Why composable business is the key to digital success

Highlights

You’ll learn how and why to transform your into a composable business:

• Adaptability and innovation: Composable business models increase agility, helping you adapt to market changes
• Core principles: Focuses on modularity, autonomy, orchestration and discovery to drive efficiency
• Benefits: Includes enhanced scalability, faster market time, improved resilience, cost efficiency and superior customer experiences
• Implementation steps: Evaluate processes, identify modularity areas, select technologies, orchestrate components and encourage innovation culture

Adopt a composable business strategy to make your operations more agile and innovative.

Keep reading to learn more!

Has anyone recently told you that your business should be agile? But what does being agile mean?

Gartner coined the term composable business. They defined how moving from traditional to modular architecture makes your business agile and responsive. 

A composable approach helps you adapt to changing market demands and combine different applications and services. This method of business composability provides a comprehensive strategy.

It improves operational efficiency, leading to continuous growth and helping you remain competitive. As rightly said, composable is the future of every business. Those who understand its importance outsmart their competitors. 

Read on to explore what composable business is and explore its benefits. 

What is composable business?

A composable business is like Lego blocks, which you can arrange and rearrange based on internal and external factors. These factors include disruptions in the supply chain or changes in customer values. Composable businesses create software and apps using interchangeable building blocks, which helps your business grow and adapt. 

Companies can create new applications using interchangeable building blocks on different platforms. Composability converts monolithic applications into individual composable components called packaged business capabilities (PBCs). With PBCs, you can create, grow and manage each component, helping you adapt to new opportunities and challenges.

For example, a retailer uses different PBCs for e-commerce and customer service. By doing so, they can manage stock levels and enhance customer support. 

What are the core principles of a composable business?

The four principles that make your business flexible, scalable and sustainable are:

Modularity

Modularity means creating a business function you can assemble, disassemble and reassemble. Using a modular approach, you can move interchangeable blocks in an agile way. This helps you adapt to new trends, technologies and goals while ensuring seamless business operations. 

Autonomy

Each modular component operates separately, reducing dependencies that can slow down decision-making and implementation. Autonomy helps you improve and replace each component without overhauling your entire system. It makes your business agile and responsive.

Orchestration

Autonomy involves components working separately, while orchestration involves how they work together. Orchestration organizes and combines your strengths, making your work easier while remaining flexible.

Discovery

Components are visible across your company through an intuitive marketplace. Discovery involves finding, assessing and using external and internal functionalities to make your components accessible to everyone. Doing so allows you to grow and adapt, taking advantage of new opportunities and overcoming potential challenges. 

Building blocks of a composable business

The building blocks of composable businesses are composable thinking, technologies and business architecture:

Composable thinking

Composable thinking works on the idea that everything is composable. Such thinking ensures a flexible and responsive way to meet customer demands. You seek and share information from inside and outside the company. For instance, you can collect customer experience ideas from your employees. 

Composable business architecture

Composable business architecture is a game-changer in structuring your operations and tech setups. Think of it as building with Lego blocks. You can rearrange, add or remove each module based on the customer's needs.

Composable technologies

Composable technologies are tools and platforms that make your business modular. They ensure seamless integration of different enterprise applications and help you assemble, reassemble and scale your IT infrastructure. 

Benefits of composable business models

Composable business models help you compete and thrive in fluctuating markets. Some other benefits include:

Increases agility and flexibility

Using modular components, companies can adjust to market changes and customer demands. You can achieve this without overhauling your entire system. Agile companies use new opportunities and mitigate risks more than their less adaptable competitors.

Case study: How has Contentstack helped Berlitz increase its flexibility?

Berlitz, a global language education company, faced challenges with disjointed marketing efforts across its franchises. To unify marketing campaigns and manage content more efficiently, the company adopted Contentstack as its central platform. They used API-first, composable and headless CMS to accommodate evolving business needs. 

Since implementing Contentstack, Berlitz launched 76 websites globally, increasing its online presence and improving page load times by 133%. The platform's flexibility allowed Berlitz to manage diverse content types, including online learning, language camps and government-sponsored programs.

After using Contentstack, Peter Gorman, VP of Product Technology for Marketing, said

“We’ve kind of moved Contentstack through the business and it’s leveraged on a lot of different product types now.”

Read the full case study here.

Makes your business scalable

Composable business models help you scale your operations and resources. Businesses can scale up or down without affecting the entire system. Scalable businesses make resource allocation more precise and efficient.

Faster time to market

Modular components reduce the time required to reach the market. Organizations develop and launch new products or services. Companies reuse and combine existing functions to increase innovation and provide customer value.

Improves resilience

A composable approach ensures the performance of one module does not impact the reliability and success of the other. This modular structure produces a reliable and competent business that persists through adversities.

Ensures cost efficiency

Composable businesses save money by increasing resource usage and reducing component dependencies. Businesses can reduce expenses related to changes and focus on innovative techniques.

Enhances customer experience

Your ability to adjust and innovate helps you fulfill and exceed customer expectations. When customers encounter a personalized experience, it leads to increased satisfaction and loyalty. 

The future of business is composable

The future of business is composable because it makes your businesses flexible, agile and innovative. These businesses make your processes adaptable and flexible, allowing you to respond to market changes. Composable companies lay the foundation for new business opportunities and here’s what the future looks like:

Prediction for the future

With 70% of medium- and large-sized companies adopting composable architecture by 2024, the future of composable is bright. 

Businesses are likely to witness an increase in the adoption of composable architecture. Such businesses increase agility and enhance their innovation capabilities. More businesses will switch from a traditional structure to a modular framework. Companies that adapt to changes have an advantage over their competitors.

Emerging trends

The next generation of enterprise solutions will be adaptable. They will be built on principles supporting easy integration. Compose and recompose your functionalities with these systems in response to new opportunities.

Preparing your business for a composable future

Reassess your current processes to prepare your business for a composable future. Companies adopting a constant evolution mindset benefit the most from composable architecture.

So, encourage a business environment that welcomes change and values agility. In addition, invest in technologies that can fully use this business model's potential.

How to implement a composable business strategy

Moving to a composite business model is a strategic business decision. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to implement a composable strategy:

Assess your existing business processes

Analyze your existing business processes. Assessments help you identify potential issues and processes that enjoy a composable approach. Key questions to consider include:

• Which of your existing processes are rigid and inflexible?
• Which processes or business areas cause delays?
• Which processes need innovation to ensure business growth?

Identify areas of modularity

After knowing your existing processes, identify areas to introduce PBCs and make your business agile. Introduce PBCs in areas with:

• High impact on customer experience
• Frequent need for adaptation to market changes,
• Potential for improving speed to market for new products or services.

Use PBCs and composable technology

Choose appropriate PBCs and composable technologies to support your areas of improvement. You can follow these best practices:

• Select technologies with robust application programming interface (API) and support for effortless integration,
• Choose independent and easily controlled PBCs,
• Ensure a robust ecosystem or community to support the technology.

Orchestrate and optimize

With PBCs in place, it’s essential to orchestrate these components. Clear processes and tools integrate and manage these modules. Optimize through regular reviews and make necessary adjustments based on performance metrics.

Create a culture of continuous innovation

Finally, to sustain a composable business model, focus on continuous innovation. To adapt to your changing market:

• Conduct various experiments,
• Invest in continuous learning,
• Create a responsive environment.

FAQs

What is a composable platform? 

A composable platform is a technology infrastructure that supports the deployment and integration of modular components or PBCs.

Is composable commerce suitable for small businesses? 

Yes, composable commerce makes your small business scalable, agile and flexible.

How does composable business foster innovation?

By allowing for rapid experimentation and adaptation, composable models enable businesses to innovate.

What is composable commerce?

Composable commerce is a modern approach that makes your business modular and flexible. Businesses can choose components to customize their e-commerce ecosystem based on their needs. A composable approach allows for quick adaptations to market changes and customer demands.

How does composable work?

The composable architecture segregates your functionalities into individual and smaller components called PBCs. You can integrate, replace and update them without disrupting your system. This encourages your business to evolve its processes.

How does a composable business ensure innovation?

Composable business means creating an agile framework to adapt and scale your operations. You experiment with new ideas, technologies and business models without overhauling your systems. The modular nature means businesses can change responses to feedback or market trends.

Learn more

Adopting a composable business is challenging, but the rewards are rewarding. You can meet your customers' requirements by making your business modular and agile.

Do you want to know how a composable business can transform your business? If you want to make your business composable, request a free demo.