Composable Commerce: The modern way to sell

"By 2023, organizations that have adopted a Composable Commerce approach will outpace competition by 80% in the speed of new feature implementation."

Is your business still living in the dark ages? We know that the shift to digital and sudden closure of stores has left many retailers feeling stuck on how to adapt to such rapid changes in the market. Some are still reliant on traditional legacy applications or monolithic ERPs. However, these largely rigid architectures are becoming increasingly unreliable and likely to slow you down from delivering new offerings quickly and cost-effectively.

Many retailers are able to undertake large transformation programmes to re-platform away from their old tech. For those of you wanting a faster solution perhaps now is the time for outside-the-box thinking, and a lean, mean, agile machine that can turn around your business’s scalability and deliver the awesome shopping experience your customer’s expect – after all, that’s what a modern technology stack should do!

Well then, say hello to Composable Commerce!

What is Composable Commerce?

To understand Composable Commerce, let’s look at the current norm of adopting a MACH architecture:

• Microservices – independent, granular, tightly-scoped software components that concentrate on only one service of the wider application.
• API’s – Entry points where these capabilities/services can be tied together and allow for IT teams to implement new ones, as well as eliminate duplication of development work.
• Cloud-native – leveraging services within the public cloud, making it easily scalable and reliable when deploying a solution across multiple data centres. Plus, enterprises can choose to use an applications services as a whole, or just its components they need on-demand.
• Headless – Deliver continuous customer journey’s across multiple digital and traditional touchpoints (web, mobile, in-store, IoT devices etc.) alongside giving complete freedom in user-interface design with front-end technology.

While MACH has its advantages, it can lead to fairly complex architecture as communication between these independent services is not always straightforward and for many retailers, can lead to cumbersome architecture which is expensive both to build and operate.

Composable Commerce is a much more fluid system that takes best-of-breed Packaged Business Capabilities – “a software component that represents a well-defined business capability, recognizable as such by a business user…[and] consists of a bounded collection comprising a data schema and a set of services, APIs and event channels.” These are ‘composed’ into a custom-built system. To put it simply, enterprises can react quickly and gain even better control over delivering new ecommerce initiatives.

As we referenced above, Gartner recently released a report stating that “By 2023, organizations that have adopted a Composable Commerce approach will outpace competition by 80% in the speed of new feature implementation.”

This digital first shopping period combined with the need to respond to COVID-19, and the rapid growth of modern technology usage snapping at business’s heels every day has paved the way for Composable Commerce to make an even bigger impact in future-proofing commerce experiences.

So, how can Composable Commerce benefit your business exactly?

Seamless integration

No need for large scale re-platforming here. One of the main benefits of Composable Commerce is allowing you to integrate different PBC’s into your current existing IT landscape and thereby adapt to any changes in the market and solve complex challenges with ease.

Greater flexibility and scalability

Want to change your approach? Add new additional features to your applications and assert mastery over your own commerce stack with precision? Flexibility and scalability are exactly what Composable Commerce is all about.

John Lewis recently partnered with commercetools in an ambiguous move to migrate off its legacy ecommerce platform to further accelerate its goal of providing a superior online shopping experience for their customers. “For John Lewis, scalability and flexibility was very much the brief, and we are very proud to be a strategic provider for such an iconic brand. A modern commerce solution based on composable architecture, API-first and the cloud, delivers capabilities which allow our customers to meet peak demand, support omnichannel, adapt quickly to the market and realise value early and often.” - Dirk Hoerig, CEO of commercetools.

No risk of a vendor lock-in

The ability to swap in/out components on demand over time as needed means you won’t be restricted to a single vendor to produce standard functionality as a one-size-fits-all offering.

This is a problem many businesses struggle to overcome, either due to financial pressures, lack of technical knowledge or in an attempt to avoid business disruptions, customers can be ‘locked in’ to an inferior product or service as a consequence.

Business and operational harmony

A collaborative business is a happy one. To deliver a unique experience, cross-functional teams, business leaders and stakeholders are now able to reframe their objectives and align their PBC’s. Therefore, new business models and solutions can be implemented faster for success.

Many retailers are without doubt, that they would be at a disadvantage if Composable Commerce was not a consideration for their future technical platform. Remember agility is not a luxury, but a standard most organisations need so they are in a good position now and into the future.

Make it fly!

Whether your re-platforming takes the MACH path or you choose Composable Commerce, the ecommerce and software testing experts at Spike95 can ensure your software is reliable, and delivers the experience you and your customers expect.

Drop us your details below to book a meeting and let’s combine forces to make your business fly![vlt_social_share title="Like this post? Please share it!"]