Sitecore’s recent upgrade to their Experience Platform (XP) 10 and Experience Commerce (XC) 10 is a major win for digital marketers and IT pros.

But before we jump into these exciting tech and marketing additions, let’s look at these enhancements as a whole to better understand why upgrades are necessary for your business.

Why upgrade?

Upgrades don’t necessarily mean a technology isn’t doing its job or that there’s an issue with the previous version. Constant improvement is necessary for growth and regular boosts to your technical platforms are a must to keep up with an ever-evolving tech landscape. If it’s efficiency in productivity you want, an upgrade is your answer to building improved internal processes for both short and long-term goals.

The Sitecore platform puts huge emphasis on strengthening customer relationships through a streamlined UX with accessibility and personalization features. The improvements in any given upgrade are the result of extensive surveys, analytics, testing, and user feedback.

Upgrades can be a smooth process when you use the right team for the job.

What’s new with Sitecore XP 10?

We’re pretty excited about the latest Sitecore upgrade. One change in particular is geared toward configuring easy-to-manage systems so cooperative teams like Marketing and IT are aligned and able to perform their daily tasks seamlessly and communicatively. Previous Sitecore versions were (and still are) powerful tools, but XP 10 adds an extra level of communication, flexibility, and partnership to the mix.

XP 10 is the leading digital experience platform to create efficiencies for both marketing and IT departments with full container support for rapid deployment and more efficient team and solution onboarding; while XC 10 provides a foundation for commerce teams with robust new product bundling and promotion capabilities.

– Sitecore

Marketing and IT, although different in terms of function and department, co-depend on one another for website maintenance and functionality. This is where XP 10 comes in and provides marketers with deeper insights into Sitecore analytics; improving transparency amongst teams when it comes to knowing which functionalities to integrate for enhancing the content model.

Additionally, the headless CMS creates a more efficient and flexible infrastructure. Marketers have more control over content and IT teams aren’t inundated with requests, giving them more time to focus on development.

You can expect to see:

• Headless ASP.Net Core option adding speed and flexibility for developers
• Expansion on the Horizon editing interface, streamlining the content editing process
• Additional support for larger multi-site and multi-lingual capabilities
• A simpler and more intuitive approach
• XP 10 offers enhanced reporting and analytics, something lacking in XM 6, which did not support profile data for personalization at scale
• Ability to integrate directly with Salesforce Marketing Cloud
• 10 introduces a full managed services environment within the Microsoft Azure Cloud Platform, meaning reduced costs to infrastructure, simpler deployment, and additional flexibility and scalability
• A drag and drop framework
• Tighter integration between SXA and Horizon editing
• Ability for marketers to send current visitor xDB data to Salesforce Marketing Cloud in real-time

Do you need a Sitecore upgrade?

To know what you need, you first need to evaluate what you already have. Performing a digital audit will evaluate how efficient your internal processes, workflows, and digital properties are.

This will analyze whether you’re in need of an upgrade or just an updated workflow and establish if the technology you’re using is not only up to date but in-line with your business goals.

When auditing, be sure to pay attention to the user journey, not just your products or services. The customer journey is crucial to any business, so ask yourself:

• Are your consumers happy?
• Are they able to navigate your site seamlessly?
• Are you establishing a relationship and maintaining it beyond the transaction?

Unsure how to move forward or where to turn for a digital audit and upgrade? Content Bloom can help. For a free consultation, book some time to speak with one of our experts on how you can take advantage of the full power of Sitecore.