Synergy between IT and business with composable architecture

Composable architecture allows you to build your digital infrastructure tailored to your needs. This means you can add new customer contact options more quickly and easily without making adjustments to the underlying systems. It's the ideal setup for organizations looking to improve their customer experience. So why doesn't every organization make the switch right away?

The notorious conflict of interest between the IT department and the business side often plays an essential role here. In short, initiatives focusing on a more flexible digital "front-end" often come from marketing, sales, and other customer-focused departments. These professionals feel the greatest urgency to respond quickly to new customer needs and (technological) trends.

Solid IT Foundation

The more internally-focused IT organization often primarily concentrates on a solid IT foundation. This foundation should support the organization's core skills as predictably as possible. The large systems, such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) or Customer Relationship Management (CRM), are also difficult to replace with a composable alternative.

Of course, the IT department is interested in ways to keep the digital infrastructure up-to-date without cumbersome updates and a patchwork of complex integrations. However, especially at the beginning, replacing the familiar all-in-one packages with a composable alternative can add extra complexity and (less transparent) costs, and require new skills.

Seamlessly aligned touchpoints

It is up to the business side to substantiate the necessity with solid figures. Although a more flexible digital infrastructure can generate a versatile return on investment, calculating this can sometimes be difficult. Actually leveraging new digital capabilities to set up a "seamless customer journey," for example, also requires a lot of new knowledge.

How do I optimally connect touchpoints? How do I ensure that the data from all those successive interactions doesn't disappear into hard-to-access silos? How do I transform the combined data about known and unknown customers into valuable insights? A serious challenge, especially as the number of options within a composable architecture is growing rapidly.

A flexible digital ecosystem is crucial

Organizations that understand how crucial these types of questions are, answer them as much as possible at the executive level. In a detailed vision and strategy, the executive board identifies, among other things, the technology that will likely provide real distinctive value for both customers and organizations in the future. Along with the conditions for successful use.

One of the most important conditions is a flexible digital ecosystem that enables early testing of new technological possibilities for potential added value. More and more customer-oriented organizations are therefore switching to a composable architecture. This innovative approach breaks down complex digital solutions into logical components.

As a result, the IT department can respond more quickly to business requirements without a major impact on the existing infrastructure. The customer side gains more freedom to test the value of new possibilities. Moreover, this improves mutual understanding between IT and the business side: possibly the most important condition for converting digital technology into distinctive added value.

Want to know more about composable architectures?

Read our longread:

"Composable Architecture Gives Customer-Centric Organizations Digital Resilience

(reading time: 9 minutes)

This article addresses the following questions:

• Do 'monolithic' software suites limit your flexibility and responsiveness?

• Why do more and more customer journeys end up in digital sameness?

• How to evolve from a multichannel to an omnichannel customer experience?

• What is the power of microservices, APIs, cloud-native, and headless (MACH)?

• Is a composable Digital Experience Platform the Holy Grail for marketers?

• Why doesn't every customer-centric organization immediately switch to Composable Architecture?