Solving the Commerce Architecture Dilemma with Composability

Does this sound familiar? You’re a commerce leader challenged to move quickly, innovate continuously, and maintain tech stability. But the complexities of your current commerce platform hinder your progress.

You’re not alone.

With one-third of the world's population shopping online, a number that continues to grow each year, you must ensure your commerce platform is flexible enough to scale with customer expectations while remaining predictable and secure. It’s a daunting task given the limitations of commerce platforms available today.

HCL Commerce+ offers a practical alternative. Packaged Business Capabilities (PBCs) are a forward-thinking approach to commerce, striking a balance between speed, flexibility, and stability.

How Did We Get Here? Monolith vs. Microservices

Two primary commerce architectures exist, each presenting challenges. Monoliths are predictable but rigid. The tight integration enables secure out-of-the-box performance, but making changes or introducing new functions is challenging, time-consuming, and costly. Meanwhile, microservices are complex but flexible. Their distributed nature allows for independent deployment and scaling, but can also lead to increased operational overhead and data inconsistencies.

Both architectures have inherent limitations, highlighting a need for a more balanced and effective commerce solution. HCL Commerce+ and PBCs provide an innovative alternative, combining the stability and predictability of monoliths with the flexibility and scalability of microservices.

HCL Commerce+ and PBCs: A Smarter Choice

A PBC is a self-contained, pre-built, reusable unit of capabilities designed to carry out a specific business function. For example, a commerce solution would have one PBC to handle search functionality and another PBC to handle inventory. You can independently deploy and manage PBCs, allowing for seamless integration into your existing systems and processes. Each PBC is functionally complete with its own user interface, allowing your team to deploy and manage it independently without technical complexity.

Common industry standards support data synchronization and communication within our composable solution, ensuring interoperability. This unique approach ensures integration out of the box.

HCL Commerce+ lets you realize value quickly and adapt as customer needs change. New features and functions don’t require site downtime or lengthy development cycles. Our solution allows you to achieve:

• Enhanced capabilities: Pre-integrated with other PBCs and built for interoperability. Your IT team can keep what works and remove what doesn’t without impacting the entire solution.
• Increased velocity: Scale up or down, or deploy new capabilities without enduring long development cycles. Our SaaS option includes automatic upgrades, so you always have the most updated version.
• Improved flexibility: Removing limiting architecture enables you to deploy only the capabilities you need. A composable solution means you don’t need to become a software company to manage your commerce stack.
• Stability and performance: Lab-tested integration ensures out-of-the-box performance. Modularity supports standalone functioning while SLAs reinforce our commitment to making PBCs work together on a faster timeline.

Let’s look at how this works in practice. A retailer wants to reach a new customer segment they’ve identified that values easy and convenient purchase fulfillment. The retailer decides to offer “buy online, pick up in store” (BOPIS) as a new purchase option. The retailer can develop and deploy a customer-friendly user interface for this new checkout option without affecting the rest of their commerce solution. The composable solution is more consumable for developers, resulting in faster time to value.

While we designed HCL Commerce+ as a technology solution in response to challenges presented by existing architecture options, it also enables several business benefits, including:

• Deployment flexibility: Deploy as a SaaS solution or run on-premise, cloud, or hybrid environments with seamless scalability.
• AI-powered personalization: Leverage AI for enhanced customer recommendations.
• Headless and API-first approach: Enables seamless integration with existing ERP, CRM, and marketing automation systems.
• Omnichannel capabilities: Unified commerce experience across all digital and physical touchpoints, enhancing customer engagement.
• Optimized TCO and faster ROI: Optimize operational costs while accelerating innovation and time to market for new features.
• Security and compliance: Built-in data protection, fraud detection, and regulatory compliance support for global operations.

By addressing today’s commerce challenges with composability and modularity, HCL Commerce+ positions your organization to move faster, scale smarter, and stay ready for what’s next.

Your Competitive Edge

It’s time to rethink your commerce architecture. HCL Commerce+ gives you the agility of microservices and the reliability of monoliths while removing the limitations of both architectures. We designed our solution with the future in mind, ensuring you gain a competitive edge in a growing digital marketplace.

Discover how you can innovate faster and serve customers better. Schedule a call with HCLSoftware to explore how HCL Commerce+ can help you future-proof your commerce strategy and improve business outcomes.