A few years ago, marketing research firm Gartner described this as a shift to a composable enterprise, where organizations would adopt technology like a series of interchangeable building blocks. This would lead to greater speed, flexibility, and resilience, its analysts said.
Achieving composability as a business may sound like a lofty goal, which is why the MACH architecture brings together all the principles that you can keep in mind to ensure you’re choosing the right solutions along the way.

What is MACH architecture?

As a MACH architecture backgrounder on TechTarget noted, MACH is more of a concept that businesses should use to develop a strategy rather than a one-size-fits-all blueprint.
The four principles include:

Microservices-based

No one wants to encounter the “domino effect” in software, where you touch one piece of an application and it affects every other part. Microservices avoids this by treating each application function on an individual basis. That makes it easier to update, enhance or remove specific services more readily than you could with monolithic applications.

API-first

For a long time, internal development teams within organizations or those within vendor companies would begin writing code and even launch applications, then realize their work wasn’t done. They might need to integrate with other tools or add some kind of enhancements. This often leads to a search for the right application programming interface (API). An API-first approach puts the horse before the cart, understanding that starting with APIs will give them more options later on.

Cloud-native

Similarly, many applications that were initially developed to be installed on a company’s own premises have been revamped over the past number of years to run in the cloud. This includes many CRM systems, ERPs, and marketing software tools. Today, the advantages of a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model have led to a cloud-native approach, where applications take full advantage of the elasticity, scale, and resilience of public, private, and hybrid cloud environments.

Headless

When many brands set up their first eCommerce sites, they were limited by content management systems that forced them to stick with the user interface (UI) that came with it. Today they have more options, thanks to headless commerce tools that decouple components like the UI from the back end where product data and other information are stored. This has eased the path for rendering content across mobile devices, wearables, and even “smart mirrors” in their store locations.

MACH architecture example

Several well-known brands are already demonstrating compelling MACH architecture example use cases. As Diginomica reported, pet food giant Mars Inc., furniture retailer Ikea, and Interflora are all moving to MACH solutions to improve the way they operate.

The article also profiled footwear brand ASICS, which sees MACH as a way of providing richer product data, such as details on how many of its running shoes have information about heel drops. Focusing on MACH principles is allowing the company to deploy solutions that will surface more of what customers want to know amid omnichannel shopping experiences.

MACH architecture pros and cons

Companies don’t change the way they adopt IT very often, and there can be an understandable reluctance to upgrade or migrate to solutions that aren’t fully mature. Deciding on whether MACH architecture is right for you will come down to weighing the following:

Pros

Greater uptime
Having an application crash or lag can have a detrimental impact on the business, particularly when you’re trying to sell to customers online. MACH solutions can help avoid this scenario because microservices, for instance, allow for greater fault isolation. That means pieces of an application can be remedied before a problem cascades to the rest. A brand’s digital presence can have higher availability as a result.

Faster upgrades
Brands may often be interested in bringing on new tools to assist with their sales, marketing, and online orders, but need to check first that solutions will mesh with what they already have in place. The composable nature of MACH solutions provides a more streamlined and accelerated path to integrating with a greater variety of applications and tools. This in turn could help brands gain a competitive advantage or speed up the time to market with features that customers want from a digital experience.

Scaleable growth
More customers, more orders, a greater mix of inventory – nothing should get in the way of brands increasing the rate at which they achieve their business goals. When IT can’t deal with large volumes of data or creates other impediments, it’s obviously not going to provide the expected return on investment. Opting for MACH solutions could provide peace of mind that they can grow at an exponential level without significant risk their IT will fail to keep up.

Cons

Lack of expertise
Many brands may not employ enough (or any) in-house developers who can create their own bespoke MACH architecture. This can be mitigated by working with trusted technology partners that have already developed their solutions based on MACH principles

More tools
MACH solutions that are developed or deployed internally may require additional tools to monitor and manage their performance. In other cases, however, SaaS tools will have measurement and reporting capabilities built into the core product

Legacy issues
Moving to MACH solutions could involve retiring older, monolithic applications that have been in place for some time. Rather than seeing this as a project calling for a complete revamp of your entire tech stack, look for specific areas where deploying a MACH solution will bring business value while putting you on the road to composability.

Selecting MACH Solutions

The criteria for what you need in a MACH architecture will depend on your business and its needs, but aim to cover these bases:

• Purpose-built: You want best-of-breed building blocks that were designed with specific business outcomes in mind versus more generic, all-purpose solutions
• Pre-built integrations: APIs and webhooks should make it easy to bring on applications and tools without causing significant business disruption
• Strong SLAs: The most trusted SaaS solutions include service-level agreements that let you move forward with confidence
• Continuous delivery model: Automatic updates eliminate the risk of solutions becoming out of date or creating vulnerabilities
• Access to expertise: Look beyond the solution itself and establish that you’re working with a company whose team can guide your shift towards a MACH architecture

MACH solutions for eCommerce

For areas such as product feed management, marketplace integration, and local inventory ads, Suvae.org offers an example of MACH architecture in action. This includes a cloud-native development path and sophisticated use of APIs, as well as pre-built integrations that make it easy to connect product listing to leading platforms such as Salesforce Commerce Cloud.

Moving to a MACH architecture doesn’t have to be a headache. Connect with our team to learn more about how to know if you’re investing in solutions that will turn your brand into a composable business.

The post Why MACH Architecture offers Greater eCommerce Flexibility appeared first on Suvae.org.

It’s that moment when you see customer expectations changing and you’re forced to look at the technology you have in place to serve them. In many cases, this will often include a collection of on-premise digital applications and various cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) tools.

Companies can often spend a long time trying to weave these technologies together on their own. As those efforts become more complex, the value and need for integration platform-as-a-service (iPaaS) becomes impossible to ignore.

What is the difference between iPaaS and SaaS?

Most likely you’ve been a SaaS user long before you’ve explored the benefits of iPaaS. If you use Google Docs, for instance, you’re using SaaS. The same goes for cloud-based versions of productivity tools such as Microsoft’s Office 365, storage systems like DropBox or even marketing automation platforms to send e-mail newsletters.

SaaS applications are popular because they’re typically easier to deploy than on-premise software, and instead of paying a fixed cost you can opt for a subscription that provides ongoing updates.

The phrase “integration platform-as-a-service” sounds similar to SaaS, but its purpose is to bring otherwise siloed applications and data together.

What is Integration Platform as a Service and how it works?

Companies use iPaaS to work with application programming interfaces (APIs) to either sync data that lives across multiple SaaS tools or to move data from between SaaS and on-premise tools.

Centralizing the way SaaS and on-premise applications and data are managed means companies can rely on a more consistent experience and share information with ease.

Think of all the tools you have in place as if they were spokes on a wheel, performing all the functions you need to keep your business running. Leveraging the power of iPaaS is like putting a hub in the middle of all those spokes, where the data and features can be orchestrated to ensure they work harmoniously and are available through the right system or device.

How can iPaaS benefit your organization

Moving to iPaaS means you’re going to free up any in-house resources, such as developers, who were responsible for trying to integrate disparate applications as your business grows. That means they’ll have more time to create a better customer-facing mobile app, company website, or other project.

Using iPaaS also means you’re less likely to experience errors in your business based on incomplete or out-of-date data that wasn’t shared properly across systems. This makes it easier to have anyone perform basic tasks (like contacting a customer), regardless of their department or role.

The efficiency of syncing on-premise and SaaS tools can also mean you’ll see a greater return on investment (ROI) from your existing technology stack. At the same time, it also means you’ll be in a better position to capitalize on innovative new services because you won’t be worried about how they’ll integrate with what’s already there.

3 categories of iPaaS providers

Finding a trusted provider of iPaaS requires recognizing the nature of your business, your team, and your biggest needs. The iPaaS companies that work in this area tend to tall into one of the following categories:

1. Enterprise iPaaS
   These are the companies with end-to-end solutions that can work with the largest companies, regardless of the complexity of their tech stack. They may offer highly bespoke or customized solutions depending on your desired workflows and the APIs that need to be created or leveraged. These are sometimes called “True iPaaS” providers.
2. DIY iPaaS
   These providers offer simple, easy-to-use tools that allow companies to manage many of their own integration needs. You might be able to simply use drag-and-drop features to connect systems and data, for example. In other cases setting up workflows is a matter of pointing and clicking.
3. Vertical iPaaS
   Also known as industry-specific iPaaS, these providers have deep domain expertise in specific markets and niches. Examples could include retail, manufacturing, or human capital management.

How do I choose an integration platform as a service?

Start your journey to iPaaS by taking an assessment of your existing tech stack and the degree of complexity you’re experiencing. Where are the areas where data or tools are disconnected? How does that impact the employee or customer experience?

Next, think through how you see your business evolving over the next 12 months and beyond. What new tools or capabilities are you likely to need or want to introduce? If you’re not sure, think of overall business goals such as revenue targets. How likely is it you’ll need additional technologies to reach those targets? The more you add to your list, the more important finding an iPaaS provider becomes.

Finally, reach out to prospective iPaaS companies and have them help you evaluate your business case for iPaaS. Ask about any case studies they can offer on similar projects they’ve done in your industry. Check into their track record in areas such as security and compliance.

Why choose Suvae.org as your iPaaS Provider?

As a SaaS provider of solutions in areas such as product feed management, digital marketing, and local inventory advertising, Suvae.org has learned directly from some of the world’s leading luxury and fashion brands about the importance of an integrated tech stack.

This is why we focus on providing iPaaS for Commerce, helping bring together solutions such as an organization’s eCommerce tools, product information management (PIM) solutions, order management, and more.

Brands come to Suvae.org because we can help with some of their most mission-critical challenges, such as integrating a marketplace with an order management cloud service, or eCommerce platforms with a PIM solution.

Perhaps even more importantly, companies trust Suvae.org to help them collect and merge partial feed data from cloud inventory systems such as Salesforce, prices from ERP systems, and catalogs from master data management (MDM) servers. The result is a unified product data stream to different SaaS tools to make their digital marketing efforts successful.

Providing a great customer experience is as important to us as it is to the brands we serve. That’s why we don’t require integration services to be installed on-premise, and we offer pre-packaged component adapters to facilitate robust and risk-free integrations. If you’re worried about the complexity of software integration, we also make it simple by managing orchestration via existing component adapters and script languages or templates.

We think of Highstreet’s iPaaS as taking an “assembly” approach to integration – building flexible, fast solutions on tested components rather than a costly or time-consuming approach that depends on switching software solutions.

iPaaS Solutions: Unlock your data to empower sales

Of course, the end result of moving to iPaaS should always stay top of mind. For most companies, that means driving more purchases and loyalty from customers. Once you have iPaaS in place, you can continue selling with greater confidence that you’re making the most of your technology investments.

Ready to get started? Connect with us to learn more about Suvae.org’s integration-as-a-service capabilities today.

The post How iPaaS Brings it all Together for eCommerce Growth appeared first on Suvae.org.

This is the next major evolution for many companies in their digital transformation. For decades, many brands run their applications on-premises, with all the maintenance and security issues that are entailed. The development of cloud computing changed that, opening up opportunities to reimagine the way they use applications through what’s become known as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model.

Today, most major retailers and brands probably have many SaaS applications in place. This includes software that powers departments such as HR, finance, marketing, and sales.

What is a SaaS integration platform?

SaaS has brought a host of benefits to organizations, from more predictable costs to faster updates and reduced workloads for IT departments. To maximize the potential of SaaS, however, applications need to be able to connect and share data easily and seamlessly.

SaaS integration platforms were designed to address this issue and mitigate the risk that applications will function as a new form of business silo.

Imagine if your sales and marketing teams were never able to discuss their work with each other, for example. It would probably lead to duplication of effort, errors, and failure to meet the brand’s overall business objectives. SaaS applications need to “speak” to each other in much the same way.

While some organizations may look to deploy and manage SaaS integration platforms on their own, working with a SaaS integration partner can allow you to tap into the expertise of a trusted third party to unify applications faster and with greater reliability.

Here are some examples of popular SaaS tools that benefit from integration with other applications:

Salesforce

The concept of a cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) system was pioneered by Salesforce, and it has continued to innovate with tools such as Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Integrating Salesforce with other platforms ensures you have a holistic view of your customer experience and can better identify your most valuable customers while cutting back on repetitive tasks.

Shopify

Countless merchants depend on Shopify to provide the foundation for their eCommerce business. However, connecting Shopify to other applications allows for greater order processing and inventory management. Integrating Shopify with a CRM, ERP or other platforms can also reduce the manual re-entry of data from one system to another.

Magento

Sometimes known as Adobe Commerce, Magento allows you to build multi-channel experiences for both consumers and B2B customers. Integrating Magento with the rest of your SaaS tools will keep team members in other lines of business on the same page as you’re developing your growth strategy.

5 things to look for in a SaaS integration partner

When you’re sourcing the right company to assist with integrating your SaaS applications, make sure to consider:

How to develop an effective SaaS integration partnership

You might have different goals for each of the SaaS tools you’ve deployed – some might have been intended to extend your reach within your target market, for instance, while others were about driving more business within your existing base. The objectives for integrating these tools will be a little different, but will still tie to bottom-line benefits such as:

Accurate and updated inventories

Customers are shopping with you in “real-time,” and the information about the stock you have on hand should be real-time too. That’s only possible by integrating omnichannel SaaS inventory systems and ERP systems. This allows you to synchronize multiple sources of inventory data across digital marketing channels and marketplaces and give customers confidence when they’re browsing for potential purchases.

Flexible views of business data

You need to show compelling content about your product catalog to consumers via digital marketing channels on the front end. On the back end, you need to be able to drill down into data about pricing and inventory to make strategic business decisions about products you’re selling via online marketplaces. You get that kind of dynamic capability by integrating myriad SaaS product information management (PIM) solutions.

Enhanced efficiency across your ecosystem

The complexity involved in quickly integrating retail content with eCommerce websites can eat up valuable time your IT department could be spending in other areas of the business. Better to ask your integration partner to take the lead on synchronizing your PIMs and eCommerce solutions based on the business rules that align with your brand’s unique strategy.

SaaS integration is inevitable, but it doesn’t have to be a chore. Contact Suvae.org to learn how we help leading fashion brands bring their applications together for greater success.

The post SaaS Integration Platforms: A Primer For Growing Brands appeared first on Suvae.org.

Even as economies gradually reopen and COVID-19 is contained, the pandemic forced a shift to digital channels — and consumer shopping habits — that is here to stay.

In their 2021 Evolution of Stores report, for example, market researcher Retail Economics and legal firm Eversheds Sutherland found online sales of clothing rocketed by £2.7 billion over the past year in Europe alone. While e-commerce was originally forecast to overtake in-store purchases by 2025, the research suggested it could happen as early as next year.

The explosion in e-commerce activity is not confined to local customers, either. In a study of cross-border shopping activity based on a survey of 22,000 consumers in 11 countries 68% of consumers made e-commerce purchases outside of their home country in 2020. Total cross-border eCommerce is up 74% year-on-year from data reported in the first four months of 2021, which suggests buying behaviors that began amid the pandemic will continue.

Increased demand should be cause for optimism, but many fashion retailers are struggling to meet it and are pulling back instead. When consulting firm McKinsey and The Business of Fashion asked how brands are predicting what they’ll need to stock, 61% said they are planning to reduce the number of SKUs.

Salesforce Commerce Cloud Platform To Accelerate B2C Online Retail

A more viable strategy to expand sales worldwide is readily available through Salesforce Commerce Cloud — as long as brands have the plan to address the integration of their sales and marketing channels.

Much like its other products, Salesforce runs Commerce Cloud on a software-as-a-service (SaaS) basis, using technology it gained through the acquisition of Demandware in 2016.

With marquee brands such as Marks & Spencer and L’Oréal and Coca-Cola, Salesforce Commerce Cloud has a proven track record in helping unify buying experiences across websites, social channels, and mobile apps. Continuous updates also make Salesforce Commerce Cloud a way for retailers to stay on top of improvements they’ll need to add to their e-commerce capabilities.

That said, deploying Salesforce Commerce Cloud is not without its challenges, particularly for larger or more complex brands with international ambitions.

A major fashion retailer might need to be able to offer products in 25 different markets. That means taking the time and effort necessary to export rich product data sets to the appropriate channels. The information involved could range from:

• Images
• Descriptions
• Categories
• Pricing

Some products may also have very different taxonomies to map onto various channels, all of which have to be gathered from disparate sources and then merged to create a product record. All of this can take substantial time away from other activities that could help enhance operations or grow revenue.

Creating product records for Salesforce Commerce Cloud can also mean tailoring them based on business rules. Some products might be subject to frequent inventory refreshes (if they’re popular items, for example), while other catalog data might remain consistent for longer periods.

Product records will also be affected by sales and marketing tactics aimed at bringing value to the business, such as promotions or special sales. Any failure to keep this kind of data accurate could have a devastating effect on the customer experience and as a result the bottom line.

Salesforce has provided REST APIs for B2C Commerce services for many years through its Open Commerce API (OCAPI). However, the significant GET operations that would be involved could jeopardize the performance of the platform.

Traditional And Dynamic Ways To Approach Salesforce Commerce Cloud Integration

This is where many brands look to trusted partners to provide Salesforce Commerce Cloud integration services.

The most traditional approach would involve developing a Salesforce Commerce Cloud cartridge to programmatically compute objects. These could include master catalogs, storefronts, price books, inventory, promotions, and more. These would be streamed out as an XML, CSV, or JSON feed. The trade-off with this strategy is the potential lack of flexibility in content formats and exported content, as well as the need to create new fields to extend the cartridge software as business needs change. It can also be a CPU-intensive process.

A more dynamic web services-based approach would involve using OCAPI or other custom-developed and product-oriented APIs to have client applications retrieve individual product data. This would only work for delta operations such as infrequent OCAPI calls. Commerce Cloud also lacks the notifications that would allow for delta feeds. Full feed exports, meanwhile, are generally discouraged based on the computational strain they could cause.

A More Efficient Way To Successfully Integrate With Salesforce Commerce Cloud

Fortunately, there’s a third option to integrate sales and marketing channels with Salesforce Commerce Cloud that will strike the right balance between a brand’s business needs and reconciling any legacy IT challenges. Rather than installing cartridges, for example, Highstreet has been able to offer a feed-less integration with Commerce Cloud by sharing only selected raw catalog data through FTP, SFT, or FTPS. This can be done by configuring an Export File Job on SFCC towards an SFCC internal folder or a Suvae.org configured FTP/STP/FTPS folder.

Once parsed, the master catalog object provides the flexibility that brands using Salesforce Commerce Cloud need. This includes supporting business rules around which products are being disabled and which are live based on customer demand. Any changes — such as inventory updates, new products, or product removals —will be automatically synchronized.

Some of the other benefits of this more efficient approach include:

• Providing an association between products on the website vs master catalog objects
• Carrying price lists for each supported country in which a brand operates via e-commerce.
• Offering full visibility into inventory, either based on a specific warehouse or at a country level. This meant not having to cut back on SKUs based on fears of overstocking.
• Fostering true omnichannel e-commerce by exporting SEO-oriented URLs directly from Salesforce Commerce Cloud to wherever a brand’s customers are.

Conclusion

In theory, e-commerce should allow a brand to sell to anything in the world. In practice, it’s easy for small details to get in the way of ensuring customers can buy in the most seamless manner possible. The efficient approach to Salesforce Commerce Cloud integration recognizes that even if you’re selling in multiple countries where people speak the same language, for example, the currencies may be entirely different. That means being able to refresh price books as often as business demands will not only meet customer expectations but give the brand greater agility during critical buying seasons like Black Friday.

Frequent inventory updates, meanwhile, make the efficient approach ideal to integrate Salesforce Commerce Cloud with marketplaces that could propel a brand to the next level of growth by an order of magnitude.
Speed and agility will ultimately be the defining traits of brands that sustain a competitive advantage in an increasingly digital economy.

Having worked with more than 50 companies across Canada to integrate their sales and marketing channels with Salesforce Commerce Cloud, we’re excited to help even more organizations capitalize on the growth opportunity ahead of them. Reach out to our team and get started

The post How Salesforce Commerce Cloud Integration Transforms Online Sales appeared first on Suvae.org.