Find the original article, written by Digital Wave Technology CEO Lori Schafer, in Forbes here.
With each new year, CIOs feel pressure to develop more efficient digital operations while elevating the consumer experience. It’s the age-old dilemma: Do more with less. However, as company leaders take stock of the technologies they have and the innovations they’re looking to add, there’s an often-overlooked function to keep in mind: extensibility.
By definition, extensibility is the ability for a company’s IT team to “extend” or add on to an off-the-shelf software solution they’ve invested in. This paradigm greatly differs from what software solutions have been doing over the last several decades, such as “customizing” software but no longer being able to take upgrades from the vendor and offering “packaged solutions” that don’t have access to source code. Extensibility today, in effect, allows a company’s IT department to take a solution and supplement it with domain-specific intelligence models or even write their own code to complement it while not disrupting the existing packaged solutions and internal business processes already in place. Of course, every company is unique, and different companies and industries have varying needs, so there are some nuances to consider when seeking an extensible solution and your approach to adopting it.
Key Tenets Of Extensibility
A recent Gartner survey of CIOs found that, on average, less than half of the digital initiatives that companies launch meet their business objectives. Part of this reason is that companies often rush too quickly to adopt a solution, as well as not ensuring the technology provides proper flexibility and room for extensibility.
Not to be deterred, the Gartner study added that companies expect to invest more in 2025, with 8 in 10 CIOs saying they will be investing in cybersecurity, AI and GenAI, data analytics, or integration technologies.
Knowing companies are eager to invest wisely, CIOs, CXOs and CTOs will want to ensure their investments last. Extensibility technology enables this. An extensible solution continues to receive upgrades from the vendor partner, but it also empowers the company’s IT team to augment the solution and write its own code, while preserving data, models and technology inside the company’s platform.
It’s also worth noting that extensibility is often confused with configuration, but the benefit of an extensible solution is it allows a company to keep its data and proprietary processes inside its four walls and its technology systems. By comparison, configuration occurs when a vendor partner directly integrates a company’s data and technology into its solution and configures it to mimic a company’s internal language and business practices. Both processes work; configuration helps a company tailor a solution, but extensibility helps a company extend a platform.
To grow your extensibility strength across your IT portfolio, some key tenants to keep in mind are:
Robust APIs: Allows you to connect diverse systems to share data/functionality through future-proof standardized interfaces and augment solutions with in-house development tools.
Open Data Model And Data Science: One thing is certain: New data and new analytics will keep coming over your horizon. The speed at which you can adapt to new intelligence and emerging technologies will be your extensibility throttle governor.
Mature Workflow Backbone: How data, decisions and user operations flow to any system is paramount to its success. Extensible systems have a configuration workflow that can be tailored to fit your business environment, processes and constraints.
Fungible User Interfaces: Any given user interface has a limited lifespan and starts to become old as soon as you “drive it off the lot.” Extensible solutions spend great care to decouple user interfaces from data and workflow. This allows your business to reconstitute elements without disrupting core functionality, providing adaptable user experiences that evolve with the market and user.
CI/CD Process And Tooling: By embracing continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) engineering practices, your teams will lower costs and streamline engineering, increasing ease of rollout when extending solutions.
Extensibility Enables Innovation
For companies that embrace extensibility, there are clear benefits. As discussed, IT teams can keep data and proprietary technology under wraps. But they can also augment a solution so that it’s able to adapt to changing market needs through plug-ins, or they can swiftly add functionalities through analytic models, workflow engines and APIs to quickly adapt at scale.
For example, an e-commerce retailer can take advantage of customization, allowing users of its commerce platform to update micro-fulfillment, shipping and payment options as they become in vogue. Or a financial services company using an analytics-powered solution allows users of the content management system (CMS) to add in a GenAI marketing copy or video creation capability to reinvent the customer experience.
Extensibility, when done right, supports agile innovation that is not bogged down by slow software vendors or legacy technical debt. These solutions have a modular design and loosely coupled layers and change over time without the need for large-scale upgrades or code overhauls. This makes it possible to embrace the latest development technology and cloud services in one area of your application while keeping other components in a steady, stable state.
Looking Ahead
With a new year ahead, and new opportunities to engage digital consumers, excitement looms large for companies embarking on digital transformations or those who have to react quickly to fast-moving new competitors. Undoubtedly, advancements in AI and GenAI technologies are fueling interest, but companies also need to do their due diligence and invest in skills as well as data governance.
Having a unified data platform in place specifically will safeguard the extensibility of solutions and enable a company to grow with technology.