Your organization’s technology stack defines the customer experiences you provide. Everything from how users purchase products to interactions with your customer support team to your personalization strategy relies on the system and tools you use and how those tools share information.
Companies using legacy core systems often find their information siloed inside, unable to share it with new tools and systems. This sets them back when it comes to innovative solutions that best serve customers’ needs.
Open Integrations are Essential to Innovation
In today’s agile world, innovation is key to becoming a market leader. A key element to organizational innovation is the ability to easily add and remove tools as new products enter the market and business goals change. This is accomplished through product integrations with open APIs.
The reasoning is simple. Technology leaders who manage open systems can ask “What solutions best serve our customers?” rather than “What tools will work with the legacy system we have in place today?”
The Evolution of Core Systems
The issue of open versus closed systems wasn’t an issue in the past. Organizations used to select a single core system, build the entire business within its capabilities, and the customer experience was often dictated by what it could (or couldn’t) do.
However, there are hundreds of SaaS products on the market today that are highly specialized and extremely powerful. It’s impossible for a single tool to be the best solution for every business problem.
If you want to use the most advantageous tools when it comes to areas including monetary revenue solutions, marketing communications, AI and machine learning, and customer service, you will need to implement different solutions that speak to and work with your core system.
Start With Your Three to Five Year Growth Vision
When selecting a technology stack, we recommend looking to products that support your growth vision for the next three to five years. After that, you’ll want to reevaluate what you use to best support your goals at that time.
This is where the flexibility of your systems come into play.
If everything is open and flexible, you can switch tools easily to support your evolving needs.
Feeling Siloed? Start Here
If your organization is using an outdated core system that doesn’t easily integrate with new products, we have two recommendations.
Recommendation #1
Create a three to five year plan for moving your core system.
Most organizations are deeply tied to their current core system—a transition won’t be quick and easy. Instead, the key is creating a long-term plan. This should include an evaluation process where you analyze your needs as well as what other systems you’ll want to work with the new core system. You’ll also need to prepare for the actual data migration—which could take a year or more.
Recommendation #2
Make a short-term plan that still supports your business goals. Once your long-term plan is in place, you should also consider what you’ll do today to support your goals. Just because your migration will take some time doesn’t mean there aren’t other options available.
A partner can help write APIs for systems that don’t have open data layers, allowing you to leverage information that wasn’t previously available. This gives you flexibility and options for integration today while you look at your long-term goals.
In today’s agile world, a core system that can easily integrate with new tools and products is key to offering innovative customer experiences. If you haven’t already started thinking about how your systems’ ability to integrate empowers or inhibits your business goals, now is the time to start.
If you have questions about your data strategy, we’re happy to help. Fill out our contact form below and we’ll set up a time to chat.
