BloomReach Executives Discuss DXP & Future Roadmap

By Gabriella Pirrone

November 21, 2018

Amazon, B2B, B2C, BloomReach, BloomReach Connect, commerce, Digital Experience, Digital Experience Market, DXP, ecommerce, eCommerce Integration, Hippo CMS, Roadmap

When Laura and I attend events, the opening keynote is one that we look forward to the most since it really lets us immerse ourselves into the company.­­ Further to that, a common conversation that began in the opening keynote and continued throughout the event is what exactly the digital experience era is now. Raj De Datta, CEO and Co-Founder at BloomReach explains “it’s the area in which we work, the area in which we live and in which we compete.” 
 
“There is really only one thing to know about BloomReach. We are the DXP company, we are all about the digital experience platform. That’s our whole business, that's what we've been about since the beginning and that is what we’ll be about sitting here in 25 years. Because experiences move at the rate of the web and so we have a long list of things to do. The digital experience platform, that is the thing, that is the way to win in the experience era.”
 
To gain exclusive perspective from those behind the innovation of BloomReach, we had the chance to speak with three members of the executive team below.

Raj De Datta, CEO and Co-Founder

The description of a DXP platform in relation to what we’re used to such as a WCM or CMS is said to have some fundamental differences but is also being compared to those types of platforms as well. So having said that, we kicked off our very first interview by asking Raj to explain what the real difference is in his eyes.
 
“The significant difference first thing is a content management system or a web content management system is an application, it is an application that marketers use. As an application, what do you do with it? You’re going to launch your website, publish content, manage content, you know and then you ultimately make sure that that website stays up and running so that’s what a content management system is. A digital experience platform is a platform; it’s not an application so the first big difference is application versus platform and in being a platform it does all the things that that a CMS does so it’s not a different thing, it includes a CMS number one but in being a platform you can actually build but whereas a web content management system is typically an application that I use and a DXP or a digital experience platform consists of a set of API’s and it can actually build interesting business budget, plugin other components, add interesting machine learning capabilities all on top."
 
The main objective should be that you focus on the customer touch-point, and what that particular platform is offering. Looking back at Raj’s opening keynote, Raj admitted one of the things they are getting tired of was watching brands and retailers get ‘Amazoned’. This was one of the reasons why BloomReach built their BRX for Commerce, made publically a couple months ago at DMEXCO so we were curious to hear how he thinks businesses can attempt to compete with Amazon.
 
“You’re not gonna compete with Amazon by doing what Amazon does.  You’re going to compete with Amazon by putting your unique brand, your unique offerings, your unique customer experience forward and the DXP is there to accelerate at a high velocity way your ability to do so. Put your best foot forward and really make sure you compete on your own terms, not on their terms.”

Arjé Cahn, Chief Technology Officer

You may remember back in November 2016 when Hippo was acquired by BloomReach. So, to further expand on one of his session topics that day, we were curious to hear how they’ve innovated on the joint platform in that time.
 
“Hippo was a small CMS vendor out of Europe, and were kind of like pulling out our personalization module and relevance module and it was going really well but we thought we should add some kind of machine learning into it and make the experiences more you know, more dynamic, more real-time, personalized based on visitor traffic and behaviour. So that’s something I really wanted to do at the time but was super hard to get done and then there was BloomReach. It was great because BloomReach was a machine learning, ecommerce company with a great track record and they had all these engineers and they had all these algorithms built out.” said Arjé.
 
As I mentioned above, BRX is the BloomReach experience and as for their future roadmap, Arjé mentions that combining their machine learning, search capabilities, content and experience is the foundation of their digital experience platform and what they will continue doing. He also added “we’re building out our API layers so developers can plug into our system very easily and extend on it, that’s super important and bringing that together with content, that’s the future.”

Nate Barad, Head of Product Marketing

Nowadays, it’s less about the vendor saving time and money and more about connecting with your customer and what they need. Nate, a long time product and marketing expert, decided to join BloomReach 6 months ago so were curious to hear what has been the most surprising thing to him since joining the team “The passion for the art of the possible. BloomReach sees something that believes it can happen and it does it” said Nate but also added “the undying thirst to try something new” is really what makes BloomReach so unique.   
 
As a customer and consumer in the DX space, we always like to ask the question of what brands are doing the best but in terms of DX. In the B2B space, Nate uses Staples as someone who he sees that’s really excelling in the space and who’s done “a surprisingly amazing job.” Nate says. “They’ve taken a very B2C centric mentality and brought it into their B2B approach.”
 
For the B2C space, Nate mentions Bose speakers has “really done a phenomenal job. Their B2B line of course with Mercedes and with other vehicles maintains that high-end speaker quality. Whereas the B2C line “what they’re doing is more than just headsets. I can listen to my favourite football player’s playlist before the game.” Bose has essentially made it so they can put the customer directly into the experience and why they’ve made these headphones. I can definitely see this being a hit for all the major football fans out there!

Ending Notes

Besides the wonderful conversations above, be sure to check back as we will be releasing a slew of other interviews from this event which include technology partners, customers and integration partners too.
 

Gabriella Pirrone

Gabriella is the Digital Marketing Assistant for CMSC Media. She brings a wealth of knowledge from not only a CMS perspective but also content, SEO and eCommerce. She enjoys everything social media and staying ontop of the latest trends in the digital marketing world.