The Platformable Business Plan 2025

2025 will be a big year for us at Platformable. Over the past decade, we have been shifting from a focus on API strategy and industry analysis to a wider perspective on open digital ecosystems. In the past three years, our core mission as a purpose-focused business has been to support the development of open ecosystems so that everyone can participate and co-create their own value.

We have seen growing interest in open ecosystems in banking, health, and sustainability as the regulatory, standards and digital public goods landscape has strengthened to enable new market entrants and better use of data to track societal, economic, and environmental objectives. With growing concerns around the power imbalances of big tech, the last year has also seen an even greater interest in digital sovereignty, open source digital public infrastructure, and the digital ecosystems that arise to support citizens, local enterprises, and global collaborations. These are all themes we have been addressing at Platformable and we are ready to play a bigger role in supporting these shifts in 2025.

Our Mission

We are a purpose-focused business, which means we reinvest our revenue into supporting our core mission.

We support open ecosystems that build economic opportunities, solve complex problems, and enable everyone to participate and co-create their own value 

Key industry sectors

We focus on four key sectors:

• Open Ecosystems - we describe the benefits of open ecosystems in general, measure the value being generated, and develop tools to ensure open ecosystems are creating value for all society.
• Open Banking/Open Finance/Embedded Finance - we support interoperable financial services that can improve financial inclusion and build everyone's wealth.
• Open Health - we track digital health strategies, regulations and data interoperability so that stakeholders can participate in the emerging open health data and digital ecosystems.
• Traceability - we support a shift to ecosystem approaches for sustainability standards bodies and other supply chain actors to improve digitised supply chain traceability and prepare stakeholders for sustainability due diligence and financial reporting.

We are excited by this work on a daily basis and while 2024 had its difficulties from a business perspective, we were still able to progress our work in each of these sectors, and have identified where we want to take this work in 2025.

Open Ecosystems

2024 achievements:

• We released a State of the Market report on the API Economy with apidays and Boomi which will be the basis for us tracking key trends in 2025.
• We maintained and further extended the interactive ecosystem tracking tool API Landscape for apidays.
• We continued work with a UN agency on API governance best practices and created resources to support the growth of their global ecosystem.
• We continued to develop and share our work on an API governance model and a data governance framework.
• Presented and keynoted at industry conference on API Trends and API Governance.

2025 goals:

• Publish quarterly API trends reports (every quarter)
• Support ecosystem leaders through content focused on best practices and industry trends (every quarter)
• Grow our work in API governance by working with new clients (every quarter)
• Grow our work in data governance by working with new clients (every quarter)
• Release a prototype of a digital data governance toolkit (Q3)
• Release a prototype of an interoperability toolkit (Q2)

Open Banking/Open Finance/Embedded Finance

2024 achievements:

• We tracked global open banking and open finance regulations to support industry clients to identify cross-border market opportunities and ensure product development aligned with the regulatory environment.
• We continued publishing our global ecosystem-wide Open Banking/IOpen Finance quarterly trends reports.
• Our data was used by Bank of England and research teams from Columbia, Stanford and other universities and acknowledged as the best in the world for open banking monitoring.
• We spoke at key industry conferences including Mobey Forum, apidays and OpenFinity events.
• Launched our open banking value tool which tracks data-evidenced examples of the benefits of open banking and open finance.
• Published our Open Finance Successes podcast.

2025 goals:

• Continue to publish our quarterly trends reports and grow our subscription base (every quarter)
• Extend our dataset and analysis to included embedded finance (every quarter)
• Work with industry leaders to support their ecosystem design approaches to open banking/open finance and embedded finance (every quarter)
• Release our Open Banking/Open Finance Accelerator Dashboard (Q1)
• Release a guide on open data and API standards in open banking/open finance (Q2)
• Release a guide for regulators on how to measure the impact of open banking regulations (Q3)
• Conduct research into equity and financial health impacts or open banking and open finance (Q2, Q4)

Open Health

2024 achievements:

• We conducted research on Canada's health regulatory environment and data interoperability maturity across ten provinces and nationally.
• We published deep dives on national digital health strategies and built a framework for analysing digital health strategy. 
• We spoke at industry events including Serbia's Kopaonik Business Forum on using health data to improve health services planning and strategy.

2025 goals:

• Work with industry leaders to support their ecosystem design approaches to digital health (every quarter)
• Release our Digital Health Strategies Dashboard (Q1)
• Consult industry and publish our Digital Health Strategies Assessment tool (Q1)
• Publish half-yearly digital health trends reports (Q2, Q4) 
• Publish an annual analysis of digital health strategies (Q3)

Traceability

2024 achievements:

• We worked with industry associations on fostering ecosystem-design approaches for the sustainability standards sector when managing data for due diligence regulations.
• We created self-paced training guides and delivered an in-person workshop on data quality for the sustainability standards sector.
• We conducted research with sustainable standards bodies on building data governance systems to support due diligence regulatory compliance.
• We conducted research to support the sustainable aviation fuel industry to build a global interoperable data registry for carbon reporting.
• We led workshops and spoke at events in the traceability sector.

2025 goals:

• Work with industry leaders to support their ecosystem design approaches to traceability (every quarter)
• Release our Traceability Ecosystem Dashboard (Q1)
• Prototype a Sustainable Aviation Fuel industry trends report (Q2)
• Release a guide on financial account reporting and due diligence regulations impacting the sustainability and traceability ecosystem (Q2)

Core tooling to support open ecosystems

Over the past several years we have come up with a core set of tools that we believe support open digital ecosystems. This year our goal is to complete the packaging of these resources and to better describe the overall ecosystem design processes we use when working with organisations to encourage open ecosystem approaches.

The core set of resources we have built and use with clients to support open ecosystem analysis and participation are:

Theory of change and value models 

One of the key starting points is to support our clients to understand what value they expect to see flow from either their participation in, or leadership of, open ecosystems. We use theory of change and value flow design tools to support this understanding, which in turn helps identify potential stakeholders and data collection needs.

Goals in 2025

• To document our theory of change approach and publicly release our in-house workshop materials to support organisations to create their theory of change and value flow models (Q3)
• To encourage open banking regulators to apply a theory of change model when designing data systems to track the impacts of open banking/open finance/embedded finance (Q3)

Ecosystem maps

We have designed ecosystem models for banking, health, intellectual property, and traceability. We also have a generic approach that can be used as a foundation to start discussions in any other sector. Our ecosystem models are macro-level, and focused on the global context but can be adapted to specific use cases, geographies, or an organisations' own ecosystem. Unlike other ecosystem models, we overlay stakeholder mapping with ecosystem component tracking (regulations, policies, standards, digital tools, etc) and also have overlays where we then look at how the ecosystem interacts across the data journey.

Goals in 2025

• To further document each of our ecosystem models (every quarter)
• To release interactive dashboards to track stakeholders and components in the ecosystem (Q1)
• To pilot a model comparing an organisation's ecosystem with competitors' ecosystems to better understand how an ecosystem-design approach can create a competitive advantage (Q2, Q3)

Personas

From a human-centred approach, for businesses taking a customer-centred approach, and for API and data providers taking a developer or data user-centred approach, we think it is essential to map the user and collaborator personas. This is a level deeper than the ecosystem mapping and is usually conducted when developing an ecosystem design strategy aimed at engaging specific stakeholders in an open ecosystem.

Goals in 2025 

• Use our persona library more to build out our networks, collaborations and client base (every quarter)
• Work with clients to support them to map user and ecosystem personas relevant to their work (every quarter)
• Release our persona library and show how we use it (Q2)
• Share our thinking around persona mapping in a way that shifts the discussion from marketing and sales targeting to supporting active participation in ecosystems (Q2)

Regulation and policy tracking

We track key regulations in open banking/finance, health data and traceability which we include in our ecosystem maps.

Goals in 2025 

• To share our open ecosystem approaches by responding to at least 4 key policy consultations on our own behalf and to seek partnerships with value-aligned organisations to support their policy responses (at least once every quarter)
• To formalise our digital health strategy maturity assessment framework so that we have a consistent approach to scoring digital health strategies (Q1)
• To track sustainability account reporting and due diligence regulations for the traceability sector., with a particular focus on monitoring potential regulatory changes from the proposed omnibus activity of the EU Competitiveness agenda (Q2, Q3, Q4)

Taxonomies, Data Models, and Datasets

Drawing on standards classifications where they exist (spoiler: they often don't), we create taxonomies to understand key aspects of open ecosystems¹. We then generate data models (based on the theory of change, value flow models and ecosystem maps) and in our core areas of interest, we have then created the datasets. We take this approach when working with clients who need to unpack an aspect of the ecosystem they are participating in. For example, if a health organisation wanted to apply our ecosystem approach to a specific burden of disease, we would need to create a dataset for them that uses a data model and taxonomies relevant to mapping the actors, policies, regulations, standards, current providers, and so on that operate in that ecosystem either at the global or geographic level (probably geographic).

Goals in 2025 

• To publish our taxonomies and data models and create processes for continuous feedback, improvement  and alignment with other data standards (every quarter)

Data Governance

Open digital ecosystems require the use of data, which means that data must be managed ethically and responsibly across the data journey. We have created a data governance model that has been successfully adopted by industries and community organisations.

Goals in 2025

• To work with industry leaders on their data governance processes (every quarter)
• To document the data governance best practices of those in our network (every quarter)
• To more thoroughly detail each step of our data governance model (every quarter) 
• To publish our health data governance resources (Q1) 
• To research and document trust framework approaches and data business models that support data revenue sharing with data contributors (Q2, Q3)
• To prototype a data governance digital toolkit where data governance leaders can store all of their data governance policies and processes in one place (Q2, Q3)

API Governance

Our API governance model reflects industry best practices and is aligned with practices from major enterprises around the globe. We are currently working with a UN agency to implement our API governance model across their operations.

Goals in 2025

• To continue working with industry leaders on their API governance approaches (every quarter)
• To document API governance best practices (every quarter) 
• To more thoroughly detail each step of our API governance model (every quarter)

Interoperability toolkits

As an addendum to data governance and API governance, we have identified a need for internal stakeholders of an organisation to better draw together their interoperability resources into one place,. This is also essential when explaining to external partners and stakeholders how to integrate with their ecosystem, or to map their own interoperability when entering an open ecosystem. Building on recent and current projects in interoperability research for the sustainable aviation fuel industry, traceability, open banking and health sectors, we are creating an interoperability toolkit resource to better support open ecosystem participation.

Goals in 2025

• To document interoperability best practices across industry sectors (every quarter)
• To prototype an interoperability toolkit (Q2)
• To support the maturing of API contracts to use as an interoperability approach (Q3, Q4)

What's missing? 

Our business plan and program structure builds on areas we have been focusing on since the formation of the company. But in the last year, we have also identified two new areas we need to incorporate.  In addition, we also have internal business activities to progress.

AI Governance

• In 2024 we did some background research on AI governance, but this year we will need to document an AI governance model and show how this links with our data governance and API governance frameworks (Q2). 
• We will be continuing our thinking and research on AI governance frameworks for use in open ecosystems (every quarter). 
• We will working on a framework that combines AI, data and API governance (Q4).

Ecosystem-design process

• In 2024, we published more detailed work on our approach to ecosystem design, and worked with clients on supporting training, creating guides and encouraging an ecosystem mindset. We would like to collate these resources, build on them further, and create guides and resources to support any organisation to foster a digital ecosystem mindset and to take an ecosystem design approach (every quarter).

Internal business approaches

• We will grow our network of collaborators, with a particular focus on partnering with creators in low and middle income countries, while continuing our priority focus on ensuring gender and diversity balance in our team structure (every quarter).
• We will continue to monitor and meet accessibility best practices on our website and in all of our digital assets (every quarter). 
• We will continue to offer discounted rates for projects and clients working with an equity and/or sustainability focus (every quarter).
• This year we will continue to migrate off big tech solutions as part of our move to using EU-based, open source infrastructure where possible (Q1). 
• We will adopt the voluntary sustainability reporting standards for SMEs (Q2). 

Working with us

If any of this work is of interest to you, please subscribe to our newsletter to keep up to date. You can also follow our Founder/Director (me!) on Bluesky and LinkedIn or follow Platformable on LinkedIn. Or you can revisit our website and blog regularly to see updates.

We are actively looking for: 

• Collaborators who share our mission goals and values 
• Clients in our core sectors who want to implement activities that align with what we do, or who are building out their own core tooling for digital ecosystems
• Sponsors who want to support the further development of our core tooling in a specific area or who want to pilot our approaches within their network
• Low-key network participants: one goal for me this year is to encourage more comments and feedback on LinkedIn and Bluesky and directly via email with our growing network. Not everyone wants to commit to partnerships or larger collaborative work, but I know many of you are working on these issues of building open ecosystems on a daily basis and I encourage you to make comments or share your thoughts with us without feeling that you have to keep building that relationship. A random feedback comment once in a blue moon is still valuable to us.

If you are interested, please reach out or book a meeting to discuss this agenda or to hear more. I'm also keen to hear novel ways we could share our progress and engage with our network more. We have a newsletter, and I want to publish here and in LinkedIn to update on progress. I'm also open to hosting open discussions monthly if there was interest. 

On this blog, I lean more towards longer form content, but am open to writing shorter blogs if readers want more regular content, or to create videos or other content². Last year we trialled a tech policy debate series and a podcast/web series, but neither saw high engagement which may just be a challenge of still building out our communications strategy (we are a small team so have focused on client work first before pushing our marketing. We also worked on our website redevelopment and our ecosystem dashboards which we will use as content assets this year.) Communicating our mission and sharing our quality resources will be a key focus in 2025.

Let's make 2025 the year of the open ecosystem together!