Arthur Lawida, President Technological disruptions have changed the way the businesses interact with consumers, and the commerce ecosystem is no exception. With society embracing the concept of e-commerce, and m-commerce, the race among retailers to build loyalty across all channels is heating up. However, while offering their products through aggregator platforms like Amazon, the efforts to build up a brand’s image need attention. This can be addressed more effectively with a retailer’s own website. And what draws crowd to a website? “User experience and content,” answers Arthur Lawida, President at commercetools, a company providing highly responsive API first platform, that realizes complex commerce models for all channels, on all devices.
According to Lawida, both existing internal business models and technology pose a big challenge for the industry; marketing groups are separate from technology groups because of the high complexities in e-commerce platforms. By partnering with leading CMS vendors, commercetools allows marketing teams to create great user experiences without having to worry about the complications in the technology utilized. The commercetools platform delivers a secure standard back-end as a service without obstructing the flow of creativity. With its focus on omni channel, the company grooms commerce into a utility that can be delivered to any endpoint on the channel retail space. This allows large retailers to simplify their enterprise infrastructure by having a single back end supporting multiple commerce applications. Since the company's platform allows a single API to be used for every channel—be it a mobile app or responsive site—developers don’t need to access different tools.
commercetools with its API first approach focuses on eliminating the need for the clients to modify their existing enterprise architecture, which is usually a costly affair. The biggest hurdle with traditional commerce platforms is that the whole platform needs to be scaled and supported even when an application is accessing a small part of the overall platform.
We guarantee that every API call is accessible in under a hundred milliseconds
However, API first approach affords scaling specific API calls as per the user requirements and depending on the volume of calls, ensuring that the clients only pay for what they use; a key part of their commerce-as-a-service approach. “We guarantee that every API call is accessible in under a hundred milliseconds,” says Lawida.
Every element on the platform is accessible through APIs, which delivers the functionality irrespective of the software that it connects to. Lawida remarks, “Our cloud-based platform lets clients focus on their commerce without worrying about the platform or operational complexity.”
"Since we offer cloud based commerce as a service, the system is always evergreen,” remarks Lawida. The three or more weekly production updates are automatically available to all customers as opposed to traditional platforms where one typically has to wait for weeks or months for a patch to come out, which then requires further testing. The continuous deployment and monitoring, translates to tremendous reduction in total cost of ownership for commercetools' clients.
commercetools’ clientele includes U.S.ELITE that formerly used Magento. They found Magento difficult to customize and expensive to maintain. With concerns regarding security, hosting and the capabilities of Magento to support their growth, the client approached commercetools and relayed their vision to grow 10x the size in five years. commercetools served U.S.ELITE with a solution built on a light CMS that enabled them to create a fully customized, responsive site that meets their current needs and can support their needs as they grow their business.
With a strong presence in Europe, the company is currently expanding across North America. The firm will be exploring new technological avenues for better offerings and is on a mission to lower TCO and offer greater flexibility to enterprise retailers and brands across the world.
