Enterprise Design Systems: The What, The Why, & The How

More than keeping up, leading up. ‍

Today's business landscape is changing fast. Organizations of every size are making moves to deliver more secure, sustainable services and expand their product portfolios as customer expectations and behaviors evolve with accelerating advances in digital technologies, data resources and analytics, and the rising tide of generative AI and LLMs.

In order to survive, grow, and thrive in today’s business world, you need an enterprise design system.

What exactly is an enterprise design system?

Zoom in.

A design system is a single source of truth that includes a brand’s design and messaging guidelines, components, requirements, and tools to guarantee more consistency, quality, and efficiency across the design, development, and experience of digital products and services.

Zoom out.

An enterprise design system expands beyond just products and services to the processes, operations, governance, and culture of an entire organization. An enterprise design system provides a more comprehensive source of truth that facilitates XFN communication, coordination, collaboration, and alignment across multiple products, services, and market growth initiatives through shared tools and resources.

As the source of truth for design and development, enterprise design systems are essential to closing the gap between your brand, your products, and your services, facilitating clear knowledge transfers and strengthening the consistency and security of delivery and execution.

Why?

Growth requires space and direction.

Today’s world is inundated with massive amounts of data access and availability as businesses and consumers alike leverage digital tools to track and manage everything from their health, finances, relationships, locations, appliances, - literally everything - from their own personal devices, on their own time, at their own convenience.

Market trends and consumer behaviors are becoming increasingly unpredictable. To stay relevant, many organizations are investing in updating their business models, expanding their portfolios, adopting cloud-based services and AI tools, and improving the interfaces and experiences of their digital platforms.

As you grow, maintaining the integrity of your brand identity is top priority.

Identity.

A strong brand identity is critical for survival. A design system is a consistent thread that can be woven through a variety of mediums, channels, platforms, and portals, binding them together to increase familiarity and ensure the optimal experience for customers.

From first impressions to growing awareness to investment to ongoing commitment, a design system instills a structure and consistency to your products and services that customers can trust.

And trust is everything.

Security.

Trust and security go hand-in-hand. As a central source of truth for both internal design and development teams and/or outside agencies or consulting services, a design system provides standardized templates, components, patterns, and processes they can share and build from that can be leveraged in the creation, launch, and scaling of products and services.

By streamlining the design and development process, an enterprise design system reduces the complexity of deployment and distribution of content, products, and services across digital platforms. Less complexity gives you the time and resources to guarantee that your organizational data as well as the data of your customers is secured and protected.

Simplicity increases security.

Enough said.

Savings.

A shared library of reusable design and development resources guarantees that design, development, product, and marketing teams don’t have to recreate the wheel every time your organization wants to launch a new product, service, or expand into a new market. By equipping teams with a dynamic, flexible library of resources, departments can both work cross-functionally and focus on planning and preparing for product and service launches, market growth, and ongoing expansion with more strategic efficiency.

Even more, an enterprise design system gives multiple teams across multiple departments access to proven resources that effectively mitigate risk and reduce the costs of fixing errors in the future.

Be smart with your money.

Competitive Advantage.

Brand awareness and loyalty require a bold, trustworthy brand design, message, and experience. A design system is critical for finding, amplifying, maintaining, and expanding that position above and beyond the competition by upholding a brand’s integrity through expanding portfolios or market growth opportunities.

AI is rapidly accelerating the speed and scale of content creation. To maintain brand integrity and trust through future shifts and uncertainties, enterprise-level organizations need to intelligently leverage generative AI, LLMs, 5G, and machine learning with an informed consideration for accessibility, inclusivity, and equity in their design systems.

Embrace the future with confidence.

How?

Expertise.

A design system includes thorough understanding of an organization’s mission, vision, and values and then translating them seamlessly into the architecture, function, marketing, and trajectory of the organization’s products and services.

It retains the integrity of your brand while simplifying how, when, why, and where brand assets and digital components are used according to a content strategy directly aligned to your core objectives and the needs, interests, and expectations of your target audience.

With more industries investing in the design and development of digital products and services, you need the right team and strategic approach to guarantee your design system is built for successful implementation, maintainable governance, and ongoing evolution.

XFN Collaboration.

Enterprise-level organizations are built and maintained by multiple teams working on multiple products and services. An enterprise design system works within this structure to incorporate every team’s needs, feedback, and expectations based on their unique workflows and requirements.

But, in order for multiple different teams to use an enterprise design system, they have to understand it. Collaborative exercises, workshops, research, and interviews provide a simple, efficient framework that teams can invest in, adopt, and scale for their different projects and initiatives.

Governance.

A team has to be appointed to ensure that the processes, operations, components, templates, and patterns involved in the enterprise design system are evaluated, maintained, and updated accurately and on a routine basis.

This team has to have a thorough understanding of an organization’s goals and future initiatives, market value and position, customer needs and expectations, and its internal workflows and culture.

All these considerations are then applied to and reflected through the design system.

The Matic Difference.

We know.

Not every company has the time, resources, or the budget to revamp their brand.

At Matic, we work with you to identify and define your critical design and development needs. We then provide you with the content strategy, UX, design, and development resources and expertise you need to help you build a design system that you can leverage throughout your product portfolio, social channels, and digital platforms. Our team supports your team so you can focus on your top priority: delivering the best services, products, and experiences to your customers.

We got you.