Enhance customer experience with event-driven commerce architectures
Nikki Eijpen
I Think, Build & Run Digital Commerce For Brands, Wholesale & Retail ???? Posting About Digital Commerce Strategy, Digital Shelf Management, Marketplaces, Webshop Implementation, Commerce Technology?
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Dear Thinkers, Builders & Runners,
Time flies. It feels like I’ve written the past edition of this newsletter only a few days ago. But it’s been already a month. I’ve been caught up in the discovery phase of a webshop implementation project based on CloudSuite . I quite like it to dive into a customer’s ambition and as-is business and really get to know them. And translate learnings into a solution that fits their needs.
I think we did a really good job on understanding the requirements. Now it’s time to start implementation. Once we go live, I’ll be sharing more details with you all.
When implementing a platform, always the challenge of integration arises. I have a few observations when it comes to integration:
And that’s a sad truth. The architecture is the backbone of a digital commerce ecosystem and can make or brake customer experience. Now here I am jumping from an integration challenge to architecture, but the two concepts are closely related. The means you have for integrating are directly related to the architecture at hand. Integration issues are symptoms of a bad architecture (design). In this edition of the newsletter, I’m advocating for developing an architectural vision, one that promotes integration based on events.
Happy reading,
Nikki
The event-driven commerce business
Todays commerce technology buzzwords are MACH, composable, headless (as a stand-alone topic outside MACH), AI, PXM, whatsoever. The discourse is very system or platform-based: webshop/PIM/ERP/OMS plaforms, platform selection principles, or applications of technology in systems.
But when you have a stack of systems, and you zoom out, you see that all these systems can’t operate on their own: they are fed with data by other systems and have to share data with other systems. While a lot of time is spent on carefully selecting individual systems, a lot less time is spent on a vision what customer experience and how the vision on integration looks like.
And when I get the chance, I promote the event-driven architectures.
In an event-driven architecture (EDA; yes, another acronym) system components communicate by producing and responding to events. This pattern is very suitable for digital commerce, as in a digital commerce business basically everything is an event:
Unlike traditional request-driven architectures, where actions happen in a sequential manner, EDA allows for a more dynamic, real-time flow of information. This shift enables businesses to respond instantly to customer actions, optimize operations, and provide a more personalized shopping experience.
Do you need an Enterprise Architect?
Whether event-driven or not, the success of your tech stack comes and goes with the quality of the architecture. And that begins with the architectural vision, and also strategy and execution. Who should take ownership of this? Who should architect the architecture? The enterprise architect.
I could spoil a lot of words on what an enterprise architect is, why any company must have this kind of role, and how enterprise architecture is done, but I can’t explain it any better than Gregor Hohpe . I personally really like this talk and I can also recommend one of his books.
Let us review your digital commerce architecture
I’m 100% sure your architecture needs a review. We can make your architectural vision, strategy and roadmap.
I only need a 30-minute call to get to know your case.
How does EDA enhance the customer experience?
As with all technology, an EDA is a means to an end. There could be many different goals, but personally I like to express what’s in it for the customer.
Real-time interactions and feedback
EDA enables digital commerce systems to process and respond to customer actions instantly. When a customer places an order, the system can immediately confirm the purchase, update inventory, and trigger a shipping process. This real-time feedback reduces uncertainty and enhances customer satisfaction by providing immediate confirmation and updates. Why let customers wait for information you already have?
Up-to-date, accurate information
Customers benefit from accurate, up-to-date information. Some information is very essential in the buying process, and that information needs to be accurate to prevent disappointment.
A product’s availability is a great example. If you run out on an item, and it’s not updated to your sales channels, customers can put orders that must be cancelled.
Personalized experiences
EDA allows for the creation of highly personalized shopping experiences by reacting to individual customer behaviours in real-time. For instance, if a customer frequently views a particular type of product, the system can instantly generate tailored recommendations or offers based on those actions. This level of personalization makes customers feel understood and valued, increasing their likelihood of making a purchase and returning in the future.
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Smoother back-office processes
With EDA, back-office processes can be more responsive to customer needs. For example, if a customer initiates a return or has an issue with an order, the system can automatically notify the relevant department, trigger the return process, or even offer immediate assistance via chatbots or customer service representatives. This quick response reduces wait times and improves the overall customer experience. Same can apply to fulfilment process, that starts working as soon as the customer places or pays for an order.
Ensuring availability by scalability
EDA allows your commerce platform to handle spikes in traffic and transaction volumes seamlessly, ensuring a smooth shopping experience even during peak times like Black Friday.
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How does it work?
The basis of an event-driven architecture is in producers and consumers of events. Let’s take the order process and an example.
The customer places an order on the webshop. The webshop produces an event message that the order has been placed. That message is broadcasted into the ecosystem.
Within that ecosystem, some systems are interested in that event. They will consume that message. The ERP is an example of this; that system captures the order event message and creates the order.
In between the producer and the consumer is a channel. The producer pushes event messages into a channel, the consumer listens to that channel for updates.
When the order is fulfilled, the ERP can produce an order shipped event message. That message can be consumed by the CRM (that sends out an email to the customer) and the webshop (to update the order status in the customer’s order history).
Multiple producers can push events into a channel, and multiple consumers can listen to a channel.
Any type of technology can connect to this network and push and/or consume event messages, for example:
How to implement an event-driven architecture?
In between producers and consumers of events is the Event Bus or Event Stream. This is technology that manages channels and processes the messages that flow through, and ensures delivery to the consumers.
Examples of distributed event streaming platforms are Apache Kafka, AWS Event Bridge and Google Cloud Pub/Sub. And there are many more, so, like with any other platform choice, you need to assess your requirements and carefully select your best fit.
But with only an event streaming platform you can’t do anything. The design is very important. You need to think of your message channels, your routing of messages, message standardization, and your producers and consumers.
There are a other challenges as well:
Is an event-driven architecture the same as a composable architecture?
Yes: they are both architecture design patterns.
No: they are different viewpoints.
Composable architecture is about separation of tasks and responsibilities. Individual tasks can be done by different systems. You can have a monolith webshop platform that has does everything out of the box. You break this monolith apart into composable pieces and outsource certain tasks to other systems: the search to a different search engine, showing the PDP to the PIM, managing order orchestration to the OMS, etc.
The event-driven pattern is an integration design pattern. It is about communication between systems or components. These could be monoliths or composable systems.
So, a composable architecture and an event-driven architecture are two design patterns that are mutually exclusive. They actually go very well together. Both patterns support the development of loosely coupled services that can be updated or replaced without affecting the entire ecosystem. This flexibility is crucial for continuous innovation and rapid deployment of new features.
In case you’d like to read more, here you find an enterprise integration pattern catalogue: https://www.enterpriseintegrationpatterns.com/
Let us review your digital commerce architecture
I’m 100% sure your architecture needs a review. We can make your architectural vision, strategy and roadmap.
I only need a 30-minute call to get to know your case.