AppDirect and Coveo Team Up to Bring AI to Subscription Commerce

This year, global spending on public cloud services and infrastructure is forecast to hit $210 billion, almost 24 percent higher than the 2018 total. By 2022, that figure is projected to reach $370 billion. Clearly, companies have a strong and growing appetite for cloud-based applications.

Is this growth as strong as it could be? There's one big reason to think that it's not: Today, there are simply too many applications to choose from, and customers often can't find the ones best suited to their needs. As the Harvard Business Review puts it, B2B software buyers are "deeply uncertain and stressed... [they] are increasingly overwhelmed and often more paralyzed than empowered."

The issue is particularly problematic for digital marketplaces, stores where users can find and purchase software entirely on their own, at least in theory. Fortunately, there's an answer to this challenge: product recommendations powered by AI. According to one study, recommendations can drive almost a quarter of both orders and revenue. Moreover, 37 percent of buyers that click a recommendation during their first visit return to the marketplace, compared to just 19 percent for buyers that didn’t.

Intelligent recommendations can drive almost a quarter of both orders and revenue.

Numbers like these are one reason why we're so excited about our latest news. Last week, we announced a partnership with the leader in AI-powered search and recommendations technology, Coveo, to make Coveo AI available in our subscription commerce platform.

As our co-founder and co-CEO, Dan Saks, explained: "The customer experience is among the most important differentiators in the digital economy. We are very excited to work with Coveo to bring the best to our customers and help them achieve even higher conversion rates by recommending the most relevant products to each and every buyer in their marketplaces.”

Based in Quebec City, Quebec, Coveo uses AI and intelligent search technologies to personalize digital experiences and deliver relevant information and recommendations across every business interaction. Coveo is embedded in many leading business applications from vendors that include Salesforce, ServiceNow, Sitecore, Microsoft Dynamics—and now AppDirect.

Gretchen Dukowitz is Senior Content Marketing Editor at AppDirect.