Redefining core commerce functions for modern, composable platforms

IIt’s time to rethink what truly constitutes the "core" of a commerce platform. For years, the all-in-one suite approach bundled search, content management, PIM (product information management) and data analytics under the umbrella of core commerce capabilities. But as the market has matured, analysts and businesses alike are finally recognizing the value of breaking these functions into specialized, best-of-breed solutions — which has been commercetools’ vision since our inception. This blog will define the key functions of core commerce, explore how the industry is shifting its perspective —and why it’s time to leave outdated monolith thinking behind.

commercetools’ interpretation has always been that core commerce refers to the group of functionalities that provide all the fundamental backend elements needed to enable a business to conduct commerce or “sell” online. This includes product catalog management, pricing, shopping cart, order management and inventory management. Dirk Hoerig, our co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer, has always referred to our headless offering (which has now evolved into commercetools Platform, a composable commerce solution),  as the engine of an eCommerce business. From the beginning, he and Denis Werner, co-founder and Chief Information, Security and Compliance Officer shared the opinion that, “Sometimes, you don't know whether you need a car, a van or a truck, but you always know you need a good engine."

Unfortunately, for a long time, the industry had a different idea of the definition of core commerce — one that included search, PIM and data analytics in addition to the functionalities to enable sales capabilities. As a result, commercetools often ranked lower than monolith platforms that offered all-in-one digital commerce platforms in the major analyst reports (Gartner, Forrester, etc.). We were discredited for not offering things such as robust search or data analytics capabilities. 

Despite this, we continued to promote our vision of a best-of-breed commerce ecosystem in which smaller SaaS vendors provide a single feature, such as search, promotions, CMS, data analytics and so on. Our belief is that by focusing on delivering one capability and doing it really well, similarly, these other vendors are able to deliver much richer, much more developed software tools that better support today’s commerce landscape due to their intense specialization.

This component-based concept has always been intrinsic to commercetools’ philosophy. More recently, it has become the foundation of the composable commerce approach to building commerce tech stacks, which is rapidly replacing the outdated, monolithic systems that were introduced when eCommerce was born over 30 years ago.

Julia Rabkin, Senior Product Manager at commercetools pointed to Search vendors Algolia, Constructor and Bloomreach as perfect examples of the value of offering adjacent functions as composable components. All three vendors offer solid capabilities that enhance the customer experience, however, each one takes a slightly different approach and innovates in different ways to appeal to specific business needs and use cases. While all are considered best-of-breed, organizations are able to choose based on their specific goals and business structure.

While we’ve been continuously educating and evangelizing our perspective, shifting the old monolithic mindset has been difficult. However, in the past few years, there have been multiple signs that industry experts are starting to recognize that these standalone components, offered by individual vendors, should be evaluated separately. They shouldn’t be lumped in with reports that assess the capabilities of digital commerce vendors.

Multiple analyst firms including Gartner, IDC and Forrester are already producing reports that specifically focus on evaluating vendors that provide search and discovery capabilities. Julia noted that Andy Hoar, founder of the B2B Paradigm, has shared that the company also plans to release a new “Combine” report dedicated to search vendors in 2025. She feels it’s only a matter of time before there are separate reports for all of the key adjacent functions of composable commerce systems. She predicts that PIM may be the next capabilities analyst firms decide to tackle.

The question is: Will organizations that continue to rely on monolith commerce platforms such as Salesforce Commerce Cloud or SAP, or be able to shift their thinking to take advantage of these best-of-breed components? Julia doesn’t think so. “Some of these platforms are trying to position themselves as composable. Maybe they’ve added some composable elements, but, honestly, are they really going to allow their customers to integrate an outside search vendor?”  

This is why business leaders need to recognize that this shift toward composable systems — which have a platform offering core commerce functions as their foundation and allow organizations to pick and choose components, and switch them out or add new ones at any time — is more than a trend; it’s a necessity for agility and innovation. By treating these capabilities as adjacent rather than integral to core commerce, businesses can achieve greater flexibility, deeper functionality and a sharper competitive edge. 

To learn more about how your organization can benefit from breaking away from its monolith platform, download our white paper, A Blueprint for Digital Modernization.