Composable Commerce: a smaller step than you might imagine

Written by Admin | 18 10 2023

COMPOSABLE COMMERCE

Composable Commerce: a smaller step than you might imagine

Implementation of a composable commerce strategy offers companies many advantages: Flexibility, agility, a quick time-to-market and never again requiring full re-platforming of your digital commerce solution.

However, such re-platforming is however a requisite when switching from a traditional Digital Commerce platform to a fully MACH architecture based platform. Such a Big Bang migration requires a great deal of resources from an organisation and entails a fair deal of risk. The e-commerce boom during the Corona pandemic gave companies sufficient resources to be able to take this step.

Think Big start small

Market growth has slowed over the past year and interest rates have hiked, making companies considerably more cautious when investing in digital commerce. Although they still require a quick front end and greater flexibility, the step up to a fully new platform is currently too much for many companies. More and more parties are therefore opting for a gradual transition whereby important components of the existing commerce platform are retained. Or, in other words: Think Big Start Small.

Headless first

The principle behind such a solution is a modern headless front end, the part which users experience, which communicates via APIs with various back-end systems, including the existing digital commerce platform. At the start of the migration process, the existing platform is responsible for the lion’s share of the functionality, while the MACH-based services only form a small part of the solution.

During the migration process, which can take months or even years, the existing commerce platform is gradually stripped, until all functional areas have been replaced by modern variants. This is sometimes also referred to as a migration process based on a Strangler Façade.

A prerequisite for this approach is that the existing digital commerce platform can access all functionalities via so-called API end points. The most recent versions of digital commerce platforms frequently used in the Netherlands, such as Magento/Adobe commerce Cloud, SAP Commerce Cloud, Salesforce Commerce cloud and Shopware all offer this possibility.

Advantages

The choice to gradually migrate from an existing commerce platform to a new platform based on modern technology offers a number of advantages. Retaining most of the existing platform and accessory integrations to start with, while only replacing the front end and a number of services, allows a much shorter time-to-market than when the platform would be replaced in one go. The quick headless front end is therefore available much more quickly.

The peak load on the organisation will also be lower due to the lack of Big Bang migration. And so the impact on resources such as personnel and finance can be much more effectively spread. After all, existing integrations using other systems need not all be replaced at once, and the full depreciation of the existing platform can also be spread out longer due to it still being use.

A good example of a situation whereby the existing Digital Commerce platform is combined with a modern and quick headless front end is Hanosshop.com Here, the existing Hanos.nl ordering platform has been reused to launch a new non-food web shop.

Would you like to quickly experience the advantages of a composable commerce strategy and a modern platform based on MACH architecture?

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