In the Forrester Wave™ B2C Commerce Suites, Q2 2020 report, commercetools is named as a leader in B2C commerce being the next-generation commerce software company. It is the “new-school commerce tech” with APIs convenient for developers backed by cloud-native microservices. Since it is version less and very elastic, thus have an advantage of efficiency at an unprecedented cost. Commercetools allow the customers to build a commerce platform with visionary commerce experiences at a very less cost and time when compared to an in-house building of platform.

The traditional commerce platforms are too complex and rigid giving challenges to speeds needed today. These things are solved by commercetools and they deliver the next generation of commerce to some of the highly developed enterprises in the world. The suite of APIs and headless architecture with commercetools enable the enterprises to have full control over their brand and user experiences with greater speed and agility. This allows exhibiting new functionality of commerce just in weeks instead of months. The enterprises had enough of the inflexible solutions that are not compatible with their customer’s journey. commercetools allows them to combine modern commerce with unique customer experiences in the fastest way.

What B2C Merchants Seek?

Over the past few years, digital commerce has faced substantial changes. The B2C merchants are finding solutions who can do much more to manage their rapidly changing market. The adoption of headless vendors is becoming mainstream and the legacy solutions are becoming more integrated, open and less monolithic to keep up with the pace. The B2C merchants look for a commerce solution which provides –

• Deep and Prebuilt Integrations: The merchants go for ease of integration which is manageable with common tooling. Also, where the changes are applied in real-time and do not require batch processing to be effective.
• Industry Leading Options: Merchants need a best-fit solution for their specific needs in every function of their commerce suites like digital asset management, order management system, product information management and more. They are not limited to first-party and third-party offerings which are partnered by the providers but should be able to combine solutions from various providers. This trend will speed up as more and more merchants progress towards a microservices architecture.
• Microservice, Cloud and SaaS: The customers are not satisfied with the upgrades which are resourced heavily and the quarterly upgrades are not able to keep up with the rapidly changing end customer’s and merchant’s needs and expectations. The upgrades with SaaS are painless and creates a meaningful difference in this context. The customers look for deployment of small portions of a platform without the need to deploy an entire monolithic suite.
• Business User Experience: The best in class vendors constantly enhance the user experience without any major upgrade or disturbance to the memory of the process. The merchants seek providers that can boost up their deep integrations and join the third-party tools within a single experience for utmost efficiency.

Most of the merchants are opting an assembly of best-fit solutions customized for their needs which enable them to manage their digital business efficiently. commercetools is an impeccable solution for digitally advanced companies for a modern and agile developer culture.

B2B and commercetools

In B2B, the requirements of customers and markets are continuously evolving. The outdated digital commerce systems are constantly working for many years without getting extended, are reaching their breaking point. The modern systems have an upper hand in the ability to be flexible to new requirements and to grow with the business. This requirement for flexibility can be translated into infrastructure and technology. The best approach that can be followed is using a combination of modern commerce platform and integrated custom developments.

The “Headless” commerce solution can be an interesting option where frontend is separated from the backend layer. The enterprises can now build personalized experiences for customers, enhance agility and scaling, have the freedom to experiment by using the headless model.

The fundamentals of headless commerce are as follows –

1. Headless approach: The success of B2B companies is highly dependent on the customer experiences they offer and their capability to model customer journeys. Headless distinct the frontend and backend process and connect them with a flexible and strong API which is future-proof.

2. Communication and interfaces: The organizations require a platform which depends on APIs to communicate and extend with other services. There is an easy way to get different systems together as seen with OCI/EDI standards.

3. A flexible model for data: In place of a fixed and rigid database structure, the B2B enterprises require flexibility to add features, group them and mould them in the way required by the business model.

4. Quick custom development: With all the basic functionalities like documented and fast API, flexible data model etc. the organization can now focus on generating the functions which actually help in creating added customer value.

5. Scalability: Cloud-based solutions have no alternative for its faster time to market and maximum efficiency. Today, the organizations need to deploy the functionalities quickly and at scale without spending any resources to maintain their server infrastructure.

In B2B business, even though hundreds of people may not be involved in the purchase process, but the purchase experience needs to be highly standardized as it plays a decisive role in the success of sales. The experience of buyers while making a purchase on the B2B platform is significant for customer loyalty. And Headless B2B commercetools platform is capable of providing an unmatched purchase experience.

Final Words

commercetools enable the businesses to always stay updated, unlike the legacy systems which makes the business redundant and inflexible. This modern commerce platform allows you to make decisions for expanding the commerce ecosystem. It updates you regularly to keep the platform fully functional and secure at all times. The headless architecture of commercetools is designed to work with virtually all commercial systems and services. This includes social platforms, B2B marketplaces, Internet of Things, virtual reality applications and many more to come in future.

About SynergyTop

SynergyTop is a proud commercetools partner and it’s working towards achieving commercetools vision to help the rest of the industry embrace #MACH with the same passion as the 250+ commercetool’ers around the world.

SynergyTop leverages all the facility provided by commercetools like Accelerators, Integrators, Merchant center, Marketplace etc. to provide seamless commercetools implementations. We design, implement, and manage both B2B and B2C E-commerce platforms and help you in transforming your business using the world’s leading E-commerce platforms. At SynergyTop, we have a team of best in the industry consultants on microservices, headless commerce and cloud solutions experience. Write to us at info@synergytop.com for further information.