The ecommerce industry is certainly a power to behold, owing to an array of factors like skyrocketing businesses, emerging trends, diversified market parameters, and so on. All these contributors have made the market so hypercompetitive that even the successful and established businesses often struggle to retain their position and brand image. But what truly drives the industry is its consumer market. Online shoppers are not only unpredictable but their behaviors, actions, and choices are subjected to change within minutes.
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So, if you want your business to become the ace in the ecommerce industry, relying on the traditional concepts won’t do any good. Achieving such a high level of success is only possible with technology integration, like composable ecommerce. Being the latest ecommerce platform, this term might not ring any bells. Considering this, we have illustrated what composable ecommerce is, its benefits for the businesses, and many other relevant facts so that you can make a well-informed decision with no hassle.
What is composable ecommerce?
An ecommerce platform is made of numerous modules or segments having dedicated functions. For example, the shopping cart is a specific segment of the ecommerce website or application dedicated to store products the customer wants to buy in future. Similarly, category pages display the products based on the search results on the ecommerce platform. In a conventional monolithic architecture, all these modules are deeply integrated with one another, performing as a single unit.
This proves to be big hassle for developers since they cannot deploy modifications in existing functionalities or new features independently. Furthermore, due to the integrations, there are high chances of negative impacts on other functionalities also. To overcome these difficulties, professionals have adopted a more radical approach, termed as composable ecommerce. It is a development concept based on APIs where ecommerce ecosystems are segregated into segments and then developed and managed through microservices.
As the microservice modules are smaller, scalable, and independent of one another, they can easily be developed and orchestrated as per the business requirements. This is what makes composable ecommerce scalable, customizable, and personalized.
How is composable architecture different from monolithic and MACH?
MACH and monolithic architectures are primarily in use for developing ecommerce platforms. However, these are not as agile as they should be to meet the current market expectations and user behaviors. That’s why developers now rely on composable architecture which supposedly offers a higher level of flexibility, adaptability, and agility.
Monolithic architecture
In a monolithic architecture, all the modules behave as a single package connected to the database and deployed as a unit to the hosting server. As a result, it is pretty rigid and doesn’t offer developers the flexibility needed to upscale the features, add new functionalities, or make the systems high-speed.
MACH architecture
MACH or Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native, Headless architecture is a next-gen approach towards developing ecommerce platforms in a segmented format. It allows developers to integrate microservices with APIs for exposing the functionalities and streamlining the communication between each component. Furthermore, it paves ways for developing cloud-based applications and decoupling the frontend from the backend. As a result, it is highly adaptive, customizable, scalable, and fast-operating ecommerce architecture at the present time.
Composable architecture
A composable commerce architecture of CCA decouples all the components from one another, regardless of whether they are deployed to the frontend or backend. For instance, a basic CCA will have a payment processor, a shopping cart, a homepage, and category filters to begin with. Due to the decoupled architecture, developers can compile all the segments they wish to add to the ecommerce platform so that the business requirements are fulfilled with ease.
What are the major modules that can be integrated with composable architecture?
An ecommerce platform requires a long list of components to work in the expected manner. For instance, it should have an inventory and stock management software, logistic tracking module, payment processing module, and many more. So, before investing in composable architecture for the ecommerce platform, it is imperative for developers to learn about the add-on modules they can utilize as a part of CCA for enhanced productivity, scalability, and agility.
Core commerce module
The core commerce modules are capable of handling the basic functionalities at the heart of the ecommerce business. These include:
- Integration and plugins with third-party libraries and applications
- Product catalog management and updates
- Shopping cart management and checkout
- Subscription and bundling models and management
Product information module
PIM or Product Information Management is one of the major modules that can be added to the composable architecture. It offers a centralized storage for all product-based information uploaded on the storefront’s pages. Any change or modification done to the information gets deployed uniformly across all marketing and sales channels, regardless of any external factor.
Order management module
Managing orders is perhaps one of the most difficult segments for any ecommerce business, regardless of its size. Therefore, composable commerce architecture comes with an additional module for order management. From verifying customer orders to validating the products with stock and inventory management software, this module handles the entire backend workflow smoothly.
What are the benefits of composable architecture for ecommerce?
1. Modularity
Modularity is one of the many reasons for which many ecommerce businesses have invested in composable commerce at the present time. To begin with, it supports decoupling of each functional and operational component. These are further developed, modified, and deployed as modules to form a fully functional ecommerce platform. Owing to such a high level of modularity, the system’s rigidity is greatly reduced.
2. Streamlined communication
Since the composable architecture implements the principles of MACH, APIs are used to form the communication between different modules or microservices forming the core functionalities of the ecommerce platform. Furthermore, these APIs also streamline the interaction of the ecommerce components with third-party applications and libraries. Since the communication channel is streamlined, the system performs much faster and with more agility than what can be witnessed in the monolithic architecture.
3. Scalable and flexible
The composable commerce architecture is highly scalable and offers a higher degree of flexibility. Here, all the core and additional functioning components are developed and deployed independently of one another. So, scaling them on the go isn’t a problem anymore. Furthermore, the higher degree of modularity makes it easier for the developers to deploy code changes, new jar files, libraries, and other components without affecting any other module.
4. Business-focused
Thanks to the modularity and flexibility of the composable commerce architecture, the ecommerce platform can easily meet the business requirements. Since each module work independently of one another, they can be customized based on the market trends, consumer demands and behaviors, and business values. Also, the composable architecture allows businesses to integrate a high level of personalization within the ecommerce platform, resulting in enhanced user experience.
5. Innovative
There is no doubt that the approach of decoupling all the components involved with the core functionalities of the ecommerce business paves way for innovation. Composable architecture can be integrated further with top-rated technologies, like artificial intelligence, data processing, machine learning, sentiment analysis, and many more to make the ecommerce platform more innovative.
How can SAP Commerce Cloud be integrated with composable architecture?
SAP Commerce Cloud is one of the emerging ecommerce solutions in the industry. It empowers businesses with innovative, scalable, customizable, and expandable tools to ensure the ecommerce platform can become more agile, productive, and efficient. So, integrating it with the composable commerce architecture seems to be a better option given the fact that SAP Commerce Cloud is based on MACH or Microservices, API-based, Cloud-native, and Headless.
Following are some of the ways in which SAP Commerce Cloud can be related with composable commerce architecture.
API-based
Since SAP Commerce Cloud utilizes API requests and responses to establish interaction between different core components and third-party libraries, it is easier to utilize composable architecture and customize the ecommerce components accordingly.
Microservice-based architecture
Owing to the microservice-based architecture of composable ecommerce, it can be easily integrated with SAP Commerce Cloud. As soon as the modules are segmented into smaller portions, they will be developed and deployed independently of one another.
Cloud-native infrastructure
With SAP Commerce Cloud, developers can easily build an ecommerce platform with composable architecture and deploy the same to the cloud server. This will further help businesses handle traffic and incoming load properly with minimal risks of server overloading and failure.
Is composable commerce the best option for your business?
Owing to the wide range of benefits of composable commerce, we can say that it will empower your business to deal with the dynamically changing market and consumer base. From customizing the website or application to rapidly deploying changes without impacting the server uptime, it has proven to be beneficial in numerous ways.
However, before investing in it, you should have a clear idea about the functioning and future scope of composable commerce. Apart from this, you should also orchestrate a roadmap, clearly defining the development, management, and deployment phases so that the ecommerce platform can enhance user experience, maintain consistent deliverability, and offer optimal quality.
