Brands today face immense pressure to keep up with rapidly evolving customer expectations. Shoppers demand high levels of convenience and personalization across every interaction, making unified, personalized ecommerce experiences a necessity rather than a luxury.
The challenge is that most legacy systems are ill-equipped to handle this level of sophistication, especially across multiple channels, touchpoints and devices. Businesses often find themselves constrained by outdated systems that can’t scale or adapt to changing demands.
In recent years, brands stuck with these rigid systems have faced often costly and disruptive replatforming projects. While replatforming generally promises modernization, it typically involves lengthy processes and may not deliver immediate results.
Customer expectations and market dynamics are evolving too quickly for a one-size-fits-all solution. Brands need more than a simple tech upgrade; they need a strategy that supports continuous innovation, experimentation with new features, and scalable solutions without frequent overhauls.
To tackle these challenges effectively, brands must align with key strategic imperatives that have both executive support and budget approval.
Based on our conversations with customers, we've identified five macro themes driving enterprise investment in ecommerce today.
5 key themes driving enterprise ecommerce investment today
1. Digital transformation acceleration
Digital transformation is no longer a distant goal but an immediate necessity. The ability to quickly adapt and bring innovations to market is crucial for staying competitive. As consumer expectations and technological landscapes evolve rapidly, businesses must embrace agile methodologies and advanced digital tools to remain relevant. Accelerated digital transformation enables companies to streamline operations, enhance customer experiences, and respond swiftly to market changes, ensuring long-term success and resilience in an increasingly digital world.
2. Unified, omnichannel shopping cart
In today’s multi-device environment, a centralized, omnichannel shopping cart has become essential. Customers interact with brands across an average of six to seven devices and numerous touchpoints, making a unified shopping cart critical. This approach integrates cart functionality across various channels, allowing customers to seamlessly add items from different brands within the same enterprise or from multiple devices into a single cart. This unified experience not only simplifies the shopping journey but also provides valuable insights into consumer behavior. Omnichannel shoppers, who represent 77.4% of consumers, are known to spend 15-30% more than single-channel shoppers, underscoring the need for a cohesive, multi-channel strategy.
3. Modernized tech stack
A shift towards modern, cloud-based technology is now a strategic priority for many enterprises. Traditional systems often struggle to meet the demands of today’s digital commerce environment, which requires scalability, flexibility, and integration. By adopting a modern tech stack, organizations can leverage cloud solutions to enhance performance, improve operational efficiency, and enable rapid innovation. This modernization not only supports current business needs, but also provides the agility to adapt to future technological advancements and market shifts.
4. Sustainability
Sustainability has transitioned from a niche concern to a central expectation for today’s consumers. Brands that integrate eco-friendly practices into their ecommerce strategies not only meet consumer demands, but also build stronger customer loyalty. Key sustainability initiatives include circular economy strategies such as buy-back programs, remanufacturing, and recycling efforts. By implementing these practices, brands can reduce waste, extend the lifecycle of products, and minimize environmental impact. Embracing such strategies helps differentiate a brand in the marketplace, aligns with shifting consumer preferences, and prepares for future environmental regulations. Investing in sustainability not only enhances brand reputation but also ensures long-term resilience and competitiveness.
5. AI and data-driven hyper-personalization
Artificial Intelligence and data-driven hyper-personalization are reshaping digital commerce. Many executive leadership teams now have a mandate to integrate AI into their business strategies, driven by its potential to revolutionize operations and customer experiences. By 2025, 80% of organizations are expected to embrace hyper-automation, which includes AI, machine learning, and robotic process automation. These technologies enhance operational efficiency by automating repetitive tasks, streamlining workflows, and extracting actionable insights from vast data sets. From AI-powered customer support and predictive analytics to personalized product recommendations, leveraging AI not only improves customer engagement but also boosts business efficiency and cost-effectiveness, meeting the strategic mandates set by leadership teams.
For brands looking to capitalize on these themes and secure ecommerce investment while modernizing their digital experiences without undergoing a complete replatforming, composable commerce offers a flexible and cost-effective solution. Unlike traditional, monolithic platforms that require full-scale overhauls to integrate new features or respond to market changes, composable commerce allows brands to innovate incrementally. By selecting and integrating individual components or microservices—such as payment systems, search functionalities, or customer experience tools—companies can tailor their digital infrastructure to meet specific business needs without disrupting the entire operation.
This modular approach enables brands to adopt new technologies quickly, scale more efficiently, and keep pace with evolving consumer expectations, all while avoiding the high costs and risks associated with a full platform replacement.
To unlock investment and prioritize modern commerce experiences, leaders should first align to strategic initiatives like AI and data, sustainability, and digital transformation. Leaning on a composable commerce strategy will help build digital ecosystems that are both agile and aligned with their long-term goals—without the need for disruptive, large-scale replatforming.