How to Develop a Business-Technology Ecosystem

10 Ways to Build a Business-Tech Ecosystem

CIOs need to be open-minded about partnerships. Find out how to redefine your tech universe to take advantage of external innovation.

In working closely with the c-suite to align IT with the business, find out which emerging technologies will disrupt the marketplace, determine sources of future value and develop the means to capture them.

Whether dealing with customer sourcing, product distribution or payment solutions, the future will depend on optimal interactions with partners to cover a broad range of IT-driven functions.

When making internal IT system components available as a service to external parties, be sure they function in real time, with partners accessing apps on an as-needed basis.

When opening up internal systems, you’re also helping your business users plug into external capabilities by, for example, integrating a third-party point-of-sale app into your internal payment system or adding an outside chat function to your website.

All these bidirectional efforts require a next-generation integration architecture. Your data management catalog, for instance, will need to accommodate third-party data, with governance in place for data cleansing, rationalization and standardization.

Cyber-security policies and oversight must extend to third-party partners and vendors. Your organization and its partners also must address legal questions about intellectual property, liability, profit-sharing, etc., so engagement in your ecosystem doesn’t hinder benefits.

Encourage IT staffers to play with new tech in dedicated sandlots to ensure that these technologies can work at scale, and so they can be brought on board as soon as their value is proven.

By transparently integrating all your organization’s services, you can address customer pain points in a more consistent, unified manner, while also making services more appealing.

By enabling users to interact with each other socially through Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, etc., you create the opportunity for as many positive customer exchanges as possible.

A broad ecosystem isn’t about hanging on to IT. Protecting systems to the point of diminished engagement defeats the purpose. Bulletproof systems are out. New app and platform deployments launched within days (instead of months) are in.