4 Platform Leaders To Consider When Choosing a DXP Platform

Digital Experience Platform, DXP, is an emerging category of enterprise software seeking to meet the needs of companies undergoing digital transformation, with the ultimate goal of providing better customer experiences. DXPs provide an architecture for companies to digitize business operations, deliver connected customer experiences, and gather actionable customer insight. Organizations are looking to use DXPs as they move from web-centric to more pervasive, multichannel digital experiences. DXPs manage the presentation layer based on the role, security privileges and preferences of an individual. They combine and coordinate applications, including content management, search and navigation, personalization, integration and aggregation, collaboration, workflow, analytics, mobile and multichannel support. Using Gartner’s Magic Quadrant can help find the most suitable vendor for their needs.

Gartner’s Magic Quadrant is organized in 4 quadrants: Niche players, Challengers, Visionaries, Leaders. These groupings are created based on the two platform characteristic axes: ability to execute, and completeness of vision. Let’s examine a vendor from each quadrant to highlight some of their strength and weaknesses

Kentico Software

• Strengths
  • Growth: Kentico is an emerging European vendor and have expanded rapidly.
  • Midmarket focus: Its appeal is to midsize business looking for packaged capabilities.
  • Price: Offers a clear and predictable licensing model at a low starting cost.
• Cautions
  • Interoperability: while advertised for out-of-the-box solutions, it is difficult to integrate with third-party offerings.
  • Limited support: Customers report relatively low satisfaction with the quality, effectiveness and availability of professional services in the Kentico ecosystem.

Oracle

• Strengths
  • Functional breadth: Offering a broad array of digital experience functionality, and a wealth of complementary technologies.
  • Industry expertise: Differentiated vertical solutions with off-the-shelf data models, processes, policies, user experience, analytics, integration and partners, for over 20 industries.
  • B2C use cases: Oracle’s CX Cloud Suite represents an appealing vision for organizations looking for comprehensive, preintegrated solutions that serve the entire customer journey.
• Cautions
  • Product strategy: Oracle’s product strategy for the digital experience is somewhat misaligned with customer demand.
  • Deployment complexity: Customers report that deployment is an unexpectedly complex task, with a steep learning curve and longer-than-average implementation times.
  • Ease of doing business: Oracle is difficult to do business with, and that its DXP offerings are hard to find and try out without a significant commitment.

Liferay

• Strengths
  • Flexibility and agility: Liferay shines when its technology is used to build highly customized experiences that incorporate external business applications.
  • Market responsiveness: Customers value Liferay’s organic innovation, which contrasts with the “innovation through acquisition” approach taken by many competitors.
  • Service and support: Customers report that they receive excellent customer support and an excellent overall customer experience.
• Cautions
  • Lack of own SaaS or PaaS: Some Liferay customers regret the absence of a provided SaaS or PaaS offering to reduce the requirement for internal or third-party technical skills.
  • WCM capability:  Organizations with experience of best-of-breed WCM applications expect functionality that is easier to use and designed for business users.
  • Analytics: Customers scored Liferay’s analytics capability relatively low.

Bloomreach

• Strengths
  • Machine learning: Has AI-powered personalization and content-marketing capabilities for midmarket and large organizations.
  • Flexibility: Provides a good balance of content management, portal and personalization functionality.
  • Architecture: Demonstrates architectural discipline with loose coupling of content, logic and presentation.
• Cautions
  • Product integration: Integration of Personalization with Experience is a work in progress. Some customers report unmet expectations regarding combined features and functions.
  • Scalability: Customers report limitations with complex security and authentication scenarios when its platform is used in intranet and extranet scenarios.
  • Access to expertise: Customers have reported a steep learning curve and difficulty finding expertise for implementation.

 

Analysing the strengths and weaknesses are very important in the research of new employee portal. Organizations must examine how they fit into objectives of a platform transformation. There are other criteria an organization should consider, such as: understanding the employee needs, involving all departments, testing and more. To read more about what should be considered read our last article: Why Your Old Employee Portal Is a Problem?