Adobe Commerce Support Alliance Interview with Ray Bogman

What is the Support Alliance

The Adobe Support Alliance is an ambitious effort by Adobe to better serve the client and the partner. It is a three-way commitment involving Adobe, the client, and the partner, with each party taking on the responsibility to help provide the best possible service. With the help of this program, clients can get the best possible support from both Adobe and the partner they choose.

Ray Bogman, Program Manager at Adobe Commerce, explains how the program works and how it will benefit both the clients and partners. He says that with the Adobe Support Alliance, clients will be able to get the best possible Magento support from Adobe and the partner they choose. The partner will be responsible for providing the client with technical support and advice, while Adobe will provide additional support and resources.

The program will also benefit partners by providing them with a platform to showcase their expertise and services. Additionally, Adobe will be able to better understand customer needs and provide more tailored services. This will enable Adobe to offer more customized customer experiences and make its products more efficient and effective.

The Adobe Support Alliance is a great initiative that will not only enable customers to get the best possible support but also benefit both Adobe and the partner. By providing the clients with the best possible Magento support and the partners with a platform to showcase their expertise, this program will result in a win-win situation for everyone involved.

The Adobe Commerce Support Alliance Interview

Brent: This is the Magento and Adobe Support Alliance interview, with Ray Bogman from the Netherlands. Ray, good to see you. I appreciate you being here. I wanna talk to you about the Adobe Commerce Support Alliance. Tell us the vision behind it and why you started it.

Ray: Thanks, Brent. Thanks for the invite. I think it’s a really important momentum we’re talking a little bit about customer engineering to really summarize it. We’ve seen support issues happening on a day-to-day basis, and we wanted to make sure that these cases are in a constructive and efficient place as possible on a day-to-day basis.

So looking at the ticket itself, we’ve seen that not all the right support or right assistance we wanted to share with the partners or the merchants was in a good place. One of the issues that came across I felt responsible for enough to say, okay this needs to change because in the end, having a response back didn’t really pay off.

Having some conversations internally we came up with a solution to find an alliance that it’s partly a part of Adobe, but partly also a part of the partners. And why about the partner? If we look at support in general, we have the customer, we have the partner, and we have Adobe that these are three components that work together, making sure that everything is in order.

But in the end, what we’ve sometimes seen and, with all respect to great partners out there, is that sometimes issues are being pushed over the fence and then Adobe needs to figure it out. To some extent. I fully agree and I support that. But in some additional cases, we’ve seen that aligning up with partners makes much more sense on a day-to-day basis.

Because once you do things together, supporting the merchant in the best way possible, actually leads to not only efficiency but also quality that will make the partner happy because in the end, it’s them and the merchants making sure that everything is running in an efficient scale.

So while having these conversations we reached out to a selected group of partners that have been around for at least a decade. And I think that the reason in picking those partners that, we wanted to jump back in the day. Let me give an example the Magenta user groups were running, we had a weekly or monthly session and we had discussions on how to support each other.

So that concept more or less was used to reach out to partners, for instance, Magento to align on how can we help each other? What’s really missing from the partner lens and what’s missing from the Adobe lens that needs to be shared back with the partners. So that was the initial vision in getting together in a room, getting rid of all the bias stuff.

But let’s start deep and let’s start being open and transparent while speaking to each other and how we can support each other working, making one front against a merchant.

Brent: Yeah, that’s great. I think one thing that partners always like is when there’s no finger pointing behind the customer with the customer there.

And one thing I’ve seen is that we’ve been able to work together without that finger pointing. It’s a collaboration effort because it’s in both of our interests to move something forward. Whereas when you finger point with a customer in the room, all you do is create division and then insecurity with the customer because they’re not sure , who they should trust.

Ray: I think that’s the big thing there, that if the partners, Adobe and the agency aren’t on the same page and they’re both pointing fingers at each other, then the client is the one who is stuck in the middle on who should they believe right?.

Brent: Yeah, chances are they’re gonna believe Adobe, which I think they should

So it does everybody a disservice. And I would say too, that it’s generally coming from the partner side on the finger pointing, but this could happen in any relationship in terms of technology with you working a hosting partner or payment or whoever that is. It’s always best to work out some of these things behind the scenes.

I want to talk a little bit about your initial meeting that you had in Amsterdam that I attended. Tell us why it was important to get those people in that room and to really work out some of the details in the support alliance.

Ray: Thanks Brent. And first of all, thanks again for supporting this project. I think it was really important to get that level of knowledge and just as I mentioned in the intro before, we wanted to have a selected group of partners that have been around and seen with all respect the good, the bad, and ugly, but have that transparent view without any finger pointing, as you already mentioned before, and inviting them.

This was a really important step and we mainly invited either technical leaders as CTOs, but also tech leads that run a project and have the overview on what actually happens on, let’s say, a day-to-day engineering perspective and how Adobe can support in that, and that could be our cloud platform.

What’s missing? Maybe, what are the things that helps on a day-to-day basis, or what kind of additional tool links do we have that can mitigate in those customer engineering issues that might happen, in the midst of your project or just before launch, or on whatever release date that you have in mind.

Making sure that we could deliver and share that in the meeting. While being transparent both ways, and I think that really was important for that specific meeting.

Brent: Yeah. And I will say that the transparency did come out. We had good and bad words about Magento, often more good than bad, but it was very healthy and it was very productive.

I appreciate that we went through some of those tools that you were alluding to, and that there are so many tools that some agencies didn’t know existed or didn’t know what they should use them for. I think particularly just, that interaction with those other partners where we could learn from each other, and again, the meeting did facilitate us learning from another partner what their best practice was while Adobe also told us what their best practice is and we could all come out with some good action items. What around that then do you find the biggest win for the Adobe side in terms of how customer service will be dealt with?

Ray: First of all, the input on a day-to-day basis, few are getting that peak in the kitchen, from Magento or the partners that we’ve spoken to.

This really helps to see the bigger picture. We at Adobe would deliver the tools the best way possible but now getting those insights on how these tools and solutions are being used. And let me give an example. We have one of our partners sharing that in some cases they would like to have this magic button, restarting some of those functionalities instead of having a ticket being submitted. This actually it makes sense. But, is something that we need to go back to the engineering platform to say, okay, what kind of solutions do we have in mind and how can we support these merchants or partners on a day-to-day basis? Is this feasible? Is this not?

But at least having the discussion helped us from an engineering perspective. Let’s say, we’ve seen maybe 10, 20, a hundred cases similar coming in. Let’s automate this because now it really makes sense. This is the focus that we are getting in, regards to self-help and self-healing, that really tie back to that specific question or issue that was raised through that meeting.

Brent: I like that. And I think you’re referring to the ability to start specific, say Redis instances on a client’s instance, correct?

Ray: Correct.

Brent: For production, I think there was a lot talked about in that part of the meeting that had a lot of great feedback. I think there are some inherent limitations because of the way the cloud is set up. It’s not often that you want everybody to have full control of everything. So I think that you need to be careful. A magic button can be great but not for everybody. Not in a production environment. Losing all the cash all of a sudden will have a major impact.

Ray: So again, it’s good to get the feedback. It’s really important to collaborate the feedback, but it’s also now interesting from our part looking back in the kitchen. Is this feasible? How can you do it? And we haven’t said, this is something we gonna do. We had never thought about it but getting the feedback now from the partners really helped us to go back and have these internal discussions on if that would be possible.

Brent: I think one other thing that was refreshing about the meeting that you set up is it was the cadence of collaboration meetings has gone down a little bit since the acquisition. I think that this was very refreshing to be able to come into a meeting room with 10 other partners, and really talk about what is it that we’re doing right and what is it that we’re struggling with.

Also a message for all of us is that as a group, we’re better, right? As, a group, as a partners as Adobe, and employing the partners to help in those solutions. I felt this gave a great opportunity for all of us to chime in, in a timeframe that allowed us to be productive. So it’s a little different than having a webinar where everybody joins and then somebody’s dog is barking and you might be answering your emails at the same time. This really forces you to focus and be productive in what you’re doing. Talk a little bit about how you’ve seen that community collaboration pay off in the past?

Ray:Looking back at the older, earlier Magenta days we orchestrated the Magenta user group back in Amsterdam, and I think we were able to run this program for seven or eight years. In the beginning we started on a quarterly basis, but at the end the group got much bigger. Now we’ve done that almost on a monthly basis depending on the topic. While we were running that program for such a long time, is that the interaction with all those different partners, depending on the topics, some were technical, some were marketing driven, some were sales driven, but the priority of all the programs helped to have a discussion. And I think that’s one of the strong things that we wanted to get this program started as a support alliance,or a reboot from the Magenta user group sessions. Actually, to be honest, Brent it’s not about, me or you or whatever, everybody within the community or any partner can orchestrate these user group sessions.

You don’t need to wait on somebody like myself or yours to run it, but everybody can pick up a session, and say, okay partners, I know we are competitors, but now let’s talk about options on how to improve and learn from each other. And actually that really helps to be open minded and resourceful. I think that’s a great power.

The Magenta community in general, looking at the alliance having somebody organizing or orchestrating, it helps at the end, for the partners to open up and start sharing. Because let’s face it, not everybody’s open on sharing their special things that are working, but in the end, I think the power of Magento lies in the sharing part because if we wouldn’t share anything from the beginning, we wouldn’t be here.

Now you’ve been there since day one. I’ve been there since day one. And let’s assume that we would never share anything. Sharing is scary. That’s my personal motto. And I will definitely encourage the people who are listening or reading to get something planned, invite others, and let’s share information that helps making those projects fun and also quality minded.

Brent: You bring up a great point. Even at the meet Magento events I think oftentimes that sort of community collaboration around a topic is missed out on. We do some panels sometimes, but they’re really, formal and very scripted. I thought the UN-conference was super fun, even though. It was post pandemic.

Everybody was a little bit worried still, at that stage. I would encourage anybody to go to the Unconference in Cologne, the Mage conference. That setting is a great place for people to show up. I know the first time I went to one was in 2019. The Shopware Brothers and Hamann brothers came to the event and had some topics that got talked about.

I think you could learn from all parts of our community.

Ray: Let’s not forget about the UNconference being planned, I think in the summer in the Netherlands. There’s events on the radar organized by Yireo and that’s gonna take off as well.

Brent: Excellent. I do want to talk a little bit about making sure that the partners are investing in their own teams, right?

Ray: Yeah.

Brent: And the alliance and I know you had some other news you wanted to share, but investing in the team is how you are gonna be successful in the part as a partner in the future. There’s a, saying in English that the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago and the second best time is today.

The best time to start building your Adobe commerce team was 10 years ago. The second best time is right now. Tell us a little bit about the importance of investing in your team and what that means.

Ray: I think it’s a really fair question. Investing in people, I think is gold It really helps to set the bar to the next level. Looking back at the alliance,on some of the issues. If some of those partners would have certified people on board, that would make a big difference in regards to best practices and how they are applied when requesting support. True, everybody can request support, but we’ve seen on a regular basis that the lack of knowledge and, with all respect, sometimes new people that need to learn. You and I started somewhere as well and we are really happy to help those people. Being a partner, having an A team that’s certified maybe from business practitioner level up to a master or an architect level really sets the bar on quality. Cause once the bar on quality is met, we see the difference in the way support tickets are being submitted.

And the way our engineers are able to mitigate in those issues. And actually it speeds up the process. The more quality we get in, the better we can deliver quality at the end. And the more fuzzy question comes, like it’s not working well, then it’s pretty hard to find a needle in the haystack.

And looking at some of the modules third party modules, which is a pretty big important component within Adobe commerce. If some of the developers would be certified we probably would have less issues that are not related to the Adobe commerce Stack, but some of it mainly related to the module stack.

To summarize please invest in your team. It will be gold in the end. And there are many solutions out there that can facilitate with training programs. Study groups like SwiftOtter. If you need any help getting the right people on board, happy to reach out or t brands. I’m happy to connect you internally with all the right people to get started. They can be that professional maybe six months a year from now and get certification.the

Brent: A great way to look at it from a partner standpoint is if you’re in the Magento space, and you’re working with a hosting company that has no clue about Magento, and they’ll say, we’ll give you an AWS instance with one core and a half a gig of memory or something like that.

And you’re like that’s really not gonna work. We’re gonna need more resources to make it run. And they’re like, why would you need more? It’s just a website. If you have somebody that knows something, they’re going to be able to solve that problem in a 10th or an eighth or a fifth of the time that a person that knows nothing.

Another great technical example is it was very common in the past the sleeping SQL processes that would show up because of something else that was happening inside Magento. Oftentimes a hosting company would point to the database as the problem. And I would say it’s not the database, it’s something upfront of the database that’s causing the processes to sleep.

But if you’re not experienced in that and you don’t have the knowledge or experience. The certifications are one step, right? But the experience part is the step number two. If you don’t have some of that institutional knowledge and you don’t have any background or, have taken the training, getting there is very difficult.

Once you’ve gotten there, your leaps ahead against the next person. But all of that combined helps you to be a stronger developer, a stronger agency and a stronger partner. To help work through all those issues that come up. Tell us about your commitment to the team and the level of certification that you expect from a as an Adobe employee

Ray:Thanks Brent.

I think it’s a really good question. Actually looking at our Adobe engineers, we have a KPI on certifications, getting everybody qualified on the best level possible. Actually for this year we have 90% of all our engineers certified. And to be honest, I’m really happy. And maybe, back in the day, every company should have a KPI on certifications because it sets a momentum.

It also inspires, but it also helps, in the end, to reach that common goal together. Not only qualification, knowledge, and, experience, as you mentioned, to support our Adobe commerce merchants in the best way possible. It would be strange that we have Adobe Commerce out there and only 25% of our engineers are certified. That would be bad. So that’s why we have a good focus on getting them certified. And with the help of our partner, SwiftOtter we are about to kick off a program that will help onboard from a study perspective and align together getting a program done and getting all the engineers certified.

And I think that’s the power again, within the community. Adobe is happy to have SwiftOtter on board supporting these programs and getting that done.

Brent: That’s awesome. So what is your vision for the next six months to a year for the support alliance?

Ray: That’s a good question.

Actually looking at the backlog list we have in mind, there’s one thing besides what we’ve received from you, the partners, there’s also one thing that we shared with the partners to also start focusing on and to maybe wrap that we have shared, a solution tool called SWAT.

That’s the Adobe Commerce system wide analysis tool that’s available as 2.4 and above within Adobe Commerce. That actually helps from a health perspective to get a good score. As we agreed within that meeting, we would like to inspire the partners to focus on getting into a 50-75. My plan actually would be, and this is a really small surprise maybe in this meeting, is to have maybe two, three months from now, a new dedicated session where we can have a technical deep dive on additional solutions, how to use Adobe commerce with the use of API mesh and app builder, and connecting those integrations together. Because what we’ve seen and learned throughout the phase on the support alliance, it’s not about, what’s going bad or wrong, but how can we enable partners using these solutions in the best place?

Once you are an ambassador on these solutions, it will help mitigate on any support issues being submitted.

Brent: I did a very early interview about SWAT on my podcast. So I’ll put a link there in the post. SWAT tool is a fantastic tool that everybody that should be using if they’re using Adobe Commerce.

Ray, it’s been a pleasure speaking with you. I know that I know that you’ve been very busy. Tell us about your new role as we close things out. .

Ray: Thanks, Brent. So a as of end of last year beginning of this year my focus now is mainly on EMEA. So my old role was focusing on the global software development aspect.

But with all the changes now within Adobe I’ve been given the responsibility as head of commerce for customer engineering for EMEA. That really focuses on end-to-end support on Adobe commerce.

Brent: That’s awesome. So if we have any problems, I know where to look.

Ray: Yeah, for sure. Look at SWAT first, let’s start with SWAT and if there’s still a case, then submit a support ticket.

Brent: Absolutely, SWAT! If you’re on Adobe Commerce and you’re not using SWAT number one, make sure you’re on 2.4, .1 or 2.4 and above. Then make sure your partner has SWAT running and start collecting lots of great analytics from that.

Ray: Maybe one additional bonus that came out earlier this week. If you are 2.4 .4, you have extensive support now for three years.

So the support model changes a little bit on the software extension. So there’s a longer superior sorry, a longer period of time for.

Brent: Perfect. Ray Bogman, thank you so much for being here. It’s been a pleasure speaking with you.

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