5 Take - Aways from the HCL Commerce Global Summitt 2022

My 5 Take-Aways are:

1. We Live for the Experience
They say a picture paints a thousand words, so perhaps all I need add is compare these two pictures! Unsolicited, a customer sent this to me with a simple message ‘Thank you for not subjecting us to this!’

Names have been removed to protect the innocent. Even the event team from the Chicago House of Blues mentioned how amazed they were at the engagement from the attendees every single day!

2. Meet the Engineers Remains Incredibly Popular

Gary Schoch, our HCL Commerce GTM Leader was adamant that we bring back the concept of ‘Meet the Engineers’ and the attendees made the most of the opportunity. It was the chance to sit down with the team who actually build the new commerce solution like our embedded Marketplace offering, our new Customer Data Platform, our low code no code platform for building apps and mobile experience and of course our enhanced product discovery capabilities that was just ranked one of the strongest by analysts.

3. Attendees Prefer Panels to Presentations

OK – Not going back to the email with the photo of a very bored looking panel where ‘Death by PowerPoint’ appears to be a real thing! The panel sessions at Summit were some of the most popular sessions throughout the week.

Shout-out to our Partner of the Year, Perficient, who pulled together a phenomenal client panel talking to why they are all-in on cloud-native and HCL Commerce V9 was not to be missed. So thank you Amy Schultz at School Specialty, Jemmie Adams from Wacoal, Mike Stiver from Trivantage, Chip Pryor at Husqvarna and Mike Rabbior from Perficient.

The CX, Omnichannel and Data panel featuring Ray Wang from Constellation Research, Bernardo Bazua, Director of Omnichannel at Coppel (second largest retailer in Mexico) and Kim Williams-Czopek wrapped up Day 1 in style. I loved the conversation that went back and forth between the speakers with practical, actionable ideas that will drive your business forward.

4. Compelling Content is Critical

Our customers love to hear about the investments in our Commerce platform and we got great feedback on the new Marketplace capability that we launched at the Summit. The concept of a Customer Data Platform (CDP) for CX that is available free for all HCL Commerce, Unica and HCL Digital Experience customers made the attendees sit up and listen. However, when our customers presented or spoke, the attendees were highly engaged. You could tell simply by the questions that were asked on every topic. Even the event team from the House of Blues mentioned how engaged everyone was.

5. The Energy was Infectious

Finally, the venue got everybody excited! Everyone has probably dreamed of being a ‘rock star’ at some point in their life. I can’t sing a note but have dreamed of being on stage with The Rolling Stones and the House of Blues re-ignited that idea and translated that thought in everyone into this tremendous energy. It was one of the most common comments that I heard.

To Wrap Up, My Only Questions Left Are:

‘How do we top the Chicago House of Blues as a venue and who wants to speak at the next event (TruckPro you are top of my list -since you have an awesome story).

Thank you everyone for attending, especially our fantastic speakers, for making this event such a success. Next year we will go bigger – the momentum behind HCL Commerce is gathering speed.