The Hidden Cost of Custom Code in Digital Commerce Systems and How to Avoid It

Many legacy commerce systems tend to be rigid and difficult to maintain due to customized software code. This drives operating costs and paralyzes growth. Next-generation no-code platforms like Emporix enable fast innovation while keeping the total cost of ownership low.

TL;DR

• Customized software code makes both monolithic commerce systems and Composable Commerce platforms rigid and complex - the “custom code trap”.
• Rigidity and complexity lead to a development and maintenance overhead reflected in high total cost of ownership (TCO).
• High upgrade effort, Total Cost of Change (TCC), often results in missed innovation and opportunities, jeopardizing competitiveness.
• Emporix sets the stage for future-proof commerce by enabling the rapid, efficient orchestration of processes and capabilities without touching the code.

Understanding the Impact of Customized Software Code in Legacy Commerce Systems

What doesn't fit is made to fit. Accordingly, over time, many businesses have continuously customized their commerce systems to upcoming and ever faster changing buyer and market requirements, even if these monoliths were rarely designed for custom modifications. Today, these systems can be difficult to handle - not only from the developer's perspective.

The reason for this is obvious: With every software code modification, a software architecture gets more complex and rigid, driving up development and maintenance costs - the total cost of ownership - over time. In addition, technical debt and hindered innovations severely jeopardize the profitability of technology investments and overall competitiveness.

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)

Total cost of ownership is a key metric for commerce executives to make informed decisions about their technology investments and continuously measure its profitability. This requires tracking and analyzing all costs along a commerce system’s lifecycle, from selection, deployment, development and maintenance over a period of time, e.g. three to five years. 

The operating costs for infrastructure, data, network and hosting, licenses and subscriptions, scalability of services, security, maintenance and support grow over time, especially if the system is to exceed its original design and deliver new custom-built capabilities. This is a particular challenge in B2B, where highly customized commerce processes are common.

Total Cost of Change (TCC)

Outdated commerce systems often cause huge recurring costs for licenses, hosting and maintenance, even though their contribution to revenue and business growth shrinks over time. Furthermore, high project costs for custom changes arise if, as mentioned above, a system does not support fast and cost-effective innovations and modifications by design.

Total Cost of Change (TCC) is a relevant metric to measure the costs of adapting, developing or innovating technology. Composable commerce platforms like Emporix that support custom modification and orchestration of key commerce capabilities enable low TCC, while rigid monoliths cause significant costs for even small system adjustments and maintenance. As a result, business opportunities are realized too slowly or not at all.

Total Spend Productivity (TSP)

Total Spend Productivity (TSP) complements TCO and TCC with another important KPI, often overlooked, but meaningful. Using TSP, commerce executives evaluate technology investments based on its direct contribution to the organization's strategic goals. Since monolithic legacy systems cause a high operational overhead, their TSP is usually poor.

Blocked innovation and competitive advantage

In addition to the pure monetary costs and poor profitability due to high operating and development costs, commerce businesses should always be aware of the negative impact of outdated, rigid technologies on their ability to innovate and remain competitive. Commerce systems that do not support these vital business capabilities should be retired immediately.

How the “Custom Code Trap” Hits Both Monolithic Legacy Systems and Composable Platforms

When legacy systems have become complex and difficult to manage due to multiple customizations so that any adjustment and maintenance initiative is associated with major effort and risk, we call this the Custom Code Trap. Businesses stuck in this trap can hardly meet even basic requirements of today’s fast-paced commerce. 

However, this not only affects companies that still operate monolithic legacy systems, but also those that already use advanced, composable commerce platforms. Even the latter do not usually cover all the required capabilities nor do they support complex processes, and therefore often have to be customized to specific business needs in the so-called Backend for Frontend (BFF).

The need for custom processes and tech stack

Digital teams in commerce businesses today face two main challenges: first, they must constantly meet new digital business requirements and take advantage of new opportunities in fast-moving markets. Second, highly specialized requirements for customized processes and technologies due to changing buying behavior require a high degree of flexibility.

• “Companies that invest in processes and digital transformation in areas like ordering, sales promotion, returns, and hybrid online/in-person sales grow twice as fast as their competitors.” - McKinsey
• “75% of B2B buyers prefer a rep-free sales experience” - Gartner
•  “It has become increasingly critical to create a top-tier digital experience that supports complex evaluation and purchasing processes and enables consistent hybrid online and sales-assisted buying.” - Forrester
• “Future-proof e-commerce allows you to evolve your customer experience and adopt any new touchpoint without being dependent on your e-commerce vendor to enable that touchpoint. With only incremental effort, you can add or replace new experiences and commerce APIs.” - Forrester

Customization drives complexity, thus maintenance costs

Monolithic all-in-one solutions as well as their composable successors, which pretend to be composable (but often are not on closer inspection), do not provide the flexibility and adaptability that commerce leaders expect. When it comes to orchestrating processes, for instance, both monolithic systems and modern composable systems reach their limits.

Both architectural approaches have been and are usually customized in the BFF to meet specific business requirements, which, as mentioned above, paves the way into the custom code trap. Customized code inevitably leads to complexity, partly due to unmanageable interdependencies within the system, and thus to more development and maintenance effort.

Rigid legacy code hinders innovation

Software rigidity refers to the state of many legacy systems in which the source code is difficult to change. This means that many code changes are needed to adjust the behavior of the software. In practice, this is often complicated by the high complexity of the code. Since even regular maintenance, let alone innovations, can be costly, they are often neglected.

The opposite of rigidity is flexibility. Flexible software allows changing its behavior with few code changes. Using no-code platforms like Emporix, even without touching the code at all. With this Commerce Orchestration approach, businesses can dynamically adapt technologies and processes to address new requirements and opportunities quickly and efficiently.

Learn in this 6-minute video how to set up a full customer onboarding process in minutes using the Emporix no-code Orchestration Engine, which would usually take weeks to deliver.

How Emporix’s AI-Driven Commerce Orchestration Platform Helps Digital Teams Innovate Faster and Keep TCO Low

Emporix minimizes the need for custom software code and unprofitable development and maintenance overhead by providing a no-code/low-code process layer that enables rapid customization and automation of complex processes with a minimum of disruption to ongoing operations and technical debt in the system.

Compared to monolithic legacy systems and other Composable Commerce platforms, Emporix offers a low TCO with outstanding flexibility. Since it covers all aspects of a modern MACH certified commerce solution but even goes beyond the ordinary MACH core principles by offering no-code/low-code process orchestration, we call Emporix a Commerce Orchestration Platform.

Agile orchestration of processes and capabilities

“We now live in a hybrid world. Sales leaders need to become ‘journey orchestrators’” is one key insight from McKinsey's 2024 B2B Pulse Survey. Seamless omnichannel experiences are crucial to surviving in today's highly competitive markets. Businesses unable to flexibly align their eCommerce capabilities and processes with customer requirements will fail.

That's why Emporix is taking Composable Commerce to a new level with its groundbreaking no-code commerce orchestration technology. Emporix not only allows businesses to tailor their commerce capabilities as needed, but also to flexibly customize processes along the entire buying journey across all relevant channels. The key to future-proof hybrid selling.

Innovate faster in dynamic markets

The number of technical innovations in eCommerce is growing exponentially, driven by the rise of AI, aka Large Language Models (LLM). What was sufficient yesterday to provide a superior omnichannel buying experience is already outdated today. Leading commerce businesses are laying the technical foundation to flexibly upgrade their technologies accordingly.

Emporix is a MACH-certified platform designed to enable fully composable commerce. And more: it takes composable commerce to the next level with its AI-driven Orchestration Engine. No matter if opportunities are to be realized or processes to be adapted to meet individual customers' requirements. Using Emporix, organizations innovate faster and more efficiently.

Avoid technical debt using the latest no-code technology

Source

In eCommerce, technical debt refers to the off-balance-sheet sum of all technological work, in particular maintenance, servicing and development, that a company must do in order to maintain its competitiveness and ability to innovate. Emporix helps prevent technical debt by providing hyper-flexible, no-code orchestration of commerce processes and capabilities.

Whereas in the past, deploying new commerce capabilities or integrating third-party systems took far too long and involved a lot of effort, today Emporix allows this to be done very quickly and with virtually no development effort. Using Emporix, there is almost no need to build new interfaces and modify legacy software code. This is the MACH+ evolution.