Integrated Technology Stack

An Integrated Technology Stack is the power behind an exceptional customer experience with omnichannel communications.  

This is the next in our series of Signal deeper dives into the four capability pillars that leaders in customer transformation and technology/IT need to focus on to enable success in communications transformations. We are publishing the series ahead of our face-to-face breakfast event  the Business Transformation behind Brilliant Customer Comms. Sign up now to join us at Milk Beach, Soho in January where senior industry leaders will be sharing their practical experiences of how to set up for communications transformation success.  

Here we focus on the second of those pillars: an Integrated Technology Stack.  

The future of customer experience will be powered by a well-Integrated Technology Stack which is not simply holding detailed data about your customers but knows what your customers do and why so you can better communicate with them at critical moments in their journey.  

1.  Customer-First thinking should be applied to architectural design. At Signal, we believe that a well-architected technology stack is essential to release the value of your technology estate. Many organisations have disparate systems supporting their products and services. Systems become much more powerful when working together and will help to break down silos to support a cross-functional delivery of omnichannel touchpoints. Designing your enterprise architecture through a Customer-First lens will ensure the customer is embedded into your organisations capability to power excellent customer experiences. A key part of this is the ability to share data and events as this will support analytics to influence customer behaviour. 

2. No single system can deliver an excellent customer experience. Architecture which is successful will meet the needs of operational communications as well as marketing. While technology vendors are striving to meet both these needs, they are not there yet. Instead, you need to deploy best-in-class technology for both areas which are then well-integrated so that you share their strengths. Quoting an old African proverb, "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together."   

3. Specialist tools will help you thrive. To provide an excellent customer experience you need to use a combination of best-in-class enterprise systems alongside specialist tools. An Integrated Technology Stack drives excellence by unlocking the potential of customer feedback, operational and behavioural data. AI tools can be used for areas such as readability and comprehension testing.   

4. Governance will be improved through integrated enterprise software. Platforms which are essential to your customer experience, including CCM platforms such as Quadient or Opentext, are essential to a well-governed process. Integration with work management systems, such as Adobe Workfront or Jira, provides more robust internal governance. Alongside this, CCM platforms are built to support operational communications and provide functionality to support accessible formats and durable medium, essential for regulatory compliance. Ensuring your assets are well-governed through an enterprise DAM, such as Adobe Experience Manager, is essential and needs to support integration with both marketing and CCM platforms.  

In our next blog in the series, we discuss Agile Operating Model