The News: Adobe may be best known for its Creative Cloud collection of software, which includes applications used for graphic design, video editing, web development, photography, and document creation and editing. However, the company’s Commerce and Workfront offerings, while perhaps less well known to casual observers, have amassed a significant roster of enterprise logos, reflecting the company’s ability to leverage its core content strengths into adjacent application categories.
Visit the Adobe website to learn more about Adobe Commerce, formerly known as Magento, and Adobe Workfront, the company’s project management application.
Adobe Delivers Digital Experiences via E-Commerce and Workflow Apps
Analyst Take: Over the past several months, most of the news coming out of Adobe has focused on its Creative Cloud suite of applications, with a significant amount of attention being placed on the company’s use of generative AI, which includes the Firefly image-generation and manipulation technology, and its inclusion into several Adobe applications, such as Express, Photoshop, Illustrator, Stock, and Lightroom.
However, two of the company’s other applications, which focus on e-commerce enablement and project management, have steadily continued to demonstrate success, without the benefit of flashy new feature set announcements. The two applications dovetail with Adobe’s strategy of providing a comprehensive set of solutions for creating, managing, and delivering digital experiences.
Enabling Online Stores via Adobe Commerce
Adobe Commerce, formerly known as Magento, is Adobe’s e-commerce platform. The platform includes a range of standard functions, including product management, payment processing, shipping integration, and marketing tools. But Adobe Commerce stands apart from other e-commerce platforms by virtue of its tight integration with other Adobe products, such as Adobe Creative Cloud and Adobe Analytics, to give its customers a comprehensive solution for managing and optimizing their e-commerce experiences.
One example of how this integration can benefit customers is via the use of image optimization. Adobe Commerce users can manipulate and optimize images using the generative AI technologies included in Experience Cloud, to tailor product images to appear to different purchasers or situational contexts. For example, an image of a model wearing an athleisure outfit could have the image background rendered white for a stock, static look, or the user could leverage generative AI to automatically render different backgrounds (e.g., on a ski slope, on a city street, on a ballfield) based on the specific context of a product search or setting. This capability improves store efficiency and relevancy with potential buyers, which can lead to greater sales conversions.
Another use case that is projected to become generally available later in 2023 is the use of generative AI-augmented product descriptions. This feature allows product descriptions to be automatically generated based on the buyer’s context. For example, the description of a high-end wristwatch could be rendered differently if a person was searching for an anniversary gift as opposed to a search for a sports-focused tool.
Unlike one the company’s adjacent competitors, Shopify, Adobe Commerce has shifted its focus to the mid-market and enterprise segments, generally targeting organizations with at least $25 million in gross merchandise value (GMV). The company says that many of its customers – including well-known companies such as T-Mobile, Coca-Cola, and Krispy Kreme, are far larger – and its mix of companies is continuing to trend to organizations that are both pure business to business (B2B) and those that sell to both business and consumer audiences. This approach bodes well for Adobe, as these mid-market and larger organizations are more likely to desire and pay for the advanced generative AI features that Adobe can offer, compared with small and medium-size business (SMB) e-commerce sellers.
Adobe Workfront Is Focused On Becoming the Operational System of Record
Adobe Workfront is a project management platform that helps organizations to plan, prioritize, and execute projects, and is designed to serve as the single source of truth for all project-related information, including tasks, milestones, budgets, and resources. Adobe Workfront is also equipped with features that are designed to help teams collaborate more effectively, such as real-time notifications, task comments, and file sharing.
Workfront takes several approaches to ensuring that all project-related tasks can be managed and tracked through the platform. It offers native, out-of-the-box integrations with a variety of systems, as well as a RESTful API that can be used to create custom connections with specific applications. Workfront also offers its own low-code integration platform as a service (iPaaS), known as Workfront Fusion, which the company recommends for organizations that are seeking to deploy many automations.
As with Adobe Commerce, one of the key strengths of Workfront is its tight integration with other Adobe applications, including Marketo Engage, the company’s marketing automation platform, and the various suite of Creative Cloud applications. Workfront leverages a common data model across all teams and technologies, which is used by marketing metadata, budgeting, projects and teams, campaign resources, and channel activities.
This integration allows for a streamlined process among Workfront and Adobe Experience Manager assets and Creative Cloud and Document Cloud. Workfront also includes a data connector enabling the platform to connect with Adobe Experience Platform (AEP), the company’s data platform, providing access to insights generated via machine learning (ML) and data science within AEP.
Although the Adobe name might not be synonymous with either e-commerce or project management, combining these applications with the Creative Cloud makes sense for organizations that are seeking to leverage the power of generative AI for both image generation and business optimization.
Disclosure: The Futurum Group is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of The Futurum Group as a whole.
Other Insights from The Futurum Group:
Adobe Revenue for Q3 2023 Again Sets a Record at $4.89 Billion
Adobe Express With Firefly Beta Is Now Generally Available
Firefly, Sensei GenAI Ascendent: Adobe Excels at Generative AI
Author Information
Keith Kirkpatrick is VP & Research Director, Enterprise Software & Digital Workflows for The Futurum Group. Keith has over 25 years of experience in research, marketing, and consulting-based fields.
He has authored in-depth reports and market forecast studies covering artificial intelligence, biometrics, data analytics, robotics, high performance computing, and quantum computing, with a specific focus on the use of these technologies within large enterprise organizations and SMBs. He has also established strong working relationships with the international technology vendor community and is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and events.
In his career as a financial and technology journalist he has written for national and trade publications, including BusinessWeek, CNBC.com, Investment Dealers’ Digest, The Red Herring, The Communications of the ACM, and Mobile Computing & Communications, among others.
He is a member of the Association of Independent Information Professionals (AIIP).
Keith holds dual Bachelor of Arts degrees in Magazine Journalism and Sociology from Syracuse University.
