Magento Live, a Business Development experience
We sent three delegates from Magium Commerce to represent us at this year’s Magento Live event in Barcelona. Paul Doherty, Magium Commerce’s Sales & Marketing Director, describes his experience of Magento Live 2018, from a business development perspective.
“Barcelona was the perfect setting for Magento Live. It has a rich and varied history and yet it is a city buzzing with modernity and change. Magento has been in existence for over 10 years now but its recent acquisition by Adobe demonstrates it keeps at the forefront of technology and is capable of re-inventing itself based on customer requirements.
Magento Live Europe was an energised hub of Magento and Adobe staff, implementation partners such as Magium Commerce, end-user clients and prospective customers. There are also a large number of Technology Partners who provide the neat technology extensions that make Magento such a compelling proposition to online traders. There’s something for everyone who is interested in ecommerce here, both on the market and on the horizon.
A lot of the stir was about what is happening with Adobe. It was immediately apparent that this technology giant is already integrating its portfolio with Magento’s platform, particularly in optimisation and analytics-based technology. As someone interested in growing our Magento client base this can only be really exciting. An even richer portfolio of products to allow clients to get more from their investment is a very powerful offering.
But even with its core product set, the Magento platform is pushing ever forwards. Magento Commerce version 2.3, to be released next month, has even more Business to Business (B2B) functionality helping ensure anyone considering an effective wholesale online operation has to put this product firmly on the list. As a system integrator with a track record of B2B deployments in Magento this was music to my ears.
Even the torrential rain, which was so heavy it poured into the conference centre at one point, sending the centre staff scurrying, couldn’t dampen the enthusiasm of those attending the keynote speech. Delivered by Iron Maiden rocker and entrepreneur Bruce Dickinson, it had the effect of firing up the audience and a visibly energised audience left the auditorium with increased vigour.
The breakout sessions were a mine of information. I particularly enjoyed the real customer success stories. People are clearly getting genuine return on investment (ROI) from Magento and this was great to hear. Personalisation was another hot topic that is obviously winning competitive advantage for many of the customers speaking, some of them in incredibly competitive marketplaces.
The flexibility and power of Magento was complemented by the extension providers that customers can use to enhance and even heavily bespoke their Magento instance at low cost compared to custom development from scratch. There were a number of stands to look through in between sessions (as well as lots of great ‘swag’. Thank you PayPal, your umbrellas saved the day!). These vendors vary from solutions for delivery, payment, site search, email solutions and even Google had a stand demonstrating how important the partnership is to them strategically.
Magento is a fantastic organisation when it comes to putting the right partner in front of the right customer so it’s always good to talk at the end of the day with a cold beer and see where we can all work together for everyone’s success.
It had been a long week, but it was invaluable and I’m looking to take everything I’ve learned to new customers over the coming year.”
Do you wish to discuss your ecommerce plans with us?
