Composable Commerce: Definition and Implementation

1. What is Composable Commerce?
2. What does Composable Commerce bring you?
3. How to implement Composable Commerce
4. Conclusion

Not just since the beginning of the Corona pandemic do you know that online sales of products and services are enjoying increasing demand. But setting up your own online shop is far from the end of your sales channel. If you want to be present in the minds of your customers and have the goal of expanding your sales, you must dance at various weddings - that is, be represented in different shops and on different platforms.

Whether you want to revise your online shop, change your primary e-commerce platform or think about using Click & Collect or a ship-from-shop, you need a solid base, on which you build your e-commerce presence. And as is so often the case on the World Wide Web and in marketing, the answer is: Data, data, data. In this case, we're talking about product information. If you provide your potential customers with the right information about your products, provide them with various images and convey a consistent brand message across various platforms, you will be able to be successful in the long term. Informed consumers make their buying decisions on a solid basis, allowing you to avoid dissatisfaction and returns. In light of this, it is especially important to keep your product information up to date.

Whether it's about ingredients, packaging designs or special promotions - nobody likes outdated data. With a Product Information Management system, or PIM for short, you can all update high-quality product information fed in by your colleagues with one click on all platforms. For no matter how well you've built your own shop, third-party marketplaces are now a fixture of the net. To effectively convey your brand message, you must offer your customers the same product experience as in your stores, your customer service or in your online shop. Therefore, quickly and effectively transmitting relevant product information to key channels is not an option for you, but a must.

A PIM system makes this task easier for you and therefore enables you to bring your products to market faster, since you have all the information collected and can transmit directly. By using it, you can adjust to changing product ranges and customer requirements within a short time and reinforce brand loyalty through a convincing product experience provided by the PIM tool. Additionally, by investing in this digital helper you can increase your conversion rate, boost the productivity of your team, reduce returns, and minimise costs.

But with the sole use of such software you won't be able to get the best possible results for your brand. Since this is most likely your goal, you should definitely keep reading. Because we are now introducing an approach that pursues exactly this aim. We're talking about Composable Commerce.

What is Composable Commerce?

You may have heard of Composable Commerce before, since this approach is currently on everyone's lips and will play an increasingly important role in the future. Among other things, this is due to the fact that customer requirements are changing ever faster and the channels through which you can reach them are becoming increasingly diverse. But what exactly can you imagine under Composable Commerce?

At its core, it's about optimizing your Customer Experience Architecture by using numerous components - so you don't use complete systems. Instead, several powerful single solutions are put together individually for your company. So you build your tailored system landscape from the best industry solutions to fulfil the requirements you must meet.

Each software component remains modular and represents a sensible functionality for your e-commerce. Suitable for this are PIM and CMS systems, product catalogs, newsletter and social selling tools as well as marketplace integrations, review and rating tools. In addition, you can integrate commerce frontends, tools for technical SEO, payment services and analytics as well as many other modular applications. To be able to combine these modules, you need a stable technical basic framework. This is also called Headless Commerce because you can implement new functions within the decoupled modules without having to upgrade your entire backend infrastructure. You can exchange the frontend as you like, while your backend remains the center of e-commerce.

What does Composable Commerce bring you?

If you've been using classic commerce platforms for your business so far, you can imagine them like a one-man orchestra. They are all-in-one solutions from one company that includes a complete frontend and backend. Basically, these are rigid, closed system architectures, which are therefore also called monoliths.

You may now be wondering what could be wrong with using these systems for managing your product information and selling your products. If we stick to the musical metaphor of the one-man orchestra, it is more likely that it will play a song with different components rather bumpily than that it can play each instrument perfectly. There's a reason why most professional musicians have only specialized in one single instrument. A virtuoso at the flute will probably not play the piano as well as they said wind instrument. Likewise with the commerce complete solutions.

The various functions that these include perform their purpose, but ultimately they are just a compromise. The rapidly changing customer needs and the increased order volume in the pandemic have significantly changed the world of online trade. Until this point in time, the monoliths dominated the tool market. In the meantime, however, it has become apparent how important agility and flexibility are for your company and your online business, as you can react quickly to unforeseen events. The rigid system architectures of the all-in-one solutions embody the exact opposite of these two properties.

By using Composable Commerce you have more control over the experiences that customers have with your brand and can adapt quickly to changes. You can open up new channels within a very short time and thus bring your growth to a new level. Composable Commerce supports you in the best possible way to meet the requirements of your customers and the market. You're combining the best software of their kind under one roof and thereby achieving the best results for the various areas of your Product Experience Management. The latter is for your e-commerce strategy what the bass line is in music - the right basis, on which you can write your brand hit. Composable Commerce is therefore made for the big stage.

How to implement Composable Commerce

To start with this approach and make your brand a real hit with your customers, you need a bass line. This forms the foundation of every song together with the drum line. Together they set the rhythm and extend like a red thread from the intro to the outro. The bass line is not only the pulse of the piece, but also gives it a hold when the melodies ignite their fireworks. We return again to the statement “What the bass line is in music is the PXM in commerce” - a strong foundation. So if you want to start with Composable Commerce, you'll have to start with your product information. Without it, you can't create a product experience for your customers. When switching to a new shop system, the product information forms the basis for a convincing product experience and an excellent customer experience.

Composable Commerce using the example of Akeneo

In this area, Akeneo is well versed, who are also listed in the category PIM on our software review platform OMR Reviews. They are the world's leading provider of Product Experience Management and Product Information Management solutions. Through these, the more than 250 employees worldwide support more than 550 retailers and brands in creating a compelling customer experience across all sales channels, improving the quality of product data, and simplifying the management of product catalogs.

In the Akeneo app store you will find over 130 certified integrations, which you can integrate and use in the Akeneo PXM Studio. In this, you can access highly scalable REST and event-based APIs. You can easily and flexibly enrich, update, and export your product information in Akeneo PIM. The connectors and apps belonging to the Akeneo PXM Studio were developed together with e-commerce and PIM experts to implement and maintain them faster. Thanks to its extensive experience in the field of e-commerce solutions, Akeneo has become a premium partner of leading e-commerce platforms such as Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Adobe Commerce Cloud and commercetools.

This high expertise and opportunities for own brand has also been recognized by the Akeneo customer Butlers. To build its digital sales on a solid basis, Butlers launched a relaunch of its entire online shop ecosystem based on Shopify in 2021. The central building block of this relaunch was the introduction of a Product Information Management system, which Butlers had not previously used. This is where Akeneo came into play, laying the foundation for the switch to the new shop system with their PIM. Hereby, Butlers promised itself higher efficiency in the maintenance of product information, a single point of truth regarding product data, as well as clear process control and an effective monitoring of the activities. Within eight weeks, from the kick-off to the go-live, Akeneo managed to implement the customer's wish. Other companies sometimes take up to a year or longer for such a venture. This makes it clear that Akeneo brings the best prerequisites to accompany its customers during a switch from an all-in-one solution to a Composable Commerce solution. By using Akeneo PIM as Best-of-Breed, Butlers has created the best prerequisites for scaling its own online business and continuing to grow, while Akeneo ensures from the backstage area that nothing is missing for their big stage performance.

Conclusion

You gain control and flexibility over your customers' buying experience by leveraging Composable Commerce. The most important basis for its success is the switch to a PIM system. The switch to Composable and Headless structures can initially be daunting, as there might be delays and revenue losses if you don't take the right steps in the right order. To minimize these risks, you should first prepare your product data and content for migration. Keep in mind that the product experience is the first point of contact for your customers with your company and the content needs to be prepared accordingly. Take plenty of time for this step, after all, you have to create it only once and not for each sales channel. Once you have entered the data, the Composable Commerce architecture reliably and consistently shares your content and data on the various platforms via standardized APIs.

A good PIM tool can be recognized by the fact that it is a cloud-based SaaS application that works for all new channels. In addition, the system empowers your team to become productive quickly and easily. In addition, it can seamlessly integrate current and future relevant trading platforms and has a highly scalable API-first structure.

Just dare and take the first step on your e-commerce relaunch path. And who knows - you might lay the foundation for the next big brand hit.