The FODcast Season 5 | Episode 3 with Dom Selvon

Welcome to Episode 3, Season 5 of The FOD: The Future Of All Things Digital - the podcast designed to bring to you the latest hot topics and trending discussions across the wider world of eCommerce.

In this third episode we welcome seasoned technology leader, Dom Selvon, to the ongoing discussion on all things Composable. 

Dom has many decades of experience within the sector, working initially within management consultancy services and technology delivery, and then as a solutions architect and CTO for systems integrators.  

Currently the Global Chief Technology Officer of Apply Digital – a leading digital solutions agency, Dom has spent the best part of the last five years advising clients on the move to composable and has helped some of the world’s most recognised brands including, Moderna, Kraft Heinz, Lululemon, and The Very Group.  

An Executive Board Member of the MACH Alliance, Dom chats to us in detail about the importance of departmental collaboration, ensuring the IT/Tech department is part of the wider delivery team (and not viewed as a ‘supplier’) and why understanding the business vision is critical for all parties who embark on the journey to composable. 

Simply Commerce is the leading supplier of talent into digital commerce across technology, digital marketing, product, sales, and leadership.

Find our more about our approach and our services within digital commerce recruitment here: https://simply-commerce.co.uk/

Transcript

James 0:01

Welcome to the FOD, where we bring you insights into the future of digital commerce for free. Season five is all about the move to composable architecture, and while it's not a buzzword anymore, there are still a number of unanswered questions, which is why I'm speaking to those who have the answers. In return, if you enjoy our content, we ask you if you could like and share to spread the message far and wide. And here we are, episode three already. Today I welcome Dom Selvon, global CTO of Applied Digital. Dom brings a wealth of experience within commerce, having been in this space since the noughties. He spent the best part of the last five years advising customers on transitioning to a fully composable architecture, initially at E2X and now Applied Digital, who acquired the business in late 22. On top of this, Dom is also an executive board member of the Mac Alliance. Welcome, Dom. Great to have you today. Do you want to tell your audience a little bit more about yourself and Applied Digital?

SPEAKER_02 0:53

Yeah, thanks. Thanks, James. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me. Really uh like talking about this subject. Um looking forward to the conversation today. I think as you uh as we'll get into it, it's an important, almost a seminal shift in the way businesses do. Um businesses, particularly enterprise, complex enterprises. So uh I'll always happy to talk about it. I've been, as you say, I've been doing this for quite a while. Um commerce as a as a as a domain, as a theme, uh, probably 10, 12 years, maybe even longer, um, longer now. Uh, but I've been in this tech game for for a for a long time. I've seen transitions from the various different types of of doing software um from uh the old days in fact to where we are now with the uh the more modern architectures, and uh and uh taking that experience, taking that expertise is something I try to bring to my clients uh in a consultancy, consult consorted manner. In a consortium manner.

SPEAKER_00 1:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:48

So I mean we've been doing this for a good good bunch of um really really sort of high profile brands uh as well, um with with unique uh complexities within uh within them. So ranging from uh Games Workshop, which is which was about the look and the feel and and the internationalization aspects, through to um the very group, which is pure play, but has a wealth of diverse uh product catalogue that needs to um that needs to take the finance aspects into it, but also the uh the the catalogue in there as well. Um but yeah, no, we've been doing it for a while and and we like to think we're we're okay at it as well now.

James 2:25

Okay, and I imagine that the uh the uniqueness you just highlighted there is is probably one of the key reasons you advise customers to to go on that composable journey. Something that I understand anyway is the reason why a lot of brands decide to start the journey is and remove themselves from a monolith is because they have something unique about the business and that they can't uh present that to their customer um in the way they want to without having something unique about their technology stack as well.

SPEAKER_02 2:53

No, no, look, you know, we we we e2x um myself and and a bunch of other systems integrators have been have been building complex commerce applications for for a good long time. And we've been able to customize the um the monolithic applications to to meet these these these needs. So being able to realize the ambition, the the sort of vision of businesses, it's not something that's that's been impossible in the past. Absolutely not. The challenge that that businesses were finding was the operational overhead of that was was adding to their cost basis. So having to maintain an entire monolithic monolithic architecture, a monolithic application, so that you make one change for one small part of the business, you deploy the entire stack, was starting to get operationally over cumbersome. It was overburdening the IT departments, it was overburdening the uh the operational staff as well. So figuring out a way to try and isolate those operational aspects of the uh of the business so that there's a bit more flexibility in those areas that require more change, a bit more flexibility to the um the imaginations of the business uh as well, whereas the um the bits that don't require much imagination, often the back office side of things can stay stable. The bits that do require imagination, the experience layers, the front ends, they can change in different different paces. And you can't really do that very easily, even in a highly customized monolithic context, it's it's a bit it's a bit difficult to do that. So that's that's largely what precipitated this this transition to a more decomposed architecture. Certainly, you know, in the uh in the old days there was one application to rule them all, it did everything for you. Um, but as we started to to to realize that one application, you know, put that burden on the business, being able to decompose, being able to have niche applications, whether that's bought, whether that's built, being able to customize them and really tailor them to your business vision, just opened up so many doors for these enterprises. And that that's largely why people are starting to go this direction. They're seeing that that that green grass on the other side.

James 5:06

Yeah, well, we know that uh um, I mean, you would have seen many more than than I have, but uh going back to the the days of the the legacy monolith when it came to a point in which there was a uh an upgrade to be done or a migration, that was something that was obviously very time-consuming and very costly. Um, but also it then prevented innovation because all of the team is busy doing the upgrade and not working on any any any tweaks that could uh make the business slightly different. Would you say that was maybe the the sort of the pivotal point? Because I mean, we've been sort of looking at headless now for 10, maybe slightly more than 10 years. Uh, and in this, whilst we've kind of been doing the composable uh transition during that period of time as well, I would say in the last sort of five or so years, it's really had a pivotal moment where businesses have really felt actually we need to decompose the different areas as well, like maybe the PIM or the CMS or whatever it might be. What would you say is the has been the sort of the defining factor as to why that is? Is it the the cost on the business?

SPEAKER_02 6:11

Upgrades are a nightmare, and you get no business benefit other than maybe security patches and and and a couple of other, you know, very very very simple or not non-game-changing functional um additions for a quite a large outlay, you know, a typical ATG upgrade in you know five years ago, which is probably the last time I did an upgrade, okay, was taking upwards of six months, it's taking um a team of four or five engineers plus the uh the client um team to to testing user acceptance and so on and so forth, um, just to maintain the status quo. And you can imagine what that cost outlay was on on top of that.

James 6:57

Yeah, huge.

SPEAKER_02 6:58

It's not really tenable. In if you tried to pitch that to a business today in the in the challenging market conditions that we're that we're facing right now, you'd be left, you'd be left out of the room. And so the the the versioning aspect of or the non-versioned aspect of the uh the sort of modern Mac applications is something that's really quite compelling uh to to businesses. You know, you have to have a relatively uh mature operational um CI C D, you know, the the sort of uh engineering side of things, infrastructural side of things. You have to talk about a relatively mature approach to that to be able to tolerate the constantly changing back-end systems. But those back-end systems are built in such a way that it's non-breaking. So you might get new functionality available to you, but until you start to use it, it's not going to break your uh your systems in theory. Okay, but you need to make sure that you're you're you're tolerant to that sort of um really highly changeable environment within which we are within which you're working.

When it comes to digital maturity - what would you advise your customers when considering composable?

James 8:02

Something you touched upon there is you have to have a relatively mature uh business to be able to undertake this this transformation. And Joel, that's something that a number of guests spoke about in our last series. And in fact, one of the the um the ladies we had also, she actually highlighted that if she she felt that if the business wasn't digitally mature, maybe composable wasn't the right move for them. Now, you obviously have tens of these conversations every year with businesses of all shapes and sizes. Um, some will be digitally mature, others not so much. What what how what would you advise your customers um uh around that topic?

SPEAKER_02 8:42

Uh so the uh the business vision needs to be understood first. You can't go into this sort of uh paradigmic shift without understanding what your business does first. You can't say, okay, let's choose a um a Mac or a composable piece of software, plumb it into our systems and say, yay, we're composable. Because what you're gonna end up doing is aligning your business operations, so just to that piece of technology, and then that technology will then grow. And then what you'll um eventually end up with is what's you know, getting a bit of a bit of a bit of traction in the market, the term of a Mac uh a Mac monolith. So what so what you've got is the um the the sort of veneer of a Mac or a composable architecture, but actually all you've got is a monolith that's that's that's presenting itself with an API and has a couple of microservices and is it's basically headless. You can't do that if you if you start to understand what your business needs first, if you um really sort of decompose the uh the facets of your business, figure out how data flows um from A to B, from back office to consumer, uh figure out what you actually um what actually differentiates you as a business, and then start to then assign that to business capabilities. I think there's a there's a Gartner term called a package business capability, which is built on top of business capabilities. Understand those business capabilities first before you start thinking about your technology, then you'll be in a much better place to choose the right SaaS application or choose the right choice between a build and a buy decision, so that when you actually run your application in the future, your operational way of working as a business, your communication pathways and so on and so forth, aren't conflicting with the technology that's supporting it. Technology is a supporting tool, it's not the be all and end all of a of a of a business. And we do try and make businesses understand first and foremost that going on a composable journey means change. And that change needs to be as um as painless as you possibly can make it. And so you need to tailor that change in a transitional manner so that you can it's not a it's not a short shot, you know, ripping a blaster off pain, it's a slow transition to uh to to compose to a composable business in the future, and so that it's natural. And everyone's bought in on it.

James 11:17

The change topic there, I think, is uh is also a big aspect as well. And uh something I'm hearing about a lot in the market is is businesses are starting to go uh on the composable journey, and actually they're not really aware of the amount of change that that is required from the business and and just how many people in the business it impacts. You obviously have the the stakeholders and uh the the um uh uh project sponsors. Um, you also have um the actual individuals in the team as well from uh all aspects of the business, whether they're in marketing and finance, all of their applications are going to change. And you need to get that buy-in from every single person in the business, which um I know can be tough. Interestingly enough, I was actually at one of your events uh last year with um Paul from the very group, and he spoke about storytelling within the business and how he was able to, or I think it was him anyway, to bring the whole business on their journey of the composable transformation by repeating the same stories day in, day out, and making sure that the the uh the value was was understood as to what where it will come and and how it will look. Is that sort of I mean they're one of your clients, right? Is that is that similar advice that you would share to your to your to customers?

SPEAKER_02 12:30

Oh, absolutely, absolutely. And and we encourage uh businesses to establish a uh target, establish you know a north star, something, something that's um that that's easy to understand, not necessarily elevator pitch, but it's it's easy to understand the the direction that you want to go. And then what you can do is every decision that you make, every um choice that needs to be um analysed and and uh thought about, you look at it through the lens of that North Star. Is it going to take you closer to it, or is it gonna take you know backwards or away from it? And if it is going to take you backwards and away from it, what's the mitigating factors to try and bring you back on the journey towards it? And having that um understood, like Paul says, you know, making sure that you you you repeat the mantra, you repeat the story, you repeat the uh the the formula, everybody starts to think in that sort of manner. And it and you know, everybody has started to strive towards that that one singular uh that one singular goal. It might be single goal, it might be multiple goals, but it's it's a it's a target to be to be aimed for. Then everybody starts pulling in the same direction. You've not got um you know one one part of the business pulling over here, one part of the business pulling over there, which you'll naturally see in a siloed organization. You start to start to see a coherent, a consistent, homogeneous organization that that is that is uh that is working successfully towards that that goal. So, yeah, absolutely. You know, really, really drilling down on what makes a business tick will help you on this on this kind of journey. And then you touched on something as well, James, um the um the stakeholder aspect. Uh when often these sort of composable transitions, we're starting to see a change in this. So to take what I'm about to say with a bit of a pinch and salt, uh it is it is changing. But up until now, when these businesses are going on this composable journey, it's largely an engineering or an IT-driven initiative. Mostly because IT wants an easy life, they want to be able to have um scalability and flexibility and the ability to react to business change, things like that. So the composable architecture really lends itself well to that. Now, because it's an IT-driven organization, there's a some sometimes a difficulty in articulating the benefits that you're going to get in a business context with this sort of transition. And so being able to articulate the the benefits and having a sympathetic ear on the other side, business side, this this stakeholder that is going to be the evangelist for this change is massive is imperative. You can't do this sort of transition if it's engineering level without a stakeholder, a bought-in stakeholder who is evangelizing for this change. Paul is a perfect example of that. Someone who understands the direction of travel, who understands the the that that long-term horizon benefit that's going to happen once this is once this is uh um you know in full flight and is able to to um you know fight the corner of the of of of engineering, fight the corner of of of um the uh the the composable philosophy in the business as a whole. You know, engineers, I'm an engineer myself, you know, we we we're not uh we're not often the most articulate uh of individuals, we're not often the best at selling things. And the early stages of a transformative architectural shift such as this are painful. There's a hump that needs to be got over. You need to establish a lot of new processes, a lot of new operational workflows that may not have existed previously, that may be a little bit um you know intellectually different to what has been done in the past as well. And being able to market that hump as a good thing, you know, getting over that that's that that initial hump as a good thing because once you're over it, it's gonna be you know plain sailing, you know, but it's gonna be going to be relatively easy once you go over it. The hump is painful to get over, and you've got to have someone pushing for the the the the horizon of the future and saying this hump is just a bump in the road.

James 16:53

Do you find that uh having both sides of the business at stakeholder level aligned is is a challenge in some of the conversations that you're having? I I guess uh more often than not, that the technical side is is pushing for this, but actually the business side well, hang on a minute, this is going to require huge change. Do we need to be doing this? And there can often be a disagreement. How how do you see it playing out?

SPEAKER_02 17:20

Yeah, I mean the the the bit the the often the challenge that I've found in those situations is that IT is seen as a supplier to the business, and having it as a supplier to the business or technology as a supplier to the business means that there is a tension between the two that often results in compromise that shouldn't be there. The compromise shouldn't shouldn't be there. Once once you get engineering, once you get the uh the development team embedded within the business, you know, have have you know if it's a tribal approach or however you want to to establish the operating model, as soon as they're embedded within the team and they have a vested interest and an understanding, a holistic understanding of the business vision, then it's no longer a supplier-consumer relationship, it's actually a symbiotic relationship, it's one that's that's that both both going in the same direction, which which is obviously, you know, naturally it's going to be more productive.

James 18:25

Yeah, more cross productive.

SPEAKER_02 18:26

So that's one of the first things that we try to do when we go into a business. We try to understand the business vision first. That's first and foremost when we sort of talk to uh to others. We understand the business vision first. What do they want to actually achieve? What do they think they want? And then what does that equate to what they need? And then we start to look at their current architecture. We start to think about you know what components are resident within the enterprise estate as it stands at the moment, and start mapping those to this now decomposed business vision. So this piece of software realizes this part of the business vision. It also realizes this part of the business vision, but you know, that mapping is is is um is very important to understand how the communication works uh internally into the business, and also it helps us understand how we can then remap those communication pathways, remap the business capabilities to new technology, how we can start to transition some of the monolithic elements, strangulation patterns or whatever you want to use, to new, more modern, more niche software, you know, your commerce tools, your contemples, your town ones and things like that, that'll that'll allow us to uh to to slowly wean the business off the monolithic applications, get them more flexible, and and benefit of that is IT becomes part of the solution, not a supplier trying to fix random problems that are thrown in that direction, not understanding the context.

Should a client select a vendor first or a supplier/integrator? What advice would you give?

James 19:57

Yeah, I mean, you it it just makes sense, right? I mean the business being seen as one rather than IT as an external supplier. I mean, that sounds pretty crazy to be honest, but um sounds like it's something that you face on a on a fairly regular basis. Um, because whilst we're talking about how composable has grown over the last sort of 10 years or so, um, I guess if we take the Mac Alliance, uh, who have said, I guess, pioneered uh its development with its kind of development, and they've gone from uh single finger, single-figure members to over 100 in a couple of years. Um, that is obviously great, but also creates quite a bit of confusion, I'd imagine, for end customers. They've now gone from having a handful of CMS providers to having 10 CMS providers and equally with with PIMS and obviously all different areas in the ecosystem. Now, I would imagine from a from an end customer point of view, there is uh well, there's only a certain amount of time you can have um when it comes to deciding on what's what's its best review, and you can't speak to everybody. So if you had an end customer that uh asked you, should we pick our vendors first or should we pick our supplier our integrator first, what what would your response be to that?

SPEAKER_02 21:16

No. Okay, I'm gonna put I'm gonna put my I'm gonna take my apply hat on and put off and put my Mac my Mac hat on that. Because if I kept my apply hat on, the natural answer would be choose assistance and scriptors. And the reason why I wanted to take that that hat off is because I wanted to explain why I think that's a a good idea in a in a um in a non dogmatic fashion, okay, or a non-aligned fashion. So the if you choose a commerce platform first, or if you choose a content platform first, the and and you Start building on that immediately. The thing you'll find will happen is your data model and your workflow process will very, very rapidly evolve to follow that particular technology's opinion. Okay. Now many of these Mac applications are pretty niche and pretty sort of domain specific. So doing that is not a main a major problem in the grand scheme of things. It could be, but it's not a major problem. However, if you take a step back and understand the processes that make that that your business is um is used to, is um is established within the business, is working well and is is um is uh there's no friction. Understand those first and then look at the technology that can realize those processes, what you'll end up with is is not just one technology to dictate to your business. You'll have the technologies are supporting your business. And the only way you can really do that is either do an introspection exercise internally, look in look inwardly, um, figure out how it all fits together, decompose it, put it all back together, and then have an understanding internally, or get someone who's done it before to help you decompose and and and so on. Now, getting someone who's done it before to come in and help you, you'll get natural speed and you'll you'll you'll get natural acceleration uh off the back of that. You'll also get an opinion there as well. Okay, so that opinion, um the apply opinion or whoever's opinion will be tempered and will be seen through that that the lens of the the enterprise that they've worked with previously and the experience that they've got um with working with previous previous clients. So if you're a pure play um online retailer with a massive catalog, then apply, given the very group's experience, be a very, very good choice to understand how that all works. If um you're uh you're a uh I don't know, a uh a manufacturer or a D2C customer or someone like that, or maybe um uh finance, you know, something that's something that's a little bit outside of the apply wheelhouse, then maybe you know, going to apply, we could apply some some first principles uh to to decomposing the uh the business. But you know what, there might be better, more more um more experienced systems integrators out there, or or even a management consultancy. So long and short, very long answer to a very short question. I do I do firmly believe that you you need to get someone who has a consultancy mindset to analyze and figure out the ins and outs and the ways and working of your business before you decide on a technology. You can understand, you can decide on your your um macro domains of technology. Say we need a commerce platform, we need a content platform, we can we need we've got some some unique promotional aspects, so we need a promotions platform, uh, ratings and reviews is is very, very unique. So we might have to build that, yeah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Absolutely. But in you have to understand your business first before you choose the actual actual technology.

James 25:32

Okay, yeah, I I I uh I would would be inclined to agree, and I I feel as though uh speaking to leaders within the agency space over the last couple of months, it many have said similar, and you you should pick you should pick your it's kind of like a joint approach. You want to pick the agency that can advise you on the technology that's best for your business, but equally you you don't just want to go with an actually because they say you have to use this, they should be able to give you uh a variety of options as well. If they're just saying you need to use this, this, and this because we've done this before, well, it's like okay, well, that's that's relevant to said business over there, not directly relevant for us and what have you. So I've I guess my take for instance is you kind of want to do a bit of both, but uh yeah, I guess what it's it's it's a it's a tough one, though. And I guess every business and is unique and they have to look at it in a slightly slightly different way that suits suits their business. Um I guess it also depends on what are you trying to change. Are you looking to start a three-year transformation program and break down all of your components, or are you just looking to start with your CMS, for example? And if so, maybe that might be a slightly easier process to start analyzing three, four, or five vendors yourself and then bring an agency um and do it.

SPEAKER_02 26:49

Yeah, you've still got to you've got still got to understand why you think the CMS is the uh is is the the part of a business that needs to change. If all you're doing is replacing the CMS that already exists, then you'll maintain the status quo.

unknown 27:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:04

Really? That might be the right choice, but you need to go in there and be data-driven. You need to be fully understood, fully cognizant of the um the baseline from which you're working, so that if and when changes are made, you know that they're for the better.

What is the number one reason that Composable transformations fail?

James 27:19

Okay. I I guess I'm kind of making the assumption that they know that, but hey, Joe, well, that's probably not a good assumption to be making. And and uh yeah, you you can tell you've had a lot of these conversations because I'm sure you've uh dealt with similar situations. Um so I guess um that moves sort of uh nicely into sort of the the the one of the next questions, then which would be in your opinion, what is the uh the number one reason why composable transformations fail?

SPEAKER_02 27:46

Yeah it's a it's a good question, um James. It's it's a relatively nascent paradigm that the sort of composable architecture. We've been doing service-oriented architectures for many, many, many years. Um service orientation is not a new um, it's not a new concept in in the uh the realms of architecture and design and so on. But the the the concept of of SaaS platforms, the concept of um applications that that concentrate on one single um element of the uh the domain that needs to be fully integrated does uh lead rise to complexity, does lead rise to um various other um uh risks of of adopting this sort of a this sort of approach. You know, there's if you do choose technology first, then there's a risk of vendor lock-in, as I described, you know, you start to follow their opinions and their patterns. With more moving parts, with smaller uh granular components within the architecture, you're bringing rise to security concerns. You know, there's a larger surface area of attack, there's more vectors uh for attack, you know, there's more things exposed to the internet that have your data in and so on. So you've got to be a bit more security conscious. Performance is is an element that you have, you know, with the monolithic world, there's one network hop into the application, and everything else then is running either off disk or off memory, much faster than you know, hopping around a Kubernetes cluster or hopping around you know different cloud vendors, for example. So architecting for that is is not simple. There's there's loads of patterns that make that happen is not necessarily simple. Data consistency is something that you need to be aware of. You need to be really keenly aware of where your data sits at rest, who owns the data, you know, could it be the SaaS platform that owns the data? Could it be your backend systems that owns the data? How do you get data from one end one application to another application in a timely manner and in a consistent manner? You've got to be massively aware of all those sorts of aspects. Um, expertise is another area that you you you need to think about. You know, the these these technologies have nuance. These the the the cloud vendors, I mean, I looked at the um the drop-down menu of AWS recently, and it's over multiple pages of all the different services that are available from AWS, each of which could arguably you know feature in a a complex enterprise cloud-based application. And knowing each of those, knowing each of those when they go wrong, so when when when they go right, they're brilliant. When they go wrong and being able to diagnose them and figure out what's gone wrong and how to fix it, that lack that lack of expertise can really bring a business to its um to its knees. So that's important. And then one other area that's that's that's that's important. It's still not the single reason that that's the composable transformations fail. I'm getting to that. The um bear with me. But cultural resistance, cultural resistance is another area that's that that's that people don't quite realize is um a barrier for success for these composable transitions. You know, these businesses are often successful, they often want to take themselves to the next level. You know, they want to say, hey, look, we've made a a record year or whatever it whatever it means, but we need to now grow. Um and the the business is operationally set up for how they currently work. The individuals who are working in the business are comfortable. They they know their jobs, they know what's to do in these various different situations, and throwing in a complete paradigm shift onto their place, you know, it's a cognitive load that they don't really want to deal with. And so that cultural resistance is is a real is a real thing. You know, people may want, they may intellectually want to do get the benefits that are going to come off the back of this, but you know, we're naturally uh many people are naturally lazy people, they just want the easy life, they want to be able to do their job well and do it and how they know it, and and and throwing in change um because of a growth ambition off from the board or whoever is is sometimes met with resistance.

James 32:14

Yeah, we see that all the time. Particularly, particularly people that have been in company for a long time, they've been doing something the certain way for five, maybe more years, to then shift it is is tough, right?

SPEAKER_02 32:23

And those people will have to adapt to it or but the biggest reason that these composable transformations fail is a um a lack of understanding of the complexities involved. So remember I talked about earlier the um the hub that that needs to be uh needs to be um surmounted.

SPEAKER_00 32:43

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 32:44

Once if you if you understand that complexity, if you understand that there is a um uh point in time where you're you're thinking, is this the right thing for us to do? This is this is too hard, this is um it's slower than the old version. It's it's not feature as feature-rich as the older version. You know, we've got we're getting in comparison, we're getting so much little uh throughput compared to the uh the old version. Why are we wasting all this time on doing it? Often businesses say, okay, let's let's let's pull the plug on this. We're not we're not getting the benefits that we were promised, we're not getting the um the flexibility and the speed and the scalability and all these sort of um abilities that that were promised. Why are we wasting this the time, the the mental uh mental health, mental bandwidth of the of our engineers and of our product owners for for something that's worse? And not understanding that the that there is that hump to get over, not understanding that there is a um an operational change that that needs to happen is often one of the largest and most um prevalent reasons that I've seen these sort of transitions fail or stutter, at least.

What would be your no1 piece of advice to a customer who may be experiencing challenges mid-implementation, about why they should continue?

James 34:00

Yeah, and that would be echoed in many of my conversations as well, is how can the business start seeing ROI as fast as possible? Because if they go through a long period where they're not seeing any ROI, and like you said, people's roles are changing, they're becoming more complex, they're doing things that they weren't doing beforehand, they're maybe not enjoying them, and they can't see why they're doing it, then it's gonna create conversations and potentially problems. Um, so okay. Um prominent point to discuss, and like I said, it's it's something that uh has been echoed in in many, many a conversation, both from agency leaders like yourself as well as on the uh the end customer. Let's let's say you're in a conversation. Um I don't know, is I guess this situation is probably something you've had to deal with at some point over the last five years, and having a customer that's on the journey and they're maybe getting a little bit wobbly. They're thinking, okay, is this is this the right thing? Should we have done this? How are we getting on with it? What would be your your number one piece of advice to that customer that is at that point in their in their journey as to why they should continue?

SPEAKER_02 35:14

Yeah, we try to counsel um the our our clients um in a in a way that they don't end up in that um in that situation. You kind of um hit on it um uh earlier, the the the ROI, the quick ROI is is massively important to to businesses. So identifying elements of the business that can test the the operational changes that that are going to be uh coming in through this this composable shift, but are relatively small is important. So we've identified three different patterns that can be uh that can be used when you do this sort of transition. There's the um there's the functional, structural, or regional approaches. So the functional one is you choose a small function and top to bottom and um and and change and change that and make that a composable uh approach. So that could be, I don't know, the catalogue. It could be the product and the the product getting a product detail page up there too. Or it could be an add-to-basket function. That will touch on quite a few different aspects of the business. It'll um get a get a tangible thing out there for the business to see. Look, look, we're making a difference, we're getting this, that and the other. But analytics behind it, you can see oh, there's there's an uptick in people adding to basket in this approach than the old approach. You know, there's there's benefits from that one. The structural approach you take an aspect of the the experience, which could be the search, which could be I don't know, the um the the the the home page from the content perspective, and change that top to bottom from experience through to data. Again, it's a bit more, a bit larger, and it will take a bit longer, but the the the results is more impactful as well. So the business will be able to see the results. The third one, the regional approach, is is again much larger, take a long time, take a longer time to to to to build. It's uh we call it regional, but actually it could be microsite, it could be a small brand that has no financial impact on the customer, and but is a good way to um bottom out the operational changes that are required top to bottom throughout the um the the enterprise. The um the challenge with that one is is often you need to have parallel um people doing similar roles. So you need people who are you know maintaining the status quo and people who are doing the uh the new approach. So go back to that cultural resistance uh um area. You know, you've got people who are who are seeing the new shiny stuff and who are experiencing the new fun stuff, people who are still with the old world, you'll probably find individuals who will do that, but you might not have the staff count to be able to do that. So you've got to figure out and plan out which which approach is the right one for for you. The reason why we um cancel those different approaches to it is exactly this um the the um the hub problem, because what you're doing there is is uh as a risk mitigation exercise. You're making it so that the complexities that you're you're bringing into the enterprise, the enterprise estate, are minimized because the surface area that you're you're impacting, the business surface area you're impacting is small financially, functionally, you know, however you want to, whatever lens you want to put through it that's that's best for you as a business to consume, as a stakeholder and as uh to uh to um to to consume, that's what you're looking at it through. And so when it comes to the point where actually this is difficult, this is difficult, the impact on the business is low. And you're willing to push through and get over that hump.

James 39:07

I g I guess as well. And on top of how you would you'd break it down, you can also refer back to the storytelling element as well, and repeating the story as to why they're why they started this journey in the first place, right? And I think if you can break it down how you mentioned and start to show that ROI, but also remind them of why they embarked on the journey six months, nine months, however long ago, then it's again it goes back to just constantly repeating it. And I think as Paul said when I when I saw him, you you can't highlight, you can't say it too much. You almost want to know that story off by heart because you say it so often.

SPEAKER_02 39:42

Yeah, I think um we've we've we've name-drop Paul quite a butt quite a bit today, um, but he's a incredible individual. Um one of the other things that that he he does um say is is this concept of a driver and a navigator. And the um if you if you think about when you're on a long a long journey in somewhere you don't know, um but you've got someone beside you telling you where to go, you you feel more comfortable than if you've got a long journey, you don't know where to go, and you're trying to figure it out yourself. Okay, so this is why having that systems integrator who has done this before, who knows the pitfalls, who knows the uh the challenges and has had and has got out of them in the past, sitting next to you, guiding you, reading the map and saying this is where we need to go, and this is this is okay, we've seen this before, and we just need to go around these few bends and we'll be on plane sailing again. That comfort that that brings to a business really allows them to say, actually, you know, we're on the right path here, we're doing okay. It's tough right now, but we know that the that's that there's this light at the end of this this this tunnel, and that's massively important. That's one of the things that keeps these projects going well. If you have a partner that's unsure, that doesn't done it before, doesn't really know um what to do in various different situations, that discomfort exacerbates that hump, makes that hump so much bigger, and and you know, people don't get over it in those scenarios.

What are the top three things would you advise a customer on before starting their journey?

James 41:13

I've I've actually not heard that analogy before, but I I really like it and it it makes complete sense. So nice and thanks for sharing. Um, so moving on then to the uh the next question, Dom. Um, what are the top three things that you would advise any end customer to do before they start that journey? I'd imagine we may have touched upon some of these in the conversation so far, but let's give it a quick highlight, real.

SPEAKER_02 41:36

Yeah, no, you we we have. I think um the top three things that you do before starting your journey. First and foremost, as I've said a couple of times, is understand your business. Understand what makes your business unique, understand what's how you communicate within the business. So communication is often mirrored by the um the data flows within the business, it's often mirrored by the processes uh between the business. If you don't understand your business, then the technology um will just be a uh a frank contexture, it will be you know a mishmash of of software that's fighting to communicate with each other. But if you do understand your business, then you can you know be really intelligent in the way you build out your your software. Secondly, uh you need to prepare the business for change. And this is done through um storytelling is a great way of doing it, um, but also having the um having an evangelist we call um the change agents within the business, those individuals who have a senior enough position, not necessarily C level, but senior enough position who have influence both up and down the business. So they're they're they're often you know new, relatively new individuals into enterprises. They have uh they they have an enthusiasm uh for change, they have enthusiasm for growth, and they have a position that allows them to influence the um the senior stakeholders, um, but also bring the um engineers, the operational staff, all of those people on um the journey with them as well. Work with them to prepare the business for change, to make the business understand that this isn't the the composable way is different to the monolithic way. There's not one application to rule them all, there's many applications, all working in a beautiful ballet of technology to realize the business vision. But that means that there's communication change that's going to happen, there's process changes that's going to happen, there's data flow changes that's going to happen, and there's um you know, uh analytics that are gonna be needed to be able to identify problems. You're not gonna be able to um figure out uh what's On wrong just by looking at a single log file aggregates and so on. So that change is massively important, and the business needs to be fully cognizant of the fact that that is going to happen. And then third, um employ a consultancy or a systems integrator that's done it before to provide that navigation, to provide that guidance so that you're not just doing ease. I say that a little bit tongue-in-cheek, consultancy. But you know, I think it I think it is important. I do think it is.

James 44:32

I I think it's really important to use somebody that's done it before. Um, and that's why obviously the the next question is what it is, because uh for for me, the partner that you choose to help you along your journey is absolutely pivotal to to a successful transformation, and uh I think ultimately you want that partner to to be excellent problem solvers and be excellent that understanding your business because uh my understanding is that there is no composed two composable transformations that are the same. So actually, the the the partner that you choose, if they've done multiple of these for for different enterprises in different industry sectors, etc., then they're gonna come to the table with so much knowledge around how they can help you on challenges that they face and and and all sorts. Um and that that's kind of what you need. If you're if you're working with someone because they're cheap and they can they say they can do it, but actually, can they? Have they done it before? You probably set yourself up for a few problems.

SPEAKER_02 45:32

Um yeah, early days in the um the sort of composable evolution, um, we were we were losing business, and the um the the reasons that we were losing business was because the our competitors were demoing much better than we were. We um went to market on a uh on the fact that this is this is not easy, that the integrations are hard, that making things talk to each other behind the scenes well is what will set you up for success in the future. Our competitors went on a um uh uh through a lens of this looks good. You know, this looks pretty. This this is um in it's got your logos and things like that. It make it it's it's it's nice looking. And that that was more compelling. And but now a more savvy customer is actually realizing that there's many moving parts, so they need to talk to each other. Interoperability is a is going to be one of the biggest buzzwords in 24, uh I guarantee it, because you've got to have that seamless communication between the the systems, so you get the benefits of that monolith all all you know in one uh atomic um one atomic component, but the the further benefits of the flexibility and the the the sort of real best practice of the um the the the SAS applications doing what did they do best. And obviously we now do yeah the uh the the the prettiness as well better than than we did, uh but the uh the the savvy customer recognizes that it's actually the operational aspects that are the uh the the difficult bits.

What is the number one thing that you would advise an end customer to check before finalising an SI selection?

James 47:17

Okay, okay. So I I guess it I mean that naturally moves us on to uh to the next question. Like I said, this is my this is my favorite question actually for the reasons I just mentioned. But um what is the the number one thing that you would suggest any customer um you were sorry that you would advise any end customer to check uh before finalizing their their SI selection? One thing, I mean you it's probably due diligence to check, right?

SPEAKER_02 47:46

But yeah, well exactly you've got to do you've got to do the due diligence on on the um uh on the the systems integrator, but really you know you're looking for a mix of experience and of deep domain knowledge. Now that domain knowledge could be in the in your vertical, or that domain knowledge could be in the aspects of the business that you want to um to grow. Um content commerce, whatever that that looks like. But you really want a um a systems integrator that can take the the delivery aspects of a systems integrator and couple that with business change aspects that are inherited inherent, as we you know, for the reasons we've discussed already about it today, that that's that um you understand the consultancy aspects, understanding the business vision. So having a consultancy can do that can do the consultancy side of things and the delivery side of things, I think, is very important in this day and age. You you could uh argue that um why do you have uh why do you have um uh the uh the the composable vendors, the products, but you don't have composable systems integrators. You can't you you have to have a consistency across the board. You could get a niche um uh element of your business further down the um the delivery timeline, no problem with that. But to start off with, you need to have a consistency across across the board. You need to have a holistic understanding of what that North Star is going to look like, what that story is going to be, as said at the beginning. And so that you you then maintain a consistency, you maintain a thread through the the transition, um so that you don't go off pieced and and and go into pitfalls in the future. So domain knowledge and experience is what you put.

How do you see the next two years looking?

James 49:39

Perfect. It's interesting you mentioned about the composable approach to agencies as well, because we've had previous guests that have said um that that that should be something that customers should also consider as well, because there are agencies out there that that do have specialisms in really specific areas, and why would you not take that approach to it too? But equally, I do agree that you need you need an overarching business to sit there and take control of it that takes the business on the journey and then possibly utilizes some of the the uh the specialists beneath them. Yeah. Um Brill. Okay, so finally then, Dom, where uh does the market go from here then? How do you see the composable space evolving over the coming years?

SPEAKER_02 50:23

Wonderful crystal ball. Um don't worry, we're well no the the the the market is maturing. Um as you mentioned, the Mac Alliance is now 100 members strong, and the the brain trust that that has brought together is is is uh it's quite humbling, uh, actually, you know, seeing seeing the the very, very smart people being able to all contribute together in a uh in a a non-competitive environment is is is meaning that some of the uh the thought leadership that's coming out of the Mac Alliance is is um is it looked very, very good. We're looking, we're seeing um aspects of interoperability. So the standards that will come out of the Mac Alliance. There'll be some publications very, very early this year and and publications throughout the year that that'll change that'll change the game uh a lot uh as well. And then discoverability as well. You mentioned previously that you know we only had one content management system, now we've got 10. How do you decide between the two? The one of the main drivers behind the Mac Alliance was to take away that uh that that burden, that intellectual burden, the decision-making burden, and put it onto someone else. There's there's discoverability um work that's going on to maintain that um that that philosophy so you don't have to keep thinking you can just go and say, This is what my business needs to do, give me some give me some options and why they're good options.

SPEAKER_00 51:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 51:55

Bit uh bit uh diminit diminutive, but that that's exactly what we're trying to achieve there. And then I think secondly, we'll see acceleration becoming key. There's there's lots of moving parts, there's lots of opinions that's um and lots of ways to skin this the skin this cat. You know, you can have you know, you can just have content and commerce and get the majority of what you want to achieve in a in a uh an online transactional business, or you could have you know many, many, many, many SaaS platforms plus custom uh microservices in there as well that that realize your business vision. But that hump still needs to be got over at the beginning. So acceleration, getting people partially over that hump early doors is going to be very, very important to uh to businesses in the new year. They want the benefits of the monolith with the benefits of a composable architecture. And the easiest way to bridge that gap is through accelerators, it's through bootstrapping applications and so. We'll see systems integrators more and more providing those accelerators.

James 53:03

Yeah, well, we're seeing that we've also recently seen Commerce Tools provide uh accelerators between some of the other ISVs in the Mac Alliance as well. Is it is it Connect? Is that what I think it's called?

SPEAKER_02 53:13

Commerce Tools, Commerce Tools Connect is is a um it is good. We've we've built a few Commerce Commerce Tools Connect uh applications, uh particularly in the payment space and the um the customer's customer experience place um uh as well. And I think it's it's a good initiative um from Commerce Tools. It is a very good initiative from Commerce Tools.

James 53:33

From from an outsider's perspective like myself, it seems like if the process can be slightly less complex and slightly quicker, then that's gonna overcome the biggest challenge that the majority of businesses face, which is seeing ROI quickly and overcoming that hump that you mentioned. So hopefully that creates a win-win environment.

SPEAKER_02 53:52

It's a it's a beautiful tension between um not being dictated, not being dictated an opinion, but also accelerating the um the delivery of the application. You know, if you're if you're willing to um adhere to another application, another business's opinion, and your your let's just take an example, your commerce aspects are relatively simple. You know, it's literally adding to a basket and checking out, then you know what? Shopify might be the best choice. It might well be that you don't need to have the complexity uh in your business, all you need to focus on is the the selling, the product that you're selling. But if you do have any sort of custom customization ambitions, if you have any sort of uniqueness to the business, then decomposing and having a componentized approach, a modular approach is really where you want to be going.

James 54:45

We nearly made it through the whole episode about talking about Shopify. So close. Uh so close. We've not even mentioned AI yet. No, we haven't.

SPEAKER_02 54:55

We're like contractually obliged to mention AI and these sorts of things, but we've managed to get through it with that. So it's good.

James 55:01

There we go. There we go. Um, look, appreciate your time, Dom. It's been great. I guess this leads us nicely to the end of the episodes. Um, so yeah, thanks a lot for your time. Um, lots of great insight shared, of course. Um, also big emphasis on data from back office through to through to customer, and uh bigger emphasis on overcoming that hump and ensuring the business can see ROI as uh as fast as possible. I really enjoyed our chat and hopefully our listeners did too. Um as always, uh if you're tuning in and you find this useful um and you enjoy the content, please do like, share, subscribe, uh, and pass it across your network. Because if each episode can just help one person and one business make the right decision for the transformation, it's doing its job. Um thanks again, Dom.

SPEAKER_02 55:47

Thank you, James. Thanks for having me.