We’ve all noticed something exciting in retail stores lately:
People.
After the rollercoaster of the past three years, shoppers are back in brick-and-mortar stores. According to Mood Media’s 2023 survey of more than 12,000 consumers in 18 countries, 86% of consumers say they’re now buying items both in-store and online. But they aren’t leaving online shopping behind entirely — in that same survey, 71% say they now buy in physical stores as much or more than they did before the pandemic.
The difference from then to now is that today’s shoppers want the same convenient, personalized experience in-store that they grew accustomed to online during COVID. They expect a seamless journey they can start in one channel and complete in another, provided by a retailer that not only knows them as an individual, but actually anticipates their needs and desires.
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How can today’s retailers deliver all that? For an increasing number of brands, the answer is composable commerce technology. According to Mercaux’s 2023 Pulse of Retail survey:
- 91% of retailers say composable architecture is important;
- 67% are ready to deploy next-gen technologies via composable commerce; and
- 30% are already midway through adopting a composable infrastructure.
Let’s dive into the compelling reasons so many retailers are going composable, and the best ways brands can embark on a composable journey with partners and their own internal stakeholders.
Why Composable?
The pandemic taught retailers their technology must be able to adapt in a heartbeat. That’s why their tech infrastructure has to be agile enough to pivot for evolving market conditions now, and flexible enough to innovate for the future. The monolithic infrastructures of all-in-one commerce suites are often just too locked-in to fit that bill.
That’s why so many retailers have embraced the openness and flexibility of MACH, a model built on microservices, APIs, cloud native, and headless architecture. Composable commerce takes that even further, giving retailers the opportunity to tailor technology to their specific needs by selecting modular tools running on a MACH stack. This was summed up nicely during a recent Retail TouchPoints webinar featuring Kelly Goetsch, Co-founder and Chairman of the MACH Alliance and Chief Strategy Officer at commercetools.
“As a business user, you can say ‘I’d like to get the checkout from this vendor, I’d like the PIM from that vendor, I’d like the search from another vendor.’ It’s being able to compose that rich experience based on best-of-breed components,” Goetsch explained.
Composable is a powerful combination of the openness, integration and customization that brands need to adapt their tech stack for today while future-proofing it for tomorrow.
Business Benefits
This isn’t just about tech architecture, however. MACH and composable have now been around long enough to prove they can drive significant business benefits for retailers — especially in creating a true omnichannel experience for customers.
Remember those consumers who’ve returned to brick-and-mortar shopping? Composable can deliver the same personalized experience to them in-store that they’ve enjoyed online for the past three years. That’s because instead of being siloed, the in-store and ecommerce systems and data work together.
If a customer feels like a brand’s ecommerce site knows and understands them when they shop on their tablet at home, that experience can continue inside the brand’s physical store, where a sales associate is empowered to help them complete their omnichannel journey.
From an operational point of view, composable allows the retailer to run integrated cross-channel loyalty and promotional programs specifically targeted for in-store, not just the ecommerce channel. Composable also makes it easier to adopt modern in-store payment methods like mobile POS to give shoppers a faster, more convenient checkout experience than cash register lineups.
In terms of business costs, research is showing that TCO for MACH and composable technology may be lower, or at least as competitive, as a monolithic tech stack.
How to go Composable
The best way to start a composable adoption journey is to begin with the business problems, not the technology solution. If you’re a retailer, ask your key internal stakeholders two critical questions:
- What do we want to achieve with our customers and our business over the next few years?
- What’s holding us back from achieving that?
In my experience, the most likely answers to question #2 are: lack of an agile, cross-functional mindset within your organization; inability to break through data silos to understand who your customers are; and inability to adapt and experiment as needed at speed.
Couldn’t you just address those issues by building composable in-house? Absolutely. The key ingredients of microservices, APIs, cloud and headless are readily available, and as Goetsch noted, composable commerce means best-in-class: the best commerce platform, the best OMS, the best personalization platform — the best of whatever your brand needs.
The harsh reality is that very few people within most organizations have the expertise or the hands-on experience required for this in-house approach.
That’s why partners are so important. Whether it’s a composable solution provider like commercetools or a composable systems integrator like Orium, a partner brings the deep knowledge and real-world experience that are absolutely critical to your adoption journey. They can help you make sure it’s the right fit for your business, streamline the entire transformation process and execute on the future vision your internal stakeholders have for the brand and its customers.
For a real life case study detailing a successful composable adoption, watch the Retail TouchPoints webinar featuring Goetsch, Scott Canney (Senior Director of Product Management at SiteOne) and Thomas Mulreid (Head of Sales at Orium).
Jason Cottrell is CEO and Founder of Orium, a leading North American composable commerce consultancy and system integrator.
