Composable Commerce:
a game changer for commerce systems
Introduction
In his 1859 book, The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin asserted that the species that adapt best to their changing environment have the best chance at survival, while those that fail to adapt fail to survive. As it turns out, this is true for both animals and businesses, especially in the rapidly evolving digital world.
Only yesterday, businesses were racing to integrate entire software solutions and cloud apps to digitally transform their business processes. Today, future-thinking businesses are already looking to level up their integrations by adding compositions of only the most relevant parts of these software solutions and apps. This new kind of advanced integration is termed “Composable Commerce,” causing quite a stir in the world of digital commerce. However, most retailers are far from understanding what it can truly do for their business. So, what’s all the fuss about?
Composable Commerce: the future of e-commerce or just another fashionable trend?
In short, Composable Commerce is a way for businesses to create more meaningful, intuitive, and informative product experiences for their customers through a careful “composition” of best-of-breed technologies.
Over the last decade, there has been a drastic change in the status quo of customer buying habits. Many customers have moved to buying their products almost exclusively from online platforms. With customers seeking to have increasingly personalized buying experiences consistently, businesses with one-stop-shop traditional platforms found themselves in dire need of being able to adapt new e-commerce features swiftly. This change entailed revamping and rethinking their entire customer experience and operating models in an attempt to become more agile, innovative, and flexible.
Instead of being locked into one vendor or platform to provide new e-commerce features, businesses started to seek modular architectures that would enable them to include the best features of other software in their platform. Eliminating the hassles of re-platforming, this flexible and customizable approach to e-commerce is how Composable Commerce was born.
In order to create custom assortments of best-of-breed e-commerce features, also known as e-commerce stacks, businesses needed an integration solution that could facilitate and sustain a Composable Commerce structure. This is where businesses that were already using next-gen integration solutions like the Alumio iPaaS (integration Platform as a Service) stood to gain the most.
How the Alumio iPaaS can empower Composable Commerce
As a cloud-based integration platform, the Alumio iPaaS enables businesses to seamlessly integrate two or multiple software solutions, cloud apps, or data sources.
The future-proof architecture of the Alumio platform is naturally compatible with seamlessly integrating composable stacks as well. Furthermore, it lowers the complexity of integrations and enables businesses to have control and ownership of their integrations, reducing their dependency on third-party providers. By swiftly integrating any software, systems, or microservices, the Alumio iPaaS allows businesses to add new technologies to their domestic digital environment and remove outdated ones. In other words, it provides businesses with unparalleled flexibility to customize their e-commerce stack as desired. Furthermore, the Alumio iPaaS centralizes all integrations and data on a single platform, guaranteeing the usability and connectivity of all e-commerce data across all systems.
In summary, with the Alumio iPaaS, businesses have access to the following:
Fast and simplified integrations that allow for swift re-platforming
An agile and future-proof integration landscape
Extensive data governance
Customized and enhanced customer experiences
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How does Composable Commerce work?
Composable Commerce is commonly described as an approach to creating integrated e-commerce experiences based on MACH architecture. It stands for Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native, and Headless.
Microservices
These are individual pieces of software features or business functionalities, such as CRM, Order Management, or Price Calculation, which can be deployed and managed independently.
API-first
A strategic method of integrating any software, apps, data sources, or microservices through APIs (Application Programming Interface), also known as software intermediaries.
Cloud-native SaaS
Implementing cloud-based integration solutions like the Alumio iPaaS (integration Platform as a Service) to integrate any software, app, data source, or microservice.
Headless
Employing solutions where front-end and back-end logic is decoupled, enabling users to operate software from the front-end UI freely.
A software solution or app comprises multiple microservices, essentially the features or business functionalities the software contains. Composable Commerce allows businesses to independently develop, deploy, and manage the best microservices or business capabilities that various apps offer instead of being locked into any one software vendor. In other words, with Composable Commerce, businesses can examine entire software solutions and apps and select specific features or microservices to build customized stacks.
Think of microservices like Lego blocks without an instruction manual to piece them together to build that creation you had perfectly envisioned.”
PBCs (Packaged Business Capabilities) are a collection of features that are flexible and easier to deploy. PBCs usually consist of specific business capabilities, such as CRM, order management, shipping calculations, or payment processes, adding tangible business value into a system. They work as self-standing, independent units and exchange information via APIs.
In fact, in their 2020 report “Apply the Principles Behind the Future of Applications to Digital Commerce,” Gartner predicted that:
By 2024, 30% of digital commerce organizations will use packaged business capabilities (PBCs) to construct their application experiences.”
In a nutshell, the benefits of Composable Commerce are:
Flexibility
Modularity
Cost-effectiveness
Time-effectiveness
How can Composable Commerce benefit your business?
In order to stay in the e-commerce race, as in any race, you need to be agile and fast! If your traditional platform doesn’t offer the specific integration you need or isn’t ready to deliver it on demand, you will be left behind as others with composable structures fly past you. To quote Gartner:
By 2023, organizations that have adopted a Composable Commerce approach will outpace the competition by 80% in the speed of new feature implementation.”
In short, change is happening, and it’s happening now, so be prepared!
It is no secret that no single vendor can provide you with a specific range of functionality tailored to your business model and evolving customer demands. With Composable Commerce, your business will have the freedom of being scalable without you having to worry about fitting into constraining models because a composable structure adapts to you, not the other way around.
Composable Commerce enables you to:
Composable Commerce promotes the incorporation of personalized and customized content online and offline across all channels, which helps to establish positive, lasting relationships with your customers.
Due to the flexibility inherent in the composable approach, you can have trial runs for your different capabilities separately, making error detection and modifications easier and thus shortening your release time.
Due to the decoupling of the front end (the part customers are in contact with) from the back end (the part that carries out transactional actions and manages the store), developers can adjust code on the back end without it having any repercussions for the front end. This flexibility to personalize and operate the two sides separately without altering other elements results in easy changes and improvements that will allow you to scale fast.
Being committed to one vendor means being confined to their timetable and fixed prices, even if you aren’t taking full advantage of their solution. Instead of being tied to a single vendor, Composable Commerce allows you to integrate specific features from various software. As such, it enables the layering of new applications and the disposal of outdated ones, removing the hassles of rebuilding your tech stack from scratch.
Depending on what your business priorities are, you can focus on particular aspects that will add value to your business, with both the technical and non-technical professionals collaborating to reach a shared goal in line with PCBs.
Some things to consider before switching to Composable Commerce
Before deciding to switch to Composable Commerce, you must first ask yourself: is my business ready for this change?
Here’s how Alumio can help: with our integration platform, you can progressively switch towards a Composable Commerce architecture based on your current business needs without having to re-platform your entire existing IT landscape. As such, you can part ways with your legacy system or base e-commerce platform without risking any loss of data integrity when “going composable.”
With the Alumio iPaaS, adapting composable stacks is easier than ever. Our iPaaS presents a low-code, user-friendly interface that both developers and non-developers can use to create, manage, and modify integrations. It automatically segregates connected systems into data flows and microservices, enabling the seamless integration of any composable PBCs within your IT ecosystem.
Conclusion
In sum, Composable Commerce aims to put an end to the restrictions of the monolithic architecture of traditional e-commerce platforms. Their one-size-fits-all solution makes it impossible to keep up with new digital developments and customer behavior.
According to Elastic Path’s 2021 “State of Composable Commerce report,” 95% of e-commerce practitioners surveyed believe Composable Commerce is “the way of the future” for businesses, and 72% believe this approach “is beneficial to both technology and business teams.”
It is beyond question that Composable Commerce is a real solution and not just smoke and mirrors. Plainly speaking, it’s about staying ahead of the curve. Commerce is not a static venture but an ever-changing landscape that evolves synchronously with customer demands, and businesses must naturally evolve with it as well. Every day, more and more businesses are choosing Composable Commerce and benefiting from it, so why shouldn’t you?
Developing IT ecosystems that can flexibly adapt to new systems like composable commerce is essential for modern businesses to survive. The Alumio iPaaS is designed as a future-proof integration solution to flexibly integrate with any new technology or variation of software or data integration - such as this new Composable Commerce wave. The Alumio iPaaS was born ready for the new era of e-commerce. Will you join us?
