MAKING it through the pandemic years has been a roller coaster ride for most businesses. No less challenging is the current and immediate need to manage an unprecedented resurgence in market demand and the resulting revenue that is hitting the services economy right now.

This rapid reversal of economic pressures is stimulating a reconsideration of accepted business tactics and operations as leading organisations dedicate themselves to capturing new opportunities. For services organisations, particularly those operating in the technology sector, this has meant a hard look at traditional business models and setting themselves on a path toward continuous transformation — and nothing supports continuous transformation more completely than business systems standardisation and eliminating high-risk/low-reward technical integrations.

Is this the new normal?

Continuous transformation will be the key to enduring success because the wild ride that is the post-COVID-19 economy shows no signs of letting up. Conditions and processes that global organisations thought they had well in hand are now among the most likely to cause disruption: a shifting, increasingly hybrid labour market; fifty-year highs in inflation growth; supply chains that are abnormally fragile; and the ever-present risk of new pandemic variants that could throw everything back into chaos. While very real, these macro events are barely opening acts for the many sector-specific micro disruptions that are driving upheavals across the board.

With all this occurring around us, services-based businesses are coming to understand one thing: continuous disruption is the new normal. To succeed they must build infrastructure and systems to meet an infinitely shifting business environment, and dedicate themselves to mastering continuous transformation.

The ‘no integrations’ approach

Just as necessity is the mother of invention, disruption is the mother of innovation. Indeed, disruption provides not just threats, but opportunities for services-based businesses prepared to take up the gauntlet. And when an organisation can counter disruption with innovation, it finds itself in a state of transformation.

Salesforce founder Marc Benioff once said, “There should be no software.” That axiom has evolved over the years; today, many services-based businesses recognise that to meet the challenge of continuous transformation, “there should be no integrations”.

In practise this means bypassing multiple integrated platforms in favour of a single, adaptable technology backbone that enables iterative innovation to counter the endless onslaught of disruption. Such a holistic platform should deliver a combination of automation and intelligence through a single, connected, cloud-based solution that supports the creation of specialised outcomes.

Many chief information officers consider reducing the complexity of their systems, by standardising on a single platform with no integrations, to be one of their highest 2022 priorities. By bringing all their business systems together in a unified, cloud-based environment, they can reduce the distance and disconnects between tools and deliver fully synchronised solutions. A complete, unified platform — one that provides a seamless experience and enables information and processes to flow freely among everyone in the organisation — is the fundamental building block required to support continuous transformation.

Eliminating cost, risk, and uncertainty

A single platform enables an organisation to bring together processes and facilitates the free movement of information between departments and functions — powering a consistent, reliable, accurate experience delivered to customers.

Today’s leading organisations seek to eliminate bespoke applications and system customisations, not because they are expensive to build but because they are costly and risky to maintain over time. Driving toward standardisation provides a strong foundation for growing disciplines, such as customer success, to interact confidently — internally and externally. Ensuring organisation-wide data synchronisation is fundamental to winning the satisfaction of a discerning customer base.

With integrations rather than a platform-based standardisation between systems, organisations spend less on regression testing, reduce the risk of downtime, and create confidence that all team members are on the same page.

A seamless, customer-centric approach

As pioneers in the current era of continuous digital transformation, services-based businesses are leading the way in simplifying and standardising their business systems environment. In so doing, they’re redefining what it means to deliver services as a business.

Continuous transformation is the game’s name as market dynamics continue to shift and change. Eliminating integrations, which threaten the organisation’s capacity to operate across functional lines confidently, is a fundamental step to powering a transformation-enabled organisation. And instrumenting an organisation to confidently and competently handle continuous transformation opens the door to opportunities — and advantages.

In today’s troubled world, customers’ interactions must be fully in tune with each other. Services-based organisations are blazing the trail, responding to relentless disruption with continuous transformation through a’ no-integrations approach, and delivering customer experiences that ensure future success.