What is Digital Experience Composition (DXC), and why is it a new big thing for enterprises

The digital space is filled with tons of new concepts, technologies, and buzzwords. Digital experience composition is one of the latest terms. Being introduced by Gartner in 2022, the idea, though, has already been on the market for a while. Let's figure out what it is and whether you need it. 

What is digital experience composition (DXC)?

When thinking of Digital Experience Composition, the first thing that comes to mind is that it is a new category in the software market, as typically research firms like Gartner and Forrester focus on them. However, this time the term refers to the entire set of tools.

According to Gartner, Digital experience composition (DXC) is the bundle of low-code developer and no-code business user tools used to create, develop and maintain digital experiences. The collection of these tools includes three categories of software: front-end as a service (FEaaS), page builder, and API integration to connect the named technologies.

In a nutshell, DXC solutions combine headless services, such as CMS, search, media, and commerce, via API. That is, by applying DXC, marketers and other non-tech users can develop elevated digital experiences using existing content sources within the company.

Components of digital experience composition

While DXC is a set of tools, it implies using a particular combination of technologies, namely three components:

1. Front-end as a service (FEaaS) that provides a presentation layer for browser-based experiences. That can be such frameworks as Node.js, Next.js, React, Angular, Vue/Nuxt, HTML, Gatsby, etc., and cloud hostings or content delivery networks (CND) such as AWS, Azure, Netlify, Cloudflare, etc. 

2. A page builder and templating engine allowing business users to create and edit content with the help of drag and drop or WYSIWYG interface. Since many headless CMSs still don't provide an editor, companies have to use third-party tools for that. 

3. API to connect the dots. Since DXC is a set of multiple technologies, you need a "bridge" to connect them all seamlessly, and API is what does the job. It links the relevant assets from their source system to the digital experience. Apart from that, the API-first approach allows you to integrate the best-of-breed solutions to create a custom "package" of tools that best serve your particular case. 

What is the difference between DXC and DXP

Due to similarity in name and the fact that DXC is a new term, it can be confused with DXP. But what's the difference? 

A digital experience platform (DXP) is also a set of technologies. However, they are used for other purposes, particularly to create, deliver and optimize digital experiences across multiple channels such as websites, mobile apps, IoT, etc. 

Meanwhile, digital experience composition (DXC) focuses on the composition part, leaving the rest to third-party integrations and headless solutions. One of the purposes of DXC is to make the process and strategy adoption easier for non-technical, aka business users.

Top 3 benefits of digital experience composition (DXC)

Compose your own experiences

Due to the agnostic approach of DXC, organizations can create tailored and innovative digital experiences by connecting best-of-breed third-party tools and vendors. While enterprise is often associated with legacy systems, outdated software, or frameworks, DXC offers a completely different approach to innovations that large companies struggle to implement due to multiple technical restrictions.

Meanwhile, businesses have complete control over the data flowing through their own channels and enterprise systems. DXC gathers material from CMS, CRM, ERP, and other sources, combines it with behavioral and contextual data from digital tools, and delivers it to a front-end framework of choice.

Empower business users to work autonomously

Despite sounding like a very technical term, DXC brings a lot of opportunities for business users. In fact, developers can configure the required experiences and hand them over to marketers or other business users to maintain in a no-code environment.

Additionally, as more and more headless CMSs introduce the WYSIWYG interface or sync external page builders and templating engines, non-technical users receive greater control to power a digital experience.

With easy-to-use drag-and-drop editors, marketers, and business users don't have to rely on developers to create and publish content across the channels they need. Instead, they can work more autonomously while developers can focus on more technical tasks. 

Shorter time to market

Another strength of the DXC is that it allows avoiding lengthy turnarounds due to the close collaboration between front-end developers and non-tech users. Since both teams work with the same UI-based tool, the time between idea creation and implementation is much shorter as you don't need to go through multiple rounds of approvals. 

Meanwhile, a shorter time to market leads to higher performance. That's why migrating to compostable architecture brings numerous benefits, including faster development time and business results. 

Digital experience composition – a must-have for enterprise

As digitalization progresses, businesses will want more tools to connect all of the technologies under the hood. Meanwhile, connecting the dots with DXC appears to be the most natural choice since it provides great integration and orchestration tools, as well as no-code environments that enable business users to manage digital experiences without ongoing developer involvement.

From the end user's standpoint, DXC's advantage is connecting the consumers' behavioral and contextual data with the company's content to streamline the digital customer experience. Since modern consumers' expectations are constantly changing, businesses must react rapidly to provide relevant customer journeys. Meanwhile, DXC helps to make timely alterations and embrace best practices for creating digital experiences.