Growth, SaaS, and a solid vision for the future. Those are just some of the things 2022 has brought us at Kentico. Read on for a recap of the past year and let me share some of the great things we have planned for 2023.
2022 was a big year for Kentico. And a very big year for me. When I joined Kentico back in 2007 as a part-time tester, I had no idea that one day I’d be CEO of the company I had grown to love. It has given me immense pleasure to oversee the building of our new SaaS offering, Xperience by Kentico, and to already be seeing how its capabilities are creating real benefits for our customers and partners around the world. And we’re not slowing down.
Kentico is growing
You may have noticed that at Kentico we have been gearing up for growth over the last year, which, alongside modernizing and automating where applicable, has meant launching a big hiring drive, and we’ve been successful at attracting some really great talent thanks to what Kentico stands for.
I firmly believe that company culture should be an authentic part of daily working life. And that work should be meaningful—a place for innovation and professional growth, but also supportive of a healthy work-life balance.
Unlike so many software companies, Kentico has grown through its own hard work and innovation, not mergers and acquisitions. We focus on quality over speed. Our developers aren’t handed an outdated technology stack and expected to slow their pace of learning to match it. They are at the helm of constant innovation and progression. They come in each day knowing that their work matters. They are constantly learning new things and moving forward. Which is probably why some of our top developers have been working happily with us for 10 to 15 years.
It is important to me that we build transparency into everything we do, that we actively build a good rapport and mutual trust across the company, and that every voice is heard. While I’m known for asking challenging questions and playing devil’s advocate, I like to surround myself with people who aren’t afraid of making decisions. And that requires a special type of team.
In our big hiring drive, we’ve been looking for goal-oriented, ambitious people who are eager to learn and help our company grow through creativity and passion. In return, we offer a great culture, opportunities for professional growth, and an excellent work-life balance. From 2023 we’re even offering unlimited vacation! My goal is to build a team that comes to work with joy, fulfilment and meaning because they are working with great people on a great product. If that sounds good to you, check out our open positions. We'd love to have you in our team!
Xperience by Kentico—an opportunity to embrace SaaS
In our 18+ years on the market, we’ve kept our ear to the ground and have learned that what matters most to marketers is flexible self-sufficiency. So, earlier this year, we released Xperience by Kentico—the first true hybrid headless SaaS digital experience platform (DXP) made for marketers. Flexible, reliable, and fast, Xperience by Kentico enables marketers to create and deliver personalized content anywhere.
Xperience by Kentico delivers cutting-edge low-code/no-code tools that remove skills barriers to power customer-centric experiences through advanced features and an intuitive, user-friendly interface—no coding required. It helps marketers craft consistent, personalized digital experiences across all touchpoints and to quickly create digital content using dynamic, reusable content, to increase traffic, brand awareness, and conversions.
True to our goal of ensuring maximum impact for our customers, Xperience by Kentico enables easy integrations, quick scalability, cloud deployment, and is backed by our highly responsive 24/7 global support. And… it’s already available via our Xperience Adopters Program in which we (and our partner network) help onboard customers and support their migration from Kentico Xperience 13 to Xperience by Kentico. The Xperience Adopters Program is perfect for customers with a growth mindset/strategy looking to power simpler projects. Adopters can start leveraging the first features today.
SOC 2 Type 2 compliance
Another impactful success for us in the past year has been achieving SOC® 2 Type 2 Compliance certification for Xperience by Kentico (software-as-a service offering). The cybersecurity compliance framework report proves that our solution ensures security, confidentiality, and availability of our customer data.
Not only does it demonstrate our commitment to maintaining a high level of information security, but also reassures our customers that the appropriate policies, procedures, and practices are in place to protect their data over time. We take trust very seriously.
A vision of the future
Our vision is built on four product strategy pillars: to strengthen our strengths, embrace multiexperience, speed up DXP adoption, and accelerate cloud capabilities. We know that most marketers today are having to compete with much larger competitors, across an increasing number of channels, with fewer resources. So, our vision for Xperience by Kentico is to support our customers where they are at, and get them to where they want to be, as easily and affordably as possible. They need flexible, customizable solutions that are able to grow with them and the extensibility and scalability to meet their changing needs.
We will continue to:
- ensure you can get your projects and content to market fast
- make it easier to deliver brand consistency and personalized digital experiences across channel
- empower marketers with low/no code tools for powerful self-sufficiency
- guarantee extensibility, customizability, and ease of integration
- make our SaaS offering as maintenance-free as possible.
And as we head towards our vision, we will focus on the following throughout 2023:
- your flexibility to grow – delivering everything you need for right now as well as all the room you need to grow
- the best hybrid headless marketer experience - empowering you to deliver powerful customer experiences and engage customers via any channel
- rich out-of-the-box tools for multiexperience delivery - to enable you to easily cover all your digital touchpoints and deliver perfectly seamless digital experiences on all channels and devices
- supportive AI technologies - that expand your capabilities, making your team smarter and more efficient through automation, recommendations, and guided assistance
- powerful content capabilities – including a Content Hub and metadata management capabilities for ‘anywhere distribution’ of content, as well as dynamic content reuse and governance across all your marketing channels.
And to ensure you’re getting the latest features and enhancements without having to wait for ‘the next big release’, we’re delivering monthly updates, so you can immediately start working out just how you want to leverage them to boost your ROI!
Moving forward, but always connected to our roots
This year, I visited the United States and Australia to meet with partners. It’s been a true pleasure connecting with those that are making a difference using our technology. In January, I’ll be meeting more of our partners in Prague for our Kentico EMEA Partner Day.
A question I got asked a couple of times on my travels was whether we’re still doing our Trees for Bugs initiative. For those of you that don’t already know, at Kentico, we plant a tree for every bug our customers find in our software. It's one of the ways we give back to the community while keeping on top of our quality. You report a bug, our development team squashes it, and then twice a year we plant trees in the name of the person who reported it. We have so far planted over 3,000 trees!
Shaping the future with you, for you
At Kentico, we build products for you. That’s why we take note of the market and listen to our partners and customers. Every bit of feedback is music to our ears because we’re either already doing something right, or we’re about to. So, as a special holiday present to me, please share your feedback about our products and service on the peer-to-peer review website G2 and contribute to our future roadmap.
As we sign off on another successful year at Kentico, I take great pride in being the one to say, on behalf of our passionate (and growing) team: HAPPY HOLIDAYS.
And get some rest—a busy 2023 awaits!