Turning CX development on its ear—and that’s a good thing

You may not have heard of the Pareto Principle, but I know you know the street version: the 80/20 rule. Eighty percent of business comes from 20% of your customers, and so forth and so on. There are millions of ways to apply the Pareto Principle to business in general, and to software development in particular. Tech history is full of examples of how repeatable solutions, based on 80% "canned" core processes and 20% customization, dramatically speed up implementation and time to value.

The Pareto Principle in practice

About 20 years ago, the market for enterprise resource planning (ERP) and other key business apps exploded when Oracle, SAP, and their implementation partners came out with products and methodologies based on the Pareto Principle. Pre-packaging 80% of the core functionality dramatically accelerated adoption of enterprise applications by mid-market and SMB companies. Today, every business on the planet runs on enterprise applications. The moral of the story: simplifying implementation pushes adoption in a big way.

The 80/20 rule has now arrived in our corner of the software world, customer experience management. I am delighted that Sitecore Experience Accelerator (SXA) incorporates the Pareto Principle to revolutionize—and I have never used that word in a blog post before—customer experience development by:

• Flipping the "u": Digital projects typically follow a U-shaped curve—there’s a huge amount of effort in up-front development, very little in the middle, and then a lot at the end with redesign. This is typically how companies work with their digital agencies:

• Sitecore Experience Accelerator turns the CX development paradigm on its ear, flipping the "u" to an "n"; it’s a template framework that lets you assemble sites quickly, significantly shortening the development timeframe:

• Since 90% of the typical website consists of similar functionality and code, Sitecore developers actually build up to 80%-90% less, allowing them to focus on more high-value CX work.
• In this way, Sitecore partners can spend far less time on repetitive development tasks during a site's up-front launch and end-of-life redesign, and more on evolving the customer experience in the large middle part of the "n."
• Enabling parallel development: Site development has always been, for the most part, a serial affair. First came the information architecture, then wireframes and layouts, then content and finally design. Sitecore Experience Accelerator allows you to do all of these steps in near parallel. Those six-month "big bang" launches become two-months, giving digital firms and their clients far more time to focus on personalization and context capabilities that "move the needle" faster, continuously, delivering measurable business results.

Implications for all

It’s an understatement to say that Sitecore Experience Accelerator is changing the very nature of CX initiatives–SXA is shaking things up completely. Here’s why change of this magnitude is so good:

• Phase 2 "nice to haves" become Phase 1 "totally possible to haves": By introducing personalization and context marketing into the digital experience far earlier, companies can move up the CX maturity ladder (below) more quickly, and see business value far faster.

• Digital agencies and Sitecore customers can focus on customer experience, not site development: Sitecore partners are some of the most business-savvy on the planet. But so much time, energy and, frankly, budget is spent on initial site launch that partners don’t have nearly enough opportunity to showcase their CX creativity. By greatly reducing the effort required to launch, partners are freed to focus on client initiatives that deliver unique value.
• Agency clients (Sitecore customers) are similarly freed–with personalization and context marketing becoming available much more quickly, marketers' creativity can shine as they shift away from standard tactics to innovative programs.
• Projects become programs: With Sitecore Experience Accelerator, both digital agencies and Sitecore customers can get out of a finite, project-based mindset into the continuous improvement cycle that a programmatic approach affords. This shift presents a longer-term view on shaping the customer experience, coupled with the quick wins and iterations that SXA allows.

For a more formal (and, OK, a little more erudite) look at the CX development revolution, check out this whitepaper by Digital Clarity Group, "From Projects to Solutions: Accelerating Web Development for Customer Experience." Tell them Pareto sent you.

In the coming weeks I'll blog about what I foresee happening in the CX industry, as adoption of martech and CX solutions follows the explosive precedent set in enterprise apps and other software sectors. In the meantime, catch me on Twitter.