All right, let's go ahead and get going. Hello and welcome to Composable Unveiled, Unlocking the Future of Commerce. I am Brian Lang, CRO and co-founder at Future Commerce. We have a great panel ahead for you, and I will get into some introductions in just a minute, but I am so excited to be here. Composable is a topic near and dear to my heart, and I can't wait to dive in with our panelists today and uncover more about what it's about. Just a quick agenda here to kind of get started. We are going to get into some introductions, as I mentioned. We're going to talk a little bit about what inspired this webinar and this digital event. Say goodbye to Build vs. Buy, the white paper by ContentStack, Publicis Sapient, and Commerce Tools. And we'll talk a little bit about that, and then we'll actually get into the content of that white paper and talk about it in a little bit more detail with some of the experts that helped put it together and whose wisdom is included in that white paper. So before we get started, let's go ahead and get into these introductions. As I mentioned, I am Brian Lang, co-founder and CRO of Future Commerce. I will be the host of today's event. And we've got three incredible panelists from ContentStack, Commerce Tools, and Publicis Sapient. Let's kick things off. Prasitha, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself?
Oh, thanks, Brian. Hi there. I'm Prasitha. I'm the global VP of Partnerships at ContentStack. So I manage the relationships with our technology partners, such as Commerce Tools, and also our solution partners like Publicis Sapient, who help our customers really get full value out of their composable investments. Excited to have you.
Thanks, Prasitha. Kelly, how about you?
Hi, I am Chief Strategy Officer at Commerce Tools. I was also CPO for six years, and I'm actually coming up on my seventh year anniversary. Also co-founder of the Mach Alliance, was founding president, chairman, and now John, actually, for continuity purposes, is chairman. So I'll pass it over to him.
Hey, thanks, Kelly. I'm John Panella. I'm group vice president in charge of our commerce practice at Publicis Sapient. Been here over 20 years helping our clients make that jump into more of a digital experience, do a digital transformation around their business. As Kelly said, I sit on the board of the Mach Alliance. I'm now the chairman of the Alliance and look forward to the discussion today.
Congrats, John. Super excited to have you. The founder and chairman and current chairman of the Mach Alliance both here. It's pretty exciting. And we'll talk a little bit more about what the Mach Alliance is for those of you that are a little bit new to the world of composable and headless. This is going to be an important part of our journey. Before we jump into the full content, I just wanted to mention this webinar is inspired and based on a white paper called Say Goodbye to Build Versus Buy. This is an important white paper as you grow and evolve your commerce experience. You need to read this white paper. It is co-authored by Publicis Sapient, Commerce Tools, and Content Stack. And as I mentioned, the three of our panelists today involved in that and have some great quotes and things to say in there. If you wouldn't mind, just go ahead and scan this QR code here you see on your screen and get into all the detail. Something definitely worth following up as a next step after you listen to this webinar. Go download and read the report in full or you can go check out that link that is there at the bottom of the slide. So without further ado, let's just jump right in. So the first thing we're going to talk about is an introduction to composable commerce because I think we don't want to assume that you understand exactly what it is. You might be new. And this webinar is not only if you're new. We're going to dive into some further depth, but just to get things kind of started. John, what is composable commerce and how does it differ from traditional e-commerce solutions?
Yeah, I think it's a great question, Brian, and one I get all the time from my clients. When you think about the industry, many folks have been on an e-commerce platform for quite a while now. Kelly, I think you posted something the other day. 8.2 years is the, I think was your number of the average time that it takes to move from one solution to another. So many folks are at that inflection point. They're on a legacy solution. It's a monolith. It's difficult to change. It's difficult to roll out new functionality. It's difficult to add new content. Yes, they have deep control over the functionality within it, but it's become a point where it's an inhibitor to their business instead of helping their business move forward. So the idea of composability is give you agility, to give you control, to give you the ability to substitute pieces in and out, and most importantly, to find the right places to differentiate. It's not right for every company to try to differentiate around a shopping cart or a product detail page. You need to be differentiating around your business and how your customers interact with you from that perspective. And what composability gives you is the ability to plug in a search engine, plug in a promotions engine, bring in the right content solution, the right experience to be able to make sure you're differentiating, you're relating to your customers, and you're providing them the hyper-personalized experience that they're expecting. So the big move to your question, Brian, is the simplest way to say it is, I was on a legacy, a proven platform, did everything I needed to do, but I want to be able to move forward to where I have more control, more agility, and be able to provide a more personalized experience for my customers.
Yeah, I love that, Don. It's so good. There's so much samey-samey out there in commerce right now. If you took away the header, would you even know what the brand was? We've done commerce platforms for 30 years now, if you can believe that. I mean, it's been 30 years. So, yeah, you're right. It's wild. It's absolutely wild. That means that if we've been doing them for 30 years, if you've been on one for eight years, you might have already had two in your experience. John, you already hit on this a little bit, and I think this is an important point, and we definitely need to talk more about the why. So, Prasitha, why would you say that any organization should look to transform into a composable solution, and what are the advantages for those that do so?
Thanks, Brian. Well, I mean, John's already started to get into this topic, but if you think about it, you know, traditional commerce technologies emerged during the 1990s in the e-commerce revolution just to provide some kind of online purchasing capability for retailers. And these solutions were developed when we had just one channel to transact, you know, so via our computers. But now e-commerce is an integral part of our day-to-day lives, and we have so many more ways to shop, so whether that's a games console, a kiosk, social media, online marketplaces, e-commerce is now everywhere and will total over $15 trillion globally by 2028. So these traditional solutions have now become very costly and burdensome to retailers, and they lack the ability to really evolve to growing consumer needs, the channels that they want to engage via or the ways that they want to pay. A lot of companies may have postponed making those necessary changes to adapt, and they're now feeling a lot of pressure as newer competition is rising and disrupting traditional business models. In some research that we recently conducted, we found that more than 50% of retailers believe their current platforms can't support their business needs for over the next year. With these traditional solutions, you selected the suite that best fit the majority of your needs. So what that ultimately means is you make some compromises along the way. But retailers now really need to ensure that the technology they have that can support them to meet their customers where they are and via the channels they want to engage and transact via. And this is what composable commerce really offers, the ability to take best-of-breed technologies and connect them together to deliver the solution that suits your particular business. By purchasing the technology rather than bespoking it, you can also focus much more of your time and attention in that differentiated, relevant experience for your customers and ensure that your brand is really unique and that you can stand out in that competitive space. Over the last 10 years, new technology has emerged to give retailers so much more agility and flexibility and to evolve in the e-commerce space and to really provide that tailored experience.
That's good. Yeah, I think you and John are on the exact same train. It's time to get differentiated. And I think this is the moment to do it. Kelly, I think there's an important part of this, which is, you mentioned this earlier, you're the co-founder of Mach. How do Mach technologies contribute to the speed and flexibility and scalability of a composable platform? And as we look at this, what is Mach versus composable versus headless? I think there's a lot to unpack there, especially as we're just coming into this a little bit and we're at the introduction part. I think it'd be good just to talk a little bit about why it's important to say Mach and composable versus just headless. A lot of legacy platforms right now are claiming that they can do headless. They can. But anyway, we as an industry are bad about naming too many things and having too many acronyms. I will take credit for that. But so composable is a great term coined by GartnerYou have to fail if you want to succeed. Prasitha, what are some of the challenges that you see and or that can be overcome?
I guess the big thing is change is hard and change is scary. And it is very easy, and we see this a lot, to just stick with what you're doing and to trust in the technology that you have and to feel that it is going to be time consuming and it's going to be disruptive to make these changes. And when you think about moving from a single suite to a stack of technologies, best of breed technologies, but still a number of different pieces, that can seem pretty scary to make all of those changes. But John's already pointed it out, no one is really saying you have to do it all in one go. Ultimately, if your current technology can't meet your customers where they want to be, then you either need to evolve or your customers are going to find someone else who is able to meet them in those places. But the next piece is that you don't have to do it all in one go. John said this is about moving forward with the areas that are of most need within your business, swapping in those pieces, checking that they work, and then assessing where you are now before you take that next step forward.
I love that. I think the old adage, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, it's actually a very fast way to see your business fail because change is necessary.
Yeah, totally.
Kelly, how about you? What are some of the challenges that you see?
I see organizations that think they should do mock and are mature enough to do it, try to do it. So I see that on occasion and I appreciate the enthusiasm. But at the same time, there is, as both have said, there's a bar that you have to clear here for technical competency and need. I think some would just be better served by taking something boring off the shelf, putting a new header on it and publishing it. I do think there's a market for that. And sometimes people try to overcomplicate things. I see far more organizations, though, that should be using mock, but instead are just using an off the shelf solution. And there, you know, it's a couple of things. It's perceived as safe, right? They're the incumbent. They've been there for years. They're probably solid C-level relationships between the vendor and the retailer brand. The team knows it. It's just the default. And, you know, again, the fastest way to get your business disrupted is not proactively making changes. And you can't just take something off the shelf and swap in your products and go live at the enterprise level and expect that to work really well. I don't think that makes a lot of sense. And that's not going to get you the competitive differentiation that you need. And e-commerce has gone from this thing off to the side that you just had, right? It used to be that, you know, if you had 550 stores and then you started your e-commerce initiative, your e-commerce store would be store 551, right? And it would literally be treated and managed as a store. Now e-commerce, digital commerce, is how you power your business. In many cases now, we've got point of sale systems hitting that. We have kiosks, tablets. That's the primary way you take in money. So it's not just something you can outsource anymore to some vendor who gives you an in-the-box solution. It's now just part of what you do. And organizations need to understand it and make sure that they're making proactive changes to better support it.
Yeah, let me just add one thing, Brian. Kelly's heard me say this phrase for the last probably six or seven years, commerce is a commodity. I think what that means, though, people have to be careful. That doesn't mean every solution will accomplish everything you want to make. It means that whether you choose an off-the-shelf package or you choose a composable package, there's a shopping cart. There's a product detail page. There's a promotions component. Those things are there. When I say that to clients, I want them to think about the fact of those core things that everybody does, I don't want to build myself. I want to take advantage of what's out there to do that. What I want to do is what makes me different as a retailer. When clients come and say, I love your brand, what is that? That's where you want to differentiate. That's where you want to use composability. That's, as Prasitha said, where you want to take those first steps in the journey. So, yes, commerce is a commodity when it comes to functionality, but it's absolutely not a commodity when it comes to experience. And that's the differentiator.
Absolutely agree with that. You can't just have your brand look like everyone else's brand. You've got to have something that sets you apart. In today's environment, when there's more and more entrants than ever, you need that control once you hit a certain state of maturity. And I think you all have done a really great job of nailing that. If you are an immature organization, maybe it's better to just rely on out-of-the-box features. And it's much more ‑‑ it puts you in a certain category. And that's cool. But if you want to actually get out there and take that next step and say, we are actually worth your attention, customer, then composable is probably the right solution for you. Let's jump on to the next step here, which is evaluating build versus buy options. And I think this is really important. Actually flows directly out of the conversation we've already been having. And so I think the question that I have here is when retailers and brands are evaluating traditional options and considering how to modernize their e‑commerce platform, what are the advantages and limitations for building on a custom e‑commerce platform versus building or just buying an off-the-shelf and then iterating on top of an off-the-shelf platform? And let's go ahead and start with you, Kelly, this time.
I think it's ‑‑ that used to be the dichotomy that was set up was build or buy. I think today it's very much a build and buy. And, you know, John was referencing something I posted about the average commerce platform being in use at an organization for an average of 8.2 years. I don't even know if we can say what a platform is for too much longer anymore. And if you look at our customers, they've got commerce tools, they've got, you know, search provider, they've got content stack, they've got promotions, they've got a little bit of everything from different vendors. And it's hard to even say, like, yeah, you know, they're on X platform anymore. And it ends up being just these pieces that you choose. What we like to say to our customers is buy the boring commoditized base foundation. And by the way, John, I unapologetically stole the whole commodity thing from you, by the way. I hope you're not mad about that. But commerce is a commodity. And you buy, like, a shopping cart from us, right, because there's no business value in building a shopping cart. And then you build your differentiation using somebody like a sapien, right, build your custom microservices, the product fitment, the stuff that makes you special, that adds value, that differentiates. So it's a build and buy these days. I think we're getting past the era of just pulling a platform off the shelf and implementing it.
I think that you're dead on. And, again, that does require a level of maturity that you have to be able to say, okay, I know what I want to build. Like, it takes creativity. And so, yeah. Prasita, what about you? What would you say, you know, some of the traditional options are, the way that people have thought about it in the past, and then what are the advantages and limitations of, like, the custom build versus the off-the-shelf build? And maybe you could flow right out of Kelly's ideas here. Maybe the future is not, you know, this false dichotomy, but it's actually a blend of the two.
Yeah, I mean, I'm ultimately going to align with Kelly and say that that blend is the best option for you. But, you know, a lot of companies will think about building their own solutions. And, you know, if you do build your own solution, you are going to have total control over the design and the capabilities. But this option could prove to be costly and time intensive. There are retailers who feel that they can build the technology from the ground up and ensure that by doing that, that will meet all of their needs for their brand. They'll retain control over the customer experience. But it will result in a lot of developer time, a lot of testing, high long-term overheads and maintenance costs. And, you know, you can often find these projects will be managed alongside a developer's day-to-day workload. And that can really result in a constant balancing act. You know, almost 50% of the retailers that we've surveyed in the past have said that they feel that their dependency on their IT teams has impeded their ability to deliver on online marketing. So, you know, this is where we feel that with a composable commerce solution, you will get the best of both worlds. You know, you don't need to compromise on the capabilities you feel that are needed for your business. You can still have that tailored experience that you want to deliver. But with a highly flexible modular solution, you can build that up from best-in-class building blocks that meet all the specific business needs, but then tailor them, bring them together in order to ensure that it meets exactly the business experience that you're trying to deliver.
Love that. Yeah, I think it echoes exactly what Kelly said. And I think we're hearing a theme here, which is composableDid very well. This is one of the big challenges of legacy platforms today and why folks need composability is being able to handle those more complex business models. And then Kelly threw out the idea of B2B. You start talking about hierarchical organizations and contract pricing and volume discounts and all of those components from that perspective. But you want to be able to, you know that customer at the end is sometimes a B2C customer, sometimes a B2B customer. You want to know which model they're in and what their persona is at that time. So I think it comes back to the idea of how composability gives that to you. Kelly's point, I absolutely encourage certain clients, you know what, go down a Shopify path, perfectly fine for you because what you're trying to do, it's adjunct to your business, it's not core. But all of these models that Proceda was describing and that Kelly were describing are the places where I do need to differentiate. My business model does have some complexity to it and composability obviously simplifies that model. Since we're bringing up names and I hope this is okay, but y'all brought up Shopify. There are others, Shopify is clearly like a certain type of retailer, but there are some that are a little closer to commerce tools that are a little bit like more fully featured, more set up for someone that would be qualified to run mock. And so we don't have to get too far into this, but you start to look at maybe a big commerce or an Adobe or a Salesforce that are like potentially not in the same style of composable that commerce tools and plus content stack plus Google sits in. When you start to look at solutions that are a little bit more geared towards the enterprise but are still considered monolith of the past, legacy solutions, what's sort of the differentiator when you stack up against some of those? Let's go ahead and kick it back to you, John.
Okay, sure, I'll jump in first. I view imitation as the greatest form of flattery and what's happened in the last two years, the large suites have started to adopt the term composable, have started to say we offer those same capabilities and they do to a limited extent. I think Kelly said it best earlier. I like to say just because you're headless doesn't mean you're composable. Just because you're composable doesn't mean you're mock. It is a stair step in your capabilities, your technology, your approach and all those things. But those vendors out there, you mentioned like a Salesforce and an Adobe. Look, they offer a great suite of solutions. For many, it comes back to what Kelly was describing. It's got to be the right fit for you. If you want to take advantage of marketing cloud, you want to take advantage of analytics, you want to take advantage of CDP, you want to take advantage of their commerce solution. They're absolutely great solutions for that. You have some capabilities around composability, but you don't have the full flexibility of really having a mock solution. You need to be able to bring those, substitute in a service, bring in a new third-party solution and so forth. Look, I implement those solutions all the time from a Sapient perspective. Many times I tell my clients that's absolutely the right answer. When you talk about the trend, and even these guys recognize it, the Salesforce and the Adobe, by talking about the idea of composability is they realize that they still have monolithic features from that perspective and they want to be part of what's going on from a mock perspective because as the analysts recognize, as our clients recognize, that's where the direction is for the future.
I love that. I think let's leave that there. I love that answer, John. I think that's a really thorough answer to the prodding I've brought here. I want to make sure I'm cognizant of time here. We've got about 15 minutes left and I do want to get into some of the more practical pieces. Let's get into the best practices for implementing composable commerce. Let's just kick it off. What are some of the key steps involved in implementing a composable solution? Let's start with you, Kelly.
It's to understand what you need to build and what you need to buy. It's time for those two separate buckets. Once you define what you're going to buy, then you go out and work with some hopefully fantastic vendors and you buy those commoditized pieces. Then you work with an SI or you do it in-house, but you build what is differentiated. It's really important to very clearly know what's your differentiation and build that. If you can get something off the shelf, do that. So many times organizations will select a vendor first and then the vendor, they think they can use the vendor for things that they should be building themselves or vice versa. That becomes messy pretty quickly.
That's good advice. Prasitha, what about you? What are some of the key steps that you see involved in implementing a composable commerce solution?
I guess I'd probably take a little step back from before where Kelly's got to and say that really the first thing you want to do is define what your goals are so that you can really do your due diligence. Be clear. If there are gaps in your current solution, be clear what they are and how they're impacting your business, how they're impacting your customer. And then really be clear what your success criteria are. It's important to think about how you can differentiate and where do you see the biggest benefits in terms of maybe driving customer loyalty or customer attention. This is going to help you define that vision and where you want to be in the future and avoid you replicating your current systems and processes with newer technology. Once you've got through that piece, there's tons of analyst research out there to really help you understand where digital commerce is evolving to and review this and take stock of how that aligns to the areas of paramount importance to your business. And also bringing together that with the feedback you've had from your customers, maybe market analyst data that you have. And this is all together going to help you try and future-proof your solution and make sure you're ready for any of the new channels or markets that you want to embark on in the future. The other piece for me is really making sure that you're bringing your organization with you along on the journey. So you want to get buy-in across your organization and help them all understand why the change is important, how it's going to impact their teams and business operations, but why it's going to help you to be more successful in the future. Because ultimately, if you're going to change your technology, you should also be thinking about, are the processes you have fit for purpose? Do you need to re-evaluate and evolve those too, as well as some of your team structures, so you can really streamline things and ensure that your business is really fit for the next generation and where you want to move on to.
Good advice as well. John, how much you, what are some pieces of advice that you have?
I think Kelly and Christina did a great job. I'm so glad you hit that last point, Christina, because I think it comes back to the enterprise and the organization. You want to make sure from a best practices perspective, you're considering the impacts to each part of the organization. That's both positive and negative impacts. Sometimes you're going to make a decision that we're going to create this new product information management solution that I'm going to manage product content in, and it's going to be separate from my ERP. What are the impacts of that? What are the considerations that I need to do? How am I going to make sure I keep them in sync and up to date? How am I going to enrich the content in the new PIM versus what I do in my ERP? Make sure you consider the enterprise from a practices perspective. The whole idea of composability is getting out of a silo. Make sure you get out of those silos and you look at what are the impacts to those other components of your organization, the stores, the marketing department, the IT organization, the HR department, and what they're going to have to consider about bringing in new people and the skills that they're going to have to look for. Make sure you consider the enterprise, I think, is the number one best practice.
Love that. In our last minute here, just quick hits, who are some good examples of brands or retailers that have implemented composable solutions and have done it well? And so, John, maybe just one from each of you kind of down the line. John, you first.
I mean, one of the ones I'm most proud of that we've done is Bang & Olufsen. Great customer experience, very compelling, engaging brand that's, you know, a high-end brand, and they've gone fully composable from that perspective, and we helped them do that.
Prasitha?
I'd probably talk about Photobox. So they're a European retailer with 30 million customers in 19 countries. They've really struggled with their error-prone in-house legacy system and wanted a solution that would support web and mobile channels and have made that move to composable, and they feel it's future-proofing their business as they want to explore new channels in the future, which their legacy system just couldn't support.
And Kelly?
I'm always a fan of LEGO. I used the LEGO analogy for years, and then we're thankful to sign them up as a customer, and I think their example of just powering through the replacement of their legacy, and now they are super composable, and it powers all the in-store experiences, the online, the mobile. They're just a great brand that's done mock and composable correct.
Love it. That's a great place to end it. Again, go download the white paper. You heard a lot of great detail here. That white paper provides even more. Scan this QR code. Check it out. Thank you again to our panelists. John, Kelly, Prasitha, all of your wisdom was incredible, and thank you again to ContentStack, Publicis Sapient