Enterprise platforms: strategy for scale and innovation

At Capital One, building and maintaining enterprise scale platforms is foundational to how we operate. Driving convergence to enterprise platforms has enabled us to innovate quickly and at scale, while ensuring we remain well-managed. We believe these platforms are the shoulders that our technology investments stand on.

But what is a platform? In my world, it is a logical collection of capabilities that teams can use to create a powerful ecosystem by building upon it, contributing to it and scaling other applications to extend its functionality.

In our multi-year platform journey, we’ve prioritized assessing platforms built over time by various teams, aligning on the target enterprise platform and intentionally planning convergence to the designated platform. What’s evident, is that the approach and experience of platform convergence is not one size fits all. With every convergence initiative comes a unique set of obstacles and learnings.

When developed effectively and managed efficiently, enterprise platforms can be tremendous productivity and innovation boosters. They offer foundational capabilities at scale and enable speed to market for innovative, intelligent and meaningful customer experiences. I’ve had the privilege of leading teams that build and manage enterprise platforms in the customer servicing space, while also partnering with several Lines of Business on convergence initiatives—and I’ve seen the impact firsthand.

Here are a few lessons we’ve learned together to truly maximize the value that comes from leveraging enterprise-scale platforms.

It’s essential for platform users to identify their current platform stack, use cases, support costs, platform convergence options and gap-fit analysis. Lines of Business know what they have and what they need. Research and analysis is necessary to understand what’s available before embarking on a potentially duplicative effort. This is where leveraging subject matter experts, the Distinguished Engineer community and engaging in Architecture/Community of Practice forums helps provide a comprehensive view of the broader tech landscape.

Once an approach on platform development and convergence is identified, prioritization and support from Product, Technology and Operations across all involved Lines of Business is crucial. Identifying business value and desired customer outcomes includes clearly articulating: 

• Who are the key stakeholders and what are their specific needs?

• What strategic business objectives does the platform support and what is the roadmap? How will it contribute to revenue growth, cost reduction or other goals?

• What problem are we solving for the customer? How will converging on this platform improve their experience, efficiency or access to services?

• What are the key performance indicators (KPIs) that will measure success?

It’s vital for both platform owners and tenants to engage closely with their finance partners, take budget cycles into account and align on a funding framework to achieve key efficiencies, guarantee sustainability and support future platform growth, while ensuring equitable cost allocation.

A SRM specifies ownership of key responsibilities and risk ownership between platforms and tenants, and is fundamental to maintaining clarity on roles and responsibilities. Establishing a SRM requires first identifying the type of platform (PaaS or SaaS) and having a common understanding of a tenant within that corresponding context:

• Platform as a Service (PaaS): Tenants use the PaaS to build and operate their capabilities. The platform serves as a deployment target, allowing tenants to host and execute their code.

• Software as a Service (SaaS): Tenants use the capabilities of the SaaS to support their business or infrastructure functionality. The platform offers APIs that allow tenants to configure their specific use cases, rather than providing a direct deployment target.

The SRM must be comprehensive and consist of several categories including: Development & Testing, Innersourcing, Deployment & Release Management, Infrastructure Management, Observability, Resiliency, Cybersecurity, Risk Management & Compliance, Change & Incident Management and more.

While platform owners have a core responsibility to ensure that all aspects of the platform are well managed and secure, tenants also have a defined role to play in adhering to what they are responsible for.

Platform convergence demands time, meticulous planning and careful implementation across teams. Identifying key milestones and outcomes to be achieved help ensure that the work can be prioritized and sequenced accordingly. Some considerations for timing may include license renewals, hardware and software end-of-support dates and new scaling requirements to support a high priority initiative, to name a few. Through all this, a robust communications strategy, including active relationship building and stakeholder management, is vital during the convergence timeframe.

Sustainable platform management requires ongoing clarity, commitment and investment by platform owners and tenants.

• To consistently deliver core value, platform owners must keep up with technology advances, actively engage with customers to understand and anticipate their needs and continually evolve their platforms. 

• For optimal sustainability and growth, a robust self-service offering and contribution model is paramount and should be well accounted for in the platform roadmap.

• Above all, platform owners must strive to ensure timely ongoing communication with their stakeholders, and exercise thoughtful change management to minimize disruption.

Beyond any tactical best practices, recognizing the hard work of both tenants and platform owners on platform convergence is essential. Celebrating tenant achievements in leveraging the platform reinforces its utility and encourages further engagement. Equally critical to the platform's success is acknowledging the expertise, dedication and problem-solving skills of the platform-owning teams, who are responsible for its development and ongoing evolution. Sharing success stories and highlighting the teams involved will help to inspire others. This recognition will elevate visibility to the value created for tenants and the broader impact of the platform convergence work.

Celebrating successes not only boosts morale but also reinforces positive behaviors, encourages continuous improvement and strengthens the partnership between platform providers and their users. For long-term platform adoption and evolution, fostering a culture of appreciation and collaboration is essential.

Building enterprise platforms is an ongoing journey of convergence, alignment and learning. At Capital One we have seen firsthand how investment models, shared responsibility and cultural recognition help platforms thrive at scale. Our experience shows that when teams build with intention, enterprise platforms become more than infrastructure. They become a foundation for innovation.