IDC MarketScape reports provide comprehensive evaluations of technology vendors that support the unique needs of the B2B market. They offer invaluable insights into the strategies and capabilities of the top vendors, serving as an essential guide for B2B leaders in their pursuit of the ideal digital commerce system. Its latest report, IDC MarketScape Worldwide B2B Digital Commerce Applications for Midmarket Growth 2023-2024 Vendor Assessment, focusing on the needs of B2B firm companies with a transacting volume of $100 million to $500 million or more in annual revenue, recognizes commercetools as a Leader.
In a rapidly evolving B2B digital landscape, analyst reports like the IDC MarketScape are a valuable resource for business leaders tasked with transforming their commerce strategies and practices to meet the demands of today’s buyers. Not only do the reports provide a comprehensive assessment of the top vendors in the digital commerce market, but they also offer a high-level overview of the state of the B2B industry.
According to the B2B midmarket growth report, the sector is poised for growth. It presents the opinion that to leverage these opportunities, midmarket B2Bs must focus on customer experience, laying out the groundwork — which includes the use of transformative technologies like generative AI and machine learning — to serve as a guide to help organizations advance commerce to the next level. The report also illustrates how these technologies are revolutionizing the customer experience and enabling firms to explore new commerce channels and business models.
These buyers need SaaS, integration, and deployment strategies that provide ample opportunities to outmaneuver larger competitors operationally and in the sphere of customer experience (CX).
To reinforce the importance of growth as a critical driver for midmarket B2Bs, the report refers to the sector as “midmarket growth companies” or MMGs. “MMGs don't back away from new technology when the macroeconomic headwinds are daunting. When extremely large enterprises pull back, MMGs lean in to seize the opportunity.”
The report also touts the value of having a high level of digital maturity, calling it a “growth multiplier” for MMGs. Firms that advance their digital maturity gain the ability to “experiment, iterate and adapt to market fluctuations,” giving them a competitive edge.
Adopting composable technologies is a key strategy for organizations looking to increase digital maturity as it allows them to gain the flexibility and agility needed to expand their commerce capabilities and tap into growth opportunities. The good news, according to the report, is that “most digital commerce software products are now composable to varying degrees.”
With composable commerce established as an industry buzzword, even legacy monolithic vendors are incorporating it into their messaging as they acknowledge the approach is key to firms staying competitive in an increasingly complex market, However, commercetools is adamant in our stance that "somewhat composable" or "composable to varying degrees" will not give you the benefits of a truly composable system.
By embracing API-first composable commerce, which offers modular architecture for rapid innovation, MMG B2B firms can swiftly adapt to market changes to optimize revenue generation and capitalize on emerging CX opportunities.
commercetools’ fully composable design was a key factor in the company being positioned in the Leaders category within the 2023–2024 IDC MarketScape for B2B digital commerce applications for midmarket growth. The report pointed to our MACH® technology, modular architecture and cloud-agnostic infrastructure along with our unwavering dedication to unopinionated APIs as our key strengths, lauding these factors as key to enabling the flexibility and agility MMG B2Bs need today.
While there are hundreds of factors at play when a buyer is selecting their commerce SaaS, IDC advocates that “every technology buyer reflects on how it intends to use a B2B commerce platform to differentiate itself in the market.” To aid in this process, they identified the 7 most common differentiators among B2B firms, noting that, “buyers will often choose more than one differentiation path, but clarity about the paths they are pursuing can help refine the commerce SaaS selection process.”
It presented commercetools as a vendor that is “well suited to MMG B2Bs focusing on business agility-led, experience-led, and tech agility-led differentiation strategies.” In addition, they highlighted that because commercetools is a truly composable system, integrations are incredibly easy. One might argue that for this reason, commercetools Composable Commerce for B2B platform is also a good fit for firms pursuing other types of differentiation strategies, including AI and data-led, Industry-led, People-led or Product-led strategies.
An excellent fit if you're looking for a cloud-agnostic, fully composable, modular headless experiential commerce product that can integrate with virtually anything and support both B2B and B2C from the same product instance.
The report stressed that commercetools is developer-friendly, a benefit that is critical to provide the flexibility MMG B2Bs need to grow and compete in today’s environment. It specifically mentions our dedication to unopinionated APIs, which give developers “full flexibility to integrate stacks that are truly fit for purpose and enterprise ready.
The report points out that while tech leaders tend to understand the value of our platform immediately, business executives often equate composable technologies to complexity. Thankfully, we have multiple B2B case studies that refute this misconception:
We're already seeing returns on the average order value size 2.5 times what we had previously. And a big part of that is just because we can create a better experience, we can get things out faster. Our team doesn't have to work within the confines of the monolith anymore.
Technical Product Manager, ACE Southern
You need to have the agility to adapt to your changing requirements and needs. I believe that the MACH approach suits that quite well. If we are thinking about 2… 3… 4 years into the future, we need to be prepared in case something changes, for example, in customer behavior or connecting to IoT. If we would have built the system with a traditional monolith eCommerce system, we would have lost that agility for the future. This is why we chose composable architecture.
Director of Digital Services, Normet
The report lauds MMG B2Bs for being “perennially eager to invest in software that will advance commerce to the next level.” These firms are willing to take calculated risks to advance business outcomes as they are fully aware that having a differentiated digital strategy is critical to their long-term success— and this is where commercetools excels.
Only 6 vendors were identified as Leaders in the IDC MarketScape Worldwide B2B Digital Commerce Applications for Midmarket Growth Vendor Assessment. As the only truly composable vendor, commercetools is uniquely positioned to enable MMG B2Bs to fully leverage the benefits — and the growth potential — that composability delivers.
To learn more about the unique needs of MMG B2Bs and why commercetools was named a leader, download a complimentary copy of the IDC MarketScape Worldwide B2B Digital Commerce Applications for Midmarket Growth 2023-2024 Vendor Assessment.
Michael Scholz is the VP of Product & Customer Marketing for commercetools. With two decades of experience in retail & software at SAP, Hybris, SuccessFactors and Sift, he has been leading software development, presales, consulting, marketing & strategic alliances.