| | July 201619CIOReviewcommercetoolsDelivering Future-Proof Commerce StrategiesToday, retailers are working with rapidly changing and increasingly complex marketing and retail scenarios. They need a flexible commerce technology that integrates well with their various subsystems to create a user-friendly shopping experience across all sales channels. commercetools' cloud-based commerce platform allows retailers to simplify their retail architecture by connecting multiple commerce applications with a single back-end through commercetools' single API. This innovative API-first model also is a perfect fit for microservices, a revolutionary architectural approach for agile IT development where small services are individually developed, deployed and managed, and communicated via standardized APIs. This ensures that retailers "avoid the need to alter their enterprise architecture just to accommodate a new e-commerce platform," adds Arthur Lawida, Managing Director, commercetools North America. A number of the well known commerce suites in the market still rely on so-called monolithic architectures, combining and deploying several different e-commerce components as one single application. The code base of these monolithic systems can get quite complex, making it harder for the IT team to change functionalities quickly. Embracing a more modular approach based on microservices architecture can assist retailers to enable an innovative, marketing led approach that can increase customer traffic and intelligently evolve the e-commerce solution. "Our platform also makes it possible for retailers to engage customers through new, non-traditional channels," explains Lawida. This is possible through a clearer separation between the customer experience and back-end development. As the digital shopping experience matures, retailers continue to invest in visually appealing and often media-heavy web shops to differentiate themselves from the competition. commercetools breaks up the traditional dependencies between shop front and back-end, placing the capability of e-commerce development in the hands of marketing teams instead of IT. Now they can employ a front-end developer in their team to establish innovative user experiences without needing to understand the complex back-end e-commerce technology first. That makes it significantly easier to monetize trending approaches such as content marketing through creating shoppable digital media (Content Commerce). commercetools has, for example, helped its client Blue Star Nutraceuticals to drive their business primarily from videos. If Blue Star's customers are interested in any product placed in the video they are watching, they are directed to check out with a click and then also provided with different options to buy complementary products. commercetools also takes advantage of DevOps technology to ensure that all its services are continuously updated and instantly available to all clients. The company also makes these DevOp services available to its clients for their front-end solutions, enabling them to initiate innovation in their system `In an Agile way'. DevOps combined with microservices empowers IT teams to be truly agile, allowing them to concentrate on their area of concern, like building shipping services, without generating disturbance in other solution areas. "In order to deliver enterprise commerce, all they need to do is be able to make an API call," emphasizes Lawida. commercetools' standard connectors enable retailers to connect their CRM, ERP or CMS solutions to the platform. The company's flexible and powerful API integrates all of their business relevant applications."Our approach of API and microservices allows retailers to be future-proof," concludes Lawida. Being an e-commerce services provider, commercetools dramatically lowers the time taken to develop core and unique commerce solutions while reducing the cost to build and maintain them. In this swiftly changing retail environment, the company is fully focused on empowering retailers to accelerate shopping experiences via new sales channels such as apps, video, or social commerce, and still continuously innovate.Arthur LawidaOur approach of API and microservices allows retailers to be future proof
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