Consumers Are Willing to Share More Data for Frictionless Experiences — Guest Speaker and Forrester Principal Analyst

(US & Canada) Guest speaker Chuck Gahun, Principal Analyst, Digital Business and Strategy at Forrester, speaks with Søren Lundtoft, Senior Director, PDX, at Stibo Systems, in a video interview about his professional background, the evolution of product experiences, various aspects related to the transition of companies pertaining to the digital ecosystem, and the challenges and opportunities related to outcome-driven methodology for consumers.

Forrester is a leading global market research company that helps organizations exceed customer demands and excel with technology.

A pioneer in the digital landscape with over 25 years of experience, Gahun reflects on how the digital space has evolved over the years. Before joining Forrester, he worked at Sapient and closely collaborated with public sector agencies like HHS and CDC, helping them develop and implement digital strategies.

Apart from that, Gahun also mentions working at a healthcare agency focusing on patient experiences, U.S. payers, and providers. More recently, he served as a partner at a digital agency specializing in B2B marketing, wherein he led numerous Product Information Management (PIM) implementations.

In his current role at Forrester, Gahun focuses on B2B marketing, content management systems (CMS), digital asset management (DAM), and PIM. He further shares about expanding his coverage to include commerce services research, which involves tracking around 130 Web Content Management System (WCMS) vendors while generating insights about the SIs and agencies that implement them.

When asked to characterize the evolution of product experiences in the market, Gahun highlights the need to first discuss PIM. According to Forrester, it is an established technology category because vendors still standardize functionality.

Further, there are divestitures of PIM solutions that signify that the product base continues to evolve. Growing digital experiences and the rise of GenAI are increasing the PIM demand. This shift has led to the evolution of the PIM category towards product experiences.

Additionally, Gahun states that growing e-commerce trends also require the product record and product data to be holistic. Therefore, the organization clearly delineates between product data and product information, he notes.

The transitions in e-commerce practices and the growth and adoption of that are driving the PIM, ultimately leading to the evolution of product experiences, says Gahun. Vendors are of the opinion that PIM is becoming product experience-centric, he adds.

Gahun elaborates that there could be different ways to approach this. Product experience could either manifest on an e-commerce website and the product detail page or in a below-the-fold experience on a retailer side, like Walmart or Amazon.

Moving forward, Gahun discusses how companies transition from internal value chain-based models to embracing external ecosystems. With an emphasis on digital ecosystems, he states that these do not look for existing value chain models in the pipeline.

Instead, digital ecosystems seek to generate new business value by making product information and records available on third-party channels, where the records can be applicable to various other use cases. For instance, there could be different applications of a backpack, apart from hiking, and consumers could use it for an experience that best suits them.

In continuation, Gahun states that Forrester’s research focuses on the fact that consumers opting to share their data enables the ecosystems to be smarter. Now, when it comes to digital experiences, it is critical to assess how content, data, and product information can move beyond static task-oriented experiences to outcome-oriented experiences.

Sharing an instance, Gahun states that booking a trip could integrate hotel, airfare, and transit into one seamless experience. He adds that the organizational data shows that customers agree to share more personal information to have a frictionless experience.

Delving further into the technical side of things regarding transition, Gahun notes that there are two aspects of it.

First, individual businesses need not build their own LLMs and AI technology from scratch, as existing AI capabilities can be integrated.

The second aspect revolves around the API architecture, says Gahun. Now, instead of extracting data from legacy systems for broader enterprise applications, the focus has shifted to tier-based API-centric architecture. Sharing the instance of how the headless revolution in CMS has become a thing, he states that it has a lot to do with businesses bringing their experiences to life through APIs.

In this shift lies a massive opportunity to rethink the ecosystem and experience and then fuel it through GenAI-focused applications. However, the baseline foundation of API architectures makes businesses flexible to bring products and services to market regardless of geography, channel, or device.

Next, Gahun emphasizes challenges and opportunities related to outcome-driven methodology for customers. With the advent of GenAI, product information, and experience, firms have the ability to connect with consumers where they are.

However, according to customers, the challenge persists with personalization, as they expect personalization at different levels with different levels of fidelity in different stages of their digital experience.

From the enterprise perspective, personalization has been difficult because customer data, enterprise content, and product information are spread across the globe with different owners and teams. In conclusion, Gahun states that he has been working with different content vendors, consumers, and businesses to bring a solution.

CDO Magazine appreciates Chuck Gahun for sharing his insights with our global community.