Fixing your Frankenstack

I’m just going to say it. Your company can’t afford to sit back and continue adding to the Frankenstack you’re running your business on. That entanglement of IT systems that has grown out of control is going to come back to bite you. It’s hampering your profitability and exposing you to disruption. Now is the time to invest in transformation.

I’ve been lucky enough to go through this process a few times, so I thought I’d share some lessons learned and three specific strategies I’ve used to navigate a smooth tech stack transformation.

Oh! And be sure to read all the way to the end, because there’s a critical key to unlocking full integration.

Step 1: Technical analysis

I like to think of this first step of transformation like a home remodel. Rarely are you re-doing your entire house at once. Instead, you simply identify the things that need to be fixed or changed and you upgrade them. And, just like a home remodel, don’t be overwhelmed. Be focused.

Prioritize what matters most and focus only on what you need to change so you don’t over-design or over-engineer, which will undoubtedly create more complexity, higher costs, and a longer completion time.

Take stock of what needs to be upgraded and resist the urge to splurge.

• Identify technical opportunities that can make the process easier or faster. For instance, if there are integrations already underway, consider accelerating them before you start your re-platformization, otherwise you may be trapped doing point-fixes along the way.
• Look for things to fix along the way that address things like accessibility, and costs. Maybe there are products in your stack nearing “end of life.” Now’s the time to replace them.

• Identify best-fit solutions by deployment so you can reduce inevitable technical and support pains. The bottom line is you need to think about how customers will be impacted during the transformation and be selective in your deployment to limit disruption.

• Remember (and document) why you’re going through this transformation. You should be able to easily answer the question: What’s the purpose and how is the transformation helping your business grow?

Step 2: Enhance the experience

When you’re going through a tech stack transformation, it’s critically important to identify and understand the big organizational needs that need to be addressed. Does the marketing organization need a quicker funnel into Sales Development Representatives? Maybe the sales team is fed up with filing ticket requests into four different systems to get a contract signed.? ????

Know what the organizational big rocks are that will impact business outcomes, and commit to making positive changes that address those issues, without adding technical complexity.

• Leverage or build a micro front-end framework and integrate all of your systems into it. This approach allows you to break apart pieces of your Frankenstack and slowly change the pieces through a microservice infrastructure, rather than doing a massive makeover.

• Move pieces strategically. A front-end system allows you to take small steps. Start with one part of the business, like finance, then move procurement, then inventory, and so on. You want to be sure to prioritize team productivity, so move your people LAST.

• Don’t let the user feel the pain - with a micro front-end framework, you can make a full sweeping makeover to satisfy your users. Then you can surface organizational solutions in a functional, user-friendly way that allows your IT team to change and update individual systems and solutions in the back-end without the user knowing.

Step 3: Shrink the core

The goal of any tech stack transformation is to reduce the number of systems – and the integrations that happen across your systems – to reduce the complexity of maintaining and updating the technology infrastructure. So, you have to pull together the most logical combination of systems that allow you to remove duplicative solutions and eliminate friction points between systems.

• Understand the technical implications of your solution plans so that you don’t add additional technical debt, like frameworks and systems that you’re going to have to update or patch later.

• Look for common work processes/capabilities (or even jobs-to-be-done) so you can remove duplicative products and solutions that are meant to achieve the same outcome.

• Identify and prioritize unmet business challenges by role. Is there a pain point that isn’t being addressed within the tech set? Remove that challenge with the right solutions and empower your users immediately to show positive progress of your transformation initiative.

• As you’re changing things around, look for opportunities for partners or acquisitions that can lighten the load for the organization. It can save you money, limit complexity, and help you stay ahead of the market as technology solutions evolve.

Okay, so here’s that important key to tech stack integration!

There’s always an underlying challenge with connecting the set of systems you choose for your new tech stack. They need to integrate through one another. You have to connect with the employee, with the customer, a prospect, a vendor.?

At the center of each of those is a person. An identity. Being able to resolve a single person-of-record is critical.

Let’s take a retailer for example. You likely have an e-commerce and in store point of sale solution in place to manage omni-channel sales. Each of those systems has unique identifiers, all of which must be resolved to a single CRM record. According to a recent survey from Statista, 86% of customers have multiple email addresses, so it’s unlikely those records will match perfectly. That’s where an enterprise identity solution comes in handy.

My company, LiveRamp , can help you overcome that challenge. We can help you build an enterprise identity infrastructure, with a consistent identity framework that protects privacy and aligns with your business priorities as you grow. We’ll help you create your own Identity graph to intelligently link identifiers together, across different systems and multiple touch-points, that continuously creates links across those records.?

LiveRamp is a data collaboration company, working with the most innovative companies in the world. We promise to help organizations build enduring brand and business value by collaborating responsibly with data. Enterprise identity is a critical piece of that puzzle.

If you’re thinking about transforming your tech stack and getting serious about prioritizing data, we’d love to help.

#techstack #frankenstack #