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Tag: Shantanu Narayen

  • Adobe CEO: Pandemic Was Inflection Point For Everything Being Digital

    Adobe CEO: Pandemic Was Inflection Point For Everything Being Digital

    “What the pandemic and the current health situation has done is that it has created yet another inflection point for everything being digital,” says Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen. “The importance of digital in the marketplace is going to be sustainable for decades. You’re not going to put the genie back in the bottle as it relates to engaging digitally and creating content digitally.”

    Shantanu Narayen, Chairman and CEO of Adobe, discusses how the pandemic has created another “inflection point” in the move toward digital transformation:

    Digital Transformation Is A $120 Billion Opportunity

    It was a good quarter all around. All of our businesses performed exceedingly well. On the Creative Cloud and the Document Cloud, not only did we have a great acquisition. in other words, new customers adopting the platform, but we really focused on engagement and demonstrating the value of our products to our customers. Even our retention levels came back to pre-COVID levels which we believe is a really good sign.

    What’s happening in the world is the businesses that we’re in, namely creativity and enabling people to tell their story, what’s happening with documents and accelerating document productivity, and what’s happening associated with every single enterprise needing to engage with their customers digitally, when you add all of this up we think it’s over a $120 billion of an addressable market opportunity for Adobe.

    Pandemic Was Inflection Point For Everything Being Digital

    What the pandemic and the current health situation has done is that it has created yet another inflection point for everything being digital. What we will have to continue to monitor is what happens in the spending environment. But as it relates to the overall need for the kinds of solutions that Adobe provides as well as the importance of digital in the marketplace I think that’s going to be sustainable for decades. You’re not going to put the genie back in the bottle as it relates to engaging digitally and creating content digitally.

    We believe that we’re in this third phase of what is happening in the enterprise. Traditionally, businesses first focused on automating the back office, and then they focused on automating the front office for knowledge workers. It’s absolutely clear that the biggest imperative that exists in the enterprise today is how do you engage with customers? This is a category that we call Customer Experience Management.

    Customer Insight Is Key To Your Digital Transformation

    If you’re an enterprise today and you’re thinking about digital transformation, what’s top of that stack in terms of where you have to invest is to make sure that you have insight into what your customers are doing. How are they engaging with you? What’s the profile? How do you deliver the personalized experience?

    We really believe that what you’re seeing in the enterprise spend environment is that the companies that are focused on this next generation of delivering customer engagement, the customer experiences, and the insight associated with how to take the most advantage of that data, they’re going to be the secular winners moving forward.

    Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen: Pandemic Was Inflection Point For Everything Being Digital
  • Adobe CEO: E-Commerce Price Drops Should Fuel Strong Shopping

    Adobe CEO: E-Commerce Price Drops Should Fuel Strong Shopping

    Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen had some good news for the e-commerce sector, saying that dropping prices in some categories should help fuel strong shopping.

    Government and business leaders the world over are worried about the state of the economy. Rising inflation, supply chain issues, unfilled jobs, the war in Ukraine, and other factors threaten an economic downturn. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon likened it to a hurricane, although it’s still unclear how bad a hurricane it will be. Despite the cause for trepidation, Narayen believes the e-commerce sector has some reason to be optimistic.

    “When you look at the total expense, in addition to the macroeconomic, where there may be a little bit more concern, what’s happening is actually you’re seeing some price decreases in elements like electronics or things that are happening with games,” Narayen said in an interview on Mad Money.

    As a result of the decreased prices, especially in categories that have previously been hit hard by supply chain issues, Narayen believes digital shopping will continue at a healthy pace.

    “Nothing’s going to change as it relates to people saying, ‘I want to do digital engagement, I want to perhaps buy digitally, pick up physically and you know, the multi-channel thing,” he added.

    Narayen’s comments are some of the few elements of good news amid the economic uncertainty.

  • The Need to Transform is Front and Center for Every C-Level Executive, Says Adobe CEO

    The Need to Transform is Front and Center for Every C-Level Executive, Says Adobe CEO

    “When people look at what’s happening with Amazon trying to get into their businesses, the need to transform is also front and center for every c-level executive,” says Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen. “Given that Adobe’s been through our own transformation and has software they want to hear from us and they want to experience that same benefit that we have been able to see.”

    Shantanu Narayen, CEO of Adobe, discusses how Adobe is helping companies large and small through their digital transformation in an interview on CNBC:

    Adobe Helping Businesses Transform

    When we talk about helping businesses transform we do every aspect of it. We help them create that experience and help them understand how to attract customers. That last mile of transacting with customers is so critical. Adobe was a company that actually innovated tremendously but we had a two-tier distribution channel. We have two businesses. We have the creative business and we have the enterprise business. If you look at what we’ve been able to accomplish in the long run and the two tailwinds that we have, we continue to be really optimistic about Adobe’s prospects.

    When we completely moved to the cloud we recognized that every other company would go through what we did. Namely, how do you engage with your customers digitally? Do you understand how to acquire them and how do they use your software? I think sharing our learnings with other people gives us incredible credibility in the enterprise and we learn from these customers.

    Creating a Real-Time Customer Profile is So Critical

    In enterprise software, this third generation, which is all about customer experience management, I think it’s the companies who recognize that you have to partner with an entire ecosystem to create this real-time customer profile that’s absolutely so critical. That’s why our partnerships, whether they be with ServiceNow or Microsoft or the other cloud kings is so critical in enabling our customers to completely transform themselves.

    What we have been able to do is create this real-time customer profile. People are really within an enterprise saying how do I create native applications? ServiceNow is clearly the leader in IT Service Management. What John (Donahoe) has done is truly special. I think partnering with them to enable IT professionals within an enterprise to use Adobe’s Customer Experience Management with ServiceNow’s IT Service Management, that was a natural.

    The Need to Transform is Front and Center for Every C-Level Executive

    Design and creativity have never been more important. Everything has a screen. So people are creating content, whether that’s a car, whether that’s a retail experience, whether it’s a basketball stadium. Adobe is the content provider that enables all of these screens to be delivered with incredible content. Given design is more important and given mobile devices are in every single place, that’s a tremendous tailwind.

    Secondly, when people look at what’s happening with Amazon trying to get into their businesses, the need to transform is also front and center for every c-level executive. Given that Adobe’s been through our own transformation and has software they want to hear from us and they want to experience that same benefit that we have been able to see.

    I’ve talked about how video is explosive. II think what Disney is doing both with their own service as well as with more control of Hulu is really saying people are consuming more and more content digitally. So providing the analytics for that, providing the digital rights management for that, the right ability to audience segment in terms of who you are attracting, a lot of that is what Adobe powers. This is not just for Disney but for frankly all the major media companies in the world.

    Adobe Powering Big CPG Companies Through a Digital Transformation

    The big CPG companies are going through the following question. They have sometimes hundreds of millions or billions of people using their products and they just don’t necessarily know who they are. Giving them that insight into how they create this incredible customer database, how they understand usage patterns, and how they understand what these people want. If we can provide that insight to companies then all the CPG companies can recognize that this direct relationship will enable them to innovate at a faster pace.

    For example, what Unilever is trying to do is really say we have this tremendous distribution network but what they’ve tried to do even with Dollar Shave Club is really say, “How do we create an incredible customer database?” But the same thing is happening across Colgate or Procter & Gamble. We are partnering very heavily with Unilever as they embark on this digital transformation and understanding customer patterns and customer sentiments across the world.

    The Need to Transform is Front and Center for Every C-Level Executive, Says Adobe CEO

    Also read:

    Without AI, Real-Time Personalization Would Not Be Possible

  • Adobe CEO Focused On Delivering Innovation

    Adobe CEO Focused On Delivering Innovation

    “We’re in rarefied atmosphere,” says Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen. “We’re focused on delivering an incredible innovation roadmap across all three of our clouds. We look forward to sharing more about our forward-looking strategy at the analyst meeting at MAX. We do look forward to the FA meeting. That’s when we lay out the growth opportunities that are ahead of us. We talked last year about how we had a greater than a $100 billion addressable market opportunity.”

    Shantanu Narayen, CEO of Adobe, discusses how the company’s incredible innovation is driving its growth and how Adobe Sensei AI is embedded into every one of their products. Narayen was interviewed by Jim Cramer on CNBC:

    Every Enterprise Must Engage Digitally With Customers

    We actually experienced growth across all three of our segments. When you look at Creative Cloud and the net new ARR that we got in that segment of the business, that was a record for a Q3. Many years after the introduction of the product Document Cloud had an exceedingly strong quarter and we’re seeing tremendous adoption of our paper to digital initiatives. On the Experience Cloud again 34 percent revenue growth. 

    Every single enterprise needs to understand how you can engage digitally with customers. I think what’s unique about Adobe is that every customer from a K-12 student to an individual freelancer all the way to the largest enterprises in the world, the breadth of our offerings and our customers is truly fueling this success.

    It’s About Getting These Customers Young

    We’ve always talked about the fact that instead of just a focus on STEM we love STEAM because the world without arts would be an exceedingly boring place. One of the things we actually did this quarter was introduce a new ambassador network in educational institutions. We’re targeting over a hundred colleges. These students are actually being the evangelists for explaining why creative needs to be part of the curricula. Getting that younger generation excited about expressing themselves we certainly believe that’s going to fuel our growth. 

    In addition to that, as we come up on MAX, which is the largest creativity conference in the world in November, I think what you’re going to see from our innovation roadmap across new areas like immersive content, what’s happening with gaming, what’s happening across devices that now have styluses, we announced a new product called Fresco for art and illustration, so the breadth of our products is amazing. It’s about getting these customers young and enabling them to tell their story.

    Focused On Delivering Innovation Across All Three Of Our Clouds

    What is really unique right now about our digital experience solutions is that we have the first mile. The first mile is content management, it’s the web infrastructure, it’s mobile applications that people use to engage with enterprises. We also have the last mile in commerce. That’s the Magento acquisition that we did a while ago which enables you to make every experience shoppable. Magento had a great quarter. We grew their bookings 40 percent year-over-year in Q3. When you talk about the rule of 40, we’re blowing that away when you think about our growth rates as well as our margin.

    We do look forward to the FA meeting. That’s when we lay out the growth opportunities that are ahead of us. We talked last year about how we had a greater than a $100 billion addressable market opportunity. Were growing the top-line at 20 percent. Our Q4 targets show that revenue growth will be north of 20 percent with EPS growth accelerating even above that. We’re in rarefied atmosphere. We’re focused on delivering an incredible innovation roadmap across all three of our clouds. We look forward to sharing more about our forward-looking strategy at the analyst meeting at MAX. 

    The AI of Adobe Sensei Is A Fabric Of All Our Innovation

    Our artificial intelligence framework is called Adobe Sensei and it’s embedded across every one of our products. It’s when you look at a piece of content and say, how did they do that? There’s probably an aspect of Adobe Sensei in that. We have hundreds of trillions of transactions that we’re processing on behalf of high enterprise customers and we can predict in real-time. Our Adobe Digital Index which talks about shopping patterns globally, that’s coming from Adobe Sensei. It’s a part and it’s a fabric of all of our innovation and we’re excited to unveil new innovation soon.

    Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen Focused On Delivering Innovation
  • Adobe CEO: “Adobe Has Really Been on a Tear”

    Adobe CEO: “Adobe Has Really Been on a Tear”

    Digital marketing pioneer Adobe has really been on a tear says Adobe President and CEO, Shantanu Narayen. In May Adobe acquired commerce cloud platform Magento for $1.68 billion and in September of this year, they acquired Marketo, a leading B2B marketing automation company, for $4.75 billion.

    Previous to these acquisitions Adobe has primarily been a B2C focused company, but now Adobe is excited by the opportunity to help enterprises around the world engage digitally with their customers.

    Shantanu Narayen, Adobe President, and CEO discussed how they are helping businesses to transform in a recent interview (watch below):

    Adobe Has Really Been on a Tear

    Adobe has really been on a tear and we have two big growth initiatives. We are empowering people to create, which has been the heritage and history of the company, and we are enabling businesses to transform.

    The key imperative, whether you are a government, educational institution, or an enterprise is to engage digitally with your customers across every screen and mobile device. Adobe pioneered digital marketing as a category. What we now have is the ability for enterprises to create content, to measure the efficacy of that content, and to acquire customers.

    Digital Experience Opportunity is North of $60 Billion

    With Magento and Marketo we extended in two very significant ways. With Magento, we now make every experience to be shoppable and complete the last mile of actually doing the commerce part of it. With Marketo, we extend from B2C companies, which is where the focus primarily was, to B2B companies. It’s an exciting time for Adobe.

    We think the available opportunity for Adobe just in the digital experience category is well north of $60 billion. When you think about it, whether you are a financial institution that is offering financial services directly digitally, whether you’re a travel or automotive, whether you’re hospitality, the imperative for everybody, including in the media business, is to engage with their customers directly.

    Adobe Enabling Enterprises to Engage with Their Customers

    Adobe always pioneered the aspects of creating that content and now we bring content and data together. It’s a market we pioneered and we are the clear leaders. While there are others looking at that same opportunity we think that we will continue to innovate at a pace that will keep us distant from the competition.

    I think what Amazon has done very effectively is demonstrate the benefits of digital engagement with their particular customers. What we do is we enable that on behalf of every other enterprise who wants to create that engagement with their customers. We give them the tools and the platform. We have a tremendous ecosystem of partners that enables them to do that.

    Whether you are a sports franchise, an airline, or a bank you want to create that digital presence. We don’t view ourselves as competitive with Amazon, we view ourselves as enabling all these other enterprises to create that engagement with their customers.

    Security and Data Privacy are Core Competencies of Adobe

    Security and data privacy are definitely core competencies that Adobe has invested in very heavily. On the data privacy part, we do it in two ways. We have millions of customers that engage with us on the creative cloud and the document cloud and keeping that data and being transparent about how we use that data is something that is front and center for us.

    On the other side, we enable all of these enterprises that are our customers to understand what are the new regulations. Whether that be GDPR in Europe or something else, we help companies understand how they can engage in a transparent way while keeping the data secure.

    It’s one of those areas that we have invested very heavily from a research and development point of view and we have to constantly stay ahead of what’s happening with regulatory environments around the world. We were compliant with GDPR right in time for the May 25th rollout here in Europe.

    We have to be circumspect as to what the rules and regulations are, but I think good sense will prevail in all of these particular cases because when you have boundaries that are down and when you have unfettered access to markets that’s what I think will continue to drive innovation and technology in the global economy.

    Customers and Citizens Have the Imperative to Deal Digitally

    At the macro level, the first thing we all have to remember is that digital is the gale wind in this trend where you cannot put the genie back in the bottle. Customers and citizens, billions all around the world, have the imperative to deal digitally with any business that they are dealing with.

    I think it is incumbent on companies like Adobe to help them to do that. Help the citizens to get the engaging experiences that they want and to help the enterprises to deliver that.

  • CEO’s of Adobe, Microsoft, SAP Announce the Launch of the Open Data Initiative

    CEO’s of Adobe, Microsoft, SAP Announce the Launch of the Open Data Initiative

    CEO’s of Adobe, Microsoft, SAP announced the launch of the Open Data Initiative, a new data repository in the cloud dedicated to facilitating collaboration across the global research community. This is an initiative squarely aimed at Facebook and Google, in effect challenging them to provide all customer related data back to the customer. Here is Microsoft’s portal to the Open Data Initiative.

    Below are key highlights from a discussion the three tech CEO’s had on CNBC…

    Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft:

    The insight that all three of us had based on the work we’re doing with many customers, such as Coca-Cola, Unilever, and Walmart, today as customers they’re all excited about this open data initiative. It’s their real insight that led us to do this, how do we work to put them in control of their own customer data, because that’s the real currency.

    Any brand out there cares deeply about the continuous improvement of their own customer data understanding. The three of us coming together is going to be central to them feeling in control of their own customer data.

    Bill McDermott, CEO, SAP:

    There isn’t a CEO in the world that does not want to have a single view of their customer and they have to connect their demand chain to their supply chain and do so in real time. If you think about the consumer whose social, mobile, they’re geospatial, they’re always on the fly, they’re going to shop different companies in all channels, direct to consumer and retail, and you have to make sure that connection point with that consumer is really intimate.

    These companies need to be intelligent enterprises because more and more AI and predictive analytics is going to rule how you engage with that customer. Ultimately, what you have to do is fulfill, so now you’re going to see the demand and the supply chain completely integrated and that data will be shared evenly among our companies so the customer is the major benefactor of the Open Data Initiative we announced today.

    Shantanu Narayen, CEO, Adobe:

    All three of us shared this vision of how do we enable enterprises to put customers at the front of the digital journey. Getting behavioral data, getting transactional data, and getting customer engagement to be the front and center is the most important thing that enterprises can do so that digital is actually a tailwind rather than a headwind.

    What Marketo does is add to our offerings in the Experience Cloud of being able to create this unified profile for all customers. The thing that every customer will tell you today is that they want an engaging experience with whoever they’re doing business with, whether it’s financial services, automotive, or retail. Adobe focused a lot more on B2C customers, but the same requirements that were true for B2C customers are now true for B2B customers and that’s what Marketo provides.

    Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft:

    The name itself should tell everything, it’s an open data initiative. It’s about really unlocking the data that is our customers’ data about their own customers. I think what is foundational here is trust. In other words, ultimately customers will decide.

    Also, compliance with their own customers trust in them is also going to be very key, because if you think about it one of the top considerations for anything around customer data is privacy and regulation around privacy. So the most important thing here would be for each vendor to think through how they participate here and ensure that there is more trust in the entirety of the value chain, starting with the end consumer to the brand and to us as software vendors or tech companies.

    I think the real challenge is going to be for some who may want to join but their business model is probably not going to allow them to join. I think overall though what we have all anchored on is if we can create an architecture and an incentive system that turns the tide to put customers in control of their own customer data I think the overall economy will be better off.