To keep up with the ever-evolving commerce landscape, business leaders are continually seeking ways to improve their ability to adapt to changing needs and scale quickly so that they can continuously meet customer expectations with ease. To support this, a new approach to building commerce technology has emerged as an alternative to traditional monolith platforms — composable commerce. By replacing the rigid all-in-one design of the monolith with a component-based architecture, it’s giving businesses the agility and flexibility they need to thrive.
Agility and flexibility are critically important today because customer expectations are dramatically different than they were when eCommerce was introduced some 30 years ago, back when the desktop computer was the only shopping channel and no one had ever heard of social media. Of course, many factors contributed to what commerce looks like now. Consumers and B2B buyers expect to be able to buy what they want, whenever they want and make purchases quickly. Plus, they expect to be able to find the product information they need easily, enjoy seamless omnichannel experiences and choose from multiple payment and shipping options.
Meeting these expectations, while continually finding new ways to keep customers loyal, is a tall order. However, it’s one that composable commerce accomplishes beautifully. The component-based “plug-and-play” architecture allows businesses to cherry-pick best-in-class components that fit their unique requirements, as well as add and remove them at any time without risk. With its emphasis on delivering flexibility, scalability and freedom of choice, it trumps traditional monolithic platforms in four pivotal ways:
1. Monoliths are rigid, composable is agile and flexible.
2. Monoliths are restrictive, composable gives you freedom.
3. Monoliths stifle growth, composable scales as your business scales.
4. Monoliths limit you, composable enhances creativity and productivity.
The capabilities composable commerce offers enable you to deliver outstanding shopping experiences more quickly, delighting your customers and driving higher sales while lowering costs. As a result, businesses across every industry are leveraging composable commerce. Regardless of what you sell, who your customer is, the size of your business or your business model, the individual components, the cloud, and the core technologies that are the foundation for composable commerce work together the same way.
A cloud-native approach goes hand-in-hand with a composable one. Monolithic applications need to be built, tested and deployed as a single unit, but a cloud-native architecture enables you to decompose components into loosely coupled services. This helps enterprises manage complexity and improve the speed, agility and scale of software delivery, enabling businesses to adapt to many new possibilities.
Managing Director of Retail Solutions, Google Cloud
B2C brands across the globe, including Audi, Express, Promod and The Salling Group, as well as B2B brands such as Dawn Foods, Cargo Crew and Just Eat Takeaway.com have all reported higher revenues and lower costs after switching to commercetools Composable Commerce. Japanese company Tamron, a camera lens manufacturer, is leveraging it to deliver omnichannel experiences across its B2C, B2B and D2C businesses.
With composable commerce, instead of constantly struggling with your commerce technology while watching your technical debt increase, you can look forward to expanding operations, boosting revenue, trimming costs and minimizing risks. The newfound flexibility it offers also fosters creativity and drives productivity among teams, allowing your organization to thrive internally as well as succeed externally.
By 2025, organizations offering a unified commerce experience by frictionlessly moving customers through journeys will see at least a 20% uplift in total revenue.
Because the composable approach is so different from working on a traditional platform, most businesses that have switched have found it necessary to integrate composability throughout their organization. This involves having strong leadership at the helm that fosters a culture of innovation, encourages cross-functional collaboration and develops a team structure that puts experiences and customer satisfaction above all else. By doing so, businesses have been able to reuse composable technologies to benefit non-commerce operations, extending the value of their investment.
While transitioning your business to a new technology that comes with its own unique mindset may seem complicated, commercetools is dedicated to simplifying the process. Ranked 1st for Composable Commerce Use Case in the 2023 Gartner® Critical Capabilities for Digital Commerce (out of 18 vendors), we offer a range of technology products that cater to B2C, B2B and the Chinese market, alongside frontend and checkout solutions.
commercetools doesn’t believe migrating to composable has to be a daunting process; our strong partner ecosystem and accelerator program ensures you have support to help you navigate your journey. Plus, you can implement it gradually, breaking down your monolithic platform into smaller, manageable components with the support of APIs, documentation, implementation partners and accelerators.
There's been a lot of challenges. There's been a lot of things that have been interesting, a lot of things that have been difficult. One of the things that wasn’t difficult, to be fair, was commercetools. It’s been fairly easy to integrate with.
VP of Engineering, Moonpig
Composable commerce is the future of commerce, providing a solution that grants businesses the freedom to innovate, explore new opportunities and achieve growth objectives with minimal risk. Not only does it enable you to adapt to constant change, but it also allows you to create unique experiences that set you apart from your competitors. It's not as complex as it may seem — and the rewards you reap will set you up for long-term business success.
If you’re ready to move away from your restrictive monolith and embrace all the benefits composable commerce has to offer, download our white paper, The power of agility & flexibility: Why composable commerce will change the way you run your business. It provides a deep dive into why composable commerce matters now, what it offers your business and how commercetools Composable Commerce products deliver better outcomes than the solutions other vendors offer.
Anita J. Temple is the Corporate Journalist at commercetools. She was a fashion editor at Women’s Wear Daily (WWD) and W Magazine before launching a career as a freelance writer and creative producer. She has written content and worked on a wide range of marketing projects for companies including Dreamworks, Walmart, Coca-Cola, Verizon, and Adidas.