Composable Commerce Setup for Agile B2B Functioning

B2B businesses face several challenges in traditional monolithic e-commerce setups. These include intricate processes, legacy technologies, diverse stakeholders, vendor lock-ins, globalization, localization, changing landscape, and more.

However, by embracing a modular and adaptable framework, like composable commerce, B2Bs can create e-commerce ecosystems that cater precisely to their industry-specific demands. It also positions them for growth in the digital-first landscape.

With composable commerce, B2Bs can deliver exceptional e-commerce experiences by selecting the best-of-breed commerce components and combining them to build and maintain unique business applications.

This modern approach emphasizes flexibility, agility, innovation, vendor independence, and data utilization. Additionally, it involves breaking down various e-commerce functionalities into individual, modular components or services. These components can be independently developed, deployed, and integrated to create a tailored and efficient e-commerce ecosystem.

In fact, research suggests that B2B retailers adopting a composable commerce approach achieved 17% higher conversion rates and 10% lower basket abandonment^[i].

But how does the composable architecture approach translate into tangible business benefits?

In this blog post, we’ll dive into the realm of composable architecture approach, its benefits for B2B businesses, its impact on ROI, and insightful use cases.

MACH: The Building Blocks of Successful Composable Commerce

MACH stands for microservices, Application Programming Interfaces (API)-first, cloud-native, and headless. It’s an architectural approach that emphasizes flexibility, agility, and scalability in building and deploying digital experiences in context to e-commerce solutions like composable commerce. Within the process of implementing a composable commerce approach, the MACH components signify the following:

1. Microservices: MACH promotes breaking down complex applications into smaller, manageable microservices. Each microservice handles a specific function or feature, making it easier to develop, test, and maintain individual components. This aligns with the modularity of composable commerce, enabling B2B businesses to assemble their e-commerce ecosystem using independent, specialized microservices.

2. API-First: APIs play a crucial role in MACH architecture by enabling different components and services to communicate and interact seamlessly. Composable commerce relies on APIs to connect and integrate various modules, creating a cohesive and efficient e-commerce ecosystem.

3. Cloud-Native: Cloud-native design involves building applications optimized for cloud environments. This approach enhances scalability and resource utilization. Composable commerce benefits from cloud-native principles. It enables businesses to scale specific components based on demand, ensuring optimal performance during peak periods.

4. Headless: Headless architecture decouples the front-end presentation layer from the back-end logic. In composable commerce, this means separating the user interface (UI) from the core e-commerce functionalities. The core functionalities include order management, payment processing, search, navigation, promotions, discounts, etc. This separation provides greater flexibility to adapt the UI to different devices and channels, providing a consistent B2B customer experience.

Maximizing Business Potential: Composable Commerce

In the fast-evolving landscape of B2B enterprises, the benefits of adopting a composable commerce approach are truly transformative. Let’s delve into the most prominent ones.

1. Adapt to Constant Change: Driven by factors like geopolitical issues, supply chain disruptions, and technological advancements, the ever-evolving business landscape demands agility. Composable commerce can empower your business to swiftly adjust to new market conditions and evolving customer expectations. Additionally, this adaptability is a proven strategic advantage that enables your enterprise to remain competitive in a dynamic environment.

2. Seamless Digital Experiences: B2B buyers, today, expect the same seamless experiences they witness in B2C interactions. Composable commerce will enable your business to craft and refine digital experiences across various channels and touchpoints. Furthermore, this modular approach will permit your enterprise to create high-performance digital storefronts, rapid feature rollouts, and personalized journeys. Studies show that 73%^[ii] of B2B buyers seek personalized B2C-like experiences, and composable commerce delivers precisely that.

3. Auto Scaled Performance: Ensuring the performance and speed of e-commerce platforms is pivotal. Composable commerce, with its cloud-native architecture, will provide your business the ability to automatically scale online capacity. This will enable your B2B enterprise to accommodate increased demand without compromising user experience, delivering consistent and seamless interactions.

4. Streamlined Processes: Historically, B2Bs have grappled with labor-intensive processes. Composable commerce steps in to automate and optimize these processes, from product discovery to generating quotes to handling recurring orders. Additionally, by freeing your sales teams from routine tasks, composable commerce can enable you to focus on strategic endeavors that drive growth and customer satisfaction.

5. Seamless Data Orchestration: Data is a valuable asset for B2B enterprises. Composable commerce unlocks real-time visibility into crucial data, such as customer insights, product details, and inventory status. This data-driven approach enables your enterprise to seize opportunities for upselling and cross-selling, enhancing customer engagement throughout the journey.

6. Foster Innovation: Embracing composable commerce cultivates an environment of innovation. Leveraging it, your tech team can gain the freedom to experiment and iterate with touchpoints and features, all while avoiding disruptive downtime. This approach also facilitates a laser focus on driving innovation output, ultimately reducing time-to-market for new releases and keeping your B2B enterprise at the forefront of innovation.

Impact of Composable Commerce on ROI

Composable commerce can significantly enhance your B2B ROI by fostering agility and innovation. Employing it, you can deliver tailored and seamless customer experiences, thereby increasing customer loyalty and repeat purchases. The broad range of APIs and cloud-native solutions offered by this approach can accelerate innovation, enabling you to swiftly introduce new offerings, gain a competitive advantage, and expand your market share. Not just this, the rapid deployment of updates and features in composable commerce can help you stay ahead in a dynamic market environment.

Furthermore, the ease of cross-border e-commerce and the ability to explore new business models, such as D2C, can provide your business with avenues for revenue diversification and market expansion. Ultimately, its adaptability to evolving buyer expectations can enhance your business loyalty, which, over time, will translate into sustainable revenue growth.

Leading Composable Commerce Examples to Look At

1. Dawn Food, an American global manufacturer of baked goods, harnessed composable commerce to revolutionize its digital presence. This innovative approach provided the company with the agility to seamlessly transition between different vendors, ensuring flexibility and vendor agnosticism.

Specifically, it utilized composable commerce to enhance customer experiences by embedding a “buy button” directly into external platforms, enabling frictionless transactions, particularly on social media networks. This strategy significantly improved its user convenience and boosted sales conversions.

Additionally, composable commerce empowered Dawn Foods to gather and analyze extensive data, facilitating informed decision-making for optimizing supply chains and pricing strategies.

2. Cargo Crew, a trailblazer in the modern work uniform industry, sought to elevate its digital presence to match its innovative products and services. Outgrowing its legacy platform, it embraced composable commerce. This shift not only increased its online revenue by 34% and conversion rates by 15% but also drastically reduced development costs, saving up to AUD $700,000. Through this transformation, Cargo Crew not only met its ambitious goals but also surpassed customer expectations, securing its position as a leader in the global B2B market.

3. Jimmy Brings, an Australian alcohol delivery service, successfully adopted a composable commerce approach by overhauling its digital management and commerce systems. The composable commerce architecture enabled Jimmy Brings to integrate various SaaS products seamlessly, ensuring quicker market entry and enhanced scalability.

This transformation involved rebuilding the entire tech stack, migrating data, and unifying multiple channels into a progressive web application. Additionally, the composable approach enabled an engaging shopping experience, flexibility for future innovations, and scalability to meet growing demand. This ultimately streamlined the operations of Jimmy Brings and improved their customer interactions.

The Bottom Line

Now you know why embracing a composable approach is imperative to foster sustainable innovation and build a future-proof technology stack. So, implement a composable commerce solution for your B2B business by

• Identifying your business and customer needs

• Building a flexible and agile architecture

• Selecting components based on the required functionality and assigned budget

• Creating a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

• Integrating it seamlessly via APIs

• Prioritizing security and compliance

• Enabling rigorous testing

• Ensuring continuous monitoring, optimization, and adaptation

Ready to Enhance Your Digital Experiences and Optimize B2B ROI With Composable Commerce? Let’s Talk!

References:

^[i] Capgemini
^[ii] Google Cloud