// The operator's manual for the room. Know the machine, run the demo, draw the line.
Caterpillar runs one of the most complete Adobe Experience Cloud footprints in industrial B2B, content, demand, work, optimization and measurement, all in production. Yet $0 of it is AI, even though Cat Digital already ships its own production AI on Helios. The operational AI is theirs. The marketing and customer-experience AI layer is greenfield, and Adobe already holds the content, brand, demand and data that AI must act on.
Everything in this manual serves one move: convert a healthy-but-flat renewal into the account that lights up Adobe's AI layer first. Open the room on this and the rest follows.
Financially this is strategically embedded: ~$11.3M multi-cloud ARR plus ~$950K Ultimate Success, spanning content, demand, work, optimization and measurement. Adobe is the system of record across the experience lifecycle. But Cat Digital, under CDO Ogi Redzic, already runs production AI in the business, while Adobe holds $0 of AI. Strong core adoption is exactly why flat is now the threat: the moment to extend is when the core is this healthy.
Cat already thinks natively in "AI agents on unified data," so Adobe's Agent Orchestrator narrative lands on prepared ground, not cold. The wedge is three concrete plays: brand-trained Firefly + GenStudio to industrialize the Modern Hex rebrand for 150+ dealers; Agent Orchestrator routing aftermarket demand to the right dealer on unified data; and winning the catalog in AI-search. All measured end to end so the Ultimate Success spend visibly pays for itself.
Cat Digital owns the operational and engineering AI, predictive maintenance, MineStar autonomy, condition monitoring on Helios. That is not Adobe's to win, and saying so builds credibility. The marketing and customer-experience AI layer is greenfield, and Adobe is uniquely positioned to own it because Adobe already holds the content, brand, demand, optimization and measurement systems this AI must act on. Adobe's agents interoperate with Caterpillar's LLM stack (Microsoft 365 Copilot, Claude Enterprise, ChatGPT Enterprise) through Agent Orchestrator and MCP. They do not compete with it.
AI Platform consumption: $0 → one agent use case, live and measured, this quarter. A budget owner who sees AI capability on the books with zero return at renewal will question the entire ~$11M footprint. Convert one use case to value before that question is ever asked. It is already-funded upside, not a failure.
Plates 01 to 03: the account cold, the footprint, and a searchable arsenal of every Adobe AI capability with a Caterpillar scenario attached.
Plates 04 to 05: discovery questions per panelist and the eight prioritized plays where Cat's biggest pains meet Adobe's real AI.
Plates 06 to 09: the tools you build the panel with, real proof points, the 30-minute run sheet, and the accuracy sheet so nothing gets challenged.
What a CSM should know walking in. Caterpillar Inc. (NYSE: CAT), the world's largest construction and mining equipment maker. Numbers are public or secondary sourced; treat precise figures as approximate.
Caterpillar is already a public Adobe AEM customer, implemented with partner Perficient for a consistent customer and dealer-facing experience. So this is not a cold pitch. The footprint is a realistic extension of a stack they already trust, and the AI layer is the upsell on top. Lead with that, it is the credibility anchor.
~$64.8B revenue (2024); FY2025 set an all-time record at ~$67.6B. Lower-margin machine and engine sales pull through high-margin recurring aftermarket parts and service, ~$26.1B in 2024, with a stated goal of ~$28B services revenue by 2026. Three segments after a 2025 reorg: Construction Industries, Resource Industries, and Power & Energy (renamed from Energy & Transportation). Financial Products (Cat Financial) is the fourth line. Revenue is overwhelmingly B2B and almost entirely dealer-mediated.
Cat sells almost entirely through ~155 to 160 independent, locally owned dealers running 2,000+ locations worldwide. Dealers drive ~85% of new machine sales and nearly 100% of aftermarket parts and service, and they own the local customer relationship. Caterpillar central supplies brand assets, campaign templates, product launches and digital lead feeds; dealers localize and execute. The central-to-local co-op model and brand governance across 150+ independent businesses is the defining marketing-ops challenge, and the most direct Adobe fit.
Master brand is Caterpillar / "Cat." Visual identity is trademarked Cat Yellow (PANTONE 1235 C, ~#FFC300) plus black, the CAT wordmark and the yellow triangle under the A (since 1989). The legacy "Power Edge" trade dress is being phased out for a refreshed "Cat Modern Hex" design, which itself creates a brand-asset regeneration need at scale. Positioning is premium durability ("Built For It"). Sub-brands include Solar Turbines, Perkins, Progress Rail, SEM, FG Wilson, MaK. Governing one premium identity across many sub-brands and 150+ dealers is a core brand-consistency problem.
Enormous, deep, multi-format. parts.cat.com alone exposes 1.4M+ parts online; the broader catalog spans machines, engines and locomotives, each carrying spec sheets, build-and-price configurators, exploded parts diagrams, serial-number-specific lookups, and warranty/service docs, across many languages, regions, segments and sub-brands. A textbook high-volume, high-variant content supply-chain load.
Strong, real, in-production AI/digital program run by Cat Digital under CDO/SVP Ogi Redzic (joined 2018 from Renault-Nissan connected vehicles). Helios is the data/AI backbone, a library of domain agents acting through Helios APIs. In 2024 Cat launched a generative-AI service-recommendation engine; Condition Monitoring Advisors use generative AI for pre-analyzed reports (~50% faster decisions); predictive maintenance runs across 1.5M+ connected assets; MineStar Command runs autonomous haul trucks. Implication for Adobe: Cat already thinks in "AI agents + unified data," so Agent Orchestrator lands on prepared ground.
eCommerce centers on parts.cat.com (frequent-buyer control center, 1.4M+ parts); parts-ecommerce sales surpassing $2B and processing on the order of $15M/day. Companion properties: Cat Central (DIY owner app), Cat Integrated Procurement for large fleets, customer portals (My.Cat.com), VisionLink telematics (1.5M+ connected assets), and the Cat App. Underneath sits Helios. Overarching goal: ~$28B services revenue by 2026 via digital + aftermarket.
Cat Digital, led by CDO/SVP Ogi Redzic, explicitly owns global marketing and brand, connectivity, enterprise data, analytics and AI, eCommerce, and aftermarket leads and insights. Brand, data, AI and commerce all sit under one digital leader inside the broader Digital, Technology & Distribution org. Single-owner structure means a cleaner enterprise-platform sale and a natural home for a unified CDP + content supply chain.
Framed as the energy transition, organized around AACE: Autonomy, Alternative fuels, Connectivity and digital, and Electrification. ~34% reduction in operational (Scope 1+2) CO2 vs a 2018 baseline. A distinct narrative track that must be personalized by audience and segment without diluting the core durability brand.
Public/secondary sources: Cat 4Q24 and 4Q25 results, cat.com dealer network, Digital Commerce 360, Equipment World. Treat precise figures as approximate.
Adobe is the system of record across the entire experience lifecycle, all in production. One line reads $0. That is the whole opportunity.
| Product | Sample ARR | Status | Read |
|---|
~$11.3M multi-cloud ARR across content, demand, work, optimization and measurement, plus ~$950K Ultimate Success. ARR figures are the panel prompt's sample scenario.
Excellent core adoption sitting next to $0 consumption of the AI Platform they could already be entitled to, while their own Cat Digital org runs production AI. Adobe is behind its own customer on the exact vector the customer cares most about. Strong adoption is precisely why flat is the threat: the moment to extend is when the core is this healthy.
Every Adobe AI capability worth naming, each with how an individual contributor uses it, how leadership uses it, and the Caterpillar scenario. Search it, filter it, pull the one you need. This is the reference, not a script.
Five panelists, five sets of priorities. For each: what they care about, the discovery questions that surface it, and the headline value when alignment appears. Address each by their role-play name. The questions are the tool, ask them, do not recite answers.
If the room remembers a handful, make it these: where Caterpillar's biggest pains meet Adobe's real AI. Each carries the IC angle (does the work, faster) and the leadership angle (governs, forecasts, proves).
The strongest differentiator in the room is not what you say about Adobe AI. It is that you built the panel with it. Here are the tools to use, what to do with each, and what it proves.
The line to say out loud. It reframes you from a vendor pitching AI to a practitioner already living in it.
Live demos, keep each under a minute, and screen-record the ones that could fail live. The point is not the output, it is that the artifact in front of the panel is the product working, and you are fluent enough to edit it under pressure. Firefly variations in 60 seconds, a CJA Data Insights question answered in plain English, the Acrobat AI Assistant generating the panel's own questions from the job description, the Content Credentials provenance panel, a deck slide born from one prompt.
Manufacturers and B2B brands already running this on Adobe. Lead with the three starred anchors; the rest are depth for any objection. Outcome figures are from Adobe's public stories, treat as reported and approximate.
| Company | Adobe stack | The AI angle & outcome | Why it maps to CAT |
|---|
Volvo Trucks North America is the closest analogue: a heavy-equipment OEM selling big-ticket configurable machines through an independent dealer network, on AEM Sites + Edge Delivery. Henkel proves brand-trained Firefly Custom Models for an industrial B2B. Lumen is the strongest quantified GenStudio ROI (campaign launch 25 days to 9, ~3x faster asset production). And Caterpillar itself is already a public AEM customer, so the AI is the upsell onto a stack they already trust.
Your run-of-show for the quarterly review. Tight, strategic, and it closes with one number to move. This is the disciplined version of everything in this manual.
An adversarial fact-check flagged a few names and attributions that get drafted wrong and then challenged in the room. Use the corrected forms. Everything not listed here verified clean against Adobe's own docs.
| Heard / drafted as | Verdict | Say it as |
|---|
Features tagged "confirm entitlement" are real Adobe capabilities but may sit in a different SKU. Forecasting and Intelligent Captions live in Customer Journey Analytics, not classic Adobe Analytics. Predictive lead and account scoring comes via Real-Time CDP B2B, not core Marketo. Say "if it's in your entitlement" rather than promising it.
Generative and agentic features move fast and get renamed. It is the Workfront Content Reviewer and Form Fill powered by AI; Firefly Creative Production / Bulk actions; a Text to Avatar API. When unsure, describe the capability and the value, not a brittle exact feature name.