Businesses have swiftly moved to the tech-oriented approach for their operation. As a result, they must manage, monitor, and integrate multiple databases, data, systems, and operations to ensure that the companies are seamlessly operating and are at optimum productivity levels. However, the abundance of systems and environment has led the organizations to be bogged down in silos. Consequently, the stagnation leads to many businesses not having the ability to maintain and flex their customer experience tech stack. Moreover, they cannot deliver the claimed customer experience, this further impacts their customer loyalty, sales, and brand image.

So how do businesses overcome the challenge of 'silo isolation' and become truly integrated? What if there was to be a platform that can bring all the system together with low to no code? Seems like a one-stop solution, right?

Well, there is one such solution that can help enterprises overcome the roadblock of silo isolation and streamline the integration process for the businesses. The solution is Sitecore Connect.

So, what is Sitecore Connect? Let’s find out.

What is Sitecore Connect?

Sitecore Connect is a part of Composable DXP in Sitecore’s Engagement Cloud pillar. The platform is a set of integration tools and connectors that allows the businesses to integrate their systems with third-party marketing and sales tools including marketing automation platforms and CRM.

Sitecore refers the connector as the integration workbench. Sitecore Connect acts as a bridge between various Sitecore products and other third-party applications necessary to enhance digital experience of a business.

Understanding Sitecore Connect before implementation is necessary, however, what’s more important is to understand the challenges that organizations were facing before introducing the platform to their environment.

Challenges that Sitecore Connect Helped Overcome

Below are some of the roadblocks that were resolved by Sitecore Connect:

Time-consuming Integration Processes

Integrating different systems and platforms can be time-consuming and complex. Sitecore Connect provides pre-built connectors and integration tools that streamline the integration process, reducing the time and effort required to connect and synchronize data between Sitecore and external systems. This accelerates the implementation of digital experiences and allows businesses to launch campaigns faster.

Siloed Data

Today businesses must store their data in various systems and create multiple databases, which makes it difficult for the organizations to consolidate and use the data effectively. With Sitecore Connect, businesses can enable seamless integration with multiple data sources. As a result, companies can access the data in a unified manner.

Manual Content Updates

Traditional content management systems (CMS) often require manual updates and do not provide real-time content personalization. Sitecore Connect automates content synchronization between Sitecore and external systems, ensuring that the latest data and content are readily available, reducing manual efforts and streamlining content updates.

Inconsistent Customer Experiences

Providing a consistent and personalized customer experience across multiple channels, such as websites, mobile apps, and social media platforms, can be challenging. Sitecore Connect enables businesses to leverage customer data and preferences stored in external systems, enabling them to deliver personalized experiences consistently across all touchpoints.

Limited Personalization Capabilities

Personalization plays a crucial role in enhancing customer engagement and driving conversions. Sitecore Connect facilitates the integration of customer data and behavior from external systems, empowering businesses to create personalized experiences based on user profiles, preferences, and historical interactions.

Limited Analytics and Reporting

Businesses need comprehensive analytics and reporting capabilities to track and measure the effectiveness of their digital marketing strategies. Sitecore Connect integrates with analytics platforms, allowing businesses to gather data from various sources and generate detailed reports on user behavior, campaign performance, and conversion rates. This enables businesses to make data-driven decisions and optimize their marketing efforts.

Multilingual and Multisite Management

Businesses with a global presence often struggle with managing multilingual websites and multiple regional sites efficiently. Sitecore Connect offers features for multilingual content management and multisite management, enabling businesses to centrally manage and publish content across different languages and regional websites. This ensures consistency in messaging and branding across various markets.

By addressing these challenges, Sitecore Connect empowers businesses to deliver consistent, personalized, and engaging digital experiences, ultimately driving customer satisfaction, loyalty, and business growth.

Since now we know that which challenges Sitecore Connect helped overcome, let’s look at some of the key features of the platform.

Sitecore Connect: Key Features

Below is the list of features that a business can leverage to stay ahead of their competition:

Seamless Integration

Sitecore Connect offers streamlines integrations between Sitecore products along with third-party systems making it easier for the businesses to operate and overcome the complexities in authentication, formatting, and connecting methods. However, the only condition that needs to be followed is that any one of the two systems must be a Sitecore product. With Sitecore Connect, businesses can integrate with over 5000 out-of-the-box app connectors such as salesforce sitecore connector, Microsoft Dynamic 365, Marketo, Shopify, and many more.

Marketing Automation

Sitecore Connect offers multiple automation scenarios for marketers to seamlessly automate the data and business processes across their customer experience tech stack. The platform uses intuitive visual canvases and several drag-and-drop flow blocks including integration conditions, repeat actions, etc.

Flexible Data Transfer Points

With Sitecore Connect, organizations can leverage flexible data transfer points that allows the businesses to initiate their data communication from various points. This includes triggers within the systems, periodic schedules, external apps, webhooks, or slack bots.

Smart Prediction

Smart prediction of the data entity mapping can be complemented with drag-and-drop manual fields mapping if required with Sitecore Connect.

Interactive Dashboard

Active control dashboards enable active monitoring of all the projects and receipts, allowing the businesses to easily spot and fix issues before they impact organization's operations.

Key Points to know about Sitecore Connect

Although, there are multiple points we already discussed about implementing Sitecore Connect that can help the businesses, however, it is also important shed light on the facts that the Sitecore connect platform must have one of the Sitecore product at either end for integration. So, to keep it simple, Sitecore Connect helps only the Sitecore products to integrate with third-party systems.

In any case if a business wants to integrate multiple third-party systems without Sitecore Connect, then they can do this by using parent platform partner, Workato.

Sitecore Connect: Use Cases

Let’s look at some of the use cases of Sitecore Connect:

Sitecore Connect for Salesforce CRM Integration

Sitecore Connect for Salesforce provides a bidirectional synchronization of customer data between Sitecore and Salesforce.

It leverages the Salesforce API to retrieve and update customer data in real-time.

The integration allows marketers to personalize content based on Salesforce data, such as lead status, account information, or campaign engagement.

Sitecore Connect for Salesforce uses the Sitecore xConnect API to push Sitecore engagement data back into Salesforce, enabling a unified view of customer interactions.

Seamless E-commerce Integration

Sitecore Connect's bridges the chasm between content and commerce with a finesse using Sitecore Order Cloud akin to a master weaver merging disparate threads into an exquisite tapestry. This agile integration enkindles a seamless synergy, empowering enterprises to weave a unified canvas where content interlaces seamlessly with e-commerce, nurturing a fertile ground for conversions.

Empowering Marketing Automation

Sitecore Connect, a beacon of marketing finesse, empowers the modern alchemists, the marketers. It bestows upon them a trove of elixirs, akin to an enigmatic alchemical scroll, propelling personalized engagement across diverse touchpoints. The symphony of data-driven insights orchestrates a ballet of customer engagement, akin to a virtuoso pianist navigating intricate melodies.

Conclusion

Siloed data due aggressive digitization of businesses has become a major challenge for organizations today. Collecting and integrating the two data increases complexities and cost for businesses. To overcome this roadblock and ensure seamless integration of two or more systems, Sitecore has introduced its state-of-the-art integration platform Sitecore Connect. The platform can easily integrate multiple systems with low or no code and can ensure that the business operations are being conducted seamlessly.

To leverage the power of Sitecore Connect for your business and accelerate your digital transformation journey, connect with us now.