big platform myth | TechRadar

Users love the platform. From the seamless configuration of iOS to Microsoft Office 365, services that “work well” and are easily accessible to users are very popular, and for good reason. Whether you’re a customer buying from a website or a customer experience manager trying to operate a CRM system, ease of use is important today.

However, with thousands of cloud-based applications in the market and active M&A activity by existing and well-funded private equity firms, the acquisition pulls together a range of services and names them. It is very common to see them sold. As a platform, whether or not these services are effectively integrated to deliver a positive user experience.

This approach is widely used in the field of marketing technology. But users know the difference.

In 2020, the number of marketers looking for an integrated solution doubled from the previous year, in part due to the challenges posed by the pandemic. As a result, incumbent players, known for their acquired product line, are increasingly trying to position their products as “platforms” to meet the demands of these markets. However, we get products built on completely different technology stacks and put them together into a business presentation to call them a platform. If the user really only has a powerful but surprisingly bulky Frankenstein Mishmash, it is not a platform. It’s patchwork.

Marketing managers should not accept this. If you have to invest your time and money just to make your own tools work properly, how can you expect to deliver a smooth customer experience? Here are some tips on choosing an enterprise technology platform, including what vendors should be aware of when evaluating an “integrated” product suite.

Look at the building blocks

First of all, it’s important to see internally how the platform is built. Ideally, it’s best to look for a native platform (built from the ground up to accomplish a particular goal). This way you can be sure that you are working on a single technology stack. Even though the platform-like product set has a common user interface, there is still a lot you can collect from the way the suite is put together. With the Get Stack platform, you run the risk of having to invest time and money in process overheads and custom changes to make up for inconsistency in the vendor’s product suite.

One area that can help you determine if you are working on a technology stack is looking at the onboarding processes and permissions associated with your product. Complex processes with users requiring multiple permissions and logins in different subsections of the platform may indicate that the platform is not as integrated as expected.

It’s also important to have a platform that works on a single technology stack. This facilitates integration with existing IT infrastructure, saves time and money, and lowers the total cost of ownership. Likewise, the real platform must be modular. This means you don’t need to install and configure parts that you don’t need for other parts to work.

Track the data

You now know the platform’s tech stack. It is important to see the platform data and how it is processed.

“Movement of Life” may be a worn-out phrase when talking about the importance of data to modern businesses, but it’s true. All departments must sing from the same song sheet to provide a great customer experience. In other words, you need to clearly record all the data that may be the only source of truth. Otherwise, it is not a platform. It’s a bunch of silos packed together.

It is by no means easy. Some offerings can inject all the heterogeneous data into a huge data lake in the cloud, but it is not easy to effectively use that data across different services. If this data is spread across different data models instead of being integrated from the start, making this data work seamlessly across different applications and services can be a nightmare.

Take the example of a CRM system. To meet your marketing, sales, and customer service needs, you need a huge amount of data to make sure that all of your efforts are coordinated. Not only customer data, but also internal data. Each function can process, use, and tag this data differently as needed. Without tools to consolidate this data and keep it clean and functional, each business unit processes differently and can quickly become fragmented. Adjusting these discrepancies can be a long and expensive process that the real platform shouldn’t impose on users.

Look at the wider ecosystem

But perhaps the most important characteristic of a real platform is that it contains an open, consistent foundation that allows you to properly plug in other third-party apps (or your own custom extensions). These integrations work flawlessly across all aspects of the product. There isn’t one API for marketing, another API for selling, and a completely independent API for the CMS web experience. The Cohesive Platform enables a cohesive ecosystem and provides a better experience for you, your customers, and third-party developers building apps and integrations on top.

The vast ecosystem of tools and support services is a great indicator of the power of the platform. Many organizations that offer enterprise technology products have a variety of partnering contracts and cross-selling opportunities, but the true ecosystem allows end users to go through a limited set of complex procurement processes without having to go through. through a complex procurement process. Find the new services you need in the open market and integrate them quickly. Priority partners.

A strong partner ecosystem is often the sign of a real platform. The burgeoning partner market not only shows that the platform itself is functioning well and that adding third-party services that are easy to configure and manage for end users is almost acceptable. A truly effective customer experience that opens up a world of possibilities.

By focusing on these three areas, business leaders can separate the real platform from the disguise and find a truly integrated product suite that helps their business, rather than buying monolithic, hard-to-use products. You should be able to.