Digital fuels every aspect of how we live, learn, work, and play: Nitin Singhal, MD – Digital Experience, Adobe India

The pandemic has triggered a digital-first world, driving businesses to accelerate their digital transformation plans towards delivering exceptional customer experiences across every touchpoint. “The ability to deliver great customer experiences is no longer just a nice-to-have—it is a competitive requirement in a digital-first reality,” says Nitin Singhal, managing director, Digital Experience, Adobe India. “Adobe’s mission to change the world through digital experiences has never been more relevant,” he tells Sudhir Chowdhary in a recent interview. Excerpts:

The pandemic has forced even the most traditional businesses to pivot and transfaorm digitally. What is the next step for businesses to ensure success?
The pandemic has not only forced companies to move into a virtual setting, leaving digital as the preferred option to reach audiences, but has also accelerated the need for teams to move quickly, assess, and adapt, making agility a central business principle. The ability to monitor and quickly identify shifts in the marketplace and customer base, rapidly respond and shift direction, reskill and bring in new talent, and consistently monitor results and measure impact in real-time are now requirements for all.

But, agility isn’t enough. The most successful, digital-first companies are authentic, transparent, and intent on doing good for their customers and communities. Focused on innovation with their people, processes, and technology, they never lose sight of their purpose. It’s these companies that will thrive most in the future.

With digital taking centre stage, where do you see the opportunity in India?
A key differentiator for Adobe India is its contribution to both—the company’s intellectual property (IP) creation and business growth, and I am bullish about our growth outlook in India. Having established itself as a leader in customer experience management solutions and demonstrated the success of its own digital transformation journey, taking a very profitable packaged software business to a subscription business in the cloud—Adobe was well-equipped to handle the disruptive impact of Covid-19 and is uniquely positioned to offer a playbook to businesses that are looking to leverage the power of digital to stay ahead in the marketplace.

Customer experiences have now become more important than ever before, and digital is what enables businesses to stand out. As digital strategy becomes core to the success of every company, we are committed to work as a strategic and trusted partner for many brands in India. Let me touch upon an example here. Financial institutions have had to reimagine customer transactions in a digital-first world. Using the power of Adobe Experience Cloud solutions, HDFC Bank curated seamless digital journeys for customers with innovative offerings like 10-second personal loans, Insta Account, etc., and was able to deliver zero-touch online experiences to customers, anytime and anywhere, offering next level of personalisation services and enhancing their digital journey.

ICICI Home Finance Company used Adobe Experience Cloud solutions to revamp its website last year and become one of the first in the industry to deliver it in six localised languages. It also delivered a platform for housing marketplace with search and compare feature to help customers make the right choice and improve fixed deposit loan application journey, resulting in decrease in drop-offs.

Where do you want to take the business by 2025?
Our strategy of unleashing creativity, accelerating document productivity and powering digital businesses is mission-critical and will continue to drive our top- and bottom-line growth. We are now focused on the much broader experience business opportunity—with three key tenets driving our strategy.

• People buy experiences, not products. Businesses need a service mindset— every customer is making a decision to renew or cancel with every interaction. We will help companies transform how they operate— always-on, knowing the past, and anticipating the future.
• Put art and science to work. Great content is key to breaking through the noise, and data is required to understand the customer’s context. We put content and data to work at scale, helping businesses deliver consistent and exceptional experiences, every time and everywhere.
• Architect for action. The velocity, variety and volume of consumer experience data is outstripping capabilities to derive actionable insight. Through our data platform and AI, we will help businesses orchestrate, deliver and optimise customer journeys across all channels.

As a company, we have always been relentlessly focused in looking around the corner and driving the next big market opportunity so we can anticipate and solve customer pain points – we are looking forward to continuing to innovate in a post pandemic world and capture new opportunities.