Salesforce and IBM partner to bring the OneEcosystem™ to life

In today’s world, organizations cannot be everything to everyone. The rapid pace of technological change, evolving customer expectations, and the imperative to stay relevant have ushered in an era where traditional business models and boundaries are dissolving.

In this dynamic landscape, enterprise leaders must understand they cannot achieve everything in isolation. Instead, they must collaborate and connect with partners to remain competitive and meet customer demands. This understanding has led to the emergence of what HFS calls the OneEcosystem™ approach—a strategic move beyond organizational boundaries to foster collaboration and innovation.

In a recent HFS Unfiltered Stories Videocast, HFS Research hosted a conversation with Indira Gillingham, VP of Partner Alliances from Salesforce, and Jason Kelley, Global General Manager of Ecosystems and Partners from IBM Consulting, to explore the dynamics, challenges, and drivers of the ecosystem concept.

We are entering an era of ecosystems driven by a boundaryless business landscape

As organizations are expected to lurch from one uncertain world to another, the business landscape is undergoing a profound transformation. With evolving customer needs and blurring industry lines, collaboration among competitors becomes imperative in this boundaryless business landscape.

At HFS, we believe that in the last few years, most organizations have evolved across three Horizons of operations: digital, OneOffice™, and now OneEcosystem (see Exhibit 1). The first Horizon captures the integration of digitally optimized processes to deliver business outcomes. The second Horizon, OneOffice, captures end-to-end organizational alignment across the front, middle, and back to drive unmatched stakeholder experience. The final Horizon, OneEcosystem, represents the need for organizations to find new sources of value beyond their walls through collaborative partnerships.

Exhibit 1: OneEcosystem is the destination of the three Horizons of innovation

Source: HFS Research, 2023

This new era of ecosystems signifies a departure from siloed operations, emphasizing the importance of adaptability and innovation through interconnected networks. As a result, the future promises a fluid business landscape where adaptability and cooperation are key drivers of success.

IBM and Salesforce highlight the power of ecosystems to tackle their clients’ biggest challenges

IBM and Salesforce have long been advocates of the ecosystem mindset—and partnering with one another. In one example highlighted in the videocast, Salesforce partnered with IBM to co-create two solutions for a large financial institution, leveraging IBM’s acquisition of Red Hat and its professional services. Their joint solution aimed to simplify secure connections, streamline business processes, and scale application modernization. In addition, Salesforce was able to leverage its acquisition of MuleSoft to establish a runtime fabric on OpenShift, offering productized support. This allowed the institution to efficiently manage and deploy MuleSoft workloads at scale, whether on-premises or in the cloud.

Salesforce and IBM have also recently partnered to offer generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) solutions for CRM customers, with a focus on integrating Salesforce offerings into IBM’s consulting business using IBM’s Garage digital transformation methodology. The collaboration aims to simplify GenAI implementation, enhance employee productivity, and improve customer experience.

The continued collaboration between Salesforce and IBM underscores the value of their partnership in addressing complex enterprise challenges and their commitment to supporting a OneEcosystem model.

With the right ecosystem in place, organizations can drive faster speed to value and achieve new innovations

What’s exciting about the future of ecosystems is the ability to deliver increasingly sophisticated use cases to clients at the speed of development and delivery they desire to achieve their business outcomes. The emergence of technologies like GenAI, Web3, hybrid cloud solutions, and intelligent workflows are opening the floodgates of possibilities. As organizations tap into ecosystem partners, they can unlock capabilities and tools to drive new value and outcomes for their customers.

However, ecosystems present organizations with two challenges they must overcome. The first is the need to balance innovation with customer experience. Indira highlighted this when she noted in the discussion that organizations must “unlock the pace of innovation [within an ecosystem] in a way that is minimally invasive to our customers, where they’re able to not only absorb the innovation but embrace it and capitalize on it to drive their top-line growth and operational efficiencies.”

The second big challenge they must grapple with is managing change effectively. Jason emphasized this when he mentioned, “Business process, business design, and changing as quickly as we need to change to really employ this ecosystem is something that does keep me awake at night.”

Overcoming these challenges requires a strategic approach that incorporates change management, business process optimization, and ensuring a unified sense of purpose among ecosystem partners. This unified vision, as Indira and Jason noted, is crucial for achieving successful outcomes.

The Bottom Line: Enterprise leaders need to proactively seek partnerships and collaborative ecosystems, recognizing that collective problem solving can address a broader spectrum of challenges than individual efforts.

The era of ecosystems is driven by the recognition that collective problem solving and collaboration can yield better results than individual efforts. Organizations like IBM and Salesforce are at the forefront of this shift, creating powerful partnerships to deliver greater value to their clients.

However, it’s critical to understand the ecosystem concept is not just about collaboration; it’s a strategic imperative for organizations to remain competitive and meet the demands of a rapidly changing market.

Tune in to our Unfiltered Stories Videocast to hear more from the discussion with IBM and Salesforce.