A new era for Sitecore and the industry

A few weeks ago, news broke that Sitecore secured an unprecedented $1.2 billion investment. Since then, dozens of customers and partners have called me to share congratulations, ideas and feedback. At the end of each call, I felt deeply inspired about the profound trust that clients place in us every day to deliver great experiences to their customers. It’s in that spirit that I want to publicly share our plans — not just in terms of investments in products or regions or people, but around a new culture and mindset at Sitecore.

Here is what customers and partners can expect from Sitecore as the company approaches its 20th year in business.

It all starts and ends with the customer

It’s a simple, self-evident truth that is often forgotten in our industry: delivering great experiences to consumers through technology starts with doing just that for the brands trying to reach them. One of my first actions back in September as the newly-appointed CEO of Sitecore was to tether employee compensation to the company’s net promoter score, making employee bonuses and raises contingent on client experience. Some scratched their head at the move, but everyone now agrees that it was a crystalizing moment and rallying cry for a new way of doing business.

My ongoing commitment is that we will do what it takes to make contract renewals an afterthought to clients. Newly-instituted programs and governance codify these efforts. Sitecore is leaning into its agile startup roots to simplify operations around customer needs in ways that would be impossible elsewhere. Customers should hold us accountable to delivering unrivaled transparency, availability, expertise, quality assurance, support and overall product experience.

An innovation engine

Sitecore will speed up product roadmap and the pace of innovation. Watch this space for news on more powerful multi-tenant cloud solutions, open APIs, integrations and niche additions in our addressable market.

I’m also thrilled to announce a first-of-its-kind Co-Innovation Center. A cross-discipline team of the best and brightest minds at Sitecore will work directly with customers to define and prioritize integrations, product roadmap, technical architecture, long-term business planning and more. One early example of the Innovation Center’s efforts are bespoke industry solutions, currently in beta, built with partners to capture the beautiful complexities and unique needs of specific industries. What an mRNA vaccine developer needs is obviously different from a large luxury retailer, and the Co-Innovation Center is punching through the prevailing industry model of one-size-fits-all solutions to deliver great digital experiences.

Global, local, and accountable to you

By doubling go-to-market presence and expanding the company’s geographic footprint, Sitecore aims to be everywhere customers are with the resources to help them get the most out of their platform investment. We’re hiring hundreds of positions in the coming months to grow teams all over the world — especially in product and field-facing organizations like customer success to help new and existing clients. Sitecore will also expand into new regions, removing market barriers that hold back adoption along the way. In the Middle East and Japan, two key growth markets for our clients, we’re tackling regional data and legal hurdles to enable digital experience delivery — with early momentum in the United Arab Emirates in partnership with Microsoft.

Own the experience of experience

Since the company’s founding nearly 20 years ago, Sitecore has grown organically to become the leading end-to-end solution for digital experience management from content to commerce. But we weren’t always recognized for that fact, making now the right time for a major investment in Sitecore’s brand and marketing. Stay tuned for creative, experience-led campaigns that increase brand awareness around the world and introduce (or reintroduce) the company to C-level leaders.

Built to last

I hope that customers and partners view Sitecore’s recent investment news as a bet on their success as much as our own. Sitecore will remain a trusted partner that is totally focused on being the best in the world at a single thing — digital experience delivery — rather than trying to be everything to everyone.

We have the building blocks of a great future. Sitecore premiered a raft of platform innovations last year to help enterprises accelerate digital transformation and cloud migration in the wake of COVID-19. Breakthroughs like AI-Powered Auto Personalization — now a standard feature of the new Sitecore Experience Platform™ 10 (XP) — and Sitecore Experience Edge, a SaaS-based platform for headless content delivery at scale to any customer touchpoint, all point to a promising future.

That said, the industry is in a perilous moment. Customer loyalty and trust — the bedrock of iconic brands — are at a crossroads as new consumer expectations are being defined every day and future physical interaction remains uncertain. Whatever the future holds, Sitecore stands ready to help clients deliver digital experiences on any screen that mimic the best intimacy and white-glove treatment of the physical world.

In short, we’re building a Sitecore that endures for clients. And with your help, Sitecore will earn the mantle of undisputed leader in digital experience delivery, from content to commerce.