The commercetools mindset

Comparing software products

Businesses invest considerable time and energy selecting the right technology to meet specific business requirements. Regarding software products, there is a wide range of options available.

On one hand there are pre-built products that have various levels of customizability (from zero customizability to highly customizable). On the other, there is the option to build a completely custom-made software product, specific to your own requirements. Each of these software product types have certain positives and negatives you should take into consideration.

All-in-one products are opinionated, and are also known as monoliths. These are suited for a small to medium business. You can get up and running with your project in a very short amount of time. However, these products have limited or difficult customization, and as a business grows the limits of monoliths are likely to increase.

Custom-built products usually have the opposite problem to all-in-one: they can be completely customized, yet this requires enormous resources and time to design and develop. This would involve becoming fully responsible for the platform's scalability, reliability, orchestration, security, infrastructure, monitoring, support, and much more. Building a bespoke, fit-for-purpose platform can be quite exciting. Yet at the same time it can be daunting due to the risk of project failure and a much longer time to value.

Until recently, Composable Commerce has existed as a compromise between these two extremes. Composable Commerce is highly customizable and capable of handling a high degree of complexity. It also offers a faster time to value than a custom-built product by providing all the right foundational primitives, eliminating the need to build from scratch. You have complete freedom to design your digital commerce flows as you see fit, and our API architecture gives you total control over integrating with other e-commerce services. This makes Composable Commerce an ideal fit for a range of customers, from mid-market businesses that have outgrown their monolithic products to enterprise-level companies.

Toy cars and the software spectrum

Choosing the right software is like choosing the right toy car. Do you want something pre-built and ready to go, or something you can customize and modify? Let's explore the options:

• Monolithic (the prebuilt toy car): Imagine a sleek, pre-assembled toy car. It looks impressive and works right out of the box. However, you're limited to its pre-determined features and design. Want to upgrade the engine or add a spoiler? You risk damaging the entire car. This mirrors traditional, all-in-one software – initially convenient, but inflexible and difficult to adapt as business needs change.
• Composable Commerce (the Lego car): Now, picture a box of Lego blocks. You have a set of pre-built components (like individual Lego pieces representing APIs and best-of-breed solutions) that you can assemble and customize to your liking. You can follow instructions (pre-built integrations and Connectors) or unleash your creativity and build something truly unique. This is the power of Composable Commerce – the flexibility to choose the best applications and connect them seamlessly to create a experience that evolves with your business, just like Lego allows for endless building possibilities.
• Custom-built software (the custom car): This is akin to building your dream toy car from scratch. You have complete control over every aspect, allowing you to create a solution tailored precisely to your needs. However, this requires significant time, expertise, and resources to design, manufacture, and maintain. While offering maximum customization, it can be complex and expensive, similar to developing a completely custom software solution.

Why choose Composable Commerce (the Lego approach)?

• Future-proof your business: Just as you can reuse Lego pieces to build endless creations, Composable Commerce allows you to adapt to changing market trends and customer demands. You're not locked into a rigid system, ensuring your business remains agile and competitive.
• Unlock growth and innovation: Composable Commerce empowers you to experiment with new business models, launch innovative features, and expand into new markets with speed and agility.
• Deliver outstanding customer experiences: By selecting best-of-breed solutions for each business function, you can craft seamless and personalized customer experiences across all touchpoints.
• Reduce costs and increase efficiency: Composable Commerce allows you to optimize your tech stack, leverage existing systems, and avoid vendor lock-in, leading to lower total cost of ownership and increased operational efficiency.

Just like Lego empowers children to build anything they can imagine, Composable Commerce empowers businesses to create agile, adaptable, and future-proof digital experiences.

Combining commercetools products

Composable Commerce now also allows you to choose your starting point on this spectrum. You can either:

• Use the flexible Composable Commerce APIs to build your own solution how you see fit, or
• Use a combination of the other commercetools products that make use of the same Composable Commerce APIs, to help you build a solution with a much faster time to market. In addition to Composable Commerce, you can also add:
  • Frontend: a React.js frontend-as-a-service product that seamlessly works with Composable Commerce.
  • Connect: commercetools-approved, pre-built or custom integrations that commercetools hosts for you.
  • Checkout: a pre-built checkout application.
  • Foundry: a set of tools, examples, and best practices designed to help organizations create customer experiences using commercetools' suite of Composable Commerce products.

With this approach, you have all the flexibility of Composable Commerce but with guided opinions which will help you go live faster.

Flexibility to adapt

Businesses often ask, “Can we easily make changes to the underlying system/platform whenever we want or need to?” With commercetools, the answer is a resounding yes. As future business requirements change, Composable Commerce allows you to:

• Swap out the frontend and integrate a new one, or even add additional, multiple heads (for example, an AI interface, an in-game app or webshop).
• Fine-tune the supply chain by integrating a new order management system.
• Expand into a new region by introducing a new payment provider.

As an API-first platform, Composable Commerce prioritizes flexibility and scalability, future proofing your business.

Businesses can easily extend the data model, APIs, or even integrate external systems to augment or replace existing functionality. This approach empowers companies to adapt and evolve their solutions without the constraints and limits of a rigid software design.

Ultimately, Composable Commerce lowers the total cost of ownership for development and maintenance, ensuring businesses can address 100% of their needs, now, and in the future.

The commercetools mindset

You can use Composable Commerce's flexible APIs to create any shopping experience you can imagine. All you need to do is decide where you start:

• Design your own solutions by creatively using the APIs, or
• Start with an opinionated and preconfigured version of the solution, that uses a combination of commercetools products.

It’s completely up to you which way you go.

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