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Unique consumer experiences, fast time to market, future-proofing, and scalability are just a few of the advantages of a composable architecture. There are many different ways to get started with composable commerce. How do you decide what is right for your business? And how do you identify truly composable software vendors?
The foundation of composable commerce begins with dividing larger eCommerce solutions into smaller ones, each providing a portion of the required functionality, such as the commerce transaction (pricing, stock, shopping cart, checkout), content management, and promotions. What used to be an all-in-one monolith with many functions combined together is broken down into a composition of individual SaaS services that are connected via APIs.
The composable architecture consists entirely of cloud solutions. They provide fast response times and high availability, while you can easily exchange components without downtime or much development time. It makes sense that Gartner states that composable is the future of commerce, which also means that it pays off for software companies to present themselves as composable, even if they are not.
A big misconception is that headless and composable commerce are the same thing. With headless, the front-end and back-end operate independently of each other and are connected through an API. The advantage of this is that you can have multiple different front-ends that can offer a seamless customer experience: true omni-channel. Another headless advantage is that you can be distinctive with your front end and not depend on the standard templates that monolithic software solutions often offer. Headless also offers flexibility: for example, if Social Commerce becomes relevant to your company, it can be added as a new front-end without adjusting the entire back-end landscape.
However, composable commerce goes one step further. The front-end itself is also modularly constructed from various back-end SaaS services, for example, the commerce engine, content management and search functions. You choose the best provider for each functionality. This way, you can quickly add a new payment service to an app, replace a PIM system in the back end or reuse the same commerce platform for multiple brands.
With composable commerce, you choose the components that are best for that one piece of functionality: the so-called best-of-breed approach. A commerce package is never really good at content management, just as a content management system is not the best at commerce, personalisation or promotions. By choosing best-of-breed, you get a solution that meets your expectations in all areas. You can also innovate more efficiently; integrating specific SaaS services requires less customisation. Moreover, new features are almost always developed by new software vendors and not by traditional legacy vendors. So if you want to continue to distinguish yourself, it must be possible to easily add new building blocks.
The transition from a monolith to a composable architecture is challenging. Not every organisation and technology that calls itself “composable” actually offers the flexibility, modularity, and scalability that composable commerce needs. You will need to exercise due diligence when choosing your puzzle pieces.
Market interest in composable is growing faster than some suppliers can customise their products. Full-suite solution providers that offer an API may be too quick to label themselves as “composable” while their core solution is still monolithic. For example, you can still call a monolithic solution consisting of modular modules, but these are not interchangeable with SaaS services from other providers.
To ensure that a software vendor is truly composable, running a proof of concept where you implement one or two key use cases and use their APIs is best. Reference clients with a similar set-up are also very relevant. There are also a number of validation questions that give you a quick insight into a supplier:
How old is the company? – Most true composable vendors are less than a decade old and have built their software on modern MACH development practices. This gives you a first indication of how modern the software will be.
Where is the company's focus? – A commerce supplier that also does content management or a content management supplier that also offers commerce are often not composable. Most composable vendors focus on a single domain.
Where can the API documentation be viewed online? – This should be publicly accessible to developers. Is the admin interface built on top of "documented" APIs? This shows that you are dealing with an API-first company, making the interface easily extensible.
Is a trial account available? – Most SaaS vendors provide a trial account or sandbox to play with the software and APIs for evaluation purposes.
How often are new features released, and how does this impact deployments? – Most composable vendors use modern development practices. For example, they regularly release updates without affecting the existing use of the APIs, so-called backwards compatibility.
What kind of monitoring and reporting is offered? – You want to know in real-time how the API is working and if there are service interruptions or other operational issues.
How many integrations with other composable vendors are available? – Since composable vendors operate in a composable landscape, off-the-shelf connectors to other systems are crucial. Composable accelerators are also interesting: they offer a pre-assembled solution for quickly deploying frequently used functionalities.
Can the software be implemented with any programming language? – Most composable vendors have SDKs available for the different programming languages and offer the ability to develop new SDKs on top of their APIs.
There are three main pillars to make composable successful. The first is technology, but this pillar does not function alone and is certainly not an end in itself. The second pillar is leadership. Your organisation needs management agility to innovate, experiment and push the boundaries. You also have to accept it if something doesn’t work: fail fast. This thinking needs to be instilled throughout the organisation from the top down. The last pillar is the business model. Close alignment between business and IT is required in the form of cross-functional teams, agile collaboration, modern development processes and fast release cycles.
Do you want to put composable commerce into practice successfully? Then take these final conclusions and recommendations into account:
Composable is the future: use it as a means to create business value quickly;
Be critical when selecting suppliers because everyone calls themselves 'composable'. Make the right choices to increase the chance of long-term success;
Composable requires puzzle work. It is a combination of good leadership, processes and technology.