Introducing the Publicis Sapient Composable Commerce Accelerator on AWS

Thinking of going on a composable journey? We’ve just made it easier and faster to get it done. Retailers can now take advantage of the new Publicis Sapient Composable Commerce Accelerator on Amazon Web Services (AWS), launched in collaboration with Publicis Sapient, VTEX, Contentstack, Constructor, and Cloudinary. Along with AWS experts with deep experience in modern commerce, together they can help brands make a pivotal modern technology transition.

In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, retailers need to adopt a modern tech stack that can deliver fast and seamless experiences to customers. The composable commerce approach, espoused by the MACH Alliance and others, yields many benefits for retailers, which are increasingly turning to MACH (microservices-based, API-first, cloud-native software as a service (SaaS), and headless) architecture. By doing so, they can achieve agility, speed, and scale through technology provided by various vendors or “compose” a solution with best-of-breed packaged business capability offered by many leading independent software vendors (ISVs).

MACH architecture offers a dynamic and scalable approach to developing contemporary retail solutions, one that’s grounded in a collection of key principles. It is based on microservices, which are small, independent modules that work together to form a larger system. “API-first” refers to the use of APIs to connect different services and applications, and “cloud-native SaaS” refers to the use of cloud computing to deploy and manage the system. Finally, “headless” means that the front-end user interface is decoupled from the backend business logic, so retailers can deliver new experiences across multiple channels without unnecessary dependencies.

The shift in thinking toward the MACH approach is the first important step, and to get your thoughts going, here are a few questions we think you should ask within your organization:

How informed are you about the composable commerce ecosystem?
Which best-of-breed solutions are available to you and fit your business needs?
What are your desired customer experiences?
What can you do to fast-track deployment and lower your costs on your path to composable?
What data sources and types of data are crucial for creating a composable technology stack that enhances a modern customer experience, and how can you integrate these effectively?

If you don’t have all the answers, we are here to help you succeed. We designed the Publicis Sapient MACH Accelerator on AWS to expedite composable commerce adoption. It guides retailers in devising robust strategies, implementing tailored solutions, deconstructing legacy infrastructure burdens, and unlocking innovation. It’s an end-to-end guided journey and here are the key ingredients to success.

A mastermind

The process of taking your whole organization on a path to MACH is not an easy task, but the outcome will provide a monumental uplift for your business. MACH also requires particular expertise—both for the transformation itself and in the groundbreaking technology MACH entails.

First things first. You need a trusted and experienced consulting partner that offers extensive experience in helping retailers adopt a composable approach. Understanding how to select, implement, deploy, and manage all the different vendors in the process can seem daunting, so you’ll need a sound strategy to tackle this project. Publicis Sapient is a seasoned AWS Partner that can help you get started and guide you on your path to becoming a composable commerce enterprise. Publicis Sapient can also help you understand how AWS technology can advance your business goals of delivering modern customer experiences across all your channels, from commerce and content to search and digital marketing optimization to generative AI and more.

Additionally, Publicis Sapient has extensive design experience, bringing years of knowledge to ensure exceptional customer experience. Included with the Publicis Sapient MACH Accelerator on AWS is the partner’s default user interface, which acts as a starting point to build out the right experience for your customers.

By building a modern tech stack, your business can use best-of-breed technologies to deliver the best customer experiences and adapt quickly to new business requirements. However, choosing to go composable may mean adopting a more agile, block-and-tackle approach while leaving traditional, monolithic platform thinking behind. Publicis Sapient offers a proven methodology and process to ensure success, beginning with a Composable Tech Assessment of your business.

An enabler

Although MACH architecture offers many benefits, such as increased agility and scalability, it requires a robust global cloud infrastructure to function efficiently. That’s where AWS comes in.

AWS is in the Enabler category of the MACH Alliance. As the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud, AWS provides retailers with a range of services, including compute, storage, database, and networking. It offers a highly secure and reliable infrastructure that can handle the demands of MACH architecture so businesses can focus on innovating for their customers.

The history of building modern, modular architectures at Amazon began in 2002. Back then, the early Amazon.com webstore was a monolithic system, making it difficult to develop and release new features quickly. The company’s IT team identified the root cause as tight component coupling and interdependent development groups. To address this, Amazon adopted an API-first design approach and the two-pizza team rule. This involved breaking down software features into smaller, independent units that could be managed by teams small enough to be fed by two pizzas. The approach, which came to be known as microservices, allowed the Amazon.com webstore to evolve quicker and improved the shopping experience for customers.

Taking these key learnings from Amazon.com, AWS became a longtime supporter of MACH and here are some ways in which we support great MACH architecture on AWS:

Scalability. AWS offers scalable infrastructure that can grow or shrink on demand, enabling MACH architecture to meet the changing demands of their customers on the fly.
High availability. AWS provides highly available infrastructure, so retailers can deliver seamless experiences to their customers, even during peak traffic.
Flexibility. AWS provides flexible infrastructure that can adapt to the changing needs of retailers. We offer over 200 fully featured services that can be used to build and deploy MACH architecture. Retailers can choose the services that best fit their requirements.
Security. AWS provides secure infrastructure that helps safeguard retailers’ data and applications. It offers a range of services that can be used to secure the MACH architecture so retailers can focus on delivering great experiences to their customers.
Cost-effectiveness. AWS provides cost-effective infrastructure that can help retailers reduce their infrastructure costs. Using AWS, retailers pay only for the services they use, optimizing their cost.

A leading enterprise digital commerce platform

Choosing a modern and scalable commerce platform is a fundamental piece to building a high-performing composable commerce architecture. That’s where VTEX comes in.

VTEX is a MACH-certified composable and complete commerce platform empowering brands and retailers globally to quickly migrate from legacy systems to a modular architecture. VTEX’s fully integrated commerce, marketplace, and order management capabilities streamline B2C, B2B, Direct-to-Consumer, and Marketplace business models online and offline. With VTEX, online merchants can take a pragmatic approach to composable commerce by launching an MVP storefront in weeks and then test and learn to build the desired architecture.

VTEX was recognized as the AWS Global Industry Partner of the Year in Retail and Consumer Packaged Goods 2023, underscoring its impact in driving sales growth and optimizing fulfillment operations. In a challenging retail landscape, VTEX’s composable platform enables brands to swiftly deploy and evolve their commerce strategies, outpacing market trends and simplifying complex commerce experiences. The Composable Commerce Accelerator helps brands and retailers take advantage of these solutions seamlessly on AWS.

A modern tech stack: About the companies in this modern composable offering

Today, over 70 percent of MACH members run on AWS, and we have a large and growing community of MACH Alliance members choosing to build great MACH on AWS. The companies listed below play a key role in the Composable Commerce Accelerator.

Publicis Sapient | Digital business transformation and consulting

Publicis Sapient is a digital business transformation company with 20,000 people and over 50 offices worldwide. It specializes in providing end-to-end capabilities in areas such as strategy, product, experience, engineering, data, and AI, and it delivered more than 100 composable based deployments for clients globally.

AWS | The cloud that enables many of the world’s best composable solutions

Millions of customers—including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies—are using AWS to lower costs, become more agile, and innovate faster. AWS has significantly more services, and more features within those services, than any other cloud provider. Services include infrastructure technologies like compute, storage, and databases to emerging technologies such as machine learning and AI, data lakes, and analytics. These services are built to handle the demands of MACH architecture.

VTEX | The composable and complete commerce platform

Forward-thinking CEOs and CIOs choose VTEX to smarten up their commerce investments. VTEX helps brands and retailers modernize their stack and reduce maintenance costs by rapidly migrating from legacy systems, connecting their entire value chain, and making inventory and fulfillment their strength. A leader in digital commerce, VTEX is trusted by more than 2,600 B2C and B2B customers—including Carrefour, Colgate, Motorola, Sony, Stanley Black & Decker, and Whirlpool—which have over 3,400 active online stores across 38 countries.

Cloudinary | Digital asset management and image and video delivery platform

Cloudinary empowers brands to deliver visual experiences that inspire and connect by unleashing the full potential of their media. With more than 50 billion assets under management and 10,000 customers worldwide, Cloudinary is the industry standard for developers, creators, and marketers looking to upload, store, transform, manage, and deliver images and videos online.

Constructor | Site search and product discovery solution for retailers

Constructor is the holistic AI search and product discovery solution specifically designed to increase revenue for large ecommerce companies. Using machine learning, natural language processing, and user clickstream data, Constructor creates personalized shopping experiences for individual customers in real time. Trusted by leading brands like Sephora, Backcountry, and Birkenstock, the company can prove tangible ROI in under four weeks.

Contentstack | Headless content management system

Contentstack is a leading digital experience platform for creating consistent, content-driven experiences for consumers that bring together capabilities such as ecommerce, content management, personalization and localization, and more to deliver outstanding omnichannel digital experiences.

What’s next?

A few things!

If you’re interested in accessing this stack to begin your composable commerce journey, start by trying the Publicis Sapient Composable Commerce Accelerator on AWS demo site to see how the parts come together as one solution. The Publicis Sapient Composable Commerce Accelerator on AWS is also available in the AWS Marketplace. Then get in touch with Publicis Sapient to gain access to the cloud formation template that will put this software in your AWS account for experimentation.

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For more information on how to engage us for a Composable Tech Assessment, please reach out to AWS_Partner@publicissapient.com.