I’ve seen many trends come and go over the course of my 25-year career in ecommerce. ‘Modernization’ has been a main buzzword of the past few years with replatforming considered the golden path to modernization. To take full advantage of composable commerce (another term that’s become popular recently), you were forced down the replatforming path.
That way of thinking seems incredibly outdated these days. Today, organizations, both B2B and B2C, are shifting their focus towards maximizing the potential of their existing ecommerce stack. This strategy emphasizes efficiency, value extraction, and rapid results, without the cumbersome process of replatforming.
In this article, you’ll learn strategies for enhancing your existing ecommerce tech stack while future-proofing your company and priming it for innovation.
Why the era of replatforming is fading
Replatforming has long been confused with innovation in ecommerce. The promise of agility, scalability, and modern architecture lured many businesses into costly migrations. These ambitious projects also overlooked how disruptive they were to both the business and customers. As companies poured resources into these initiatives, they frequently encountered massive challenges, like:
- Exorbitant costs: The costs regularly ran into the millions
- Long implementation cycles: The average project lasted 12-18 months, diverting resources and causing delays in other priorities
- Underwhelming results: The big changes often yielded far fewer improvements than anticipated
The ecommerce ecosystem is a small world, and before long, stories of blown timelines and budget became well-known. Thus, businesses grew increasingly skeptical of replatforming, opting instead to enhance existing ecommerce architecture with solutions that deliver immediate and measurable value.
Four ways to maximize your existing ecommerce tech stack without replatforming
These are the five elements to put at the top of your must-have list when looking for new solutions to add to your ecommerce tech stack to transform your ecommerce experiences:
1. Avoid technology for the sake of technology
While there is a lot of slick technology in the ecosystem, the technology should first and foremost have a clear path from solution to value. For example, many B2B organizations limit the products they offer online due to their complexity, thereby limiting the (low cost) revenue through their online channel. Solutions that solve this challenge and deliver clear value should be a consideration for adding to the existing ecommerce stack.
2. Seamless integration with existing systems
Seamless integration doesn’t just mean the ability to layer on another solution to your tech stack. Instead, consider the following: how does this new solution take advantage of and add value to my tech stack? For example, is the technology designed as API-first and composable, so it integrates with not just your ecommerce platform, but also with other solutions in your stack, such as your PIM, marketing platform, etc.
This allows businesses to embed new technology directly into their current environments and provides both flexibility and scalability without a full replatform.
3. Accelerated time-to-value
The true test of new tech is how quickly it can integrate and be deployed. Every day or week you spend implementing software is time you’re not realizing value. What is a fair time to deploy and receive value? Look for systems that can be implemented in weeks and bring you ROI in three to six months.
4. Personalized and engaging experiences
Both B2B and B2C buyers demand tailored, intuitive shopping experiences. Any new system that you bring into your tech stack should play a part in delivering these experiences, whether it’s through better search, guided selling, or other forms of personalization. For example, AI-powered digital assistants can supplement your SEO and paid marketing programs by delivering deeper personalization to customers who arrive on your site from these channels, guiding them to tailored product recommendations. For B2B companies, CPQ systems can be supercharged with product configurators that allow buyers to build their own BOMs and request quotes, accelerating the CPQ process on the backend.
5. Data enrichment and syndication
One of the biggest untapped resources cycling through any company’s ecommerce tech stack is data, specifically product data. If you’re looking for a new solution to integrate into your environment, it’s essential for it to have a positive impact on your product data through enriching it and/or syndicating it across channels. This ensures that not only is your product data clean, consistent, and accessible, but also that it’s useful across any channel and experience you want to optimize.
Examples of ecommerce companies that grew with composable solutions
Dräger uses composable tech to digitize its sales process
Dräger, a leader in medical and safety technology, implemented an AI-powered guided selling solution. This transformation led to a 96% improvement in configure price quote (CPQ) accuracy and a 27% increase in lead-to-order conversion rate. By integrating composable capabilities into their existing setup, Dräger avoided the costly process of replatforming while enhancing their digital sales process.
Trek boosts conversion rates with personalized shopping experiences
Trek leveraged guided selling and digital assistant technology to enhance customer interactions across its online channels. As a result, Trek saw a 200% increase in conversion rates, showcasing how rapidly implemented solutions can deliver tangible results without the need for extensive platform changes.
The future of ecommerce technology is composable
The season of the replatform is over. Businesses no longer need to embark on costly and time-consuming system overhauls to stay competitive. Instead, by using value-driven composable solutions, they can unlock the full potential of their existing ecommerce stack, delivering exceptional customer experiences with speed, efficiency, and measurable impact. Transformation doesn’t need to be disruptive—it can be efficient, scalable, and, most importantly, profitable.
