.  

As a customer engages with your brand, each channel and touchpoint they interact with has the potential to create a new data silo, which are disparate centers of data housed by one group in an organization that is not fully accessible by another. These disconnected data silos – coming from sources such as Call Centers, CRM systems, or in-store point-of-sales systems – are one of the most common barriers to gaining a true 360-degree view of your customers, and a continuous challenge for 90% of organizations.  

Developing connected experiences relies on an exceptionally designed, personalized, end-to-end customer experience. This type of experience can be activated via a CDP (customer data platform) that serves as the catalyst for a customer data-enabled integrated tech stack that seamlessly captures customer data (from things like digital behavioral interactions to self-selected preferences and past purchase history) as a customer engages with a brand’s website, e-commerce destination, in-store/POS, account portals, apps and more. 

Having your data effectively integrated is at the core of your customer experience. Today, companies can no longer afford to not provide a connected and seamless customer experience. According to MuleSoft’s 2022 Connectivity Benchmark Report, organizations could lose on average $7M if they fail to complete these digital transformation initiatives.  
So, how do organizations create an agile and seamless customer experience? The solution – APIs.  
An API (application programming interface) is a software intermediary that allows two applications to communicate with each other, creating a flow of data like a two-way street. According to MuleSoft’s API’s Essentials Blueprint, “APIs are the digital building blocks that compose and orchestrate customer experiences, foster new partnerships, and drive revenue with business models.” 

MuleSoft is leading the way in data integration software, and empowering organizations to integrate their data at scale to create connected customer experiences. According to their 2022 Connectivity Benchmark Report, APIs are helping organizations deliver more value by:  

    Increasing productivity  
    Unlocking major revenue growth opportunities 
    Delivering better employee and customer experiences  

In addition, with MuleSoft’s Salesforce CDP Connector, users can integrate their data with Salesforce CDP endpoints, automate data ingestion from third parties, query the CDP Data Lake, and get the full 360-view of their customers within their CDP instance.  

At Horizontal, we believe that brands and companies are only as good as their worst customer experience. We partner with the world’s Fortune 500 companies in solving complex customer data challenges to drive business outcomes. Want to learn more about how to integrate your data to begin your digital transformation? Let’s talk.
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Creating a connected customer experience with APIs

Harnessing the power of customer data for CPG brands
Additionally with major CPG companies that have multiple brands and product lines, gathering customer data across the entire product portfolio suite can further advance loyalty to the enterprise (and not just single brand purchases). For instance, if a company has oral care products and a haircare line – these customer data points showcasing product adjacencies can be leveraged to bundle and/or complement marketing programs and digital experiences. This can inform enterprise strategies for individual brands to (under the house of brands architecture) support each other in cross-sell opportunities.
Which leads us to personalization. Customers expect their experiences with brands to be tailored. To not only meet their needs, but also anticipate them. If brands aren’t doing that, consumers have a tendency to quickly switch brands. 
On the flipside, if you can activate personalization in the right ways, a study by Deloitte found that “1 in 4 consumers are willing to pay more to receive a personalized product or service” and “in some categories, more than 50 percent of consumers expressed interest in purchasing customized products or services.” 
As the market conditions continue to evolve with the potential of COVID resurfacing in the fall, inflation causing prices to increase and the looming fear of a possible recession, CPG brands need to help customers navigate these waters by guiding them with the right recommendations and pathways to purchase. Connecting moments from digital to in-store to packaging to product usage. For instance, on a tactical level, if your data on a segment is driven by value (e.g., always needs a coupon/discount to buy), a “‘savings”’ message should be front and center in the marketing. Or if a customer segment is conditionally loyal to a brand that continually provides promotional offers, deliver digital coupons to this audience as “offers for you” with a coupon and/or manufacturer’s rebate.  
Pulling the thread all the way through, the final moment of conversion at-shelf are top of mind for CPG brands to tip the scales in their favor. Understanding there are parameters and limitations retailers have for merchandising, can CPG brands influence consumer decision moments with in-store digital touchpoints – like digital end-cap signage/POS, QR code links to digital coupons and/or promotional tie-in to the retailer app?. All of these bolster customer connectivity, while capturing key data points of engagement.  
This is a very interesting position for CPG brands. On the one hand, they have legacy relationships they rely on with retailers to distribute products on store shelves. But we know retailer customer data often is not shared directly with CPG brands. That said, one of the biggest opportunities we see for CPG brands is capitalizing on capturing as much zero- and first-party customer data as possible, not only to drive more personalized experiences within a specific brand, but also to find avenues for aggregating data across product lines within a house of brands model. This could aid in cross-sell and bundling promotions with adjacent recommendations  
 
If your channel marketing and promotional plan is solidified, you can then activate it with customer data and intelligence through powerful martech solutions like a customer data platform (CDP). Where the technology enables marketers to aggregate high volume of customer data points into a single repository, unifying individual customer profiles. From which brands can then create key segments for effective omni-channel orchestration. By melding experience, design, data and technology and having the right customer marketing strategy in place, paired with data activation through the experience, all will ensure your brand thrives no matter the market conditions. 

Utilizing CDP to populate any in-store/on-premise tools continues to tie the customer to a digital engagement. This can allow CPG’s to drive sales through real-time messaging in an app, a QR code or other experience meant to connect with the customer in a key moment in their customer pathway.  
By leveraging a data-driven approach, CPG brands can reach their key audiences with the right message and engagement, along their journey – no matter the channel.  
If you’re interested in learning more about how your organization can achieve a single view of 360-degree customer data to activate automated omni-channel experiences, - we’d love to talk about ways to help you realize your brand ambitions and achieve business outcomes together. Let’s connect.
Data-driven marketing at scale can deliver that growth—consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies can deliver 3 to 5 percent growth in net sales and improve marketing efficiency by 10 to 20 percent. 
McKinsey
Like all other businesses, the CPG sector felt a major impact with the pandemic in 2020. However, in this case, the onset of the coronavirus created a surge in demand for CPG products. In fact, during 2020, the industry saw more absolute growth than the four-year period (2016-2020) leading up to the quarantine.  

Now almost three years later, what is the outlook for CPG brands as some consumer behaviors go back to pre-pandemic habits? And what is the outlook as other behaviors (e.g., BOPIS) remain intact which were demonstrated as a part of COVID-19 safety measures and preventive exposure?

A recent article published by PwC outlined six areas of focus for CPG brands in 2022. Those included the following: 

    Reclaim strategic differentiation 
    Devise a technology-enabled ESG (environmental, social and governance) strategy to help create value for all stakeholders 
    Target direct consumer relationships using the abundance of available data 
    Rethink commercial operating models to help meet omni-channel consumer needs 
    Future-proof the supply chain 
    Pursue digital transformation for the next wave of cost reduction 

From our perspective, the two areas of focus from the article that really stand out, and where CPG companies can rise above their competitors, were the third and fourth areas of focus: customer data and omni-channel customer journeys.  
With privacy and security at the forefront of consumer trust, more and more brands need to rely on zero-party and first-party data.  

    Zero-party data points are inputs that proactively come directly from the customer. These could include preference center data, purchase intentions, personal context and profile/account information, along with how the individual may want the brand to recognize them.   
    First-party data refers to behavioral data captured (with opted-in permission) of users/customers as they engage with a brand’s various digital touchpoints – website tracking, transactions, etc.  

Zero- and first-party data is particularly crucial for CPG brands as a lot of rich customer intelligence resides within retail partner databases and sources. Obtaining this data in a secure way is critical in understanding customer needs; to activate relevant marketing and brand experiences that drive loyalty. With a full holistic view (e.g., Customer 360) of your audience, including past and real-time data points, brands can drive omni-channel personalization tactics at scale. The key is to find opportunities for customers to not only engage, but also align to their buying behaviors and purchase preferences.  For CPG brands that don’t have their own DTC model, what are ways to partner with retailers on things like continuing to support an at-home buyer, buy online pick-up in-store (BOPIS), buy-now pay later, flexible payment options, or changing brand affinity because of more variety in digital interactions?
Or what are considerations for direct mail or email communications and offers to seasonal messaging – all the way down to automated marketing based on customer behavioral patterns (e.g., it’s been three months since a customer purchased a toothbrush – and dentists recommend toothbrushes being replaced every 90 days)?
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Harnessing the power of customer data for CPG brands

Horizontal Digital awarded Sitecore Partner awards for a consecutive year
Horizontal Digital earns two 2022 Sitecore Partner Awards in the Partner Excellence and Customer Value/Impact categories.


“This year the 2022 Sitecore Partner Awards have a laser focus on recognizing partner performance and outcomes aligned to [their] mission of elevating leading brands through unforgettable digital connection with their customers based on [Sitecore’s] vision to disrupt the market with innovative solutions that turn consumers into fans” (Sitecore).
 
Putting consumers (people) at the center of everything we do at Horizontal is the ethos behind our Experience Forward sensibility. This sensibility is the grounding foundation and lens we apply to the work we do for our clients on their journey of digital transformation. A progressive evolution that continually aims to raise the bar of customer experiences that lead to successful business outcomes and the reason why we were awarded the Partner Excellence and Customer Value/Impact awards by Sitecore.  
 
The Partnering Excellence award recognizes partners who demonstrate overall superior commitment to in-depth knowledge (enablement, training, certification, and specialization) and commitment to selling with Sitecore.  
 
The Customer Value/Impact award recognizes partners who exceed in consistently delivering value to Sitecore customers throughout the entire customer lifecycle; ensuring the customer continues to draw value from Sitecore and that the customer has a positive experience with our products. This award is based on nominations by their customers. For Horizontal Digital, nominations came from our clients Worldwide express and Yas Island and are a testament to their trust and support of Horizontal’s partnership and in-depth knowledge of the Sitecore platform.  
 
As the partner with three Sitecore partner awards, we are set up as the best partner to deliver on our clients’ ambitions with Sitecore in building connected experiences for their customers and driving value for their business. 
 
Horizontal is an original Sitecore Platinum Partner with 12 recognized MVP’s, over 100 Sitecore implementations and 16 years of partnership. As stated by our Co-Founder & CEO, Sabin Ephrem, “This is a partnership that remains strong and successful and will be for years to come as we usher in a new era with the Sitecore composable stack of products that will keep our customers on the forefront of technology.” You can learn more about the award by visiting Sitecore's winner's page.
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Horizontal Digital awarded Sitecore Partner awards for a consecutive year

0-100: Realizing a composable DXP with Sitecore
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to adopting composable marketing technology (MarTech). It’s about first understanding the digital problem you need to solve, then choosing the right tools and timing.
In her most recent insights piece, Horizontal Sr. Director Anne Norman referenced three categories into which most Horizontal clients fit in terms of their marketing technology strategy:  
 
1. Monolithic Invested



    Currently driving value/ROI 


    Existing platform-as-a-service (PaaS) MarTech footprint 

 
2. Composable Curious



    Interested in maturing the end-to-end customer experience (CX) 


    MarTech includes both PaaS and software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions 
    

3. Composable Ready



    Truly integrated CX across end-to-end journey 


    SaaS leverages the full capabilities of the cloud, beyond storage and hosting, including elastic scaling of highly available resources.

Today we’re focused on how you plan your path to your composable future. TL; DR: You do you. There is no one road to composable – it’s about first understanding the digital problem(s) you need to solve, and then choosing the right tools and right timing for your solution(s).  
Defining the digital problem – some MarTech history 

Marketers shouldn’t have to care about technology as much as they do, but here we are. Let’s go back in time to better understand the choices digital leaders have today:   

In the late 90s, new digital technology emerged on the scene called content management system or CMS. For the first time, marketers had technology to structure their content and present it in a web context.  

Over time, CMS providers evolved to deliver something called DXP (digital experience platform). Why? Because the web was no longer just about corporate brochure sites. You needed email. And campaign landing pages. And A/B testing. And personalization. And while tools were available to create and manage all of those experiences, getting them to connect with one another was really, really hard, time consuming and expensive. DXP came along to put all of those capabilities into a single, monolithic solution so you could buy one piece of software to do everything. (In theory, at least.)  

Fast forward to today: technology is finally getting out of the way of the business. Software is lightweight and much easier to integrate than back in the day, so it’s no longer necessary to have a single monolith powering all your digital capabilities. That’s composable, and that’s where we are now. 
Defining the digital problem – the business POV
You lead or support a digital business. How are you supposed to understand and keep up with these technology changes? Start with “why.” Focus first on the digital outcome you need to deliver, which will lead you to your technology solution.  

Example 1: You work for a consumer products company that sells via retailers/etailers like Amazon and Target. But since the pandemic started, you, like other consumer goods companies, are considering options to sell directly to your target audiences. In other words, you’re looking at your first foray into direct ecommerce and need a way to manage transactions in addition to getting the right product in front of the right consumer at the right time.  

Example 2: You are a B2B services company with an extensive portfolio of businesses serving a wide variety of verticals. Your catalog of capabilities is broad and deep, and your website is a critical touchpoint for sharing those capabilities and generating leads. In other words, you’re a content-intensive business needing streamlined operations and personalized journeys.  

Two simple examples, two significantly different digital problems. This is what composable technology like Sitecore’s is about. In example 1, it’s enabling commerce capabilities with a product like Sitecore’s OrderCloud®. Onboarding ecommerce is not a small undertaking, and may require substantial focus from your team. (More on that below.) Once you’ve begun to master direct commerce, it will be time to look at personalized product discovery and recommendations, something Sitecore’s Discover solution does extremely well.  

In example 2, the near-term focus is on streamlining content operations to ensure you’re bringing relevant, compelling stories to your addressable markets. So Sitecore’s Content Hub Digital Asset Management (DAM), Content Marketing Platform (CMP) and/or Marketing Resource Management (MRM) capabilities could be silver bullets. With your content operations tightened up, you could look at Sitecore Personalize and/or Customer Data Platform (CDP) to deliver those 1:1 experiences that cement your value proposition.  

In short: the difference between then and now is that you have the flexibility to pick and choose the technologies that best solve the problem in front of you; once you’ve done that, you can move on to the next problem. And you can do that at whatever pace your organization can absorb. So here’s how to get started:  
Solving the digital problem: a process outline
1. Start with why: What is the outcome you need to deliver? Are you trying to increase digital revenue? Drive down digital cost? Accelerate path to acquisition? Introduce direct commerce capability? If you need to solve more than one of those problems, start thinking about them in priority order in terms of (a) where you’ll drive the most business value in the near term and (b) what you think the business is best prepared to take on in the near term. Can you take on more than one of these challenges at once? Maybe. But at Horizontal we’ve found that the fastest path to maturation is knocking them down one at a time (usually but not always).

2. Now think of your current technology and data capabilities in terms of solving that problem. Do you have a commerce engine that you haven’t turned on or don’t know how to use? Does your current DXP come with personalization capabilities that you’ve never implemented? Or do you need all-new tech to drive your outcome? If you have tech in-house already and just haven’t used it, you might want to first think about why that hasn’t happened yet. You might uncover other challenges: maybe you don’t have the right skill sets, or executive buy-in is lacking.  
3. Assess your organization’s readiness. Onboarding D2C ecommerce, for example, is essentially starting a new business and requires far more planning than just enabling some tech. Adding personalization to your digital user experiences is something you can walk up to in a series of stages, testing and learning along the way.  

4. Now you need to align your stakeholders across business, technology and other influential groups, which could include legal/compliance, infosec and/or sourcing/procurement. Are you aligned on the business case and associated KPIs? Have ROI metrics been established to support the investment? Is everyone in agreement on the stages involved in onboarding the new capability? Do you have a plan for organizing your team around the new capability? 

5. Now you can develop your scoring criteria, which are essentially the requirements the technology must fulfill in order to address the problem you’ve defined. We strongly encourage you to consider a partner like Horizontal to lead a thorough and unbiased scoring, evaluation and selection process that takes into account the needs of business, technology and compliance stakeholders.   

6. With technology selected and procured, we often recommend that your implementation approach account for that test-and-learn approach mentioned above: consider targeting a subset of your audiences or use cases, rather than trying to do everything at once. A classic and common example: we ask clients why they haven’t taken steps to personalize their digital experiences, and we often hear that they’re waiting for their data to be completely cleaned, or all of their touchpoints to be completely redesigned. In other words, they’re waiting for perfection, which is the enemy of good. Just. Get. Started. Somewhere. Starting with simpler, less comprehensive use cases gives you the flexibility to deliver value in increments, which supports the business case for ongoing investment in innovation.  

Finally, and most importantly: don’t lose sight of the people factor. Digital transformation without proper change management will fail. Onboarding new capabilities as you mature often necessitates training, upskilling and in some cases even reorganizing your team. Horizontal’s experience-forward approach to digital isn’t just about your audiences of end users, it’s about the people doing the work too.  

Want to learn more? Check out our whitepaper, “Orchestrating your path to composable."
 
 
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