Enterprises are wrestling with some major technology challenges, but three of the biggest are sprawling tech stacks and legacy constraints and rising integration costs.
Fortunately, there is a quiet revolution taking place in how software is designed and connected that is addressing these challenges. At the centre of this shift is a simple idea: what if APIs weren’t just integration tools, but the foundation of the entire platform?
That’s the philosophy at the heart of Conga’s approach to Revenue Lifecycle Management (RLM). For Charles Harb, the company’s Director of Strategy, Innovation and Transformation, the API-first mindset is more than a feature; it’s the very architecture of how modern business systems should work.
“At Conga, API-first means every core capability. From CPQ engines, CLM services and document generation, to identity and analytics; what we design is as an API product first,” he said.
“We don’t treat APIs as an afterthought or a bolt-on for integrations. They’re at the heart of how the technology itself works.”
Building the ‘Middle Office’
This approach allows Conga’s platform to redefine the “middle office,” – the space between CRM and ERP. Its outcome is deceptively simple, in that it ensures that quotes, contracts, orders, billings, and renewals flow seamlessly across systems.
“Our platform acts as that middle layer, orchestrating data and processes between front-office systems like Salesforce and Dynamics and back-office systems like SAP and Oracle,” Harb said. “It keeps domain models, contracts, and SLAs consistent no matter where the data lives.”
By standardising everything on a single unified data model, Conga offers what Harb called the “freedom to swap front-ends without rewriting the back-end.” In practice, that means a sales team can change its CRM or add an e-commerce layer without the entire quote-to-cash process breaking.
This level of flexibility is what Harb sees as essential in the age of mergers, acquisitions, and multi-platform ecosystems. “We’ve had customers running Salesforce in one division, Dynamics in another, and SAP in the back end,” he said. “When they realise they can harmonise those through Conga’s architecture without rebuilding everything, retraining their salespeople, or having to rip-and-replace, that’s the light-bulb moment.”
From Tactical Fixes to Architectural Thinking
Meanwhile, the conversation around digital transformation has matured. For Harb, the most progressive CIOs are no longer talking about which tools to buy, but about how to simplify the architectures that bind them together.
“Historically, technology projects were tactical,” he said. “Organisations would start by solving a single pain point, whether that’s document generation, quoting, or billing, without addressing the larger structural challenge of upstream and downstream systems.” Over time, those tactical fixes created more complexity than they removed.
What Harb sees now is a shift toward architectural thinking. This means a focus on composability, simplification, and resilience. “When you start treating integration as a strategy rather than a project, you begin to unlock scale,” he said. “It’s about designing for change and flexibility instead of reacting to it.”
That change in mindset requires leaders to look beyond immediate functionality and measure outcomes in terms of adaptability and governance. “The businesses that win,” Harb observed, “are those that can evolve their architecture faster than the market changes around them.”
Rethinking AI and Data Foundations
Artificial intelligence is another common boardroom talking point, but Harb cautions against approaching it as a shortcut. “AI built and trained on bad data and bad processes just helps companies make more expensive mistakes faster” he said. “Before layering intelligence on top, organisations need to fix the underlying systems that feed it.”
From his perspective, AI-readiness means a focus on architecture. The systems generating insights must be stable, interoperable, and transparent. “You still need good data, good processes, and clear lineage. Otherwise, you’re training models on noise.”
By embedding AI through open APIs rather than isolated modules, enterprises can keep pace with the technology without rebuilding each time the tools change. Harb described this as the difference between “deploying AI” and “designing for intelligence.”
Open Standards and AI Add a New Layer
The rise of open standards is quietly redefining how digital ecosystems are built. For Harb, this is one of the most overlooked shifts in enterprise software.
“Standards like OpenAPI and GraphQL have moved us away from hard-coded integrations to flexible, self-describing interfaces,” he noted. “They let organisations compose systems instead of coupling them.”
Event-driven design, another pillar of this shift, gives enterprises the ability to automate without fragility. “When your systems communicate through events rather than dependencies, you can innovate without fear of breaking things,” Harb explained.
This architectural openness also sets the stage for meaningful AI adoption. “AI isn’t a feature—it’s a capability that belongs everywhere,” he said. “When your architecture is API-first, intelligence becomes another service you can plug in, extend, or replace.”
That design philosophy prevents brittleness as technologies evolve. “If an underlying app changes, your AI workflows shouldn’t break,” Harb added. “The goal is to build architectures that are intelligent by design, not just intelligent by marketing.”
Composability and Governance in the Modern Enterprise
Looking ahead, Harb believes the defining skill for enterprise leaders will be balancing openness with control. “Developers should own their services, but the platform must own the guardrails,” he said. “That’s how you preserve innovation without sacrificing security or compliance.”
For CIOs, this translates into a new kind of discipline: composability with accountability. The next generation of systems, Harb suggested, won’t be measured by how many features they have, but by how elegantly they adapt.
“Platform thinking,” he said, “is about designing for the unknown. It’s not about predicting every change. It’s about being ready for it when it arrives.”