Digital Experience Platform: When configurability is key to advancing your business results

Before investing in software, companies need to be clear on what they want to achieve with it, and what types of solutions can best support their business needs. Knowing how a company will develop - i.e. what the processes and ways of working will be in the future - will also inform the choice of digital architectures.

Today, out-of-the-box solutions are available to support many processes. Still, some companies - by virtue of their size, processes or specific requirements - will not be able to solve their needs through ready-made software. They will need a different approach to digitalization. This is where configurability comes into play.

When off-the-shelf solutions are not enough

A configurable system is both flexible and scalable. Companies and organizations can adapt it to the needs that are typical for their business, work organization and industry. In some lines of business, configurability is not a nice addition, but a must have. It has a direct impact on the quality of operations and customer satisfaction.

What does configurability mean when it comes to our core product, Infosit Digital Experience Platform? First and foremost, it means that it can be adapted to specific business needs. It allows processes and work standards to be digitised in ways that maximally support the advanced (and often highly complex) marketing and sales goals.

In a competitive, fast-changing market, with large parts of business digitalised, software is expected to provide maximum efficiency and support. It is paramount that business needs are met. Over time, they tend to become more and more complex.

The more complex the business need, the more configurability it usually requires.

• A large hospitality business with dozens of hotels, campsites and resorts in multiple countries can have a complex, dynamic system of pricing tied with accommodation units, special offers and loyalty programs. Presenting and selling accommodation in campsites is different from presenting and selling hotel rooms. There can be specific work processes related to price lists, with frequent changes and the need to display it across digital channels in real time, in multiple languages. That level of detail is nearly impossible to recreate in standard, off-the-shelf software.
• A storage rental company operating hundreds of facilities in different locations can have storage units of different types, and highly specific requirements in the rental, purchase and marketing operations.
• A professional national-level association can have hundreds of local and regional instances under the national one. It can have requirements for a unified look and feel, while enabling each of the participating entity for creating and publishing their own content.

There are many other examples like these. Infosit DXP adapts to these requirements quickly and efficiently, drawing from two decades of experience in digitalising these types of workflows. Adaptation can be anything from adding a promo code into your sales process to introducing dynamic pricing, specific cancellation procedures, specific steps involved in delivering on business proposals etc.

A structural feature, to fuel your growth

Configurability is one of the main structural features of Infosit DXP. It is organized into entities and properties, with the flexibility around adding properties to entities. For example, a company using Infosit DXP can have multiple organizations within the same CMS; each can have entities with different behavior, properties, appearance, editing method, order etc.

Simply put, the very structure of Infosit DXP enables us to translate business process from the real world into the digital sphere in an elegant, fast and efficient way. By doing that, we are in fact providing a structure (data model) for maintaining and supporting the business process.

And by connecting it with external services via API, we can pass it where it needs to go. Examples of data models include:

• Storage facilities
• Accommodation units and structures
• Offers and invoices
• Payments

A configurable system changes and grows along with the needs of the company that uses it.

If there is capacity that the company needed when it was smaller, it can stop using it when it no longer needs it. If there is a new capability you need to add to your stack, it can be integrated into the existing platform. Because it is the platform your employees already know, getting up to speed will be faster.

Technology and architecture for high configurability

At Infosit, we firmly believe that digital should respond to business needs. So we created an architecture that supports the growing business needs and is constantly upgraded via new technologies.

Infosit constantly improves the DXP, especially in the areas of security, stability, flexibility and speed. In the last year alone, we improved the speed of content delivery by 70%. We will never compromise on security and stability, as we introduce new technologies.

When configuring Infosit DXP, we first look at the client's needs. Usually the need for configuration arises when the company wants to adapt to a business change, when a new business need or process needs to go digital, or when a 3rd party integration has been chosen to improve a specific area of operation.

Whatever the reason, defining and understanding the client’s need is always our first step. We seek to understand our clients’ business deeply - what does the change bring, how will it affect the existing setup? When we understand that, we can propose solutions. Understanding the need is the most important step, because the DXP configuration for a company depends on the company’s end goals.

The process of digitizing business needs is a reflection of the way Infosit operates as a company, focusing on quality and long-term relationships.

The synergy of business and digital

While it’s important for businesses to have a good understanding of what digital can bring them, we expect our employees to understand business needs, too. Without an in-depth understanding, we believe that digitization cannot succeed entirely.

Using our experience and understanding, we have created predefined data models that respond to particular business needs. An example of this is the SEO module. Like any other module, it is a set of entities and properties. Instead of developing it for each client from scratch, we rely on previous expertise when first configuring it for a client, making sure it will meet all the needs of search engines. Same goes for the gallery and other modules - they can be added to the system easily, while allowing further configuration if the business needs it.

In addition to high configurability which adds flexibility to businesses, we work towards improving the speed as well. Oftentimes, greater results in business are achieved due to greater speed. Predefined, configurable modules enable us to do exactly that for our clients.