Omnichannel has been at the forefront of commerce technology conversations for the past decade. Yet the ever-changing landscape has even surpassed this type of commerce solution; evolving forward to the concept of a unified commerce ecosystem – adapting a composable commerce mindset.

What is a composable commerce? How can this approach benefit companies who adapt it? In this Forbes article, Rob Harbols, Partner at Artisan, defines this new era of commerce technology landscape and how this modern-day approach provides the ability to keep up with the ever-changing environment, company demands, and industry trends.

According to Gartner, a “composable” approach leverages modularized, cloud-native business capabilities to move toward future-proof digital commerce experiences. Composable commerce is the leading-edge strategy of selecting various best-of-breed solutions and assembling them to fulfill your exact business requirements.

Harbols breaks it down a bit further. It's much easier to redirect a fleet of speedboats than to turn around a cruise ship. In the world of commerce solutions, the monolithic commerce platform is like the cruise ship—they’re reliable, they may have some fun bells and whistles, but they are bulky and slow. The out-of-the-box solution might be dependable, but customizations are cumbersome, expensive, and slow.

A composable commerce solution is more like a fleet of speedboats—nimble, interchangeable, and quick. With a composable commerce model, the best-of-breed software is unified through a service layer, allowing technology teams to add features or swap out applications seamlessly. Innovation happens quickly, and organizations can capitalize on emerging opportunities in real time because they don't need to retrofit the entire boat to make changes. They simply need to plug a new “vessel" into the fleet.

Harbols goes on to share three ways composable commerce can benefit a business.

1.   Stay in sync with customer expectations.
Composable commerce unlocks the capability needed to pivot quickly. New applications are plugged into the core service layer and integrated seamlessly, rather than retrofitting the entire system.

2.   Prevent vendor lock-in.
Composable commerce gives you the freedom to select the best solutions for your business needs and integrate them seamlessly. A one-stop-shop may add a level of convenience when it comes to vendor management, but companies lose the flexibility and freedom composable commerce provides.

3.   Leverage business-centric tools.
A business-centric tool enables users to make changes to the system and customize it to their needs. A composable commerce model provides business centricity and is a catalyst for real-time responsiveness.

When the concept of modularity is adopted across the business, the evolution to composable commerce can begin – a process that can occur over time, that’s the beauty of composable commerce. Deploying interchangeable, best-of-breed applications as a result of this commerce solution, just might be your next competitive advantage.

To read the full article, visit Forbes.com.