Khurram Khan

Khurram Khan,
CTO, Infosys Equinox

Speed of integration is one of the most appealing benefits of composable commerce architecture, and a main driver of why MACH (Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native and Headless) architecture gained momentum.

The ability to keep your commerce system “best of breed” is another key advantage of composable commerce. Capabilities like PIM, payments, tax, search and personalization can be swapped in and out over time as needs change and as vendors compete. This means integrations are never a one-time project, but an ongoing activity to keep your system leading-edge.

MACH-X (MACH with eXtensibility) takes the benefits of composable commerce even further, adding the element of open stack flexibility to ensure ecommerce integrations are both fast and future-proof.

Why composable commerce integrations are mission critical?

Connecting various systems, applications and API-driven microservices to each other is one of the most important activities in IT. Without integrations, data and capabilities stay in silos, severely limiting what a company can achieve to support internal operations and external customer experience. Have you ever bought something online that could not be returned in store, or had to manually key orders into your ERP?

In today’s competitive digital landscape, the ability to add and extend capabilities fast and without friction separates the leaders from the laggards. The Digital Commerce Radar 2023 study found a strong correlation between the number of digital capabilities employed and business performance.

Adding and maintaining digital capabilities in a composable environment requires integrations, period. It’s a must-have, not a nice to have. The key is to make integrations as easy and efficient as possible.

Which integrations are most critical for digital commerce?

Connecting commerce with the almighty ERP is one of the most critical and complex integrations. For some organizations, the ERP is the original source of omnichannel inventory, pricing and catalog information – especially for B2B commerce. This data needs to be pushed into the commerce platform, with orders and customer information pulled from ecommerce into the ERP.

While microservices-based ERPs do exist on the market, legacy ERPs are typically larger, monolithic platforms with one centralized database. Ecommerce platforms – especially of the composable variety – have multiple data sources that must be mapped and integrated with the ERP to support a reliable single "source of truth."  This complexity makes ERP integration one of the most challenging.

Given the sensitivity of customer information and financial data, additional care must be taken with respect to security, encryption and access controls. What’s more, ERPs are often highly customized to specific business requirements. This adds additional complexity to the integration project.

The Infosys Knowledge Institute asked over 2500 enterprise executives which are their most critical digital commerce integrations. Topping the list were Inventory (which typically flows through the ERP), PIM and payments:

Share of respondents by the rank of business systems critical for integration with the digital commerce platform

Why MACH-X for smoother integrations?

Composable architecture breaks traditional monolithic applications into smaller, modular components, each with their own APIs and independent data store. This makes integrations smoother, as you’re working with discrete components that are not tightly coupled to each other.

This greatly shortens integration timelines and makes it much easier to swap individual components in-and-out over time.

While there are a number of MACH-ready commerce vendors on the market, their APIs are delivered "as is."  You can connect them with whatever headless and MACH-compatible apps and touchpoints that you want, but you are not able to modify the APIs themselves.

The challenge arises when unknown variables emerge during or after integration, where requirements change, or nuances are uncovered. MACH-X uses an open stack that enables customizations within the microservices themselves for full flexibility and control.

MACH-X API layers are designed to keep customizations separate from core code to ensure they don’t lead you off the upgrade path. Open stack architecture also allows you to build new, custom microservices with consistent programming language to work seamlessly with the rest of your system.

Once you’ve initially migrated from monolith to MACH-X, future integrations will become much simpler. For example, data may be stored in different systems and formats between your monolith, microservices and composable applications. You may be moving parts from a SQL database to NoSQL or vice-versa. Legacy systems may have their own non-standard proprietary data formats that must be dealt with. Because microservices store their own data in smaller chunks, the data prep stage moves faster, and are migrated in smaller pieces.

How to prepare for critical commerce integrations?

Although composable platforms are by design more flexible and simpler to integrate than monoliths, data migration can still experience hiccups if you’re not prepared.

Whether you’re tackling your integrations with your internal team or a systems integration partner, you’ll need to invest time in preparing your requirements, systems and data.

  1. Plan for your internal subject matter experts to fully flesh out your requirements, or engage with your partner on a full discovery and documentation phase.
  2. Prepare your data by identifying relevant data and where it’s stored, and craft a strategy to clean, map, validate and secure the data.
  3. Set up a test environment for development, testing and QA.
  4. Clear up as much tech debt as you can before kickoff.
  5. Set realistic timelines and cost estimates. A typical composable integration project takes 3-6 months, depending on preparation, complexity and resources applied to it.

Want to learn more about how MACH-X based composable commerce can help your ecommerce brand? Write to us at contactus@infosysequinox.com and we will get in touch with you.

Looking to upgrade to a modern composable commerce architecture?

Contact us to discuss how our MACH-X based platform can help address your integration challenges to craft hyper-personalized commerce journeys.

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