WHY AGILE TECHNOLOGY PLATFORMS ARE THE KEY TO EFFECTIVE INNOVATION

Sujit Unni,CTO, Paysafe

 

A main reason why platform technology can prove to be so effective for a business is its agility, and the speed with which the system can be improved plays a central role in this. If a business takes months to update its technology, then it’s fighting a losing battle, and when you’re working with siloed product developments, this long lead time can easily be the reality which you’re faced with.

But by using an agile platform, you can make dozens of technology upgrades and enhancements a month, and this platform agility is the foundation on which companies can innovate.

The goal of any business is surely to be able to offer competitive products and services, as well as be an enabler of great customer experiences, and for many, a constantly evolving platform is the bedrock of this. But in order to make your platform as agile and effective as possible, the environment has to be right.

 

Building the right technology architecture

The best outcomes are achieved by designing your platform so that it’s agile from day one. And the core platform is the place to start. A composable architecture allows changes to be made quickly, which drives the continuous improvement that’s so vital in a platform. APIs play a pivotal role for technology focused businesses, and in the payments architecture they support the speedy, streamlined development that’s necessary to get to market fast. They do this by lending flexibility to systems management, enabling you to decouple components of an application, and providing scalability and speed.

Abstraction in your payments platform is also vitally important. Especially for more traditional businesses such as banks, where it removes complexity around specific use cases and ensures that complex requirements are managed outside the platform. Here, the difficulty of a given task doesn’t impede progress or affect overall delivery.

From a business perspective, an abstracted continuously evolving processing platform delivers numerous benefits. It accelerates your responses to market changes, can scale with demand, is always up to date with security and compliance, and ensures uptime and consistent services. Ultimately, it provides a win: win situation – the consumer gains a better digital experience, and the business succeeds in building a reputation for innovation that creates loyalty in its customer base.

 

Choosing the right tools for the job

To increase the rate at which you can innovate you need to have the right capabilities and partnerships. In today’s competitive environment you need to be able to launch new ideas and features at speed – it’s no good taking weeks or months, never mind years.

A fast-tracked product development cycle must be supported by an agile platform backed by software, tools, and partnerships that add value. Integration is a vital part of this, enabling you to connect and collaborate with third parties and other providers as part of an open ecosystem. This means you can choose partners that complement and extend your offering, plus unlock new markets and opportunities to increase your competitive advantage.

Another consideration for a tooling strategy is the idea of opening up platform capabilities more widely across your organisation. Abstracted self-service workflows allow product and technology teams to easily access pre-approved templates, increasing efficiency and innovation.

Finally, you need to make sure you assess your partnerships, workflows, and tools to accelerate your build-test-deploy cycle, make updates and improvements fluidly, and provide your teams with access to capabilities that drive service delivery. These are all key factors in determining the agility of your platform.

 

The importance of internal culture

Assembling, motivating, and developing your talent is crucial because the best teams build the best platforms. It’s so important to get your whole team on board because everyone has a role to play, and you can do this by sharing the larger vision for your platform with your whole team, not just management. This means sharing responsibility, understanding the goal, and developing a culture of trust.

One of the key challenges faced by mature organisations is codifying behaviour to preserve culture and initiate cultural change. In my opinion this both defines the success of your business more than anything else and is the hardest thing to get right. You need to co-ordinate your efforts by having the following:

  1. Clear definition of goals and the attributes that personify the culture
  2. Active design and implementation of hacks in collaboration with the wider organisation, enriching teams with a combination of external coaches and high-impact hires
  3. Continuous measurement and revision of objectives

As team members hone their skills and grow their knowledge base, they’re able to refine, scale, and enhance the platform. Creating an environment in which the entire team understands the importance of their work and shares a commitment to make things happen is at the heart of every competitive, futureproofed payments platform.

 

Platform agility speeds time to innovation

All organisations seek to innovate at speed, and while there are many factors at play to determine whether this is possible or not, the platform is certainly one of the most important. Agile technology platforms can mean the difference between stagnant development cycles and sluggish updates and continuous improvement, fast fixes, and constant new features and functionality which help to deliver products that increase your customer satisfaction and loyalty. But you have to get the environment right first in order to optimise your chance of success.

spot_img

Explore more