Discover why customer journey analysis is crucial to mapping out an integration architecture that crosses organizational and company boundaries.

1. Why the Customer Journey is critical to your
Integration Architecture.
By Anthony DeLima, August 24, 2017
Not surprisingly more than half of the world's population is online, more than a third are
connected to social networks and close to 60% are mobile. Users and digital stakeholders span
all age groups, races, company types, geographies and income levels. All of this continues to
ignite an estimated $ 3 trillion technology ecosystem that includes infrastructure solutions,
mobile devices, new integration platforms, continually evolving channels, new products and
services and unlimited content.
If you had any doubt about the disruption of old industries, how brand loyalty is established or
how companies are racing to figure out how to expose critical business assets and services to
create digital value, then just dig into Amazon's strategy.
Also, not surprisingly, creating and delivering digital value now rests on a vast ecosystem of
Web application programming interfaces (API) that enable the connection of any device to any
service, and any service to any data asset in a complex economic value chain.

2. "Web APIs enable the development of mash-up applications,
that serve data and services to Web and mobile users."
Creating and monetizing market facing APIs (i.e., RESTful, traditional SOAP-based and others)
continues to create traction as businesses realize that leveraging their data and services across
corporate boundaries is a "must do" in order to preserve their existence and create new
revenue streams. For example; Expedia generates more than $8 billion of revenue a year
through its API-powered affiliate network. PayPal processed over $99 billion in total payment
value (TPV) via its API-enabled business network ($31 billion TPV from mobile, up 53%).
The ultimate goal is to use APIs to expose information resources through multiple channels
including; Web, mobile, IoT devices, and a new generation of partner applications and services
that dynamically engage with customers by leveraging advanced behavior analytics and
machine learning.
However, increasingly companies face the
stark reality that guaranteeing acceptable
API performance, availability, reliability,
and security, is a huge challenge. This is
especially the case when the business is on
a fast track to creating new digital value or
pushing to become a critical actor in an
industry's value-chain (i.e. Financial
Services). Aside from delivering poor
performing applications that fail to meet
customer expectations, other challenges
can include integration patterns that do
not match business aspirations, security
risks, and inconsistent adoption of base
development standards just to name a
few.
Understanding the Customer Journey.
At the heart of the problem is the fact that companies continue to struggle to establish a
unified view of their digital aspirations. Either the business is unable to clearly articulate
customer demands, is frustrated with the Tech team's ability to rapidly and consistently deliver,
or the Tech team feels they are unable to make a valuable contribution in helping the business
to think through various business strategies.
"Integrating internal systems, third party Cloud solutions, customer systems and social networks
requires a clear view and agreement on the company's digital aspirations."

3. Ultimately, defining digital aspirations is not a business problem to be solved nor is it a
technology capability awaiting to be developed. Rather it is the end result of a clearly
articulated and compelling ambition to continually transform the business by bringing together
the collective thought and perspective of all stakeholders (customers, line of business owners,
partners, and technology leadership) as to how best to service the customer's needs and wants
through a digital channel.
To address these challenges, companies are rapidly assembling cross functional teams that
include external stakeholders (customers and partners), key business representatives and Tech
team members who collectively define long-term planning horizons that go much further than
envisioning a tactical digital experience. A great first step is developing comprehensive
customer journey maps that explore the viability of proposed digital solutions.
Customer journey mapping is not
new and has helped in plotting
and understanding the entire
customer engagement cycle
from how customers connect
with the brand, to how products
and services are delivered. The
process is invaluable in gaining insight to customer interactions by service and persona at
various interaction points. The process is also crucial in defining long-term roadmaps for
products and services as well as the viability of a company's operating processes and
technology ecosystem.
Understanding the interaction between customers, partners and internal stakeholders at the
business process execution level, can also drive critical thinking and decision making around
operational improvement, structure, culture, required competency and technology architecture
strategy and tactics. It's a crucial tool to helping business and technology teams to collaborate
in thinking through the art of the possible as well as mapping out a suitable integration
architecture that crosses organizational and company boundaries.
Managing the API ecosystem
Ultimately, most digital solutions require an integration platform layer (i.e., iPaaS), an API
ecosystem and other solutions that interconnect internal and third-party systems and platforms
- they enable critical company assets and services to be exposed, thereby creating new
customer value. Too, it allows developers and partners to access critical company assets and
services to develop innovative solutions.
However, an API ecosystem without proper management controls can pose various business
risks and challenges including performance issues, security vulnerabilities and major system
failures.

4. "Implementing a comprehensive API lifecycle management strategy that addresses design,
development, publishing, access control, monitoring, scaling, and analytics is key in achieving
digital aspirations that are highly dependent on cross-platform integration."
Aside from establishing an overall API management strategy, identifying and implementing an
API Gateway platform is crucial in ensuring application performance and scalability. API
gateways provide a much-needed mediation layer between internal systems and external
integration end points. API gateways enable applications to invoke services that run anywhere
(i.e., Cloud, Mobile) - they provide centralized management of API changes, traffic, deployment,
policy enforcement, security, performance management and error handling. Having a solid API
Gateway strategy as well as clear rules governing this tier is fundamental to creating cross-
platform solutions and ensuring reliable processing of all API calls.

5. Key Takeaways
Envisioning new digital solutions and speeding these to market requires much more than
developing a cool website or Mobile App. It requires a comprehensive approach to uncovering
real customer needs and wants and creating a blueprint for how to deliver these capabilities.
The key takeaways include:
• More than ever, there is a growing need to bring together Tech teams who are
developing "cool stuff" based on assumptions about what digital solutions should look
like and business stakeholders who rightfully continue to reinvent a company's value
proposition in a continuously shifting and morphing digital marketplace. The latter can
be challenging as organizations are faced with having to leverage decades of
investments in people, process and technology to deliver well defined business solutions
versus creating new ones that typically cause significant organizational disruption.
• Customer journey mapping is a crucial first step in uncovering integration challenges
and impacts to a company's structure, governance model and underlying operating
processes,
• API management is key in ensuring a company's digital aspirations can be executed and
that delivered solutions meet and exceed performance expectations. It's also a key
aspect of ensuring the long-term viability of APIs and the overall integration ecosystem.
Aside from addressing fundamental customer journey needs and establishing a suitable
integration and API architecture, too often, basic use case modeling, systems sequence
mapping and performance modeling techniques are pushed aside in the name of Agile
development. The results can be devastating as systems under perform, are costlier to develop
and maintain, or create huge security risks. Companies should invest wisely in their people to
fine tune these skills. It's a critical competency that has to be in place in order to successfully
think through and engineer the "art of the possible."