Like the last article, this is one way to look at things, and has been a useful way to introduce IT stakeholders to what these kind of initiatives mean for them. It's based on the commonly accepted (common sense) of the Gartner pace layering principles for application architecture, essentially enabling customer centricity through the use of digital API or robotic-enabled channels, (almost) irrespective of the state of the underlying systems of record.
Fundamentally, Systems of Record applications need to be able to handle data requests from modern Systems of Engagement applications. Customer Experience is the driver of tech – not the converse.
Systems of Engagement : This layer provides the flexibility to meet rapidly changing requirements and delivery of seamless journeys across channels. Transactional data collected is crucial for ongoing control of policy, regulatory adherence and analytics to tune customer journeys and propositions.
Middleware : Services providing ‘legacy’ data to the engagement layer and vice versa; enabling 3rd party and white label integration. These solutions boosts capability and apply contemporary standards to deliver required enterprise-grade flexibility.
Here its usual to see the promotion of standards to simplify integration with industry networks... and potentially new services such as Distributed Ledger initiatives (Blockchain).
Systems of Record : This layer holds the core policy, case or customer information. This is usually the area of largest support cost (especially with a legacy environment) and a headache for CIOs. Here an investment in data and analytics, and / or in application discovery and monitoring software can proactively identify issues and improve data quality.
Systems of Understanding : Extract insight for reporting and direct feedback loop into process flow, informing next best actions.
As ever, this is just a starter view and inevitably the picture gets more complicated when you delve into it. Always fun!