Modernizing the Digital Backbone

Even with the number of tech startups leveraging cutting-edge technology to create new products and services, the number of organizations operating on outdated and unsupported systems is staggering to say the least. I’m not talking about ancillary systems that are used infrequently. I’m speaking of the core systems – the organizational “digital backbone.” With advancements in automation and artificial intelligence (AI), organizations are now feeling the pressure more than ever to improve their system’s performance, functionality, and security with SaaS solutions. But what actually makes up this so-called digital backbone and how does an organization go about modernizing it?

When we say digital backbone, we are referring to your organization’s core systems, because they are financially supportive to the organization, an investment. They are what makes money and without them, the organization could not sustain a competitive market position and would ultimately parish. However, is it fair to say that only applications, systems, and platforms make up the digital backbone? In complete fairness of enterprise architecture, we would be remiss to not include the people and the processes that utilize these technologies, let alone, not to consider them as investments.

To modernize the digital backbone successfully requires careful planning, alignment, and execution of the organization’s business & digital strategy.

You don’t have a digital strategy? Let’s start there.

1. IDENTIFY & STRATEGIZE – Before modernizing your digital backbone, you must first set some fertile ground. Selecting and implementing a new core solution without conducting the necessary due diligence is a train wreck waiting to happen. Fertile ground setting starts with getting a sense of your organization’s level of Digital Maturity and its impact on executing its Business Capabilities. From here we can identify the critical gaps and develop the Digital Strategy Plan.
2. DISCOVER & REALIZE – Documenting the current state of your digital backbone includes memorializing the enterprise landscape. Visualization techniques like Enterprise Architecture Blueprinting allow organizations to discover how their applications are integrated. Business Process Mapping efforts allow stakeholders to realize who is actually doing what with which technology for every step of a given process. These visualizations will expose functional and technical gaps of your systems and processes, thus resulting opportunities (requirements).
3. SOLUTION & MODERNIZE – When understanding what options are available through modern features and functionality, too often we hear the phrase: “We don’t know what we don’t know!” It’s critical to do your market research and understand what capabilities modern platforms and vendors provide today. With the insights gathered from discovery in addition to your market research, you can narrow down the Vendor Selection Process. By scoring RFP responses, vendor demos, and vendor capabilities against the status quo, you will further reduce the complexities of the modernization process. After a modernized solution has been identified, it’s critical that your organization’s IT Capabilities are revested and realigned so that they can continue to support the business capabilities.

The three stages summarized above require an extensive amount of work, however each stage builds upon the next and creates the fertile ground needed to secure the digital backbone through the modernization process. With that said, modernization efforts require commitment from all levels of the organization and with effective evolution management by leadership. Yes, evolution management is the new organizational change management. Why? Because change is often driven by theory, fad, someone’s idea; it’s often a prescribed or even frantic reaction to events. Alternatively, approaching the organization to evolve its people, processes, and technology carries a sense of driven purpose that gets people tuned to the same frequency. It’s adaptive, emergent – it’s securing the investment!

The work doesn’t stop here as the proposed solution must carefully be contracted and negotiated with the vendor so that the solution can be successfully implemented and supported. The contract itself is the fulcrum that dictates the healthy relationship. In a lot of cases, vendors can provide you with agreements that are written heavily in their favor. To assure a healthier relationship, it is critical to negotiate an agreement that protects you from broken promises and failed execution. Remember, the Vendor Relationship and Contracting Process starts when you first interact with the vendor.

At FPOV we have a saying: “As organizations we strategize so that we can modernize, and we modernize so that we can monetize. We do all of this while staying secure and risk aware.” We have developed a modernization framework that reduces the complexity when engaging in large digital initiatives like vendor selection or upgrading to a new core platform. The FPOV modernization framework does this by ensuring that people, business direction, and IT investments are aligned, so that the organization can continually scale via new technology.