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Composable Commerce can be difficult: because you can choose a separate solution for each feature, selection, implementation and maintenance quickly become complex. Digital agencies can offer a solution by providing a bridge between the monolith and fully open Composable with ‘accelerators’.
The advantage of Composable Commerce also has a downside: the great flexibility and options mean that making the right choices quickly becomes complex. Accelerators address this problem with a reusable front-end, pre-built components, and integrations of a number of SAAS solutions. This mitigates the disadvantages and makes Composable Commerce more feasible for medium-sized companies.
More and more companies are embracing Composable: you can implement the best solutions for business operations, reduce maintenance costs and respond quickly and flexibly to future needs. In addition to all the promises and benefits, the accompanying challenges are also becoming more known. With every implementation, Composable results in a unique toolbox with components that you have to connect to each other in the right places. This enables a best-of-breed approach, but also means more complexity for overseeing the toolbox, supplier choices, connections and maintenance.
This is all manageable for companies with deep pockets and large internal IT teams, but it also takes longer before benefits such as faster time-to-market and flexibility are achieved. Not every Composable project delivers what was promised, or even gets stuck halfway through. The high expectations are not met and Composable ends up in the drawer as yet another silver bullet. What now?
The main goals in replatforming
Before you can continue, you will first have to look at how you got here. The choice of Composable is guided by previous disappointments with the all-in-one or monolithic approach. In fact, you want to combine the advantages of the monolith with the advantages of Composable:
Fast initial time to market
Minimal risks
Flexibility and agility for further development and innovation
No vendor lock-in
Low total cost of ownership
Never platform again
What often goes wrong in practice is that after an extensive selection process, a choice is first made for, for example, a SAAS commerce platform, CMS and search solution. Subsequently, during implementation, the wheel is reinvented around the architecture, the front-end and integration of the various solutions.
Another common mistake is like-for-like replatforming, where the old functionality is recreated in the new solution. Careful consideration must therefore be given to the new opportunities for value creation and how a certain functionality can best be used in the new set-up. It is therefore also possible that old functionality no longer has a place in the new solution because it no longer offers much value. So-called accelerators make this transition faster and more sustainable.
Simplify the move to Composable with accelerators
Accelerators act as a blueprint for a specific purpose, such as a white-label front-end of a webshop, opening up the SAAS components to this front-end or integrating them with each other. They include integrations, SDKs, libraries, services, methods, and best practices.
Accelerators are mainly offered by digital agencies and system integrators who offer their customers a proven and practice-oriented solution. Accelerators help minimise errors, bring a standardised approach and thus ensure higher quality. It offers companies a quick go-live and development hours can be used for functionality with a distinctive character instead of reinventing the wheel. In addition, internal development teams can be deployed quickly, with the advantage that they can continue to develop things independently or in collaboration after going live. This also makes a proof-of-value process an interesting option.
An accelerator shapes the IT landscape and offers a total solution, making it reminiscent of a monolith. The big difference, however, is that you can easily add or replace parts with this approach, which is a lot more difficult with a real monolith.
Best practices for replatforming
Those who want to quickly make the transition from a monolith to Composable Commerce and run into the associated disadvantages will therefore end up with accelerators at some point. Consider the following best practices:
Focus on your core business
Find the best solutions for your company-specific processes, or build them yourself where necessary, just like SLBdiensten did. Use accelerators as a starting point for a rapid realisation of your MVP.
Be critical of your own processes
Accelerators come with specific integrations, for example for payment providers. That saves a lot of development time, but it may mean that you have to switch payment providers. This is not so difficult for online parties, but it is different for parties with physical stores. Therefore, make a good inventory of your needs and processes so that you get a clear picture of what customisation remains.
Start where it hurts
Think about: a marketing team that can’t do anything because the experience and campaigns are chained into a monolith, or orders that are delivered incorrectly. Look at where the most business value is and then determine what the added value of accelerators is. This makes your process more manageable and provides immediate value. The choice to replace everything with Composable at once is risky and not recommended.
Work with real data
Use real business data and not dummy data as early as possible in the development process. In this way you can check immediately: is everything we build correct and will this really work in practice
Choosing is precious
Before choosing a monolith, you should consider a number of suppliers. With Composable you can choose the best solution for each component, so you will soon have to consider dozens of suppliers. Often the accelerators of a digital agency are based on preferences and experiences with a select set of solutions. In this case, check whether these solutions meet the requirements and wishes of your company.
Be careful what you buy
Just like we discussed earlier what to look for when selecting a composable supplier, accelerators also come in many shapes and sizes. Make sure that an accelerator does not result in a vendor lock-in by the underlying provider. A good provider will ensure that the accelerators offer you the freedom and flexibility that comes with Composable.
This is not the end but only the beginning
Companies often also have their own development teams and only the initial replatforming is (partially) outsourced. It is therefore extremely important that these teams are onboarded during the project on the new development process and the accelerators so that after the project there is a solid foundation in terms of both platform and knowledge for further development.
Accelerators in practice
The use of accelerators offers companies a quick transition to Composable. You should note that accelerators encompass more than just rapid improvement and commercial leverage. A good set of accelerators stems from the right engineering culture and makes it possible to continue to innovate and develop after a rapid go-live. In this way, accelerators deliver on Composable’s promise of sustainable replatforming and make Composable accessible and viable for midsize companies.