commercetools Partner Summit: endless possibilities

What can your business do to embrace the “Spirit of Endless Possibilities?” That question formed the basis of our partner commercetools’ Partner Summit event, held earlier this month. I was delighted to attend and the event was a fantastic opportunity to spend a day and two nights, with top partners and members of the MACH Alliance.

So much was discussed at the event that it would be pointless to cram it all into one post. However, three key themes emerged that I think are really worth keeping in mind for the long-term future of all things composable.

With increased go-to-market operations in the Americas and investment into its core product offerings, commercetools has carved out its own considerable niche in the composable commerce space. This isn’t just great news for commercetools and their existing customers, it’s also an exciting growth opportunity for the community that surrounds commercetools. 

The conference opened with a customer case study with Bark, a leading D2C dog care and supply company that went through an incredible transformation to a MACH stack with commercetools. Their partner, ChangeCX (also a Talon.One partner!), detailed the implementation side of the project and what the future of digital commerce holds for Bark.

commercetools has a range of B2B-specific workflows and features coming soon, putting it in a perfect position to take on monolith incumbents currently lacking innovation, scale, and agility.

commercetools have even prepared for this with their own terminology. Every industry is evolving and businesses are increasingly exploring unique models, from B2B2C and beyond. commercetools now broadly categorizes all of these models as B2X.

commercetools is committed to making its commerce platform extensible. This was evident by how many best-in-breed software vendors were in attendance. 

Among the vendors present, many of which you’ll recognize from our post about Jimmy Brings’ composable commerce stack, were:

Leaders from all of these organizations came together to discuss how they can take integrations to the next level with accelerators (more on that below) and enhanced go-to-market strategies. This is where the magic happens: when people get in a room together and start exploring opportunities to make things better for their mutual customers.

commercetools also had a significant number of system integrators and consultancies in attendance, among them were many of our partners, such as: Orium (formerly myPlanet), Publicis Sapient, Deloitte Digital, Capgemini, Accenture, Apply Digital, Mastek, O2 Web, Royal Cyber. 

It was inspiring to see these leading implementation partners come together, not as competitors, but as evangelists for the MACH movement and composable commerce in general. That these major firms are investing time, money, and engineering excellence into composable commerce as this level should start to open more eyes.

Without a doubt, the word of the summit was “accelerators.” Let me explain.

This is shorthand for a customer-first MACH philosophy that takes companies to the next level by considering what technologies they already have in place. 

Consider a fashion company selling online, in-store, and through third-party marketplaces. They want to go to MACH but aren’t sure where to begin. Imagine an out-of-the-box composed solution with key infrastructure and orchestration platforms ready to go along, including a prescribed way of testing and implementation. Not only is that pretty exciting, it’s also close to being a reality: with a proposed solution of commercetools (commerce), Mirakl (marketplace), Newstore (POS), and Talon.One (promotions and loyalty) all linked by Orium in the works. 

To find out more about how a fashion industry leader is embracing composable commerce, check out our River Island case study.

Once you start thinking this way, it’s easy to imagine the myriad of possibilities for the different industries. Ready-to-go solutions like this are going to be transformative for the exploratory phase, a streamlined process designed to get a meaningful POC out in the market in just a few months. This is a game-changer for any brands looking to move to a MACH stack. The reduced risk, increased testing ability, and shorter feedback loops will also mean better customer experiences from constant iteration and innovation. Everyone wins.

To see how massively shorter feedback loops can benefit a business, check out our Eddie Bauer case study.

This summit did a great job showcasing commercetools’ partners’ accomplishments over the past year while also providing a truly exciting look at what’s to come in the year ahead. However, that was only the starting point. It was so much more than a mini MACH reunion.

Everyone loves healthy competition but for this event, competitors really put aside their feature war battlecards to truly share ideas and get a chance to actually sit down and talk with people they'd previously only communicated with digitally. It was a great to celebrate that every can play a part in the larger movement happening in the commerce and digital experience.

In this spirit of collaboration, another great advantage for me was talking to key Talon.One partners about some of the incredible ways we can work together for our customers.

We’re already talking about: 

The commercetools Partner Summit was a welcome reminder that we as people need to interact in person to create better innovations and ways of working. Coming together means collaborating in meaningful ways to create better products and outcomes for the customers leveraging these technologies. When we do all of that, the people who really benefit are our mutual customers’ end users and consumers. 

To learn more about how Talon.One and commercetools work together to build innovative promotion solutions for every industry, check out our ebook here.