How to Architect a Digital Backend System

for Scaling a Business

Every one of your business systems has its own complexities, along with the added technical required know-how. What every Digital Backend Strategy needs elements of the following;

• Sales

The Business Model The sales cycle starts with a good business model that enables rapid expansion and ability to generate incremental revenue. While at present it’s not a significant area of concern, it will become critical over the coming years. For example, customer acquisition is not at the core of every business model. Likewise, the definition of “good business model” and “average” is not completely clear. There is no legal definition but in general, the following attributes are associated with a good business model.

• Governance

Designing the appropriate technologies to support your Digital Backend Strategy is one of the most important aspects of a business strategy. When discussing infrastructure, the most common and obvious place to start is with the software that backs up and manages your business. You may have separate plans for backup, archiving, disaster recovery, and vendor management, all of which come under the umbrella term 'governance'. A good place to start with building a strategy is by taking a look at your needs and identifying the specific use case that would benefit from the management of the infrastructure. Looking to the Data? The majority of the focus in this area should be on the data. This is the absolute lifeblood of your business.

• Review

Security Content management Administration Documentation Analytics Growing Content Management Content management is responsible for the conversion of digital information into actions and understanding of customer behaviors. To scale, you will need to implement a CMS, integration framework, content management strategy and content service. This may seem confusing but this is what you need to do to engage your business at scale. Source: digital backend strategy Governance Governance is just as important as the right technology to scale your business. You will need a governance system that provides consistent policies for every business activity and information.

• Growth Plan 

You should look at how to quickly grow your business, and how to integrate new systems easily. You should be considering and architecting a plan. If it is slow growth, a back-office of one or two systems might be sufficient. However, if you are growing quickly and looking to onboard hundreds of systems, then it is essential that you start planning now. Create the architecture for a service, such as building a public-facing customer support system, implementing an enterprise-wide CRM system, then deciding how the systems will connect, whether this is a VPN, P2P, Distributed ledgers or through API's. Governance One of the first steps is deciding where the organisation sits. Are you all up in Northern Ireland, UK or continental Europe, and do you have an HQ?

• Compliance

Governance Review Growth Plan Compliance and documentation associated with modern delivery require every role and department to be increasingly knowledgeable. Anything to do with Compliance and documentation needs an audit trail, making this a perennial area for automation and cognitive audit solutions to enforce procedures and understand processes in ways that streamline business operations. Governance The monitoring of compliance and reporting of relevant metrics is often important in a digital strategy, providing a platform for review and improvement. Digital governance reduces risk, minimizing any risk to a company’s reputation from non-compliant practices or compliance policies.

• Marketing

Selecting and obtaining a digital marketing platform could be the most exciting decision your business will ever make. What you decide to use can define how successful your business can be. After all, no one wants to spend money on technology that doesn’t yield any results. You’ll also want to consider what marketing tools you’re going to use and how you will position your marketing on different platforms. What services and channels will be the most effective for you? Sales Sizing Up Sales Processes and Systems One of the most important decisions you’ll make when choosing a Digital Backend System is how you’re going to use it. Will it be used for tracking key performance indicators, or will it be deployed as a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system?

• Brand

Is your business brand integrated with your digital back-end systems? Is the brand easily perceived and recognised by the users? Are you using the right brand colors in the digital world and is that something that you should be focused on? Is your content ready and how should it be displayed? Marketing What does a Marketing Campaign look like? When should a campaign start? How much content should it include? What channels should it use? How should the campaign be designed and delivered? How should you measure its performance? Governance What is the role of the Marketing Department and its tools? How does a Digital Marketing Plan need to integrate? Who should be a part of the process? Who should drive the process? How often should the plan be reviewed?

• Integrator considerations

Think in terms of server and database being available, online, and powerful enough to handle any task you want to throw at them. There should be redundant servers, more than one version of each if your system is dependent on some functionality. Think in terms of server and database being available, online, and powerful enough to handle any task you want to throw at them. There should be redundant servers, more than one version of each if your system is dependent on some functionality. Think about it — Redundancy doesn’t mean that there are two redundant systems sitting on your network. Use your cloud partners to increase your business resilience, scaleability and efficiency. think about it — Redundancy doesn’t mean that there are two redundant systems sitting on your network.

It’s always in the best interest of your company for your technology solutions to keep expanding and evolving with the same effort- and cost-efficient way. If you’re considering building an “all-in-one” backend system or infrastructure with custom modules that focus on one business function, here are some questions you should ask before diving in. How do you plan to integrate your new backend with your existing systems? Which APIs are you going to use? If you decide to use an off-the-shelf platform, does that take you away from offering customers more flexibility? Are you going to extend your services to other geographies? Do you plan on running a multi-region environment or will you just take the existing geographical footprint of your web applications?

Digital Backend Systems

It’s time to grow your business, to do so, you need the right technology, processes, software solutions and systems for your business back end. Designed with your needs, lifestyle, abilities, budget and goal aspirations. Setting up your Digital Online business infrastructure from scratch takes a lot of time and money, not to mention not knowing where to begin.

Building and maintaining a solid governant and compliant, backend infrastructure for your online business can be consuming, expensive and a daunting challenging task when you do not know where to begin. Building all the necessary growth backend systems to run your online business can be a long and burdensome process when you have no organised structure or process or fragmented software, plugins and software.

Building and maintaining a solid Digital Ecosystem backend infrastructure for your business can be a time-intensive task. With many SME’s choosing to outsource their backend build, compliance and governance and ecosystem strategy to 3rd party services or apply unfit-for-purpose building blocks with integrators and software that may lack in quality, support and compliance.

You are looking for;

• Structure

• Organisation

• Sustainability

• Compliant

• Efficiency

• Profitable Sales & Lead generating systems

We have created a flexible, simplified and practical backend framework, designed to grow the digital online systems such as;

• Digital Backend Systems

• Payment Gateways

• CRM’s

• Project Management

• Lead Generations

• Technology & Software solutions

• Integrators & Connectors

• Marketing

• Workflow and Processes Systems

• Operation Systems

• Automated Lead Generation Systems

• Eco-Systems

• Onboarding / Client Experience

The Digital Backend Strategy is a model that you can develop to meet the needs of a variety of customer organisations, of different sizes, operating in diverse business environments, and needing a variety of different solutions. Organisations need to embrace digital transformation, by building their digital backend to be able to meet the changes that are coming. You have just read an understanding of what that means for your business.

You may have tried tackling this project yourself by using (Saas) packages or using templates with no understanding of your business requirements or nuances etc – chances are it may not be a suitable fit to achieve growth. With over 22 years of experience building professional backend eco PMO backend platforms for global brands and businesses, I approach Technology and Systems with a technology, human-centric approach at the forefront.

You might have been able to get started but it almost certainly came with its own complexities. Our experience tells us that every business is different so we make sure we build tools and solution putting YOU at the forefront.

Helping to build the backend system infrastructure so that you can develop the ‘Frontend’ or customer-facing side of your business focusing on making great products or delivering your services, your focus. Working with you, or your teams with recommended and vetted referral partners who can build your solutions.

Providing systems and structure, so you can start building your business infrastructure backend systems and relieve systems overwhelm. Book a complimentary call here or review your options here.