E-commerce is a constantly evolving industry, facing new challenges and opportunities every day. Consumers demand personalized, fast and fluid experiences in all channels and devices; where competitors multiply and diversify. This forces companies to rely on strategies such as Composable Commerce capable of offering them flexibility, scalability and adaptability in this competitive context.
In essence the composable commerce approach is to enable companies of varying sizes to build and customize the e-commerce platform from individual components, so that functionality and capabilities are acquired on demand.
Gartner forecasts that by 2023, organizations embracing a Composable Commerce strategy will surpass their rivals by 80% in terms of the speed of new features deployment.
Composable commerce provides agility, practicality, flexibility and resource optimization. We will go into more detail about its concept and benefits below.
Next, we will analyze the basics of composable commerce and the ease and agility with which it can be adopted.
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What is composable commerce?
Traditional commerce has evolved from the physical store to the digital world, opening new opportunities for customer service.
But, the digital world also evolved, through new technologies that enhance the qualities of digital platforms.
This concept refers to the ability to build an e-commerce from different pieces, creating a scalable, reliable and flexible structure.
In the Web portal Coveo they define it as:
“Composable commerce (also known as unified commerce) is a modular, flexible and configurable approach to creating and managing your digital commerce solutions.”
This is made possible by creating independent software modules with specific responsibilities within e-commerce platforms. Functions such as product management, payment management, shipping management and even configurable analytics and reporting.
Key principles of composable commerce
There are three principles that consolidate the definition of composable commerce and differentiate it from traditional commerce:
- Modularity.
Very much in the style of microservices-based development, modular development is present in composable commerce.
Each component can be added or removed independently, without affecting the operability of the platform. This facilitates customization and flexibility.
- Interoperability
Each module can be seamlessly integrated with all other modules of the platform, regardless of vendor or programming language.
This interoperability is possible thanks to the use of application programming interfaces, which are standardized in communication.
- Cloud native
Composable commerce platforms run in the cloud, which means enabling cloud-native advantages such as scalability, performance and availability.
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Components of a Composable Commerce ecosystem
A composable commerce ecosystem is made up of a network of software components interconnected through APIs.
Together, these components give shape to the composable platform. Among the basic components or modules of an e-commerce, we have:
- E-commerce platforms, basic solutions for catalog management, shopping cart, payment methods, among other features. that allow you to choose and combine the services you need, and that easily integrate with other solutions.
- Content Management Systems (CMS), solutions that allow you to create, edit and publish content.
In composable commerce, they are offered in a headless way, that is, they offer a solution in charge of the content only, and that communicates with the presentation layer through APIs, facilitating the separation of responsibilities.
- Data analysis tools, necessary for the collection, processing and visualization of online store data. They are used to measure performance and user behavior.
- Other composable services: these are the solutions that allow you to add specific or advanced functionalities to your online store, such as marketing, personalization, security, artificial intelligence, etc.
These four components create a composable commerce ecosystem, a comprehensive, dynamic and competitive solution for the ecommerce sector, with the necessary flexibility and scalability that the digital environment currently demands.
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Benefits of Composable Commerce
Composable Commerce tools offer multiple benefits for ecommerce leaders and owners, including the following:
Customization
As a platform developed from modules, each organization can design or create its online store associated with its objectives, values and needs.
This enables a unique environment with clear differentiation of the value proposition.
An architecture that offers personalized shopping experiences for the business, and even for each customer segment or contact channel.
Adaptability
In a highly competitive environment, where technology evolves by leaps and bounds, composable commerce allows modifying, adding or removing services or pieces of software to the eCommerce platform, without affecting operability or service delivery.
This allows companies to adapt to the changing needs of the market, customers and even the organization.
In a commercetools publication, the case of Danone, a company that deployed its digital platform in record time and without incidents, thanks to composable commerce, to meet the need for direct access to baby formulas for parents in the worst moments of the pandemic, is reviewed.
Cost efficiency
By incorporating only the components to be used and exploited by the organization, the following is achieved:
- An optimization of investments in technologies.
- Streamline developments and launches, saving time, costs and efforts.
- And it eliminates the cost of maintenance, updating and operation of these modules not required, and that as part of a complete solution were necessary to ensure the stability of the platform.
Scalability
Composable commerce, as a cloud native, incorporates the advantages of scalability, allowing to increase or decrease the capabilities and performance of the platform according to the volume of traffic.
This, in turn, makes it possible to optimize the use of technological resources.
The Cultural Shift Towards Composable Business
The transition to Composable Commerce is more than a technological upgrade; it represents a fundamental shift in business culture. Leaders must embrace a mindset where every aspect of their business is seen as modular and adaptable. This change-centric approach, a key theme in Gartner’s analysis, involves viewing all non-changeable elements as a liability and recognizing the value in designing systems, processes, and strategies for continuous adaptation. This shift ensures a balance between stability and agility, fostering a culture that not only adapts to change but anticipates and drives it. This strategic evolution, visually represented in Gartner’s insightful diagram, underscores the importance of embracing change at all levels – from people to processes to business architectures.
How can Composable Commerce be implemented?
As it has been evidenced, composable commerce is characterized by the implementation of modules.
For the case of companies that already have e-commerce stores, the implementation can be done in a granular manner.
But whether it is a migration or the creation of a platform from scratch, the following steps can be established:
- Objectives definition, audiences, value proposition, and other characteristics that allow establishing the necessary functionalities in the platform, according to the business strategy.
- With a clear vision of the service, it is necessary to analyze the composable service providers that adapt to the conditions and needs of the business. Prioritizing quality, reliability, security and compatibility.
- Making intensive use of the APIs provided, which must be integrated and configured for each of the components.
- Testing and validating the behavior of the platform periodically and/or constantly. To ensure performance, usability, security and customer satisfaction.
The modularity of composable commerce allows a progressive implementation, allowing organizations to make a focused process in critical areas from the simplest to the most complex. Where simultaneous testing of the entire platform is not required, but rather specific integration tests.
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The Future of Composable Commerce
Like any implementation of new technologies there are challenges that must be overcome to acquire the full potential of Composable Commerce solutions.
Challenges such as:
- The technical knowledge required for the integration of the various technologies.
- Ensuring that components are up to date
- Costs that may be associated with each individual component
- And the time associated with the selection and testing of modules or components.
But in spite of these, the benefits that it brings once they have been initiated, add to the businesses an indispensable flexibility in these times.
“Large application vendors, once considered the path of least resistance by customers, are increasingly seen as a business risk, due to their inflexible business models.”
This reinforces the need to establish flexible architectures that guarantee the incorporation of new functionalities to the platforms, and the adaptation to new technologies.
Conclusion
The flexibility, customization and scalability that composable commerce provides, adds to e-commerce companies an unparalleled agility to adapt to changes in market and consumer behavior.
An essential strategy today to maintain competitiveness levels!
The key to the implementation of composable commerce lies in the separation of responsibilities and functionalities according to business priorities. In this way, a progressive migration can be planned.
At Nulogic we are specialists in the implementation of composable eCommerce platform solutions, supporting the implementation and integration processes, so that our clients acquire the maximum benefit from them.