We’re almost a quarter way into 2021 and Sitecore is thriving, with big announcements from HQ in San Francisco.
Sitecore recently announced their acquisition of Boxever Ltd., a SaaS-based Customer Data Platform (CDP), and Four51, Inc., a company delivering modern B2B and B2C experiences for enterprise brands, in a game-changing move that will put their customers at the forefront of the digital experience-based economy.
Now, Sitecore has unveiled Sitecore version 10, launching exciting new features and functionality that will accelerate the delivery of Optimisation, Content, and Commerce at an infinite scale.
If the events of 2020 have taught the world anything, it’s that organisations need to evolve and start modernising their customer experience. In a new era of digital transformation, “where 47% of CIOs in 2020 say the pandemic has permanently accelerated digital transformation”, your customers and business are simply demanding more. Customer-led digital experience in combination with adaptive business models is the opportunity to truly lead your industry.
With the release of Sitecore 10, organisations are better equipped than ever to achieve their digital ambitions and leverage technology to modernise their digital future.
Let's walk through the new capabilities of Sitecore version 10 series and how this will help take your business to the next level.
What’s new in the Sitecore 10 series?
For Marketers
Marketing agility and flexibility are the key areas of Sitecore’s product investment allowing marketers to leverage emerging tech and execute digital experiences at scale.
- Rules-based content profiling improves marketer productivity with automatic behavioral-based profiling of content based on content tags and taxonomy.
- Sitecore AI ‐ Auto Personalisation standard delivers faster time-to-market and time-to-value for personalisation with no minimum site traffic required to turn on Auto Personalisation (and up to 12 million annual visits). For brands that have already begun their personalisation efforts, Sitecore AI helps by analyzing visitor behaviour to learn where they are in their journey, deepen their understanding of them, and determine the best content to optimise their experience.
- Segmentation Audience Filtering - In Experience Analytics, marketers and marketing optimisation analysts can view a selection of dashboards and reports to gain a quick understanding of patterns and trends in experience analytics data.
- SXA & Horizon integration combines the complementary elements of the two products so users can benefit from the SXA time-to-market advantage within the next-generation UX of Horizon. The tighter integration between the two, significantly increasing the speed at which a brand can edit and evolve experiences to match the rate of CX change.
For Technologists
Unprecedented scale and performance with the coupling of cutting-edge tooling creating limitless possibilities across application development and cloud delivery services.
- Experience Edge - The first component of Sitecore's new SaaS platform will be the headless content delivery capability with Sitecore Experience Edge. Connect your new website to a content experience layer with an API application architecture.
- ASP.NET Core - Headless development allows you to build your application faster on the latest .NET technology.
- A new Next.js SDK - provides flexible delivery models ranging from static site generation to Server-side rendering (SSR), to hybrid approaches. React developers everywhere will be cheering.
- Containers - Expanded modules supported by Sitecore Containers, including Horizon, Azure Blob Storage and Publishing Service, improve the module deployment process and reinforce high-quality Docker and Kubernetes experiences.
For the eCommerce Manager
A suite of new features promising to excite any eCommerce manager and help efficiently manage each stage in the supply chain, from product cataloging, to order fulfillment, and beyond.
- Product Content Management (PCM) - With the introduction of Sitecore Content Hub alongside Sitecore Commerce (XC), product marketing images, videos, specifications and more, can be easily managed in unity with digital product merchandising.
- Customer Service Enhancements - Sitecore’s xDB (Customer Experience Database) fully integrated with the Order Manager helping Customer Service manage order enquiries.
- Evolving Business Tools Suite - Continued evolution of the promotion manager with product bundling and new features like product gifting.
- Searchability - Advanced search added across the platform, indexing a wider array of product data across the merchandise manager.
- Reduced Total Cost of Ownership - With the latest container model mentioned above, deployments for Commerce will drastically improve the speed to market and reduce the cost.
It's easy to see how the updates available in Sitecore 10 will help empower businesses in their capabilities and accelerate delivery times.
Ready to upgrade to Sitecore? Book a demo with us if you'd like to learn more about what Switch and Sitecore can do to help you modernise your digital future.
— Nick Jones
