Adobe recently released its 2021 Digital Trends Report which has shown that speed and action of insights will be an overriding focus and key investment area for many Asia Pacific (APAC) businesses in 2021.

In 2020, digital disruption led businesses to realise they need to understand and act on data faster. Only one-third (35%) of ANZ leaders believe their organisation has strong capabilities in accuracy, actionability, speed and access of insights. However, four in 10 (40%) respondents are planning to invest resources in improving insights and analytics capabilities to achieve their top marketing goals in 2021.

According to Adobe chief technology advisor and principal product manager for Asia Pacific and Japan, Scott Rigby, the major trend to help leverage this is headless commerce as a steppingstone to an integrated tech stack.

“Headless commerce is no longer just a buzzword; it is more widely accepted within the industry and there is a better understanding of its benefits for supply chain flexibility, wider range of APIs and ability to enrich the customer experience,” he told Retailbiz in a recent interview.

“Another area that Adobe has invested in is live search. When there are thousands or millions of product SKUs on a website, there is a real need for strong search capability. Companies can now provide hyper-relevant results that auto-complete, auto-index and auto-filter to drive customers to complete their transaction.

“There is also an increasing desire to deliver content at scale and speed and we want to democratise that throughout the organisation outside of the content producer or creator.”

The Adobe Journey Optimiser, scheduled to become available at the end of June 2021, offers real-time customer insights and engagement to optimise personal and contextual experiences. It is the industry’s only enterprise application designed to help marketers optimise the customer journey across any outbound or inbound customer touchpoint.

“We have seen an acceleration of online transactions and I believe this is unlikely to return to pre Covid-19 levels. There is a strong appetite among businesses to communicate using less traditional methods and instead, utilise more digital channels.”

How Adobe Magento Commerce moves beyond transactions

Magento Commerce, part of the Adobe Commerce Cloud helps with designing, creating, and supporting e-commerce solutions. However, the platform can be adapted to a much wider range of website interactions beyond transactions. It offers search, navigation, filtering, categorisation and personalisation features that marketplace websites like Skill Finder need to succeed.

A traditional retail e-commerce site built on Adobe Magento Commerce uses a detailed taxonomy to help consumers filter products based on brand, colour, size, or price. For Skill Finder, this taxonomy is used to help Australians find the specific courses that they’re looking for. The website also uses the cross-sell and upsell functionality in Magento Commerce to help learners find similar courses and continue building upon their skills.

The Skill Finder website was designed around a headless architecture to better handle traffic spikes and give developers the flexibility they need to change the look and feel of the site’s unique front-end. Skill Finder provides clear links where users can browse the catalogue by skill category or provider. It also includes a unique assisted interface, similar to a chatbot, that helps newcomers discover skills in any category.

Developed in response to a call for action from Minister for Industry, Science and Technology Karen Andrews and led by Adobe, the digital micro-skills marketplace, Skill Finder has seen more than 80,000 Australians visit the site and close to 8,000 people have selected a course relevant to them.

Following a successful proof-of-concept, the federal government has provided a $2.7 million grant to further develop the platform and help more Australians upskill and reskill. The top courses on the platform include Adobe: Basic principles of design, IBM: AI concepts, Atlassian: Build backlog w easy agile, MS: Add decision logic to code and Accenture: A better cover letter.