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Clearing the Fog About Composable Commerce Architecture for B2B

October 16, 2024 | Oro Team

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The composable approach to eCommerce was first proposed by Gartner in 2020 as a way to bring together best-of-breed eCommerce solutions to meet fast-changing business needs.

Composable eCommerce has quickly become one of those buzzwords everyone throws around in tech. But behind the hype, there’s real substance.

While modularity and flexible architecture aren’t exactly groundbreaking ideas, composable eCommerce is gaining traction because it offers something more: a way to customize and scale online experiences with the precision modern businesses need.

The problem is, with so much noise around the term, it’s easy to miss how this approach can actually transform your operations – improving everything from your online storefront to the efficiency of your back office.

In this post, we’ll cut through the noise. We’ll break down what composable eCommerce really is as an eCommerce architecture option, why it’s more than just a trend, and how you can leverage it to build an adaptable, future-proof eCommerce strategy.

What is Composable Commerce?

Composable commerce definition

Composable commerce empowers businesses to handpick best-in-breed software components for their eCommerce platform. Instead of a monolithic platform, you select specialized solutions for core functions: product information management (PIM), search, checkout, content management system (CMS), and more. These components integrate to form a custom platform tailored to your needs.

It’s about choosing the ideal eCommerce solution for your business, not settling for a one-size-fits-all approach. This offers benefits over traditional eCommerce platforms by avoiding vendor lock-in and enabling faster time to market.

Why Use Composable eCommerce Architecture?

For the longest time, developers and business owners relied on traditional commerce platforms sold as a single ecommerce platform package to perform commerce related functions. As business needs rapidly change due to new technologies and rising customer expectations, relying on a single commerce platform solution can become a significant limitation, not a strength.

As traditional monolithic commerce systems grow, they become more complex and limited in adaptability. Development teams get bogged down with complex code, dependencies, and business logic. Updates and feature launches require re-deployment of the entire system, which increases workload. Costs go up, productivity drops, and opportunities to deliver innovative experiences are often missed.

This is where a composable commerce platform comes in.

Composable Commerce Architecture

As a modern, modular, and flexible architecture, composable commerce enables businesses to swap technologies, adapt to market changes, and optimize for peak performance.

Modular architecture

Modular eCommerce architecture is built on the idea that it’s better to break down the traditional monolithic modules into loosely connected modules. Each of these modular software components performs a task or service within its own container, functioning independently but interacting with others to exchange data.

Changes can be made to one module without affecting the whole system, allowing for a composable approach to business strategy.

These modules depend on a well-defined, stable API-first approach to ensure smooth communication. In this context, modules are often referred to as microservices. This modular approach enables businesses to adapt more quickly to change.

API-first approach

An API-first approach is integral to how composable commerce works. It involves creating digital commerce platforms or other solutions that are designed to operate as microservices and connect with others.

This composable commerce approach offers immense flexibility in both development and deployment. But there’s a trade-off: managing a stack this modular can bring added complexity, especially when it comes to keeping all those moving parts in sync.

Cloud-native infrastructure

Composable commerce also relies heavily on cloud-native infrastructure, providing a resilient, scalable, and cost-effective foundation for commerce services. This infrastructure supports the ability to scale as business needs grow, allowing for rapid expansion and flexibility, key components in composable commerce platforms.

Get an overview of the B2B eCommerce platform market with our B2B eCommerce platform comparison guide

Benefits of Composable Commerce for B2B

Composable commerce introduces more flexibility in choosing solution providers for a potential eCommerce task. Think of it as putting together Legos to build B2B eCommerce. You can add on new pieces as needed or add new elements to cover the shortcomings of existing solutions.

For example, if you’re using an eCommerce system to manage your product catalog, but need the power of a PIM eCommerce solution to manage product information across multiple channels, you can simply integrate the two solutions. The end result is a solution that is scalable, flexible, and able to meet your current needs and future demands.

Here are the major benefits of composable commerce.

Greater flexibility

Composable commerce offers businesses the power to build a commerce system that fits their unique needs, rather than forcing them to mold their operations around rigid platforms. With the ability to manage complex business requirements on your terms, you stay in control of your entire commerce setup.

Time-to-market

Composable commerce takes agility to the next level by letting you adjust both the front end presentation layer and back-end services without the typical delays. This makes it easier to react to market changes in real time, reducing the time-to-market and keeping your business competitive.

Increased efficiency

While critics of composable architecture claim this approach requires more resources to maintain the disparate technologies, the opposite is true. Making a change doesn’t require reconfiguring the entire system. That allows for more effective customizations and greater cost optimization.

Vendor agnostic

With composable commerce, you’re free to choose the best tools for the job, integrating third party services or using independently developed modules as needed. This flexibility means you’re not at the mercy of a single provider, giving you freedom to evolve on your own terms.

Scalability

Growth is never one-size-fits-all, and with a composable commerce platform, it doesn’t have to be. Whether you’re responding to shifting customer loyalty trends or looking to expand your digital marketing efforts, this approach allows you to scale specific components without overhauling your entire system. That way, you can stay nimble and grow without hitting tech roadblocks.

Composable Commerce Vs Headless Commerce Architecture

Headless commerce and composable commerce both prioritize flexibility, but they differ in scope. In headless commerce, the front-end and back-end are decoupled, allowing businesses to control how content is displayed across different channels. However, the back-end typically remains a unified system, meaning changes to one function may still impact others.

Composable commerce, on the other hand, breaks down the back-end further into packaged business capabilities (PBCs). Each PBC, such as content management systems, payment processing, or CRM, operates independently, which means you can swap or update individual components without affecting the rest of the stack. This offers a level of modularity that headless commerce alone doesn’t provide.

To sum up composable commerce vs headless comparison: both approaches enable businesses to deliver customized experiences, but composable commerce focuses on extending that flexibility deeper into the architecture, giving businesses more granular control over their entire commerce ecosystem.

Core Components of Composable Commerce Architecture

A composable commerce solution consists of multiple packaged business capabilities (PBCs).

What Are the Packaged Business Capabilities?

Packaged Business Capabilities (PBCs) are like pre-built modules of business functionality you can plug and play into your operations.

Each PBC is a software component that represents a well-defined business capability. The essence of the composable approach is to leverage a diverse set of solutions – with PBCs as building blocks – that excel at their particular function.components of composable ecommerceSource

Keep in mind that aside from PBCs, your eCommerce architecture will still require infrastructure-related elements. These include the front-end frameworks – the pre-written app structure consisting of files and directories, as well as the front-end deployment and hosting platform itself.

Here are some examples of PBCs that you could include in your composable commerce platform:

Commerce engine

The commerce engine is the backbone of a composable commerce ecosystem, responsible for essential commerce related functions like product catalog management, pricing, promotions, cart management, and order processing.

This core software component orchestrates the various microservices, ensuring they operate in harmony, and integrates smoothly with other PBCs to manage complex business logic across the platform.

B2B buyer support

Some B2B buyers have complex corporate structures and purchasing processes. Many will need quick ordering and bulk ordering functionality. Good eCommerce systems should offer account management, self-service features, and order tracking capabilities.

Order management system

An order management system allows you to create, analyze, and track all elements of an order. While modern commerce systems should offer this function natively, specialized systems may be needed to manage complex configure-price-quote, quote-to-cash, approvals, returns, or refunds.

Inventory management system

Inventory management tools update, track, and manage your inventory. It helps manage inventory levels and product availability by location, set stock levels, and allocate resources. Enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions can also be used for this purpose.

Content management systems (CMS)

The CMS allows you to manage website elements such as menus, navigation, pages, and page layouts. Many digital commerce platforms offer pre integrated solutions for CMS, but you may opt for a standalone solution if you have unique content needs.

Product catalog

The product catalog is the heart of the eCommerce system, and one of the main building blocks of a composable eCommerce system. A product catalog manages the products you offer, what customers see, and how they see it, ensuring accurate order fulfillment.

Improved Storefront Experiences

Digital asset management (DAM)

As a business grows, managing a large number of digital assets gets challenging. Some eCommerce brands opt to centralize their digital assets and media with the help of a DAM system.

Product information management (PIM)

A PIM solution helps you better manage your product data across all channels – both offline and online. It’s particularly beneficial for brands with large order catalogs and complex product relationships.

Customer relationship management (CRM)

With a CRM solution, you can more easily manage your customer activity, keep track of order history, communicate, and personalize messaging to buyers.

Shopping cart and checkout

A shopping cart and checkout system allows eCommerce brands to manage shopping carts from various channels. Cart systems may offer guest checkouts, wishlists, and more.

hosted-checkout-storefront

Search system

You may wish to utilize an external search system to go through your eCommerce catalog and website contents if the search functionality provided by the eCommerce platform is insufficient for your needs.

Pricing, promotions, discounts

What customers pay remains a deciding factor in purchase decisions. Pricing, promotions, and discount solutions help you manage complex pricing rules while offering promotions and discounts to meet your marketing needs.

Payment systems

While many digital commerce platforms offer out-of-the-box payment eCommerce integrations, not all payment gateways are supported. Furthermore, you may want to integrate with a custom-built system.

Reporting

You may want to integrate with analytics systems and dashboards to get a comprehensive view of your eCommerce business.

reporting dashboard

 

Search and Personalization Engines

Search and personalization engines improve the shopping experience by offering relevant product recommendations and search results based on customer behavior. Integrated with existing systems, they allow composable commerce to align with various business models for personalized marketing and content.

Payment and Tax Management

Payment and tax management systems ensure secure transaction processing and accurate tax calculations. As part of modern technology stacks, these composable commerce solutions enable businesses to handle payments efficiently and remain compliant with regulations.

Order status, shipments, availability. It all lives in your ERP. Discover how to integrate your ERP with eCommerce.

Where and How Do Composable eCommerce Architecture Components Connect?

The composable approach allows immense flexibility to craft experiences and customize integration using an API-first approach that allows companies to build a tech stack unique to their needs with the components specific to their use case.

A key to composable architecture is understanding where and how PBCs come together. To determine how to compose, you must know where your data is located and understand how it must flow through your systems. Composing happens inside or outside of the eCommerce solution and requires a modular eCommerce solution such as OroCommerce. 

Outside of the eCommerce application

When you compose outside the eCommerce application, you retrieve data from other systems in your tech stack. At some point, this data will travel to your eCommerce application.

For example, you can use the ERP as a single source of truth, where inventory and pricing data resides. Product data can be managed in PIM, but subsequently exported to your eCommerce application’s checkout system.

Inside the eCommerce application

When you compose inside the application, your eCommerce application distributes data to other systems. Essentially, the eCommerce application acts as a single source of truth.

For example, you can retrieve products from PIM and pricing data from accounting software. All this data is brought together and processed in your eCommerce application.

Key Elements for A Strong Composable Foundation

The weakest link in any composable eCommerce architecture is the eCommerce platform itself. Thus, it’s critical to analyze your platform solutions carefully to ensure they don’t limit your freedom to choose and compose solutions best for your business. Look for these key elements when selecting your digital commerce technology:

True separation

The very essence of composable commerce architecture is separation. At the very least, the system should separate back-end from front-end components in a headless fashion. Platforms lacking this ability cannot be composable in principle.

Unlimited composable services

A truly composable eCommerce platform should allow you to compose native elements as “modules” but also support other components without limitations. Look for solutions with open and robust APIs exposed for external use.

Easy to set up and scale

Composability is synonymous with speed and efficiency. Pay special attention to solutions that allow you to compose elements quickly with minimal investment, and consider flexible deployment options such as cloud-based deployments.

Strong ecosystem

A successful composable project requires an eCommerce vendor’s support of the composable idea and a strong eCommerce tech ecosystem. Look for vendors with demonstrable experience delivering projects with partners. Open source solutions should be supported by a robust user community as well.

How Do You Implement Composable eCommerce?

Implementing a new architecture blends a new way of thinking with a traditional way of handling technology. You’ll still be working with components, extensions, and add-ons – it’s just at an entirely new level. 

Start with composable thinking

Not every organization is ready to embrace the thought patterns and principles of composable architecture. Overcome traditional thinking about technology – namely with respect to features and capabilities that can only be used and scaled as a whole.

Focus on specific business needs

Build and organize for flexibility and resilience, not to preserve and maintain existing structures and processes for their own sake. Think widely in terms of the whole ecosystem and select technology that aligns with that vision.

Let strategy drive problem-solving

A composable strategy will lead you to technology that makes composable possible. Your eCommerce platform should allow you to take a feature and isolate it, making it composable. However, getting there means selecting the right platform from the outset.

Select a solution designed to be composable

When evaluating eCommerce solutions, look for composable elements out of the box. Having a great feature list is not enough – you should be able to turn features on and off at will. The Orocommerce B2B eCommerce platform offers:

  • Composable Commerce APIs: Flexible APIs in eCommerce extend and integrate with off-the-shelf or custom-built solutions your business already utilizes.
  • Developer documentation: Access extensive support and developer documentation to rapidly build out your eCommerce presence.
  • Strong partner network: Rely on a strong and diverse partner ecosystem with a track record of realizing complex composable eCommerce projects.

Build Your Composable eCommerce on the Right Foundation

The vast eCommerce software market can feel overwhelming. You need a solution that not only offers design freedom but also adapts swiftly to changing market conditions. That’s where composable commerce shines.

Many platforms claim to offer a composable commerce approach, but few deliver the full benefits—such as true separation of elements, flexible APIs, and a scalable architecture. These are critical for ensuring your commerce platform remains adaptable. Opting for a platform built to be composable from the start will help you avoid the pitfalls of vendor lock-in and software limitations.

The Oro Approach to eCommerce Architecture: Flexible eCommerce

At OroCommerce, we go beyond the buzzwords. Our composable commerce solution is designed to meet the real needs of B2B brands, combining a rich customer experience on the front end with powerful back-end tools for optimizing workflows, automating processes, and improving efficiency. With Oro, technology works for your company, not the other way around.

Ready to transform your business with composable commerce?

Contact Oro today to explore scalable, flexible solutions.

Questions and Answers about Composable Commerce

What is composable commerce definition?

Composable commerce meaning: It allows eCommerce teams to gather best-of-breed solutions and integrate them to reach business goals.

This is in stark contrast to using a single e commerce platform with natively included functionality.

Why is composable eCommerce important?

In B2B, here’s pressure to innovate and evolve offerings rapidly.

This belief is reinforced that no single solution can offer the capabilities to deliver the eCommerce platform experiences modern customers demand.

What makes composable eCommerce?

Composable eCommerce consists of a front end presentation layer (the elements that the customers see), separated from the business layer (where the business logic takes place).

The business layer is further divided into functionalities that can be offered as standalone applications.

Collectively known as packaged business capabilities, these are the building blocks of composable systems.

What are the benefits of composable eCommerce?

Composable architecture offers brands and leaders numerous benefits. For example, businesses can:

  • Design their own customer experience and differentiate it from competitors
  • Pick and choose optimal solutions to reach their goals
  • Save costs, and increase time to market
  • Adjust, scale, and optimize as you grow
  • No vendor lock-in

How does composable commerce handle third party services?

Composable commerce allows you to integrate third party services in a way that doesn’t compromise your overall system.

These services can be added or swapped independently, giving your business the flexibility to adapt quickly to changing needs without major disruptions.

This modular approach helps you maintain control over your commerce system while benefiting from specialized external tools.

What is the relationship between composable commerce and traditional e commerce?

While traditional e commerce platforms are often rigid and difficult to customize, composable commerce offers a modular framework that is built for flexibility.

Rather than being locked into a monolithic solution, composable commerce lets you create a tailored commerce platform by combining specific components that match your business needs.

This approach provides far more scalability and adaptability compared to traditional platforms.

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