From a Composable Enterprise Architecture to a Customer-Centric Business

In today’s business landscape, agility is paramount. Traditional monolithic IT systems often impede flexibility and hinder rapid innovation. To overcome these limitations, companies are adopting composable enterprise architectures, modular setups comprised of interchangeable building blocks. That way, they can rely on a flexible framework that not only fosters agility, but also cultivates a customer-centric mindset. In this blog, I explore some benefits and strategies.

Recently, Salesforce partner delaware BeLux invited me to participate in a discussion on “composable enterprises”, along with experts from Microsoft and SAP. The term has been around for a couple of years; Gartner even stated once that the future of business is composable. Meanwhile, many organizations have worked out ideas that fit this mindset. Consider service-oriented systems and the rise of data mesh architectures that decentralize analytics, allowing teams to perform cross-domain data analysis and quickly gain insights. For example, to get a full picture of a customer and provide the best service.

APIs are also part of this composable approach. Developers use them to integrate applications with external services; or they make their own developments available for integrations so other parties can build on them. Like a flying wheel that provides agility, technologies such as MuleSoft enable companies to leverage this API-led connectivity and create an application network and governance framework.

Ultimately, all of the above examples share the same goals: reducing complexity and promoting reusability to innovate and generate value faster.

Composable by design

Originally, most enterprises worked in siloes with multiple teams developing solutions that had a lot of overlap. A composable mindset transcends that siloed structure. Instead of integrating each solution point-to-point, users benefit from flexible building blocks that can be plugged into different systems. Of course, a composable approach is not necessarily the best solution for every use case. Therefore, you must always weigh costs against benefits. Amazon, for example, recently migrated back to a monolithic system for its Prime Video service. In the end, business value should be the main driver in choosing a composable approach.

Yet there is no doubt that a composable mindset is a key attribute of most future-proof businesses. That’s why many platform solutions, such as Salesforce, are also composable by design. Most vendors understand that in this cloud-dominated world, clients may choose to combine multiple solutions. Especially CRM software has always had to be a dynamic building block that can integrate with other systems and function in a broader IT architecture. The composable nature of these platforms allows the entire business to quickly take advantage of the latest features and updated technologies.?

Moving the customer to the heart of your business

Composable enterprises are also supporting the trend where companies are moving from a product-oriented to a customer-centric approach. From following up on leads after a campaign to maintaining and renewing loyal clients... Today’s customer journeys span many different departments and channels. Every point of contact needs to have a complete understanding of the client. Breaking down the siloed technology landscape reveals the overlap between systems, enabling better decision-making and more customer-centric business processes.

With a composable mindset, IT becomes an asset provider that works in close collaboration with the business. In the past, IT and business were not always on the same page. Business users need quick access to new applications, while IT is often understaffed and unable to keep up with the pace of innovation. There are about 22 million professional developers worldwide, compared with more than a billion knowledge workers. In a composable enterprise, these knowledge workers can use no code or low code platforms, allowing more people in the business to unlock the power of data and develop applications within IT’s secure governance framework.

Ultimately, a composable approach could even lead to shared or interchangeable KPIs between CIOs and business leaders. While the CIO is measured on revenue growth, the project manager can be assessed by looking at “on time/on budget” delivery of the next project.

Do you have ideas on this topic or want to share your own experiences with composable enterprise architectures? Feel free to let me know in the comments or send me a personal message.