No matter where you are in your MuleSoft adoption journey, you’ve likely learned that we encourage our customers to adopt some form of a Center for Enablement (C4E) model to accelerate success with the MuleSoft platform.
Why choose a C4E?
You may already be familiar with what a C4E is and does, and what the best practices for establishing a C4E are. Maybe you’ve attended or watched our four-part C4E webinar series or even started looking through the reusable artifacts stored within the C4E Playbook in the Catalyst Knowledge Hub.
Even after familiarizing yourself with all the great content MuleSoft has out there on the C4E model, you may still wonder if anyone actually does this stuff, or if a C4E would be beneficial for your org. To put your mind at ease, we’re here to answer your burning questions.
MuleSoft has worked with thousands of organizations over 20+ years and has the data to prove that our customers who take the time to set up some form of a C4E (regardless of size, industry type, or geographic location), see an increased return on their investment with MuleSoft and greater tangible benefit to their bottom line.
Why C4E? Let our customer results speak for themselves
Among the many customers who’ve obtained provable value from a C4E, there are a wide array of examples that you can learn about to find inspiration on what a C4E can do for an enterprise like yours. Rather than just believing us, we’ve compiled real-life examples from our MuleSoft customers for your learning pleasure.
OneMain Financial
OneMain Financial, the largest lending-exclusive financial company in the US with more than 1500 branches across 44 states, established a C4E organization early in the implementation process, which allowed the team to build with MuleSoft on their own to drive toward greater reusability.
Here’s a quick rundown of their timeline:
- 2018: OneMain Financial purchased MuleSoft and implemented the platform and the C4E foundation with the help of MuleSoft’s Professional Services team. With the C4E in place, they launched their pilot, and over the course of the year, they had converted 1000 Java endpoints into MuleSoft and had eight APIs in production.
- 2019: The C4E built a training program that allowed the team to expand and to focus on service enablement, and by the end of the year, more than 20 developers had been onboarded to the platform. From there, OneMain Financial’s C4E organization allowed them to build with MuleSoft on their own and to drive toward greater reusability.
- 2020: OneMain Financial has over 200 APIs in production, and the team at OneMain notes that their C4E team has been a huge factor in their continued success.
The Department of Veterans Affairs
In the Public Sector, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) branded its C4E as the Digital Transformation Center (DTC) with a focus on integration strategy and roadmap, centralized governance, skillset readiness, and stabilization of existing programs.
Following establishment of the DTC, the VA has:
- Established standing troubleshooting and enablement sessions for end users
- Established API lifecycle governance and guidance
- Created an integration project template
- Centralized certificate and credential management
- Established standard logging framework and CI/CD template
- Orchestrated enhancements to sustain readiness and adaptability
- Improved health outcomes for veterans through using APIs to extend the point of care beyond the four walls of the hospital ward
Pacific Life Insurance Company
Pacific Life Insurance Company began its MuleSoft journey with limited resources, but established a C4E with a mission to provide a stable, scalable and secure platform that enables innovations and supports KPI integration development.
Some of Pacific Life’s C4E achievements include:
- Release of reusable components: Custom connectors, policies, and API fragments to improve agility and speed
- An initial set of 22 APIs built in fewer than five months with only two developers
- Eventual release of more than 110 APIs in production across 20 projects that address various business problems
QBE
QBE Australia had big plans at the start of 2020 with digital transformation programs lined up across their three major business units: personal lines, commercial lines and claims across three regions: Europe, North America, and Australia Pacific (Auspac).
Each of the business partners wanted to drive more business growth via digital channels and improve both customer and partner experience. This resulted in a backlog of initiatives and a high demand on the integration team which had fixed capacity.
With the formation of a global C4E and creation of a C4E marketplace, QBE was able to:
- Engage divisions across technology practices
- Drive value through reusability
- Help the business unit CIOs and divisions accelerate their delivery with greater speed to market
- Create a culture of collaboration and encourage problem-solving and innovative thinking
QBE was a featured speaker at MuleSoft’s 2020 virtual CONNECT Conference where they shared their C4E journey:
C4E isn’t one size fits all – it’s a tailored experience
The process of establishing a C4E is easier than you might think. MuleSoft’s team of experts has seen customers find success within their first year by following the C4E playbook and starting with as few as three assigned resources:
- A C4E leader: Responsible for stakeholders, onboarding, leadership of the platform, and setting long-term vision for the platform
- An architect: Responsible for policing the platform and enabling reuse)
- A platform engineer: Responsible for building CICD pipeline and creation of onboarding documentation
For those organizations that are more complex or would benefit from more hands-on guidance, we recommend partnering with MuleSoft’s Professional Services team, or one of our partners, to help get you started on your journey to scaling your distributed software delivery journey. Both our services team and our partners offer a variety of packages designed to either walk you through the C4E process from start to finish, or to help you fill in the gaps where you need it.
How to get started with a C4E
As these customer stories illustrate, the C4E model is one that fits in organizations of all types and sizes. It doesn’t take a digital native or high-ranking C-level executive to put the framework in place; start with the resources linked above, and engage with your account team to help you along your journey.
Whether it’s helping you get the justification you need or connecting you with teams that can help you execute upon the vision, MuleSoft can help accelerate your team’s efforts toward a successful Center for Enablement.
