the technical foundation for innovative eCommerce solutions

How to unlock new possibilities and channels?

commercetools author image Stephanie Wittmann
Stephanie Wittmann
Head of Communications & Content, commercetools
Published 19 December 2018

John de Koning, Commercial Director of Digital Commerce at Incentro, about the technical foundation for innovative eCommerce solutions

Online purchases are increasingly being made via non-traditional channels. In addition to web shops, customers are buying more frequently through channels such as voice assistants, social media, games and IoT devices. In addition, customers require a more personalized user experience and excellent service. “commercetools is leading the market with its clear API-first vision,” says John de Koning, Commercial Director of Digital Commerce at Incentro. “This makes it possible to unlock new possibilities and channels and to develop an excellent customer experience at the front end.”

Incentro is an innovative digital service provider that helps companies with their digital transformation. A mix of digital strategy and consultancy, development, data and optimization is used. The agencies’ digital commerce practice translates fast-paced market requirements into impactful programs for their clients. The customer experience is central to this; with the firm belief that only satisfied customers convert. Incentro aims to turn their clients into digital front-runners. Successful eCommerce starts with a good technical architecture upon which you can build and grow. This is where commercetools come into play. De Koning: “By using commercetools, we are able to develop a flexible, scalable and future-proof eCommerce foundation. This applies both to customers who experience insufficient speed and flexibility as a result of legacy commerce platform, and customers who want to set up a modern system relatively quickly from scratch.”

the technical foundation for innovative eCommerce solutions

Post-web era

“With commercetools, we have a scalable, flexible solution in our hands, where front and back end are separated,” says De Koning. “That offers many possibilities. With commercetools, we provide our customers with the possibility of customization and that also means that we can easily adapt end user interfaces to the kind of commercial channel that we use. But also to the medium that the end customer uses. commercetools essentially delivers the engine that we can link to various other front-end technologies such as Angular or React and content management systems such as Bloomreach, Contentful or Drupal.”

commercetools is a supplier of API-first and cloud-native enterprise commerce software developed for the so-called post-web era, in which online sales no longer come exclusively via the web browser. With the solution, organizations can quickly add commerce options to different platforms. Think of traditional webshops and checkout systems for physical stores. But also think about mobile apps, online games, screens in shops, augmented and virtual reality and social media. Internet devices can also be commerce capable including kiosks, wristbands and cars.

Freedom and flexibility

The post-Web era demands flexibility from companies that can only stay ahead of the competition or become leaders by continuing to innovate. Preferably, they should have immediate access to the latest possibilities in the field of enterprise software. In order to be able to manage growth, it is important that they can scale up their capacity to process purchases quickly. “commercetools offers us that freedom and flexibility”, says De Koning.

“Unlike other tools that have a predefined user interface and design, commercetools does not dictate how we work and what kind of solutions we develop,” continues De Koning. “We are free to decide for ourselves how we deal with data, product mapping, architecture and so on. The modular construction of commercetools makes it easy to link components together and set up a complete omni-channel order flow. This freedom does place demands on organizations, requiring the definition of the product and data model well in advance. Ultimately, that always yields more than a standard product model. At the same time, this approach does provide an opportunity for companies to plan from the customer’s point of view and deliver added value.”

Freedom for developers

Developers like commercetools too.  With the open source software development kits, developers can program in Java, .Net, Scala, PHP, GO, NodeJS, Objective-C or any other programming language that they prefer. De Koning: “Our developers are real professionals and love that flexibility. The programming language aspect also helps us to attract programmers. In a tight labour market, it is nice if you are not limited to one specific type of developer or explicit knowledge. And that developers, in the context of personal growth, know that they can also acquire new skill sets with us. The use of commercetools also ensures that customers can make technological choices themselves and can recruit engineers to support them. In the end, we see more and more that customers themselves are also building up development skills.”

De Koning is also very pleased with the collaboration with commercetools. “It is important for our customers that they work with an implementation partner who is in close contact with the supplier. We have those short lines with commercetools. The company responds quickly to requests and if an issue occurs once, it is quickly resolved. The service that commercetools offers to both customers and partners is extraordinary. All vendors claim that they guarantee service, but commercetools is one of the few players that, for example, refunds license fees if it does not comply with the SLA in terms of uptime and response times of the APIs. commercetools is unique in the market.”

For more information on Incentro check out the website.

commercetools author image Stephanie Wittmann
Stephanie Wittmann
Head of Communications & Content, commercetools

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