Business professionals and technology experts may agree that responding to fast-changing customer expectations is a must, but don’t always see eye-to-eye on what technology is right to stay competitive in a crowded marketplace. While technologists have already recognized that composable solutions are the way to go, many non-technical peers remain skeptical as they don’t yet see the benefits from a business perspective. To get everyone onboard for a composable future, read the tips and insights to drive internal buy-in.
This year, the keyword “composable” has been everywhere as the age of monolith eCommerce platforms slowly comes to an end. Executives have realized that they cannot escape an environment of constant change and that delivering outstanding customer experiences needs to become a routine, not something special. And while 82% of C-level executives said that concerns about the economy have increased the need to adapt and modernize their IT architecture, there’s still some reluctance to make the move to composable commerce.
In the meantime, tech experts are confronted with impossible requests to accelerate innovation, deliver features faster, maintain availability during a high influx of online traffic and so on, with outdated legacy technology. Clearly, this doesn’t work, so we see more technology folks looking into modernizing infrastructure with composable commerce to solve such challenges, but facing challenges to get it approved internally.
If you’re a tech expert dreaming of a composable commerce solution but C-level and business teams haven’t yet bought into your idea, here’s how you can get internal buy-in.
Getting started: Change the narrative from tech to business speak
Did you know that 85% of leaders recognize that it’s vital to deliver improvements to customer experiences at speed? To drive a productive discussion with your colleagues, tap into the need to embrace constant change in a faster and smarter way, and connect the dots with what the business needs and what technology can deliver.
That said, getting your business colleagues on the same page requires you to:
Drop the jargon: You may love MACH®, SaaS and multi-tenant architecture, but your business peers probably have no idea what these terms mean.
Read the room: Your business-minded colleagues care about revenue increase, cost reduction, brand reputation and operational efficiency. Address these topics for a productive discussion.
Flip the script: Every story has a beginning, and this one should start from the customer’s point of view. Position composable commerce as the enabler to achieving your company’s goals.
Building your story in 5 steps
Follow the five steps to create a compelling story.
How is your company serving today’s demanding customers? And how can your company move faster in addressing those fast-changing expectations? Analyze what customers are telling you and if your company is equipped to fulfill those demands, from convenient and personalized experiences to omnichannel commerce.
What commerce requirements does your company need to stay ahead of customers’ demands? Spin your story according to the time-to-market, flexibility, scalability and customization options your business colleagues want to have.
What’s composable and why should your colleagues care? Simply put, explain to your business audience that it’s through a composable solution that they can turn brilliant ideas into reality. Their ambitious business goals can only be achieved with powerful technology under the hood. Make that connection clear and communicate how legacy platforms hurt the bottom line.
Bring in the benefits — creating unique experiences, increased conversion, efficiency gains and lower total costs of ownership (TCO) — and the customer stories that prove them. Show how switching to composable commerce positively impacts sales and cost reduction.
A vital part of your storytelling should be case studies. What benefits have businesses reaped with a composable architecture encompassing revenue increase, cost reduction and efficiency boost? Here are a few examples:
Canadian luxury menswear retailer Harry Rosen’s implementation of an omnichannel approach resulted in 300% growth in orders, a 1.8% increase in basket value and a 3x lower return rate.
Fashion brand Express handled 3x the traffic on Black Friday without a hitch and added five significant capabilities to their digital experience in three months.
Electronics manufacturer Bang & Olufsen increased the D2C conversion rate by 60%.
The B2B work uniform company Cargo Crew saved about 2,000 hours of customer administration time when compared with manual order processing.
The composable commerce platform of choice for leading B2C, B2B and D2C brands including Audi, Sephora, Qantas and Dawn Foods enables you to move from legacy solutions to composable with a growing digital commerce portfolio.
A Leader in the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Digital Commerce Report for four years in a row, commercetools provides a flexible and agile infrastructure for businesses to benefit from composable commerce at speed and without vendor lock-in.
Don’t wait any longer to engage your colleagues in a productive conversation about composable commerce. Download the complete Composable Commerce Cheat Sheet to help you in the internal buy-in process!
Manuela Marques Tchoe is a Content Writer at commercetools. She was a Content and Product Marketing Director at conversational commerce provider tyntec. She has written content in partnership with Facebook, Rakuten Viber and other social media platforms.