An ever-expanding field of opportunities for Drupal

There were five pieces altogether written about ambitious Drupal experiences. Each of them focused on a single subject of what constitutes an ambitious digital experience. In the first part of the series, I did my best to explain what ambitious digital experiences mean. The main conclusion, at least in my opinion, is that experience is much more than just mere content. And ambitious digital experiences should come as natural and intuitive as possible. And be focused on the customers, on the users. 

 

Provide valuable and unique digital experiences

I have tried to define the term customer experience as an element of digital experience, the latter being a much broader term. Customer experiences are definitely the ones that drive businesses forward, but it seems that by focusing only on them we miss out something. Especially if we take into account the content, scale, and volume that customer experience management can't cover. It seems that digital experience management can cope with managing customer experiences and add some extras to the equation. IoT, Industry 4.0, VR and AR being just a few of them who would have an irretrievable effect on the digital experiences of a not so distant future. As a matter of fact, some of them are already here. 

Closely connected to an ever-expanding area of digital experiences is what and why integrate something into your existing online presence or a new one if building it. We are leaving our footprints and fingerprints behind every time we engage in the digital arena. We are all users in that digital arena, potential customers looking for items, products, solutions. And like in the B2C environment, the same can and should be applied also to the B2B environment. Marketing automation tools, CRM systems, ERPs, are the fundamentals. 

 

 

What are the opportunities in Industry 4.0?

When considering Industry 4.0 the integrations should go even deeper. Autonomous robots who can communicate with each other and with people are already a reality. Same goes for collection and evaluation of data from many different sources. For example, production systems on the one hand and enterprise and customer management systems on the other side. Simulation and horizontal and vertical system integration are also one of the building blocks of Industry 4.0. Rarely are companies, suppliers and customers closely linked today. Companies, departments, functions, and capabilities will become more cohesive and by evolving universal data-integration networks truly automated value chains will be enabled. More and more systems and applications will be deployed to the cloud, production systems will benefit from data-driven services with a reaction time of several milliseconds. Due to increasing interconnectedness, the need to protect vital industrial systems and production lines from cybersecurity threats will increase dramatically. Augmented reality will also be used more and more in future years. The employees, users, and buyers will be involved in a much broader use of AR, which will provide real-time information to improve decision-making and all work-related procedures. 

 

Not to forget about new regulations on data protection and privacy

But as we will all be more and more a part of interconnected digital worlds and agendas the need for safeguarding the personal data of every individual is becoming more and more important. The amount of data that will be travelling through optic fibres every second will be enormous and all that data should be taken care with the utmost care and highest standards of security. However, when the companies will fully embrace the idea of Industry 4.0 the data will be stored in the cloud and when needed making its way to users will be surely greatly protected from possible cybersecurity threats. As they should be. And because the personal data will also be stored in the same system, it will be treated with the same standards. 

To sum it up, ambitious digital experiences are definitely the way to go. I covered some of the aspects that kind of experiences should entail - I'm making no illusions I covered all of them. And I do believe that the Drupal community is more than capable to address any of them. Those which are already here and we know about them and those who are hiding just behind the corner. 

 

We at AGILEDROP have dealt with a lot of aspects of ambitious digital experiences in the past years. Collected experiences which we are willing to pass along. Get in touch if you would like to utilize the obtained knowledge in your projects also.