Digital commerce: Finding the right technology partner
By 2023, organizations that have adopted a “composable” approach to commerce will outpace their competition by more than 80% when it comes to the implementation and rollout of new features. Perhaps that’s why agencies are now recommending that retailers turn their attention to composable commerce as a way to shape and future-proof their entire digital transformation strategies.
If your agency’s job is to create dynamic digital storefronts or competitive end-user experiences, you’ve probably already had the “composable commerce” conversation with your retail customers. The disruption caused by the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns has taught them that in order to be successful in the modern digital landscape, they need to be flexible and agile. It’s one thing to design a superb storefront and throw some marketing capital behind it, but without the right digital strategy in place, it won’t be enough to compete on the e-commerce stage in 2021 and beyond.
A composable approach to e-commerce
Growth in retail technology appears to be exponential, with customer trends and expectations constantly raising the bar in terms of the services and features that are required to remain competitive. A decade or so ago, stores that had an online presence would have had an advantage. Today, an online presence is all but essential if a retail business wants to survive long-term.
The balance of the commerce market has shifted so quickly toward distributed SaaS technology and modular architectures that Gartner coined the term “Composable Commerce”, referring to the need to orchestrate a selection of best-in-class tools to compete. The idea behind this is that no single vendor can offer all of the applications, features, expertise, and technologies to create a robust and refined e-commerce experience for retailers, and that’s why finding the right technology partnerships has become so critical for agencies.
Cultivating a strong partnership network with API-first vendors
If your customers are to benefit from best-in-class solutions, then you need to be able to take advantage of best-of-breed technologies. The best way to achieve this is to work with technology vendors that take an API-first approach, ensuring that their solutions are fully compatible and interoperable with all other leading technology vendors.
Some of the trusted technology partners that Emporix works with, for example, include Frontastic; a “front-end-as-a-service” company that specializes in customer-centric digital experiences, or Onfleet; a distribution specialist that helps retailers plan routes, track drivers and provide real-time location updates to customers. Meanwhile, Algolia’s specialist search-as-a-service solutions help to ensure that customer shopping experiences benefit from intuitive search functionality, and Contentful provides a CMS that customers feel comfortable with when taking control of their content management. This ecosystem of leading technologies all in one place is possible thanks to the agile nature of the API-first approach. It provides a perfect environment to create next-generation composable commerce solutions, with players from all fields coming together to combine their creative functions into one effective digital solution.
Udo Rauch, CSO of Emporix, explains why partnerships are so vital and how easy they can be facilitated with the right core technology in place:
“Emporix lies at the core of the composable commerce approach. Our headless solution splits the front-end and back-end of a customers’ online presence into separate touchpoints, giving us the flexibility to incorporate different functionalities and roll them out with ease. By leveraging various cloud-native microservices and APIs that have been specifically developed for digital commerce across both B2B and B2C, each technology partner is able to implement its own solution without disrupting or causing conflicts with other areas of the digital storefront. This is fertile ground for great partnerships to come together and set new benchmarks for excellence in both B2C and B2B commerce, which is why agencies love to work with us.”
To find out how Emporix’s digital commerce solution provides a gateway to incorporating the best-in-class technology vendors into your next project, register your interest here. We aim to use our experience and expertise to make doing business as simple as possible, but with the most sophisticated systems.
Together, we’ll continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible for retailers and redefine e-commerce.
