The Future of Digital Experiences with Agility CMS

Speaker 1: 0:06

Welcome to another episode of the SaaScast. Here we have a simple rule no jargon, no fluff, just bite-sized advice from some of the biggest names in the SaaS world. And today we're thrilled to have the CTO of Agility CMS on the show. Their personalized, scalable and future-proof headless content management solution is helping enterprise businesses unlock potential of their business through new digital experiences. Joel, it's great to have you on the show today with us. Before we dive a little bit deeper into our theme for today, which is the future of digital experiences, would you mind sharing a little bit more about yourself and what inspired you to join Agility Sure, and maybe your story there?

Speaker 2: 0:43

Sure Thanks, jason. Thanks for having me on. My name is Joel Varity CTO. As you said at Agility, I've been with the company for gosh probably just over 18 years long time.

Speaker 1: 0:53

Wow.

Speaker 2: 0:55

I think the reason I say it so long is really share a lot of core values with the CEO, john Voight, co-founder, and he and I get along really well and I think we've evolved with the company together and our relationship as well, and what we've been trying to do has evolved with the industry and I think that where we're at is a really interesting time, as you were saying, with the next generation evolution of how people work with digital experiences, especially in enterprise, with you.

Speaker 1: 1:25

Yeah, I think they're very different. There's lots of those Shopify CMS platforms that do the e-commerce side too. But yeah, I think enterprise has a really big opportunity to have it itself in the digital experiences it can create because of a lot of the new developments that we've seen with technology in the last few years. So I guess that's a great segue into we're going to go into this period of accelerated creativity and innovation, because there's new technology that can unlock new possibilities, and so how do you see enterprise organizations also taking part in leading this movement and where would you see yourself fitting into that in the mix?

Speaker 2: 2:10

Yeah, I think certainly the idea of jumping the chasm in terms of composable tools is what we're starting to see and what is like the industry is certainly approaching or if not right at a period of hyper growth. So what do enterprises want from the composable tools that they're using? Agility is usually part of a bunch of tools that an organization will bring on At one point. There's a point where it's like the growth for the enterprise means that those tools need to be stable and solid and I think one of the things that Agility we've been focusing on is stability as a company over the long term.

Speaker 2: 2:50

Lots of our customers went with this in excess of 10 years and we've evolved with those companies and we try to bring that kind of stability. That stable message of this is how you build with this platform and sort of assemble your stack of tools using Agility and helping our customers do that so they can talk to a person when they talk to us and we will give them that kind of advice of how they can build their brand and kind of get to their hyper growth that they want to see. Usually, folks come to us it's like, hey, we want to change our message or we want to solidify across omnichannel or multiple digital outputs, these kind of things like that. How do we do it? I thought we'd do it in a stable way for growth.

Speaker 1: 3:33

Right, and I'm assuming a big part of that too is as the technology partner is having a network of implementation partners, if you will like cloud consultancies, software firms to then help leverage a platform that you've built, coupled with some of your thought leadership and perspective of where the industry is going within their sector, and then it's kind of almost like how do we then find them a great partner to help them go on these journeys? Because for many enterprises it's five, six plus years. Right, we've always underestimated the cost of change, and when I say cost, it's just, you know, greatest cost being time. It's. We're asking people to do more, learn more and work in entirely different ways, like brushing your hand with a toothbrush in your left hand versus your right hand. If your right hand, it is going to take you a long time to get used to. And so I guess that's kind of like.

Speaker 1: 4:34

You know, the industry is moving forward way beyond screens now and it's got voice and it's got gestures and it's got augmented reality and virtual reality, and when you think back to what I was just saying with like enterprise and you know where they're at and some of their struggles internally, and so many companies are trying to prepare for this new world, yep, where content is going to be consumed regardless of screen, and so I guess you know it's two part question. How should enterprise leaders prepare for that shift? Like, what's their priority list? If there is one and then two, what's the best way for them to start actually seeing practical value from that in a platform like yours?

Speaker 2: 5:17

Well, I see one of the reasons why enterprise corporations come and look for tools like agility is because they're kind of stuck.

Speaker 2: 5:24

They're thinking, oh, we need to support essentially more accessible and more channels, more output channels.

Speaker 2: 5:30

With our tools and their current tooling whether it be sort of a monolithic DXP or a traditional piece of software that they're managing their content with is kind of falling down and not giving them that.

Speaker 2: 5:41

Or maybe it's a major upgrade that's going to be ridiculous, expensive and you know years, years down the road, whereas they'll come to us saying, hey, in a matter of weeks or months can we spin up something that will solve this problem and then we can solve a complete problem use case down the road, and so we'll help them.

Speaker 2: 5:58

Sort of set that up and just decoupling the content from the OQID allows you to build, first of all, way more accessible content, which gets you a long way down the road towards more channels, as long as it's like a lot of tools that can kind of like read content and present it in different ways rely on all the accessibility parameters that you can embed in that content, which is really easy to do in a headless system, and I think what agility also does is brings experience management into the CMS in a headless way, so that you can essentially lay out the components from your design system. However they're being output inside the CMS, it's just in terms of like bits of content. So managing your content across multiple channels comes a lot easier at scale with agility.

Speaker 2: 6:44

Because of, as we're saying, because of how we help folks model their content for those outputs. And that's why we work really closely with customers and saying how are you going to model your content? Are you going to structure it in a way that will serve you now and you can build on it into the future?

Speaker 1: 6:58

Okay. So like going back to like the core of the question, which you know, how can enterprises prepare for it? One thing I'm hearing is definitely clear is like your technology foundation needs to be solid. Part of that is going to be an element of the CMS and the individual experience. The other ingredient is content right, and you kind of put content first versus the technology foundation and I assume that's to give a time while they're building up this repo of content that can be repurposed across. I guess any digital experience or any screen or voice or gesture based experience, right Is that kind of your advice?

Speaker 2: 7:37

Yeah, you kind of nailed it in a nutshell. I mean that's and oftentimes what we'll say is what's the minimum viable product. That's like a phase one that you can kind of hold in your head of what would be successful to start seeing ROI as quickly as possible, so that we don't have a multi-year project where nothing really gets done and it's this massive kind of frozen waterfall approach and how can? So how can we start seeing like a version one, get out the door and then build on that moving forward?

Speaker 1: 8:06

And so, when you think about, like the partner aspect, right, so like this, this enterprise is moving at lightning speed, right, they can't slow down and they're trying to unlock smart growth, and that's coupled to technology in almost every single way. And so, yeah, what's your advice to kind of solve that problem? Like, we're going to start experimenting with new content, ways of creating content, ways of managing that content. We're also going to be building a new tech foundation while trying to keep our current business in flight. You know, obviously I've seen like it's. I think it's like 86% of these enterprises are now leading on an ecosystem of partners, but I don't think it's just the partner is the solution, right. So what have you seen that's worked, that that's a help the business solve that problem, and then be from a sustainability perspective, like how do you pick the right partner and and how do you make sure that they're they're invested in the outcome of the success?

Speaker 2: 9:09

Yeah, great questions and not always easy to solve. We've sort of built up our Sort of the, the list of partners that we trust that work with us and we we try to align our core values essentially as much as we can okay to help and really what it's trying to do is bridge the knowledge and experience gap for working with technology and content and things like that.

Speaker 2: 9:30

So you know, there's a lot of kind of new stuff for enterprises that they're seeing. These organizations are kind of they've been doing their thing for a Long time so this all seems really new and in a little scary. So partner who has the knowledge and has the experience can help sort of build the trust factor for, okay, this is how this is going to work, this is what the timeline is going to look like and this is what your life is kind of going to look like Working with content, moving forward if you go down this direction and that that really helps people sort of see the future, kind of builds like a destination postcard. This is what it's going to be like and this is how your job is going to slightly change so that the people who because the people who use the software Don't usually buy it with enterprise right there, not usually make any decisions.

Speaker 1: 10:11

So we, the, the partners, usually helps us bridge that that technology gap when someone has already made a decision okay, and so you know another area that I think get to prize because they've been so focused on, like the bigger parts of these experiences, right, because they're transforming and it's you know, replace, you know or modernize or and sometimes Rebuild.

Speaker 1: 10:36

I think it like there's definitely another area of opportunity within, like the micro Interactions we have with these companies, right, and and you can clearly see night and day, like when you look at it coming like an Amazon, right, like One of the markers of success I look for in a company that's that's you know, enabled by technology is how many times are you deploying a day?

Speaker 1: 10:57

So they're deploying 22,000 times a day, which means they are delivering value that many times to shareholders, employees and and to any and to customers and so Like. That is a micro interaction, ironically, that you don't even know about, yep, but you know, an enterprise that wasn't born digital, you know, you think about an Amazon that's already got a layer deeper than that. That's like we're gonna subliminally play value, without you even knowing it, to that of an enterprise that's still struggling with those experiences, right, like we've all been there, we've all entered our credit card numbers three times and it's told us to stop valid, or you know, like the awkward, you dropped my call. Like what the heck? I was on a hold for 30 minutes and why don't you have chat like and why do I have to call you?

Speaker 2: 11:46

so there's I mean, there's a bunch of stuff that I could sort of jump on. But the first thing is like just the idea of how, what is your rhythm as an organization? It's sort of like, you know, for Amazon it's like x thousand times per day to kind of do updates, make, make these micro changes, do testing and experimentation, that sort of thing. That's a great question and oftentimes for slow-moving enterprises their rhythm is like 60 days or something.

Speaker 1: 12:12

It's really slow. I'll call it, I'll quantify that for you not to interrupt. Capo one to place 50 times a day.

Speaker 2: 12:19

Okay, so there's a, there's someone who's made a change, so they're their virtual mic drop. Yeah yeah, they're moving a lot faster, so yeah, when folks come to us and say, how can we get from where we're at now to there? First of all, there's often a lot of pushback.

Speaker 2: 12:32

There's often a lot of let's slow things down, which fair enough. So oftentimes CMS is like the gateway drug, so agility becomes the gateway to how to get more rhythm. First of all from marketing, because content doesn't necessarily have to go through DevOps. Now we were talking about compliance and sock to an ISO.

Speaker 1: 12:49

Sometimes those things can slow things down.

Speaker 2: 12:51

So sometimes content does go through DevOps and it can, but oftentimes it doesn't have to because it's a sort of a different set of set of users and whatever. And we really want to help Organizations get more rhythm. How do you, multiple times per day, you put net changes, you're reacting to how customers are giving you feedback, things like that. So that's one thing. And so like, faster dev ops, more rhythm from marketing, absolutely that's what we want. As much experience management inside the CMS. So there's only one tool for those teams to work with at a time for content, I.

Speaker 2: 13:22

But at the same time, you mentioned things like how can we add chat? How can we add these other tools? Right? So that's to me, that comes into what I call composable. So there should be tools that we can bring in. So maybe you know, maybe you want to use intercom for chat, because it solves that problem really, really well. And then maybe, further down, ooh, we want to do it slightly differently. Or, like you know what we're using HubSpot, let's bring in HubSpot chat, and which is what we did in Agility, the other day so you know we pull out one tool and put in another tool without having to redefine the whole.

Speaker 2: 13:49

Thing.

Speaker 1: 13:50

That's assuming that they've already got, you know, like microservices, and that you know they've got you know, composable architecture that can be, you know, quickly re-architected, put in an app landing zone and then, you know, sent off to be deployed. And so I think it still goes back, Like I don't want to bring it back, but again, those partners, right. The real struggle is and this was actually going to be my next question so, when I think about an enterprise, like my two main concerns are going to be capacity and capability in order to reach the goals of that of the organization, which is, you know, growth and operational efficiency and cost savings. Right, For probably most right now. And so that means, like you know, building out a new muscle of, like, talent acquisition for tech, right, and you know, like I'll use an example, like a construction company, they're very, actually cool. I love the more traditional businesses that have been kind of overlooked, but if I, you know, if you asked an engineer at Google or a construction company, what are they going to say? And so, like, you're part of the equation, right, A partner is another part of the equation, and then there's

Speaker 1: 15:14

you know the other challenge, which is how do we start attracting this talent that can use our platform? So, you know, I've always seen that as a really big area of opportunity for great platforms like yours to come in and really advocate for. You know, working with partners to get you to a point where you don't need them, right. As a digital business, you shouldn't have to have to be leaning on those people, right so? But you'll always need them. They're always your naval seals that will come in and unlock the next wave, but it's how many of them are helping really grow that capability while addressing the concern of capacity?

Speaker 2: 15:56

right and to me it comes down to how are you agile, how are you becoming more agile? And I think that's a term that was overused and is underused now because it was trying to mean too many things, but I think agile is a way of managing capacity and capability and partners is one of the ways that you can supercharge that. If you could bring on someone who has, they can bridge the knowledge and experience gap with the things that you don't know yet and if you can, hopefully you could maybe bring that in-house, either by hiring or trading. We've seen that work, certainly as some of our customers who were longtime customers that have gone through digital transformations, which is another word that's overused but it's like transforming from.

Speaker 2: 16:36

We've got this monolithic beast that is hard to work with and we want to transform it into something that's a little more nimble and we can swap things in and out more reliable. How do we get from here to there? Does it have to be all at once? Can it be gradual? How do we do it? One property at a time, bringing in a partner to really help that? And then sometimes that starts off a long-term relationship with the customer and the partner where they're working together and it's like an ongoing relationship, which is great, because then everybody wins. But sometimes they say, like you know what? This is a one-shot thing. We're going to, it's part of a project, it's six months or whatever, and the idea is to move the knowledge in-house and then to help. So then phase two and three and whatever can be done, more and more in-house.

Speaker 1: 17:20

If you've seen both sides, which side do you think like from your perspective, not to put you on the spot, but to put you on the spot do you think works better? Because actually that's an interesting viewpoint I've never really thought of.

Speaker 2: 17:33

I think more and more organizations are seeing the value for maintaining the partnerships with those partners that believe the same things they do. That's the hard thing. The hard thing is finding someone that works, that believes what you do and has a cultural sit.

Speaker 1: 17:51

It's just like the together we achieve more if our values are aligned. In our vivid futures that we're working towards can align together right.

Speaker 2: 18:01

Yeah, and it depends on the organization, like some organizations have made it part of their mandate. Hey, digital and technology isn't our business. Our business is something else and that's just a tool that we can get help with Other companies. That is a thing, or they've made it their thing, either by acquiring or hiring. But oftentimes there is a knowledge gap that sometimes it is a short-term sort of thing to kind of bridge that gap, get over the hump and then kind of start rolling with new technology and new mindset.

Speaker 1: 18:30

Yeah, and then I guess, for people that are listening, are there any books or or mentors or resources that can kind of understand, you know, the speed that enterprise needs to move with, coupled with, like, all of the changes that they're gonna have to embrace from a tech perspective that you've read or you know talked to, that you think would be you know, good resources for others?

Speaker 2: 18:56

There's a book I read called Engineering Management.

Speaker 1: 18:58

for the rest of us Can't tell you that's a great title, yeah it's a great title.

Speaker 2: 19:03

I had to look up the author, who I found on Tech Twitter and just followed, and essentially she just wrote down essentially what she'd been telling all over you know, her friends and coworkers and people that had found her on Twitter about, like hey, these are all the, these are the problems that I come up with and this is how I've solved them. And she kind of jumped around to a bunch of different companies that she might get a Google now. That was a great resource for me as an engineering manager, working with other engineering managers and seeing lots of growth. I also just like to watch companies that are doing this and to see like and sort of the growth versus stability thing is really interesting. So two companies that I've that I work very closely with are Netlify and Versailles, and they're like people who criticize them say, oh, you're just an AWS wrapper, you know you're not really doing anything that they don't provide.

Speaker 2: 19:51

But yet these companies are growing really, really fast. They're acquiring technology, they're coming up with tons of different stuff. They're similar companies but totally different in sort of their approach, and I just love watching their leaders and how they manage that growth and to have turned that from like because they've went from like these hyper growth companies to now they're becoming enterprise Like I know some of our customers are literally using them because it's so easy. They've got great enterprise agreements that have like the SOC2 compliance and all sort of stuff and they have the SLAs. They've done the things and they've gone through the growing pains of how to connect with those bigger enterprises who want the long-term benefit of like stability but they want to take advantage of these things that you know consultants and so on are saying, hey, you got to get onto this new technology. So they've kind of charged the, supercharged the industry. I think they've even made it easier for folks to go and work with other partners because they've kind of reset how we might have relationships with enterprise customers.

Speaker 1: 20:52

That's interesting. And then I guess, as like a final takeaway for everyone listening, you know there's lots of black moments in any, or sorry black moments, black swan moments in any industry, and there's always, you know, like innovation that can really unlock massive growth In digital experiences. What do you think could be the next unforeseen game changer? So this is something that's not on someone's radar yet, like you know, think about your world and all the things that you're nerding out about. What's that thing that you think has the power to reshape our digital experiences yet again?

Speaker 2: 21:33

Yeah, I was talking with some, some other digital leaders in Boston last week and the idea of co-pilots is a thing that so you know, we've heard you for a generative AI, for chat, gpt and certainly a lot of marketing departments and issue, and all the folks are using this all over the place. But the ideas of, well, what if you had and I and we have this as so there's like a github co-pilot as a developer that we Can use. You know, that kind of kind of just helps you out and it's like they're making you more productive. Um, but think of the co-pilots that could be there to Word to help you bridge that, the knowledge gap where you would have had to talk to a human, but now you have this almost human like helper to help you, along with enterprise business type of tasks. So it might be like I need to generate a content model so that I can, you know, build the build content structures that are for used in in VR, right?

Speaker 1: 22:25

Well, yeah, I find an expert for that right. That's so. You know what? What's cool I couldn't put a name on that, but I've been seeing that more and more and more within enterprises as a huge area of opportunity and and yeah, I couldn't. I couldn't agree more that that it's gonna be a really interesting space and actually a quite practical way to leverage AI and and and things like machine learning in a in a way that's like gentle nudges versus like we're gonna take a job, yeah, and and not that that's like I mean it hasn't happened right, like we're still here, we're still employed and in many ways they're helping me more than I'm helping them with my $20 a month that I'm giving them.

Speaker 1: 23:14

Thank you very much, chat, gdp, and please go and knock the, the socks off of whatever else you got. It's sore for us to help us be even more productive. But, yeah, like I don't view it as a threat, I view it as a, as a huge enabler. Like I can't wait to see what comes, especially in the like the, the so cool coal piloting, and I was gonna make the joke and then I didn't, but now I am. It kind of reminds me of that little Paper clip from back in the day and in word, what it would always like, but it would always bounce up in the wrong time. Yeah, so at least we've, you know, solved that in the last decade or so since that version of word was out.

Speaker 2: 23:55

Yeah, yeah, and the other side of it would be like there's this co-pilot, there's, there's a little, you know, an AI helper that can help you along at different times in this context sensitive and it's it knows the things. But the other side of it is that I think our software is gonna become way more collaborative and this is on the near-term horizon. So, like I think our modern users expect everything to be essentially Google Docs, so I know who else is, who else is here, we can chat, we can have a conversation and collaborate Within every piece of software that we're using. That's not something that we expect from enterprise software yet, but I think that expectation should change. Figures it.

Speaker 1: 24:30

Are you? So you're seeing that between Brands, so like, let's say, microsoft in a slack, like I know there's already integrations and things like that. You know, like, give it, give that in his example. You know, take that. Just double-click on that a little bit for me.

Speaker 2: 24:46

Yeah, so imagine that the tools, all the tools that you're using to just like manage content on your website or manage, you know, to work with your customers and to manage the customer journeys, those kinds of things imagine.

Speaker 1: 24:57

Oh, those two, you got it.

Speaker 2: 24:59

We're as collaborative as like a Google Docs. Some of them are.

Speaker 2: 25:02

Some of them are getting there, I think our expectation should be that they're all, first of all, yes, they all have some level of collaboration within them, but they should work together as well, whether that be through like slack or teams or some other kind of like interim Communication layers, that they're all kind of hooked into. Our expectation, I think, should, should be, and it is becoming that that's. That's just an warp, that's like the baseline for software, as it were, as these composable platforms work together.

Speaker 1: 25:29

Got it Well, joel. Thanks you so much for your time today. Tons of insight shared on the on the future of digital experiences, and it was definitely great to talk To you about it, someone that sees both it from the business and the technology side, and it's even rare that you've lived I think you said 18 years. Was it 18 years?

Speaker 2: 25:52

18 years agility, yet 25 years in the industry.

Speaker 1: 25:55

I can't remember the last time I heard that from someone at the same company. It feels like it's going back to like my parents era, where they would stay for a long time. So but why? I'm saying that that's great. I mean, that's deep domain expertise In an area that's like still rapidly changing and innovating and turning on a dime. So if Anyone wants to get in touch with you, learn more about agility, where do they go? Can you give them the the Best places to reach you and find out more?

Speaker 2: 26:25

sure I'm on Twitter at Joel Vardy, so my first name, last name or Joel at agility CMS com. Perfect Thanks, joel. Thanks for having me on, jason.