Transformation Guidance for CIOs: Embracing Flexible Technology for Seamless Digital Transition
In the realm of modern business, CEOs and CIOs often grapple with the age-old challenge: how to do more with less, while enhancing the consumer experience. The solution to this dilemma might not be as complex as it seems; it lies in the concept of extensibility.
Lori Schafer, CEO of Digital Wave Technology, a pioneer in AI-native enterprise solutions for consumer industries, elucidates the importance of this often-overlooked function. Extensibility, she explains, is the ability for a company's IT team to add on to an off-the-shelf software solution they've invested in. This paradigm shift allows a company's IT department to supplement the solution with domain-specific intelligence models or even write their own code to complement it, without disrupting existing packaged solutions and internal business processes.
The Key Pillars of Extensibility
Schafer highlights several key tenets of extensibility, based on a recent Gartner survey of CIOs. These include robust APIs to connect diverse systems and share data/functionality, an open data model and data science for adaptability, a mature workflow backbone to facilitate data and user operations, and fungible user interfaces that can evolve with the market.
Extensibility is often confused with configuration, but the former allows a company to keep its data and proprietary processes inside its own systems, whereas configuration integrates a company's data and technology into a vendor's solution. Both approaches have their merits, but companies can benefit significantly from choosing an extensible alternative.
The Impact of Extensibility on Innovation
By embracing extensibility, companies gain the ability to swiftly adapt to changing market needs through plug-ins or by adding new functionalities through analytics models, workflow engines, and APIs. This agility supports innovation that is not hampered by slow software vendors or legacy technical debt.
For instance, an e-commerce retailer could tailor user preferences for micro-fulfillment, shipping, and payment options, while a financial services company could incorporate GenAI marketing copy or video creation capabilities into its content management system. Extensibility, done right, thus equals unbounded potential for innovation.
As we embark on a new year, many businesses worldwide are likely to indulge in digital transformations, or scramble to react quickly to emerging competitors. The promise of AI and GenAI technologies entices many companies, but it's crucial to invest wisely and skillfully, embracing the extensibility of solutions to grow with technology.
Boost your extensibility game by building a strong foundation in robust APIs, an open data model, a mature workflow backbone, and user interfaces that are easy to customize. By doing so, you're paving the way for a more agile, innovative, and resilient enterprise, able to adapt to the ever-changing landscape of the consumer industries.
Lori Schafer, with her expertise in AI-native enterprise solutions, emphasizes that extensibility can help companies like Digital Wave Technology maintain control over their data and processes while leveraging off-the-shelf software solutions. Schafer further notes that extensibility contributes to a company's lifespan by providing the flexibility to adapt to changing market needs through the use of plug-ins and custom functionalities.
