Composable commerce - Here’s the thing

But first, what is composable commerce? 

For the past twenty years, almost every business has had to replace its platform every five years, give or take, to keep up with the customers' demands and offer the best possible experience for its users. It’s important to keep up with the news and developments, considering what a good commerce stack should include even though the solution is both expensive and time-consuming. But now we’ve entered a new era. 

Having a composable commerce architecture means that the systems in your landscape are built to work together. Cooperation is a large part of the system's value proposition. A composable commerce stack should not only be easy to integrate with, but it must also be open with its data and prepared for different actions you might want to apply in your systems. Changes in the system are exposed so that other applications can embrace it and build a common flow across several integrations. What we are facing here is possibilities and flexibility at their best.

Not following? Here’s an example

An example could be a website that allows customers to build their own custom computers by selecting the specific components (e.g., processor, graphics card, memory, storage) that they want to include in the final product. The customer is able to "compose" the product by choosing from a variety of options, rather than being limited to the options that are pre-assembled by the manufacturer.

How is a composable platform different from traditional platforms?

Making individual functionality work together is quite a clear contrast to previous generation systems. Everything had to fit together and breaking out parts of functionality to use in other systems was not easy. 

For basic eCommerce operations, a conventional do-it-all platform has all the bases covered. It's an excellent solution when launching a small business or when you don't have enough skills in-house. But, when your business grows, your plans may not align with the product propositions of your supplier. It’s time to find a new system that answers to your new idéas and functionalities.

Here's where composable commerce comes in. It allows you to take control, develop the front-end functionality your customers expect, and add the components you need to support new processes - without changing any systems.

How do I know if composable commerce really is for me and my organization?

So, is this meaning that composable commerce is for everybody? To answer this question it’s essential that you understand what composable commerce will improve and what opportunities it can bring to your platform. 

Therefore, before you do anything else, it will help to identify what your USPs:s are. Clarify to yourself what makes your eCommerce better than your competitors. If many of your USPs are in need of strong technical support, it makes it more likely that composable commerce is what you need. The chance that you’ll find one system that is offering everything you need to improve all of your USPs is not very likely.

Pro’s and con’s with composable commerce - let’s list some of them: 

Let’s start off with the positives:

• Customization: As mentioned above, a composable commerce suite allows merchants to create highly customized shopping experiences that are tailored to the needs of their customers. This can help to increase engagement and conversion rates, as customers are more likely to make a purchase when they feel like they're getting a personalized experience.

• Flexibility: A composable setup allowing merchants to easily make changes to their online store as their business needs evolve. This could include adding new features, changing the layout, or integrating with other tools and platforms.

• Cross-selling and Upselling: One of the key benefits of going composable is to help merchants cross-sell and upsell products to customers. By using personalized recommendations and interactive product displays, merchants can more effectively showcase related or complementary products, increasing the chances of a sale.

• Improved User Experience: When going composable, merchants have the ability to create a more seamless and intuitive shopping experience for their customers. This can help to reduce friction and increase the likelihood of a sale.

Let’s continue with the downside:

• Complexity: Building and maintaining a composable suite can be complex and challenging, especially for those with limited technical expertise.

• Integration difficulties: Integrating all modules with existing systems can be difficult and time-consuming.

• Fragmentation: A composable setup can lead to a fragmented user experience, with different components acting independently and potentially creating a disjointed experience for customers.

• Scalability: Scalability can be a challenge, as the various components need to be able to handle increasing amounts of traffic and data.

• Security: Ensuring security can be difficult, as security threats can emerge from any one of the many interconnected components.

• Maintenance costs: The costs of maintaining all systems can be high, as fixing bugs and updating components can be time-consuming and resource-intensive.

• Data consistency: Maintaining data consistency across all components of a commerce system can be challenging.

Composable or not - Here’s a summary

The value of composable commerce lies in the ability to select systems with clear, composable properties and put them together into a functioning whole by yourself. If you do this correctly, you radically reduce the risk of having to do a large, multimillion-dollar project again where everything has to be replaced. Instead, you can exchange and change the included parts afterward. It increases both one's ease of movement and flexibility whilst making it easier to keep up with increased and changing demands from one's customers. 

But everything certainly comes with a prize, and that mainly involves the right type of knowledge and a particular offering. And then there’s the thing about fees and licensing of the different modules within the composable commerce stack.

Let’s take a closer look at what types of modules the composable commerce stack usually consists of: 

• OMS (Order management system): Often a license fee + additional transaction fee.

• PIM (Product information management): License fee + additional fees for the amount of SKU’s in use. 

• CMS (Content management system): License fee based on users & features. 

• WMS (Warehouse management system): Often a licensee fee

• Headless storefront (Presentation layer): Often a big starter fee including costs for design and coding, with additional fees for hosting (depending on agency and framework) 

• Search: Often a license fee based on users/visitors

• Payments: Fees is often based on transactions.

So, still up for the hyped composable commerce stack?

Is there an alternative to composable commerce? 

Well, there’s plenty, to say the least. You have the traditional monoliths when everything is built together and there are the modular ones, where you find a lot of the functionality you need and still can integrate and introduce new systems to gain the advantage against your competitors.

Geins Commerce - A cross-breed made for starters as well as enterprise companies

Geins Commerce is a new, cross-breed of the traditional do-it-all-monoliths and the newer composable platforms: It’s built upon MACH technology, and get’s you everything you need out of the box to build a global, competitive online business. 

The idea behind Geins Commerce is that you should focus on building your business, rather than collecting IT systems. With Geins you get native modules taking care of everything from product management to sales, and further on to content and fulfillment. 

And you can choose to replace any of the modules as you go, just as with a composable setup. 

The main benefits of choosing to go with Geins:

• Total cost of ownership: Rather than having to pay for multiple licenses, you only pay for one.

• Agility: Just like any composable suite, Geins is headless - meaning that you can design as you please and don’t need to worry about business needs creating bottlenecks for your organization. 

• Flexibility: You get everything out of the box and are still free to mix and match to find the sweet spot for your business - just as with a composable setup.