Microsoft and Adobe have deepened their cloud partnership for the sake of their marketing customers, the two technology companies revealed on Nov. 3.
The two companies have integrated Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Adobe Experience Manager, enabling marketers who are using the Adobe toolset to better capitalize on the customer relationship management (CRM) stored in Microsoft’s business application suite, stated Dina Apostolou, director of the Business Applications Group at Microsoft. A similar tie-up already exists between the Adobe Campaign service and Microsoft Dynamics 365.
Adobe Experience Manager, part of the company’s Marketing Cloud solutions portfolio, is a content management offering used by marketers to create and deliver online, mobile and internet of things (IoT) experiences to drive customer engagement. Now, those experiences can be informed by customer data stored and managed in Dynamics 365.
“The value of this integration really extends from the data that underpins both solutions,” said Apostolou in an announcement. “Enterprise organizations can now design and connect rich marketing content with CRM data in Microsoft Dynamics 365 to transform how their sales and marketing organizations can collaborate and ultimately personalize brand experiences for their customers.”
In a separate statement, Suresh Vittal, vice president of Experience Cloud Strategy at Adobe, struck a similar tone, noting that the integration is part of a year-plus collaboration between the companies’ engineering teams.
“By empowering enterprise companies to design and connect rich content with vast amounts of data—including customer relationship management data from Microsoft Dynamics 365—Adobe and Microsoft are uniquely positioned to transform how sales and marketing organizations engage with customers,” said the Adobe executive.
Combined, Microsoft Dynamics 365-Adobe Experience Manager deployments will help sales and marketing organizations develop a more holistic view of their customer bases and streamline workflows while promoting collaboration, the companies claim. Further efficiencies can be gained by automating content personalization activities, allowing marketers to ditch many manual processes that can bog down campaigns, Apostolou said.
The new integration follows the September 2017 announcement that Adobe Sign was named the “preferred e-signature solution” for Office 365 and the rest of Microsoft’s software and services portfolio. Adobe, in turn, is hosting Adobe Sign on Microsoft Azure and is making Microsoft Teams the standard chat-based collaboration experience for Adobe Creative Cloud, Document Cloud and Experience Cloud.
Since striking their cloud partnership in 2016, Microsoft’s and Adobe’s product portfolios are becoming increasingly intertwined.
For example, Microsoft is using Adobe Audience Manager to perform custom targeting on its Bing search engine, enabling brands to better reach their intended audiences. Meanwhile, Adobe Analytics Cloud features voice analytics integration powered by Microsoft Cortana that allows organizations to capture and study voice data to help determine user intent.
Finally, like Sign, other Adobe services have made Microsoft’s cloud their home. Campaign, Adobe Experience Manager and Audience Manager are all currently being delivered from Azure data centers.
