Today the buyer's journey is integrated across channels and touchpoints. If you want to stand out from the crowd you need to be flexible enough to create services and user experiences that makes the buyer’s journey simple, quick, and inspirational enough to the clients. Modern commerce architecture is an architecture based on a more modular approach using microservices. It’s virtually the opposite of a “monolith” all-in-one application.
There are multiple definitions connected to Modern Commerce Architecture such as:
- MACH – CommerceTools concept stands for Microservices-based, API-first, Cloud-native, and Headless.
- Composable Commerce – Gartners definition recommends this approach to “strangle the monolith”. The concept builds on an incremental approach to build towards a more modular architecture. Gartners recommends approaching this in three dimensions - Customer Journey, Business Capabilities Tech stack – to “compose” your digital experience.
- Connected Commerce – like Unified Commerce, means a seamless shopping experience across channels devices. This has been an aspiration for many companies – but now the technology is here to support this strategy.
Here are 7 things that will make it easier for you to understand modern e-commerce architecture:
- Drivers
The digital commerce market and landscape shift incredibly fast. Consumer behavior can shift completely from one day to another and all companies that want to stay relevant need to be prepared to adapt to these changes.
The coronavirus pandemic has affected this development – and increased the importance of online sales channels.
- Numbers
According to Gartner, by 2023 companies that have adopted a “composable commerce” approach will be up to 80% faster in their implementation of new features.
- Enablers
Over the past decade – several new technologies have seen the light of the day that enables Modern Commerce Architecture. Most important is the rise of Cloud and API-technology.
- Benefits of implementing a modern commerce architecture for your company:
- Flexibility market responsiveness
- Time to market
- A better foundation for innovation
- TCO – less spend on upgrades maintenance – and more on things that drive sales customer experience
- Best-of-breed vs. Hybrid
Just because you choose a modular architecture does not mean you have to do everything modular and choose best-of-breed platforms for all functionalities. A hybrid approach is probably the way most companies will go. Choose best-of-breed solutions for functionality that makes a difference, and can prove ROI, and choose packaged functionality for more standardization.
Always put the customer first, they do not care about your complexity – but you should. Legacy IT or a complex business organization is no excuse for a bad customer experience. Always assume a customer-first approach – and truly find out what your customers want to create a world-class customer experience.
- Reality
Let’s be honest – all companies have some form of legacy-IT to relate to. Most companies already have several e-com/MarTech applications running with multiple integrations. A rip-and-replace approach is rarely conceivable, nor motivated. Instead – most companies will have to lay out a road map to successively build towards a more modern commerce architecture. This requires organizations to break down silos and work cross-functionally.
- Implementation organization
There are several trends today in how to build a team to support your digital channels. Some companies have an in-house strategy – to have full control over the strategy development.
Some companies outsource everything to digital consultancies. In between, there are many variations of mixed teams. The important part is to choose competence that can handle the complexity that a modern commerce architecture brings. There are many consultancies out there that can implement a website or a webshop – but fewer that can implement and evolve a modular eCommerce platform.
We hope that this blog found you well, and feel free to get in touch if you have any questions.