I recently joined a valuable webinar hosted by our partner,
Voucherify
, to shed light on these terms. Alongside a panel of solution integrator experts (
Clay Hobson
,
Uday Kumar Lakkoju
,
Ilya Antipin
), we unpacked the distinctions between accelerators, DXPs (represented by
Andrew Kumar
), and myself from
commercetools
.
Amy C.
was moderating the discussion.
The core message? While all these tools aim to supercharge your development process, the ideal approach depends on your specific needs.
If you would like to watch the full webinar you can find it here:
Below are the questions and answer summaries of what was discussed during the webinar:
What exactly are accelerators and what benefits do they offer for businesses looking to transform digitally?
- The Mach Alliance includes technologies like Commercetools, which achieve significant results when fully operational but offer limited out-of-the-box functionality.
- Accelerators are pre-built starting points created by experts to quickly address basic setup needs, including initial page setups and both front-end and back-end integrations.
- These accelerators provide a practical and stable foundation for users to engage with the technology effectively and facilitate further expansion.
- Key benefits of using accelerators include adopting tried and tested best practices from previous projects, simplifying the integration of diverse technologies, and providing a clear starting point for project initiation.
- Accelerators are especially beneficial for brands with dedicated technical teams focusing on innovation, allowing them to build upon a solid base and tailor the system to fit their specific needs.
- They prevent the need to start from scratch, enabling businesses to focus on customizing and improving their systems, ultimately providing a blueprint and essential components for unique and tailored solutions.
What specific measurable KPIs (key performance indicators) can we expect to see from your accelerators, and what kind of impacts have you seen with customers you've worked with?
- Accelerators significantly reduce the time from contract signing to implementation and launch, potentially saving up to two months on an eight-month project, enabling faster customer interaction and iterative scaling.
- They de-risk projects by reducing the discrepancy between estimated and actual project durations, leading to less rework, fewer guesses, and more predictable outcomes.
- Key performance indicator (KPI) impacted by accelerators includes time to market, as they facilitate the rapid development of complex capabilities and provide stable frameworks like clean architectures that can be expanded to meet specific business needs.
- Accelerators simplify the complexity inherent in integrating best-of-breed ecosystems, streamlining processes so that each component does not need to be handled individually.
- They offer a known, vetted implementation method that simplifies the customer's ecosystem, making it unnecessary for clients to understand the integration details.
- Solution integrators like Valtech EPAM and Orium leverage accelerators to provide reliable solutions with a proven track record, established best practices, and successful deployments, ensuring customers do not need to manage the intricacies of component integration.
- Overall, accelerators act like a blueprint, providing a toolkit to efficiently start processes without reinventing foundational elements each time.
Should accelerators be used only for greenfield projects or for migrations as well?
- Accelerators are not limited to Greenfield projects but are also effective in Brownfield projects, facilitating the migration of existing solutions to new composable architectures.
- Design principles for accelerators include compactness, adherence to MACH principles (isolation, robust interfaces, single purpose), and making integration into Brownfield solutions easier and more effective.
- SIs extend the concept of accelerators beyond deployable code to include methodologies for project initiation, CI/CD pipeline construction, and comprehensive documentation, all designed to expedite processes and apply best practices.
- Accelerators encompass a broad range of resources that provide a starting point, speed up processes, and ease team workloads, not just technical products or codes.
- Their adaptability is crucial, allowing them to meet diverse customer needs and integrate seamlessly into existing systems, whether in commerce or other platforms.
- This flexibility is vital in projects requiring system transitions, where direct swaps are impractical; careful integration and adjustment are often necessary.
- The dynamic nature of accelerators is essential for their effectiveness, incorporating continuous feedback and improvements from each implementation to remain relevant and efficient.
- Accelerators should be designed to fit seamlessly into various systems and scenarios, enhancing their utility and effectiveness without forcing unnecessary changes.
What is DXC?
- Digital Experience Composition (DXC) focuses on visual tooling for marketing, business analysts, content operators, and merchandisers, enabling them to enhance their digital platforms, often in collaboration with accelerators.
- Uniform, a specific DXC tool, offers a free, open-source component starter kit that provides a no-code or low-code drag-and-drop interface within a composable framework.
- Uniform is capable of extracting content from headless CMSs within the MACH Alliance, including major platforms like Adobe Experience Manager, WordPress, and Drupal, helping to seamlessly bridge different content management systems.
- The flexibility of DXC like Uniform allows integration with both legacy and modern technological stacks, with these integrations packaged as productised solutions that require minimal to no coding, delivered as a SaaS service.
- Gartner has recognized the importance of digital experience composition by identifying 16 vendors actively developing these capabilities, underlining the sector's growth and the increasing demand for such solutions.
- The primary goal of DXC solutions is to manage multi-experience platforms—ranging from web and mobile to in-store kiosks—facilitating the transition from headless, decoupled systems to cohesive, visually oriented interfaces that are production-ready.
- This transition addresses a significant need within the industry, ensuring that modern tooling requirements are met while also providing a user-friendly interface for marketers and business users to effectively navigate their digital toolsets.
Beyond pre-built solutions like accelerators, what unique capabilities does DXC offer?
- Digital Experience Composition (DXC) enhances usability by offering a well-integrated preview across different tools in a stack, allowing for experimentation and personalisation with content, data, and commerce sources.
- DXC facilitates easy manipulation of page components through a visual, no-code interface, enhancing flexibility in content management.
- Transitioning between different code packages does not require direct code changes in systems like Uniform, enabling seamless use of both legacy and modern MACH stacks without disrupting data connectivity.
- Interoperability is a key strength of DXC, especially important for large enterprises with custom, undocumented APIs, allowing these to be integrated smoothly and used without coding.
- Uniform platforms provide robust service level agreements (SLAs) and reliability guarantees, addressing maintenance and update concerns commonly associated with accelerators.
- The codebase under DXC platforms like Uniform is continuously monitored and updated, ensuring quick integration of new features, such as those from commercetools, typically within a week, all managed within a SaaS environment.
- DXC is particularly useful when dealing with complex digital environments involving multiple MACH tools or a mix of legacy and new tools, offering cost efficiencies over traditional development approaches.
- The need for extensive manual coding, humorously termed as dealing with a 'glue code monster', is significantly reduced when using DXC, streamlining the integration process and reducing dependency on extensive developer input.
While accelerators offer benefits to developers, do they also indirectly improve customer experience by enabling features like better shopping experiences, increased customer engagement, and loyalty building?
- Accelerators significantly enhance customer experience by enabling earlier conversions in the marketing funnel and introducing engaging features such as AR/VR for a virtual shopping experience.
- They improve customer engagement through interactive elements on websites and apps, such as gamification, which can boost brand loyalty and foster unique loyalty programs.
- Data integration in the background allows for more personalized customer experiences by seamlessly connecting various components.
- A responsive feedback system integrated into the ecosystem helps address customer service issues promptly, enhancing overall customer satisfaction.
- While accelerators may not address every customer need, they enable platforms to ask if specific capabilities can be implemented post-integration, which is indicative of a well-functioning accelerator.
- System integrators focus on capturing and understanding customer sentiments and pain points to enhance the functionality of accelerators, thereby empowering customers to effectively use these solutions and reintroduce them into the market.
- The composability of accelerators allows them to be treated as modular components within a system, facilitating easy addition, removal, or swapping of features to meet specific needs, exemplified by the ability to customize shopping carts or integrate new loyalty features.
- This modularity and adaptability make accelerators particularly effective in environments where different visual components need to be tailored to create a unique shopping experience for each customer.
Could you elaborate on the concept of commercetools Connect or similar pre-composed solutions, and how this, in turn, differs from accelerators or DXCs?
- commercetools Connect simplifies integrations by transforming complex integration processes into easier-to-manage connectors.
- Typically, customers face challenges in building integrations due to the need for in-depth knowledge about connections, coding, testing, and maintenance, which are time-consuming and require expertise.
- commercetools Connect offers prebuilt connectors developed with partners, reducing the complexity and workload for customers. These connectors come with the necessary runtime environment and maintenance under a Service Level Agreement (SLA).
- This service allows customers to focus on selecting and customizing the connectors needed for their specific requirements without getting bogged down by the technical details.
- While integrations form a part of what accelerators offer, commercetools Connect focuses specifically on making these integrations more user-friendly and less technical.
- Integrations within accelerators are often more visible and linked to specific high-profile products, but commercetools Connect aims to streamline the backend connectivity that supports these front-end functionalities.
- commercetools Connect is compatible with accelerators, providing a flexible option for customers whether they choose to manage integrations themselves, use assistance from partners, or rely on Commercetools for ongoing support and maintenance.
Is there a scenario where utilizing multiple accelerators, DXC, and pre-composed solutions simultaneously would be beneficial?
- Digital Experience Composition (DXC) focuses on enhancing the customer experience on the front end, handling everything from browsing to post-purchase care, and integrating high-performing components for a seamless operation.
- DXC, accelerators, and tools like commercetools Connect can be integrated to work cohesively, covering different aspects of the e-commerce experience from content management to complex integrations like order and account management.
- These tools facilitate smooth transitions between different systems within an e-commerce setup, ensuring minimal rework and duplication of efforts and enhancing overall system efficiency.
- Accelerators provide flexibility in integration, allowing customization to fit various business needs and enabling changes or swaps in the system as needed, supporting the adaptability required in modern business environments.
- Commercetools Connect enhances these capabilities by enabling simpler integrations with various vendors, supported by Commercetools' existing partnerships, thus extending the system's functionality and integration potential.
- The architecture of such systems is designed to be open and flexible, encouraging customization and adaptation to fit specific customer demands and existing ecosystems, supporting a diverse range of business applications and scenarios.
- These integrated systems are designed to be customer-centric, providing the tools necessary to tailor the shopping experience uniquely to each customer's needs and preferences, and are instrumental in addressing specific merchant requirements that may not be met by off-the-shelf solutions.
- The combination of DXC, accelerators, and tools like commercetools Connect allows for a comprehensive strategy that can significantly enhance operational efficiency and customer satisfaction in a competitive market.
Can you share specific examples or case studies where your company's adoption of accelerators, DXC solutions, or pre-composed solutions has led to significant business outcomes for your teams?
- Large brands are increasingly collaborating to enhance speed and efficiency, focusing on reducing time to market and increasing flexibility, which allows for democratizing the creation of experiences and quicker delivery to customers.
- Customers are increasingly demanding personalized, curated, and relevant experiences, leading to revenue growth, higher conversion rates, and improved performance for businesses that adapt effectively.
- A case study from Mars highlights the scalability and effectiveness of accelerators. Despite the complexity, Mars implemented an acceleration program across 14 countries, achieving virtually zero downtime and significant improvements, such as a 50% improvement in the cart-to-checkout process and a 10% increase in order value over a year.
- These successes demonstrate the value of using proven models and collaborating with vendors rather than building solutions from scratch.
- The new accelerator "Rapid Activation for Composable E-commerce" exemplifies the industry's move towards more adaptable and rapid integration capabilities, allowing enhancements to marketing websites by enabling commerce features through platforms like Commercetools in just weeks.
- The industry is benefiting from the versatility of modern composability in the MACH field, integrating various technologies like DXC platforms, Commercetools Connect, and cloud-native capabilities to create efficient, scalable, and client-specific solution architectures.
- This era of integration and accelerated digital transformation is marked by significant advancements, allowing for more dynamic and responsive business strategies.
