Partner of the Month October 2021: ethinking

Content is the cornerstone of digital sales strategies, and that makes content delivery just as important. The finesse and user-friendliness with which Ibexa DXP creates content-rich experiences across multiple channels and devices ensures that customers engage with a product or service whenever or wherever they want.

The Berlin-based agency ethinking realized it could help its clients deliver content even more effectively by embedding push notification functionalities into the Ibexa platform. This plug-in, called Push, removes a potential pain point as businesses re-platform or implement Ibexa DXP as part of their digital transformation.

At the Ibexa Partner Conference in January 2021, ethinking won the coveted Technical Contributor of the Year Award for its Push server integration. The agency is our Partner of the Month for October.

Founded in 2014, ethinking joined the Ibexa Partner ecosystem two years ago. Of its 18 employees, two developers are currently Ibexa-certified. The German media is an important part of its customer base. “We work with every industry,” says Christian Müller, CEO of ethinking, “but we have made a name for ourselves with publishers, radio and TV stations – content-led businesses, you could say.”

ethinking supports the full range of digital transformation processes. “And that isn’t just about technology,” Müller explains. “We’re more than an IT company. Our focus is on using technological tools to make your business a success.”

It is this client-centric approach that inspired the Push initiative. “Most content will continue to be consumed as a result of push notifications,” Müller says, “and that is evident from peaks in traffic you get after an alert has gone out.”

Notifications inform customers about new products or discounts. In a media context, push informs users about breaking news. In e-commerce, you can use push notifications to send customers who abandoned their check-out baskets a reminder or a coupon for a 5% discount if they go back and complete the purchase.

“Push is a paid service but ethinking offers the push servers as part of Ibexa DXP, so this is something that you do not need to develop on your own,” Müller says. “The push service is already integrated in Ibexa DXP and can then be customized.

This is a thoughtful response to the practical reality where businesses often need to experiment with push notifications in order to optimize them. “If you need to customize or fine-tune, you can get in touch with Ibexa or with us. The point is that with Push you can start hassle-free and without initial cost because the integration work has been done already.”

Müller recognizes the same pragmatic, customer-centric approach in Ibexa DXP. “It can be a weakness of other platforms that they offer too many plug-ins,” he says. “They are not always as transparent as Ibexa DXP which offers a good and sensible combination of features in one product.”

“In the end, businesses want solutions. With Ibexa, you have clear cases in the sales process where you see how other customers are successful with Ibexa DXP so it’s very transparent what you get. You can just start, and then you are also free also to customize things or to add things. You’re not limited by choosing this solution.”

Müller also emphasizes something that is often forgotten: documentation. “Other DXPs are often full of technical features that are nice to have but then they aren’t packaged that well, or they are poorly documented. Documentation is an important part of your DXP experience and in other solutions this is often not as strong as in Ibexa DXP.”

He adds: “And if you do have a question or a problem, there is someone you can call [at Ibexa]; it’s not just a big-ticket system where you wait weeks for an anonymous reply.”

Digital transformation is a technological and cultural challenge. In the wake of Covid-19, business leaders know they must transform yet many still have analogue reflexes when it comes to project planning. “It is the old world of three-year projects where everything is clear from the outset – when of course nothing is clear,” Müller says.

ethinking takes an agile approach to projects where flexibility is key, and where there is room for creativity and experiment, “and even for things to go a little wrong”, adds Müller. Part of digital transformation is for businesses to recognize the value of this way of working.

It is another interface with Ibexa DXP whose modular architecture reflects the progressive and fluid nature of effective digital transformation. Decision makers often believe they need to transform “in one go”, in a single, monolithic project – the kind of complex and difficult- to-control project that characterized the early days of the computer revolution.

“It’s not like that anymore,” says Müller, “you can build towards digital maturity, in terms of technology as well as investment, and Ibexa DXP is set up to do that. And every step of the way, you have to take the client with you – that is our job.”

If you would like to discuss a potential project around digital transformation or customer experiences with ethinking then please contact them at office@ethinking.de or call +49 (0)30 5770019-60