In the digital age, the success of a business no longer comes from the efforts of a single business, rather it rests upon the interconnectivity and cooperation within a business ecosystem, a network which can include suppliers, distributors, consumers, employees and other stakeholders. A business ecosystem affects and is affected by others, creating a constantly evolving relationship in which each entity must be flexible and adaptable in order to survive, as if it were a biological ecosystem.

“Success in the digital era will come from the connected and collaborative efforts of business ecosystems more than from the controlled efforts of individual companies. To stay competitive and relevant, companies need to transform their relationships with their various partners and providers to become highly functional ecosystems" -Vala Afshar

A solid, connective network of business stakeholders is absolutely critical to digital success. A poorly built fragmented network consequently can lead to:

• Communication problems with your partners, clients and suppliers because they don’t have a consolidated location to communicate and collaborate with each other easily. It’s imperative for organizations to have a structured and well-organized communication system that will distribute roles to users, access content that is relevant to them and will drive operational efficiency and increased productivity.
• Exacerbated siloed departments around the globe. If communication is already an area of weakness, then the effects of siloed teams will only be expounded. You may struggle to keep decentralized teams in sync with one another. But if business processes are synchronized, an enterprise can work as a united organism and obtain its preset business goals.
• Inefficiently distributed information between your stakeholders. As a result, a company will undergo massive problems with user management, social collaboration and delivering expected user experience. On top of that, this problem will exacerbate and grow at an exponential rate along with business growth. Closing the information gap with a web portal that provides developed collaboration ecosystem will let all the business participants exchange and see the right information in time, perform their tasks in a duly manner and achieve their goals. By presenting sought-after information, you will meet users’ expectations and enhance their experience that will drive both personalized purchases and employees’ engagement.

Ultimately if business partners and internal employees are not synchronized, then this can have drastic effects on customer experience and company perception.

Why Build a Connective Ecosystem?

Every business will have an array of very diverse internal and external stakeholders, which makes it difficult to connect and integrate all parties, with their own interests and goals, together. However, a strong ecosystem enables organizations to respond and thrive especially in an increasingly complicated digital world.

Is there a solution that will be an answer to all the challenges mentioned above and can lead to a much more desirable business outcome? Companies need a reliable system of interaction with customers, agents and other business stakeholders. Accomplish this with Liferay Digital Experience Platform (DXP) and its out-of-the-box customizable features for building effective portals.

Connecting Your Business with a Digital Experience Platform

A digital experience platform is software that provides enterprises with an architecture to digitize business operations, deliver connected customer experiences and gather actionable customer insight. Liferay DXP is a consolidated platform that empowers organizations with these capabilities in order to build digital solutions for audiences across an enterprise, including customers, partners and employees. These solutions can include websites, mobile apps, intranets and portals such as customer self-service or partner portals.

Building digital solutions with numerous business participants can involve complicated infrastructure and requires many resources on the part of a software vendor and a client. At Aimprosoft, we build solutions on Liferay DXP to overcome these challenges, including the ones mentioned earlier, to achieve a truly interconnected business ecosystem.

Organizations can benefit greatly from Liferay DXP’s host of built-in applications, called portlets, which includes Blogs, Forms, Workflows, Chats, etc., to create engaging and personalized portal solutions for their employees, partners, agents, customers and more. Portlets are valuable because they are ready-for-use on Liferay, economizing time and money for your business. They are also dynamic, meaning that they could be added to any page on-the-fly, further cutting down development time. Seamlessly integrate separate applications, themes and layouts into a single portal with the developed infrastructure of business participants.

Another benefit is that Liferay’s extremely granular roles and permissioning enables users to streamline business operations. You’ll be able to give different business stakeholders restricted access to certain information. That becomes possible with Liferay web portal capabilities for roles and permissions management, users management, pages and content and applications management.

Not only that, Liferay’s flexible architecture allows businesses to build and connect these solutions on one platform. Liferay is also flexible enough to be able to add on whatever future solutions you may have as your business and business ecosystem grow.

However, what stands out about Liferay DXP is the level of customization available. Many business owners expect that when dealing with out-of-the-box software solutions, portlet functionality is standardized and can not be customized to the needs of their partners or customers; however, Liferay portlets are designed to be flexible and customizable for your business. All of these features together set the foundation for what your business needs in order to build an integrated ecosystem that is tailored to your business needs.

Liferay DXP in Action

Let’s examine what these business ecosystems may look like in different industries, specifically telecommunications. Virtual1, a company that provides a network that connects wholesalers throughout the UK, wanted to quickly create a portal that could serve as an online hub. They turned to Aimprosoft to help launch their portal solution faster, without needing to create it from scratch. Thanks to the flexibility and customization of Liferay, the company was able to use the portal to attract potential partners to the site in the shortest time possible and boost their business growth.

From the inception of the portal, the orders for its services have multiplied approximately by 100 times. The company’s revenue has grown from £12.5 million in 2015 to £26.8 million in 2018 driven by the newly-integrated software systems, partners network and increased number of orders. Reseller partners are now able to compare quote results, order and monitor services in real time, through the portal, and as a result, been able to become competitive on the business arena and grow due to the connected business ecosystem. Furthermore, Liferay’s out-of-the-box functionality and portal features ensured the success of building and expanding this highly intelligent business ecosystem as Virtual1 continues to add new business stakeholders in.

Business ecosystems don’t get built up overnight. They require a long-term strategy and vision, the right technological tools and support from the entire company. Though it may get challenging, success in building a connective business ecosystem will be the difference between prospering and being left behind in the digital economy.