by Janus Boye
Casper Aagaard Rasmussen from Valtech introduced composable commerce to our community
Composable Commerce is the future. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you already heard it last year when we had our popular MACH Alliance member call, but what does Composable Commerce really mean and why does it matter?
As Group SVP Technology at Valtech in wonderful Copenhagen, Casper Aagaard Rasmussen heads up the global strategic activities within their MACH and Composable Enterprises business. In our latest member call, he shared why the future of commerce is composable, what it means to the marketplace at large and how it impacts agencies and customers. As he said:
We are in the era of the shared ecosystem. Composable Commerce enable new business models and helps you achieve the accelerations you are seeking. We live in a world with constant change to how consumers buy products and services.
Below I’ve captured some of the highlights from the call. Further down you can find the slides and the entire recording.
The future of commerce is interconnected, flexible and reactive at its core
To set the stage, Casper reminded us that not only do we live in unpredictable times, commerce and specifically retail is rapidly changing.
Casper on stage at the Boye Aarhus 21 conference, where he gave a popular talk on 3 Pieces of the 2022 Content Management Puzzle. Photo: Ib Sørensen
You might notice how times are changing by walking down the high streets of most cities, or with the closure of many shopping malls, but Casper made us think differently. He used the example of how a car is no longer just a car, but also now an assistant. Also the entire concept of a store has been turned upside down becoming more like a showroom for many brands.
As he said:
The future of commerce needs to be more value-centric and service-oriented by design. Also, brands must create highly personalized products and services to generate stronger emotional equity.
Using a simple illustration, he showed how the consumer today has to navigate a changing landscape - a boutique on social media, perhaps using a smartphone that’s also a wallet. Delivery is done using gig economy vendors and financing is not just the realm of old fashioned banks.
From a technology point-of-view Composable Commerce has these four characteristics according to Casper:
best of breed
composability
evolutionary
cloud-native
He shared the slide below on how Composable Commerce your new digital business. By establishing holsters of digital capabilities, made to be re-configured and re-purposed, the approach help companies flex to future needs. This concept also clearly illustrates how agencies like Valtech, are needed to support the future of commerce when these build new strategies enter the board room.
It’s quite likely that we are far from done innovating on new digital business models and touchpoints. That’s another reason to embrace composable.
A human-centered approach to business transformation
Composable Commerce is far from only about technology and innovative ways to implement products from start-ups. Citing IT analyst firm Gartner, Casper added the term Total Experience to the conversation.
According to Gartner, Total Experience is a strategy that creates superior shared experiences by weaving together disciplines like customer experience (CX), employee experience (EX), user experience (UX) and multi experience (MX).
Composable Commerce as a technology strategy make it possible to realize fast innovation, with stellar consumer experiences, while employees and process stay happy and efficient.
As Casper said, key business drivers include the increase speed of reaction, adaptation and innovation. Also, there’s the business need to protect people and process from rapid change. That’s why the former approach of picking a suite vendor or out-of-the-box monolith is no longer the choice for everyone.
Are we geared for the speed of this?
As a part of the Q&A, the obvious question came up: Can we really deliver this using frameworks like agile or ITIL that many of us follow?
The clear and unequivocal answer from Casper was a big: YES. As he said:
It does put an increased demand on engineering skills as the complexity is high, but it is indeed possible.
He specifically talked about engineering scale on how new capabilities and SaaS platforms each need to be scaled, utilized and managed. This adds significant complexity, as capabilities may need to be replicated, re-configured or re-purposed for audience, reach, innovation or new business models.
Elaborating further on this, a friendly community member shared this link in the meeting chat: How Big Tech Runs Tech Projects and the Curious Absence of Scrum.
Learn more about Composable Commerce
CMS Wire featured a helpful recent article on The Business Case for MACH Architecture.
You can also download the slides (PDF) or lean back and enjoy the 28-minute recording below