How Headless Systems Can Help Brands Move with Speed and Agility
by Jonathan Whiteside, Dept
Monolithic architecture is a thing of the past; we’re now in a headless future. Headless technology is quickly becoming the first choice for many organizations seeking to architect an agile and flexible technology stack.
And, given the events of 2020, brands are realizing they have to move quickly. The ability to respond to changing conditions, act rapidly on customer feedback, and swiftly bring digital solutions to market, will be critical for all brands in 2021 and beyond.
As new channels and platforms are developed, digital experiences continue to evolve, making it more difficult for some companies to stay afloat given the continuous stream of development. In order to keep up, brands need flexibility in their underlying technology platforms and business systems.
A headless approach to system architecture is quickly becoming the first choice for many organizations seeking to architect an agile and flexible technology stack. From commerce to content management, headless tech is enabling IT and marketing teams to deliver the digital experiences their business needs and their customers want, across multiple channels, quickly and easily.
Essentially, headless systems view the front-end and back-end as separate systems and focus on the back-end only. This means you can change one aspect without affecting the other; developers can create new websites or applications without being tied to any specific framework or language. A headless architecture can enable flexibility, reusability, and connect various data sources to support your business in the creation of new digital experiences.
Headless systems have numerous advantages, from lower operating costs to an easy setup:
Flexibility: multiple teams can interact with the system at the same time. Meaning your digital teams can each work on their tasks which are then connected via APIs. This gives each team full flexibility and can rapidly increase time-to-market.
Faster time-to-market: headless systems promote an agile way of working. Each team can work simultaneously on its tasks using one system without getting in each other’s way. Also, businesses can more easily and efficiently replace or upgrade various aspects of their existing infrastructure. This means the production process can be sped up and your website can undergo maintenance while still being online.
Stability: an established headless system will generally be well-tested, stable, and bug-free. It will save you the stress of writing a custom user interface for data input.
Of course, like all systems, headless approaches also have a few downsides that organizations should be aware of. For one, businesses need to make sure they understand how their teams work and what functionalities they need in order to make them as effective as possible.
Otherwise, they run the risk of choosing tools and systems that their teams won’t actually use, for whatever reason. Additionally, it can be tempting to slide into “system silos” where teams are not working together and data is not being shared. It’s important to pay attention and ensure that new business software can be easily integrated with others.
Flexibility and rapid time to market are critical for today’s challenges – long development cycles, upgrades and deployment times typical of monolithic platforms can no longer be tolerated. Moving to a headless approach for technology platforms is increasingly the answer to accelerate and enable IT and marketing teams to deliver the digital experiences their businesses need and their customers want, across multiple channels, quickly and easily.
Jonathan Whiteside, Dept