How to evaluate the quality of digital ecosystem — five basic features

At True Engineering, we have been making large IT-systems for major companies for over 15 years: S7 Airlines, Ingosstrakh, VSK, Leroy Merlin, and more. At the start of each new project, we ask the customer a question: "What do you expect from a high-quality digital ecosystem?" And as time has gone by, companies’ requirements for IT systems have changed over and over.

In this article, we will tell you how in 30 years Russia has gone from "special ledgers" to digital ecosystems, and on what grounds you can check your ecosystem’s quality or the project at its initial stage.

How requirements for digital ecosystems have changed

1990s

At that time, everyone unanimously voted for universal solutions which had been tested in peer companies. As they would say, you can't go wrong buying IBM.

A good IT-system simplifies the work employees have to do, and ideally automates it and helps reduce errors. Frankly, these processes have not changed a whole lot.

Let me show you an example. In the 90s, when we wanted to buy a plane ticket, we would go to an air ticket office. IT-systems have made it easier for a cashier to issue a ticket but the passenger has been left unaffected.

2000s

An IT-system or platform is considered to be good in the case that it is able to change processes. At that time, our customers expected it to be able to digitize the technology and business processes, and ideally the product itself.

Air ticket purchases in the 2000s went like this: you would go on a website, choose a flight, pre-calculate the service cost, print out your boarding pass, and go to the office just to pay for and register the ticket. At that point, sales going through a website were out of the question: there was no legislative framework or infrastructure, and people were not ready for that yet. But companies had already started thinking about such a thing.

2010s

Technology took another leap forward. Internet sales are everywhere or at least almost everywhere. Companies want to continuously change up their products, adapting to the latest consumer needs.

Today it would be hard to imagine a tourist printing out his reservation and going to an airline company's office to buy a ticket from Novosibirsk to Moscow. After all, it is easier and quicker to do that via the airline's website, mobile app, or Aviasales link. Seat selection, check-in, and additional options like additional luggage space can also be performed online.

In the 2010s, our customers expect that an IT-system, now a digital ecosystem, can help quickly adapt a product or service to the demands of the market without the consumer noticing.

The digital ecosystem of 2020

A modern digital ecosystem can be presented as a construction assembled out of different parts. These parts can be replaced quickly when necessary, providing the company with an easy time entering the market. It is easy to add new products or systems to a system like that. It quickly collects analytics and feedback and is able to transform flexibly.

For example, suppose an insurance company decides to tie the cost of comprehensive car insurance to driving performance. If you drive carefully, do not overtake, and do not cut anyone in, you get to pay less. In a high-quality digital system, it is easy to integrate everything you need to implement it and quickly start selling new products online, via a mobile app and a retail manager network.

The result is an ecosystem that helps companies release new products instantly or render existing products more flexible. It completely eliminates monotonous manual labor, as the processes are automated and online. All a person needs to do is make a decision.

The five basic features of a quality digital ecosystem

Regardless of the business sphere and the tasks specific to it, there are absolutely universal requirements that determine the quality of a digital ecosystem. In light of 15 years of experience, we have formulated five features that distinguish a good ecosystem from one that requires improvement.

1. The system is easy to implement or abandon in 5-10 years

​The first thing to think about when choosing a system is how you will abandon it. In IT, 10 years ago everyone wrote a plan for implementation without thinking about the cancellation plan. Now new tools and technologies keep cropping up. Therefore, sooner or later, you will have to update everything that used to seem completely immovable.

If you can easily and quickly implement the system and also easily abandon it, then it will integrate properly into your platform.

2. Flexibility: the ecosystem’s updating goes unnoticed by users

A good ecosystem changes easily without affecting the rest of the company's IT-infrastructure. This allows the company to quickly bring a new product to market: add to the digital platform, launch online sales, and immediately assess demand.

A quality digital ecosystem is easily maneuverable: in connecting current services and disabling outdated ones. In that case, it will work on a continuously, and users, be it customers or employees, will not feel the rocking of the boat.

3. Easy integration with other systems

At the outset, a good digital platform never requires the company's existing IT-systems to be tossed to the wayside or urgently replaced.

Only systems need to be radically updated that are impossible to integrate: this is a sign that they are outdated. Any compromise in this respect will become a ticking time bomb that will explode when you least expect it. It will not be a pleasant situation if an online store "goes under" on Black Friday due to the pressure of customers simply because a couple of months ago no one worked out its fault tolerance.

If the systems work well, the digital ecosystem is easily integrated and organically complements them. Just as easily, it becomes a source of information or takes this information independently from the existing systems.

4. Rapid notification of failure

Speed is of paramount importance. If the site dies, then the payment for the goods will not go through, or customers will be unable to connect to the system. You should know about the key issues as of the moment they appear, not when they reach the news.

A good digital ecosystem is equipped with monitoring and tech-support tools that help a problem to be quickly identified. An excellent digital ecosystem monitors the dynamics of key indicators and determines that an important process has failed based on a jump on the chart. In emergency cases, it proactively warns specialists about problems in their work and makes it convenient for you: via email, messenger, or push to phone. 

5. The digital ecosystem belongs to your company

The success of a digital transformation depends on who owns the property and intellectual rights to the systems and the algorithms they’re composed of.

Therefore, a good digital ecosystem is one that your company fully owns. This means that the solution is transferred to you as an intellectual property object and can be jotted on the balance sheet as an intangible asset. You have the source code and all the necessary documentation. Furthermore, your tech-support knows how to work with the digital ecosystem and is not afraid to roll up their sleeves.

Fast delivery of the updated product to the end user is a mandatory feature of the modern digital system's time to market. At the same time, the cost of developing the ecosystem should not affect the cost of the product. So feel free to reject conditions like: "We charge a penny per transaction," as it harms the scalability of the company in the long run.

Conclusion

What we do while we are creating a digital ecosystem is look into the future: what opportunities to incorporate for effective product development. Throughout the course of designing it, keep in mind that the system will be operating in the future, and the future is unpredictable. Your ecosystem should work for you right now and help you with said unpredictability tomorrow, or at least not interfere with your plans.