Interview with Pascal Lagarde, Digital Director Commerce at Valtech

It takes vision to change an industry – Interview with Pascal Lagarde, Digital Director Commerce at Valtech

commercetools author image Stephanie Wittmann
Stephanie Wittmann
Head of Communications & Content, commercetools
Published 22 January 2019

Highest standards for highest quality: Our goal is e-commerce solutions that are as flexible as our customers are diverse. To do that, we work with the best. At our Partner Day in October 2018, we thanked those who focused on pulling together with us. Because only through the expertise of our cooperation partners, we can offer companies exactly what we do: agile solutions that adapt to the market situation and the needs of our customers at all times.

The excellent work of our partners is usually not visible on the surface but runs highly efficiently in the background. Because we know that, we’ve created awards for our partners that excel in innovation, performance and creativity. Here, in interviews, we present three experts who deservedly took our partner awards home.

Interview with Pascal Lagarde, Digital Director Commerce at Valtech

Pascal Lagarde, Digital Director Commerce at Valtech Netherlands

commercetools Performance Award 2018 for Global Engagement

As a full-service digital agency, Valtech combines years of technology expertise and marketing experience to support businesses to master the digital transformation ‚Connect what’s not connected, create what’s missing‘: The integration of new and existing technologies is one of Valtech’s core competences.

Which role does commercetools play in your global portfolio?

Pascal Lagarde: Valtech has a focused portfolio of industry-leading platforms and technologies for both content management and commerce. commercetools is one of the latest additions to this portfolio, and it provides us with commerce capabilities for a variety of B2B and B2C use-cases. Next to this, we see an explosion of touchpoints, from in-store to IoT and apps. The microservices architecture of commercetools is really suited for these scenarios.

How clearly can you differentiate your target customers based on your portfolio and does commercetools fill a blank spot?

Pascal Lagarde: It is not a matter of black and white. When we select a platform for and with our clients, the choice often depends on many factors, such as vision of the client, their understanding of technology, the complexity of the business model, complexity of the enterprise architecture, ambition to in-source part of the development or not, the budget, any preferences as well as previous experiences and existing systems etc. Having said that, commercetools has a unique position in our portfolio with features and capabilities that other vendors are not able to provide.

In which scenarios would you prefer a cloud-native, API first commerce platform?

Pascal Lagarde: There are a number of reasons why we would advise our clients to move to a cloud-native, API first platform. These include topics such as

  • The need for a platform that truly supports omnichannel touchpoints (think website, app, connected car, wearable, POS-system etc.)

  • The need for flexibility to adjust to upcoming developments (new markets, changing business models, user requirements etc.)

  • The expectation that the performance and scalability will be important – to support rapid growth and/or peak loads

  • The integrations that are needed to other systems, both in the back-office (PIM, ERP etc.) and with client-facing touchpoints. service orientation from a seller side will remain high.

This, of course, means that every company needs to get rid of commerce silos and establish a ubiquitous experience for their customers – on a platform that allows fast and frequent deliveries for all channels.

Find out more on Valtech's website and check out the interviews for the commercetools Partner Day 2018.

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

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