First Line Software is a premier provider of software engineering, software enablement, and digital transformation services. Headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the global staff of 450 technical experts serve clients across North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia.
Several hundred customers, prospects, and partners could be found at Kentico Connect Denver which was held on October 2 – 3 at the Grand Hyatt Denver Downtown. As a Kentico Implementation Partner, First Line Software executives participated in the sessions and actively networked with attendees.
The two days of sessions were packed with education around Kentico’s “Headless CMS” strategy. Organizations today prefer a platform that provides “microservices” that enable them to integrate with other solutions and services via API’s. This approach provides an organization with less risk and more flexibility by partnering with multiple solution providers.
Martech’s Marketing Technology landscape has grown from about 150 vendors in 2011 to over 7,000 vendors in 2019. There are partners that specialize in a niche such as eCommerce, Optimization, A/B testing, DAM, PIM, and more. Organizations have discovered that it is better to work with these niche partners rather than depending on the CMS provider to develop these services at an expert level. Decoupling the platform enables best of breed solutions.
The event started off with a keynote by Petr Palas, Kentico CEO, who shared Kentico’s dual product strategy around Kentico EMS and Kentico Kontent.
- Kentico EMS is the Enterprise Marketing Solution (EMS) that will be used by organizations with a medium CMS (Content Management Solution) maturity. The next generation version of this product is Kentico 2020 (K2020).
- Kentico Kontent – Kentico has renamed their Cloud solution “Kentico Kontent” that will be used by those organizations with high CMS maturity. This rebranding reveals Kentico’s move to becoming a provider of Content-as-a-Service (CaaS).
Topics discussed during the conference sessions included those where First Line Software has expertise such as AI and Machine Learning, ADA Compliance, and Personalization. Organizations are leveraging machine learning and building algorithms to track customer journeys. This will help them to identify patterns in customer behavior, better understand personas, which leads to the potential of comparing past sales data to predict what content to render to ultimately increase “closure rates”.
The 2-day event closed with a keynote from Mark Grannan, Senior Analyst with Forrester. Mark delivered an insightful presentation about the end of monolithic CMS platforms with the introduction of microservices platforms, confirming what the attendees had learned over the previous 2 days. Going headless and leveraging microservices, reusing content, and agile development are all important factors to ensuring a successful content management strategy.
If you didn’t have an opportunity to meet with us during the conference, Contact Us to schedule a brief call to tell us about your CMS technology initiatives. We will share details about how First Line Software’s expert implementation capabilities can be instrumental in setting your organization up for success with the best eCommerce personalization software.