Technology drives everything that we do at ISACA – whether that is powering members’ pursuit of a career-changing certification, providing an array of flexible virtual learning opportunities, offering support and resources for our global chapters – the list goes on.
That means for ISACA to deliver on everything we want to do, we need a top-notch digital platform. The five key pillars of a successful digital platform are the establishment of an accountability framework, shared customer insights, a mature operational backbone, the actual digital platform and an external developer interface.
The ISACA Application Development team is supporting the creation and implementation of ISACA’s new digital platform. The key concept to understand is that ISACA’s digital platform is more than just software and hardware.
Let’s tackle each of the aforementioned five pillars and explore how ISACA is meeting our mandate of creating a modern digital platform that will best meet members and customers’ needs.
The first pillar is an accountability framework – in essence, this is the establishment of a concise RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed) matrix that defines which team and individuals within a team have the capabilities and responsibility to make decisions, authorize expenditures and direct resources. This policy also provides the framework for how teams work together and establishes clear operational practices that are adopted globally within ISACA. This is the ISACA operational playbook that defines how we do our work.
The second pillar is the establishment of shared customer insights. Over the past 18 months, ISACA has added capability and capacity to establish a deep understanding of our customers and how we can better serve them through technology. ISACA has a mature research department that provides deep qualitative insight into our members’ wants and needs. However, we did not have deep capability to perform the same research on our technology. To close that gap, a UX (User Experience) team was hired. The UX teams mandate is to help our product teams understand the qualitative technical wants, needs and customer insights, and turn that data into actionable recommendations for future digital platform enhancements, new product features or entirely new products. The final piece of establishing shared customer insights is the implementation of the Google 360 platform, currently underway by the IT and marketing teams. The Google 360 platform will provide a deep well of quantitative data that can be aligned to our qualitative data sources to provide a more complete representation of our users and members. This whole data set provides our product teams with the ability to specifically target initiatives that will provide ISACA, our members, and our users the best return on investment – money, time, people. Once this capability is matured, the product team will realize significant efficiency in meeting our members and users where they are in their ISACA journey.
The third pillar is the establishment of a mature operational backbone. This is the aspect of ISACA’s digital platform that is most mature. The modernization of the ISACA Customer Experience Center (CEC), the use of platforms such as Service Cloud and Jira, and the addition of a Tier 3 technical support team means that we have established clear governance and operational efficiency within this space. While ISACA is still iterating and building capability in this area, we are well beyond where we were a year ago. The operational backbone is going to carry a heavy load for ISACA as the digital platform transformation continues to completion. As we replace legacy systems with our new digital platform, the operational backbone will support our members and users through the churn of ongoing innovation.
The fourth pillar is the hardware and software being purchased, developed or acquired via partnership that will comprise our digital platform. Rather than list specific technologies, we are going to delve into the application engineering pattern being adopted for the digital platform – hub and spoke. The hub is the system of record – it contains the master data set, acts as central message processor for connected applications and serves as the security and authentication processor for all connected applications. In short, everything that will occur on ISACA’s digital platform will flow through our Hub. Spokes are internally developed applications such as the Nexus, the CMMI Cybermaturity Platform or the CMMI appraisal system. Spokes can also be integrations such as BenchPrep, RedShelp, On24 or PSI. Regardless of the type of spoke, each one must connect to the hub for member and user authentication, and member and user data. This powerful pattern allows for a centralization of member and user data, as well as a single user security management application that facilitates Single Sign On (SSO). The power of this pattern is that all data generated from spokes is passed to the central hub and is then made available to all other spokes as needed. The member benefit from this pattern is that all spokes can operate in tandem to create a homogenous user experience – no more logging in to different websites or apps that don’t look or work the same. Finally, the pattern creates a data lake of information that can be utilized and extended to support an infinite number of new spokes, representing new features or systems our product team envisions to support the wants and needs of our members and users.
The final pillar is the development of an external developer interface, or API. This is a specialized spoke – one that allows future partners to digitally connect to our data lake. This is the pillar that is the furthest from completion. ISACA will not likely have an operational, external API until at least late 2022. The benefit of this type of specialized spoke is that it will allow our product and partnership teams to sell our services digitally via direct connection.
As you can see, ISACA’s digital platform is far more than hardware and software – it’s people, processes, and culture all advancing and evolving to help us surpass our members’ expectations for top-notch technology, service and membership.
Editor’s note: Find out more about ISACA’s ongoing digital transformation here.
