According to James Norwood, digital transformation is now mainstream for organizations of all sizes as they work to become digital businesses. However, the drivers for such reinvention may vary from delivering seamless customer experiences to introducing new business models or disrupting existing models. "That's at the macro level, but digital transformation is also fueling investments in technology to elevate the customer experience to attract, retain and engage customers, partners and employees, as enterprises are turning to rich and omnichannel digital experiences," he said. Norwood is currently executive vice president of strategy and CMO at digital experience vendor Episerver. He joined Episerver at the start of 2015 after a career spent selling and marketing ERP at Epicor and later customer service software at KANA.

Despite being around for decades, AI is currently one of the most popular topics in business with Gartner predicting that by 2020 AI will be a top five investment priority for more than 20% of CIOs. Join Joey Moore, Director of Product Marketing and Greg Moore, Manager for Personalisation and Campaign Strategy of Episerver for a practical webinar on The 3 key ways to improve the customer journey. AI is currently closing the gap between detecting patterns from large data sets and predicting intent (a role traditionally reserved for human marketers and merchandizers). AI-powered technologies are replacing the manual work traditionally completed by merchandizers to make product recommendations and marketers to make ad spend decisions. For now, AI will not completely replace all human effort, but it will dramatically improve the effectiveness of ecommerce teams that use it while enhancing the experience of shoppers who purchase from AI-centered ecommerce businesses.

When we inject "intelligence" into content management systems, from automating menial tasks to analyzing the tone of each piece of content, the possibilities are endless. On the retail side of things, more brands have started harnessing the technology to deliver content, increase engagement, and strengthen brand affinity. Now, B2B brands are catching on creating more innovative business cases as well. To go more in-depth on where artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) powered technologies sit in the eCommerce world, our media reporter Laura Myers had a great conversation with Ed Kennedy, Commerce Strategist at Episerver. As Ed pointed out during the interview, the use of AI and ML is rapidly emerging from its initial use case; personalization.

There's an endless sea of content as it pertains to best practices, how to leverage AI for your business, how it will impact consumers, and the list goes on (way on). The truth is, some AI is too complex and unnecessary for businesses to be worrying about investing in for their brand at this stage, especially given current and short-term demands. But with constant talk of AI and automation in the media, the pressure is on, it's tense, and it's noisy. In an attempt at cutting through that exact noise, insights were gathered from 11 tech leaders that go deeper on where that focus should be (and why). Businesses need to carefully and methodically weigh their options on whether or not AI is right for them and if so, methodically plan their roadmap accordingly to ensure both product and consumer longevity.

LiveEngage from LivePerson is a chat capability for ecommerce and web sites that gives Episerver customers a way to communicate directly with website visitors through a chat, increasing sales and customer satisfaction and loyalty. With a full back end agent interface that provides usage statistics and sentiment analysis, you get excellent insights into the needs of your customers.