Sitecore CEO: Embedded agentic AI is the future of business

Last May, Sitecore chief operating officer Eric Stine was elevated to CEO. He took the reins from former CEO and Boxever founder Dave O'Flanagan, who remains an advisor to the Sitecore board.

Stine -- an executive whose background includes stints as chief revenue officer at Qualtrics and chief commercial officer of Skillsoft -- becomes Sitecore's CEO during a pivotal time for digital experience platform (DXP) vendors. Generative AI is reshaping not only marketing and commerce for Sitecore users but also the expectations of their customers. We discussed this and many other topics in the following interview.

Editor's note: This Q&A was edited for clarity and brevity.

How did the CEO transition come about?

Eric Stine: As COO, the opportunity to spend a year with our customers, partners and team -- and run the business -- was such a gift. Then last spring, I was blown away when the board asked me to step in as CEO. I think the reason I was asked is a function of the relationship that we established as a COO leadership team with our customers and with our partners; the work that we had done in our managed cloud and support business; the work that we had done investing in our ecosystem; and most importantly, the work that we had done executing on our strategy and helping our customers upgrade to a truly SaaS-native, AI-first platform with XM Cloud and Sitecore Stream.

What is your mandate as CEO?

Stine: We have a clear vision, mission and strategy. We believe that digital experiences can be so powerful that they connect the world, and we believe that we are the best at creating experiences that feel personal and predictive, like they were made just for you. Our mission is to help the marketer by simplifying how brands reach, engage, convert and serve their customers, by simplifying and shortening the distance between compelling content and commercial outcomes.

We believe that the rise of agentic AI means that companies must be SaaS-native to truly unlock the power of embedded agentic AI in their businesses. Large model updates, continuous improvement -- all that -- argues for being on a truly next-generation platform.

Describe how generative AI and agentic AI have changed Sitecore.

Stine: We must start by acknowledging what AI has done to you as a marketer and technologist. As a technologist, it is forcing you to relearn and rethink your job, organizational structure, cost structure, and how things get done. As a marketer, AI has changed the shape of your traffic.

I always roll my eyes a little bit when I read these articles about how the traffic has disappeared, as if all of a sudden, we put down our phones and stopped using the internet. People are still using the internet. They're on social media. They're getting answers. But the journey has changed. The shape of that traffic has changed, and now, instead of using tools that will pull that traffic to your front door, your content needs to be compelling enough, contextualized enough to be pushed out to the places where your audience is -- in their Instagram feed, on TikTok, in the AI summaries. Your content needs to be contextualized in a way that can be found by signals and not just keywords.

So, how has AI changed Sitecore? It's changed us. In changing how the marketer and the developer experience the world, AI has changed what Sitecore does. We have AI that is not a bolt-on; it's not sprinkled on top. It is fully embedded into the content lifecycle management workflow. That means [users can] create brand-aware briefings and campaigns, design a target market, launch a campaign, pull the assets, put them in market tests, target and then perfect -- all from a single prompt.

You talked about traffic declining. Myth or not, how can DXP vendors -- Sitecore, Adobe, whomever -- help marketers, considering how people are looking at AI summaries more and going to websites less?

Stine: I should be 100% clear -- traffic has absolutely disappeared, but the audience is still out there. The journey is being rerouted, and we need to bring the content to the customer in ways they are now searching for and experiencing brands. People are still on the internet. It has shifted the responsibility of the marketer to reach the audience, rather than expecting the audience to show up for them.

So, we consider our obligation is to make it as easy as possible for your content to break through, to contextualize it so it shows up in those AI summaries and social media feeds, and to drive traffic back to your website by showing up in ways that make people want to click and engage with you.

How has the marketer's role changed with the rise of composable DXPs?

Stine: The intersection of AI and composability gives marketers the opportunity to rationalize the technology and architecture of their stack, and to focus on the things that they do best, which is telling their story and delivering their brand campaigns to the audience they know is there for it.

Composable, previously, shifted a lot of work to the marketer and the developer to put the pieces together. I think AI, on a SaaS platform, really helps them rationalize how content turns into commerce and enables marketers to focus more on understanding the evolving nature of their ICP [ideal customer profile] and the stories that they need to tell to engage with them more effectively. It really allows marketers to get back to why they became marketers to begin with. I don't think any marketer got into marketing to assemble technology components; they did it because people love their brands and they really wanted to create compelling brand experiences for their market.

It's been a while since Sitecore acquired a company. How would you describe your acquisition strategy, and should we expect more acquisitions?

Stine: I think the most important thing is that we're focused on our corporate strategy, which is to make decisions that allow users to create experiences that are personal, predictive and powerful enough to connect people, to help marketers simplify how they reach, engage, convert and serve their audience.

Anything consistent with being the best agent-to-experience platform will be a candidate for consideration. Whether our growth comes organically or inorganically, it will be truly about keeping our promise to customers.

Don Fluckinger is a senior news writer for Informa TechTarget. He covers customer experience, digital experience management and end-user computing. Got a tip? Email him.