How to Maximize ROI of Your Composable Commerce Transformation

00:00:07:11 - 00:00:32:09

Unknown

Hello. Welcome to our webinar. we're going to get our other panelists here to, to turn on webcams, join in. People are going to be joining in for the next few minutes here. We're we're going to go ahead and get started right away. Thomas, there you are. And just going to wait for make sure Sree gets connected here as well.

00:00:32:11 - 00:00:48:01

Unknown

Hey, guys. Really excited for for this webinar today. I'm going to give just a, just a quick overview of the way how things are going to work for the next 30 to 40 minutes here. A little bit of a bit of background, and then we'll do some introductions and we're going to dive right into it.

00:00:48:02 - 00:01:18:28

Unknown

So, this webinar is really going to be our goal is to, inspire, but also to really provide a lot of actionable advice, for people watching. We have you're going to hear a very inspirational story of Sephora and how they went through that digital transformation and everything they've gone through in the past few few years, the strategy that they're using, and really, how it's helped them to, not just transition their digital or go through a digital transformation, but help them dominate in the market.

00:01:19:22 - 00:01:38:06

Unknown

And since we also have Thomas here, he's, works for one of the leading composable agencies. We're going to pull on some of his knowledge as well. He works with a lot of brands, and, we're going to dive into topics that he sees brands, doing to really win and to see and to maximize ROI with their composable implementations.

00:01:38:08 - 00:01:59:01

Jay Myers (Bolt)

So, few house rules. Let me just flip the slide here. A lot of you probably in a webinar, so I won't spend a ton of time here, but, actually really quick, I always like to get people to throw out an an introduction to the chat. If you want to throw in your name, you can throw on your company if you want to, maybe city living or country living.

00:01:59:02 - 00:02:17:04

Unknown

I know Thomas is in Italy right now. So, it's always fun seeing where people are joining in from. So introduce yourself in the chat. Just say hi where you're from. And then we want to keep this interactive as well, too. So it's going to be kind of scripted as we go through it. I know Sree is going to walk through the Sephora story.

00:02:18:05 - 00:02:35:25

Unknown

We've got some discussion after. If you have questions, ask them at any point during the webinar. And, we'll probably address all of them at the end. We're probably not going to stop during the webinar to answer each one, but please ask them during and then we'll just get to as many as we can as as time permits at the end.

00:02:35:28 - 00:02:54:06

Unknown

And really important, there are no dumb questions. Ask anything. If you, you know, there's people here that are probably well on their way. With composable, there are people here who are composable, curious, and have no idea maybe even what it is. Or if it makes sense and so there's going to be people at a lot of both ends of the spectrum.

00:02:54:16 - 00:03:08:09

Unknown

There's no dumb questions, so ask anything. And if you really feel it's time, you can make it anonymous. But honestly, there's there's no dumb questions. And then the last thing I wanted to say is this is going to be recorded. So if you have to get up and go to the bathroom or something, take a phone call.

00:03:08:09 - 00:03:26:21

Unknown

No stress. We'll make sure we send it out to everybody. There was a lot of people that I know registered as well, too, that they can't make it, but they want to make sure they get the recording. So, everyone who's registered will get a copy of the recording as well, too. Okay. With that, let's quickly introduce our our guests here and then and then get started.

00:03:26:21 - 00:03:45:07

Thomas Mowry (Orium)

And I'm actually going to get you guys to introduce yourself. You can do it better than I can, Thomas. I'll start with you, and then we'll go over to Sree. Yeah. Thanks, Jay. I feel like we're making a habit out of these, panels and, podcasts. I do gathered, but, my name is Thomas Mowry. I am head of sales here at Orium.

00:03:45:08 - 00:04:13:10

Unknown

We were previously called my planet, but last August, we decided to change our name as well as took on a round of funding. But, my core focus within the organization of I've been here for about three years is really how I'm helping brands transition towards composable commerce. I like to say I've been working on projects since before it was even call that, back in 2020, before Gartner decided to actually coined the term I was talking about the headless space and how you can make that change.

00:04:13:10 - 00:04:35:13

Unknown

So I've seen a really fun life cycle of this space maturing and moving extremely quickly. And really my main goal in Orium, at Orium as a company is to help people take this first step. And get moving in a direction that they ultimately feel like is is a better promise ground in terms of what they want to get to in the future.

00:04:35:15 - 00:04:59:11

Sree (Sephora)

Perfect. And sorry, I hand it over to you. Thank you. Jay. Does the rule apply to me too? Like, can I run to the restroom if I need to? In between, I really quickly, though. Yeah. Hell, you're all right. Yeah, yeah. Thank you. So. Hello, everyone. I'm sorry, chief technology officer for Sephora. Been with the company for almost close to seven years now.

00:04:59:13 - 00:05:19:20

Unknown

And, as Thomas said, I think composable, headless and all of this have been there for quite long, and I've been advising that for many organization. I was in consulting before, long ago, before this job, about 20 years in the industry have been, preaching about it in the last year and a half or so.

00:05:19:20 - 00:05:45:14

Sree (Sephora)

I've been ambassador for Mark as well. And, explaining organization to take this journey of composability and the headless and the cloud readiness and and so on. And I'm here to talk about, like, our journey, at Sephora and so far, being a specialty retailer in prestige beauty, across the globe. It's it's a massive organization, but at the same time, massive journey to undertake, to make this transformation happen.

00:05:45:14 - 00:06:09:09

Jay Myers (Bolt)

And I'm going to talk about how it happened then and what are the steps which we took. Yeah, we're looking forward to bonus points for, yeah, as I say, and bonus points for anyone watching who can guess how many plants she has behind him. There. I'm going to say six, but can't quite tell. I'm Jay Myers, I'm one of the co-founders with Bolt, and, we do a lot in the composable space as well.

00:06:09:20 - 00:06:25:16

Unknown

We are a checkout company, and so we help brands, on their checkout wherever they, wherever they sell. And, we think that that's an important piece of, of the stack. And, so that's what that's what we focus on at both. And, I'm one of the co-founders, I can't remember I said that or not.

00:06:25:16 - 00:06:45:25

Unknown

So. Okay with that, let's, let's dive into and the first thing we're going to do here is kind of, I mean, we're lucky enough to have Sree, you know, with, an amazing company like Sephora. I think they're an inspiration to to so many, on so many levels. You know, we're talking a lot about the technology, but, you know, a lot of people know no Sephora.

00:06:45:25 - 00:07:11:20

Unknown

They don't think they know. They know it for the products and a lot of other things, but they don't know all what's behind the scenes. And a lot of that is what actually makes that amazing experience for customers possible. So, you've been through a bit of a journey and we're fortunate enough to have you with your. So I know you've talked about it a lot, so let me, we're going to walk through let me just click on this here your story, and we'll be quiet for a little bit.

00:07:11:20 - 00:07:28:16

Unknown

And then, and then we're going to, discuss and have some questions after. I just want to say to everyone watching as well too, feel free to post any questions on any of, three slides. Put them in on the on the right hand side. You should see a panel. There's there's a tab that says questions. Type them in there.

00:07:28:27 - 00:07:43:02

Jay Myers (Bolt)

And then we, we can see them on our end and answer them one at a time. So feel free to ask at any point or any clarification anything. And we'll make sure we get to them at the end. So, I hand it over to you now, Sree. Thank you. Jay. I'll, I'll start with the brief story.

00:07:43:02 - 00:08:05:13

Unknown

I think many of you understand what's the phrase and how. Sephora I came to be and we have been in the industry for quite long, and we have been forefront, in the forefront of digital and ecommerce ecosystems since 1999. All right. So we have probably been probably one of the first ones to start mobile application, native mobile application for our consumers in the beauty domain itself.

00:08:05:16 - 00:08:30:11

Unknown

So with that said, I think we are also a retail retailer by heart, right? I mean, it means that we had physical locations which are strong physical locations with strong, advisors, and experts, and which has been our core of the business. And, in 1999, when we started digital, it was it was an accessory organization, primarily dedicated to making discovery happen and less about the purchases.

00:08:30:11 - 00:09:04:21

Unknown

But so it grew up to be, a big enough, organizational venue maker. Right. So that that created this organic growth. And, and it comes with the traditional liabilities of like systems and legacy, operating organizations. So the journey for us started about, 6 or 7 years ago. Just ten years before my time. But the concept was that we wanted to, decouple the technology from, like, just the underlying foundations, which are like, I'm going to go through like the mindset.

00:09:04:21 - 00:09:23:22

Unknown

Right. And which is very critical and without understanding what that is and what is composable and what is that, what kind of help. But for an organization, you can truly take a journey. And so I'm going to walk us through, like, how did we go through this mindset? And then skill set and then into the toolset and tools that this for me, the technology.

00:09:23:24 - 00:09:42:03

Sree (Sephora)

All right. So I'm going to just walk you through. Let's go to the next slide. And here I'm going to talk about just the mindset of like what are the key concepts which we kept in mind when we started this journey and years ago. Right. So how do we become a customer centric organization? Sephora I has been customer centric all the time.

00:09:42:05 - 00:10:05:12

Sree (Sephora)

How do we generate organizational beliefs and and the technology approaches with respect to the product mindset and the customer centric approach of developing something with customer in the center right. How do we then, figure out the time to value? Because that's something which, we always at any organization doesn't look at right, them. And we usually look for like how fast can we get to the market.

00:10:05:12 - 00:10:28:24

Unknown

Right. But how do we get to a value is something which we have to, consider when we take this journey on and then prioritizing growth versus perfection, because I know that many companies focus on making it perfect, making it flawless and and and so on. But at some time, I think you need to take a pause and think like, let's figure out what is a growth, let's measure what's happening and then decide whether we want to invest further.

00:10:28:24 - 00:10:58:01

Unknown

I think that is what this means by prioritizing growth versus perfection. Then, creating a sustainable team, right? So that is the fourth part, which is you need to have teams which are sustainable and continue to support the roadmap of those products. I think that's the only way to get to delivering these composable architectures versus dispatching projects. I think many organizations traditionally have been gone through waterfall ish approach, where you have, teams organized around systems and tools.

00:10:58:01 - 00:11:32:29

Unknown

Right? And you have then projects which are falling onto their plates and you work on a project, you handle the project, you deliver it to the customer, and then you move on to the next project. What you missing this situation is the continuation continuous roadmap and execution of enhancements and the feedbacks which are coming from the consumer. So having this sustainable domain based teams who are consistently looking at results from the production and results from the consumer feedback and then optimizing it for the future, I think that's the, that's the meaning of sustainable teams versus dispatching by the, projects going into the next slide.

00:11:33:20 - 00:11:56:03

Unknown

Let's move on. Please feel free to ask questions on any of these, building agility. What's the second thing which, I know I've talked about briefly, waterfall and what that means. Right. When you gather requirements, then you design for it, and then you wait for, engineering team to build for it. And then after a few months or maybe weeks, you get to see the product and you may or may not fit to the requirements.

00:11:56:03 - 00:12:13:23

Unknown

So agility means that you don't have to get to the perfection, right? You you want to know every single requirement from the consumer. But you do need to reach out to consumer as fast as possible, whether it is prototyping, whether it is doing something, very minimalistic, right, and getting it released so that we can get the feedback from consumers.

00:12:13:23 - 00:12:32:01

Unknown

And we started this journey in a three year format. Right? I mean, it's a massive organization with a large change for an organization to move from waterfall to truly agile. And I don't have to talk about agility and agile mechanisms, which are out there. So if there are organizations still trying to figure out, I would say this is a great approach.

00:12:32:01 - 00:12:52:09

Unknown

To start with, we started creating a small lane which we call like Express Lane, and you might have heard this term like Fast Track, Express Track or Toll Pass. Whatever it is, it's a small team focused on consistent and continuous delivery of certain features and in the consumer facing applications. Right. So we started that with the year. It went through a lot of learning.

00:12:52:09 - 00:13:15:22

Unknown

I mean I think organizations will need to get used to it. Teams will need to get used to it. You need to consider how do you then incorporate prioritization into your mechanisms. All of that. And we mastered that in the year one. And then year two when we went with certain applications and certain teams who are ready to get on to this fast track, and we used to give it access, okay, or Clean air pass, which used to get into this fast track lane.

00:13:15:22 - 00:13:38:26

Unknown

And we created multiple such fast tracks and organizations. And year three, which is about I think, into 2021 is where we reached year three and we started this concept called product delivery model. So we, organized the teams around, domains and capabilities, which can then be delivered consistently updated, constantly monitored, and, and so on. So that's how we took it.

00:13:38:26 - 00:14:02:21

Unknown

You can also see how many people were involved, how many sprints of activity. And we are now at, where we were before, approximately eight, organizational releases to consumer facing features to about like 52 features in a year. Almost every other week, we are releasing something to production to consumers so that they can then test it out, figure out and and so on.

00:14:02:23 - 00:14:23:08

Unknown

And I have some examples too. Let's move to the next slide, which talks about, how we got about measuring the outcomes. Right. So now you have created the organization which is independently releasing certain features, but it becomes critical for us to focus on what is success measure for every single feature, right? Every single things which we are prioritizing.

00:14:23:11 - 00:14:46:25

Unknown

So that's where KPIs come. Come into play. Define the success criteria and make sure that you are able to measure that as well. Right as we go, A/B testing is not a new concept. So many people who know that consumer focused changes, especially going into headless. I think you will need this more and more because you are decoupling your, website and applications, which are more consumer facing from the backend technologies.

00:14:47:02 - 00:15:09:24

Unknown

And you need to make sure that every feature which is released independently is measured and successful using your challenges and and controls and then, feedback. I think getting the feedback from all different mechanisms, I mean, you may get feedback from your customer support and client services team. You might get feedback from your NPS surveys, you might get feedback from.

00:15:09:29 - 00:15:35:21

Unknown

So, other online services, which we are doing for different measures. Consolidate those feedback and see where your product can improvise further. Where are you seeing friction and and so on, and consistently optimize that using the same lane which we talked about in the previous slide. Make sure that that gets prioritized and it gets fixed and, optimized for the consumer on the technology front, many of them, many of you might have heard about the The Canary release.

00:15:35:21 - 00:16:00:05

Unknown

I think that's another process of measuring some of the features. During feature release process. How do you then, release certain aspects of the features to the consumers, measure the technical KPIs of it, and then consolidate that back into the, into the process. So that's what this measuring of outcome means. So these three things are critical in terms of, skill set and mindset.

00:16:00:08 - 00:16:26:20

Unknown

Now let's go into, deeper into what we did for specifically skill set. Can you go to the next slide. So here you will see how the teams have created. This is just one example. And we were lucky enough to start our composable journey way before pandemic. And, it was just by luck. Right? I mean, it was not planned, but I think organization understood the benefits of composability and the headless.

00:16:26:22 - 00:16:50:26

Sree (Sephora)

We started that and we were lucky enough to put the foundation and and you can see how it went through the journey. So we had to revert. We our stores were closed approximately about three months and the digital revenue was only revenue which was coming in. Right. So how did we utilize some of the features such as omnichannel journey, which we took, and it shows how it was released into production in an iterative fashion.

00:16:50:28 - 00:17:11:09

Unknown

You can see that with composability, we could achieve releasing features to the market which is minimum marketable product. Right. So again, there is a concept, a concept called minimum viable product, which I hate to use in technology terms because viability doesn't mean anything to the consumer. Right? So it may be viable from a technical standpoint, but it may not be usable for the consumer.

00:17:11:09 - 00:17:29:00

Unknown

So if you can make it usable, that's what I would call it minimum marketable product. And this in this scenario, we started the journey in Q1 of 2020, just before the pandemic. We figured out that we need to quickly turn around and release something, which is like researching online and pickup in store. And we we did that in just three months.

00:17:29:00 - 00:17:58:24

Unknown

We released it to the consumer. They started using it. We could see that about 1% of the the total sales were coming through, for the reserve online pick up in store. But we also saw certain challenges, like people couldn't do the hard reservation, they couldn't pay for it in advance. So we started creating the feature two, which is the buy online pick up in-store immediately right after in the next quarter, we released Buy Online and pick up in-store, and that allowed consumers to then pay for it and then reserve the product in the in the store so that they can go and pick it up.

00:17:58:26 - 00:18:20:16

Unknown

And then just the quarter after that, we had the holidays and after that, the Q1 of 2021, we released same day delivery, which was another capability which we enabled for the store associates to ship products right out of the stores into customers location, making it available on the same day. So all of these features, you can see how it was done iteratively in a monolithic ecosystem.

00:18:20:16 - 00:18:44:25

Unknown

Pretty much it is impossible to do it right. You either get all the requirements, go into waterfall approach and you release eight months after something, and then you then discover that the consumers are not adopting. So this is what I would say. One of the advantages of composable journeys that you can make iterative enhancements, iterative launches, and also going back to a B testing test out, get the feedback as you improvise.

00:18:44:25 - 00:19:02:17

Sree (Sephora)

You can then figure out which part do you want to take? Do you want to continue to do buy online, pick up in-store, or do you want to do it, through same day delivery because there is more adoption from the consumer side. So we completed pretty much the journey of like omnichannel and we continuously enhance it even now, adding new features to it.

00:19:02:17 - 00:19:22:23

Unknown

But, this is just an example of like the total sales coming from the channel as well. You can see bottom, we are measuring how much a percentage of the sales are coming to each of them. Right. So this shows you the journey by quarter by quarter how it was iteratively done. Let's go into the technology side now that you understood like the business factors, what we could achieve through composable.

00:19:22:26 - 00:19:48:12

Sree (Sephora)

So a few things which we changed on the team side. Going back to what I was saying, that the project focused traditionally we consolidate people to deliver certain products or projects. We moved away from the concept to delivering, certain capabilities. So omnichannel was journey, which I was talking about. So the team was cross-functional. They came from different application backgrounds, the different skill set, but they were goal to deliver one single thing.

00:19:48:12 - 00:20:14:25

Sree (Sephora)

And the objective was to make it omnichannel. Objective was to make things happen to the consumer, get the feedback, reiterate and continue continuously improvise. Right. So that is one thing which we successfully could do. And I think majority of our organizations have moved on to this new approach right now. Going into the next slide, So now let's talk about some of the technology specific things, which we changed.

00:20:14:27 - 00:20:36:17

Unknown

I talked about composability. But composability starting it starts from decoupling your slower components, which traditionally for the organization like Sephora our and many other organizations. I think you have monolithic ecommerce ecosystems in the back end, which are slower in terms of releases and features. And how do we decouple? That's where headless, headless comes into play.

00:20:36:19 - 00:21:03:25

Unknown

Then coming into the breaking monoliths, I think there are concept of buy versus build. We'll go into that later. But, I think the question is, how do we make sure that the things which are absolutely needed and critical for consumer experiences, how do you decompose them, take away from your monolith and create that, a separate ecosystem for yourself to, to create the agility which is required for the consumer side, then moving to the cloud, it is more about optimization and scalability.

00:21:03:25 - 00:21:21:11

Unknown

I think, I, I practically talk about building, church for Easter, which is don't build your church for throughout the year. If you just need it for Easter, just build it for Easter. And that's the concept with cloud as well. You don't need to completely scale up the systems for your peak volumes and the demands which are coming in.

00:21:21:11 - 00:21:51:02

Unknown

So that is something which we will, will achieve through the cloud, applications as well. Then automate your repeatable process. So there are like so many mundane processes which you will have in the organization if you are grown organically. How do you automate it? How do you decompose and decouple that from your monolith so that you don't, operate your monolithic ecosystem with all of these, traditional operational procedures going into next slide.

00:21:51:04 - 00:22:11:25

Unknown

So this is, after the transformation, this is a composable ecommerce, architecture. The very high level, though. I mean, it doesn't talk about all the different factors, but it shows you how it turned out to be, from where it was before being one big monolith which used to do all of these, capabilities. Now there are pieces of functionality.

00:22:11:27 - 00:22:39:07

Unknown

You can see the greens and the oranges. The the greens are the ones which we use the traditional, commodity, platforms. The, the oranges are the ones which we have created in-house to create those agility for the organizations. And this is high level ecosystem of different layers of ecommerce, in the industry. And this is something which I've created for a template for our organization to use to, to, to figure out, like where each of the pieces will fall into place.

00:22:39:09 - 00:22:52:15

Unknown

Right. So this is just to share with the rest of the, audience here so that you have a reference architecture in place for, your transformation. Okay. Going into the next one.

00:22:52:17 - 00:23:18:29

Unknown

So that's it. That's pretty much, please feel free to ask any questions if you have to drill deep into some of those. I think I'm happy to connect with you offline as well. To chat about the journey and the details of each of those components. Yeah. And I know I can imagine it's hard to compress everything you've gone through in the last few years into, into a few slides, but, I mean, that's a very good high level understanding of it.

00:23:19:01 - 00:23:48:14

Unknown

Are you would you say so you are Sephora is is in a fully composable state now, some of the enterprise applications are still monolithic in nature, but all of the consumer facing applications, you can say that it's already composable, it's headless and so on. Yeah. Gotcha. Thank you so much for for that. I mean, if anyone has, it wants to talk to someone who understands it, I mean, and has gone through it on the front lines.

00:23:48:24 - 00:24:13:10

Thomas Mowry (Orium)

It's always great hearing from from your that kind of perspective. So I really appreciate that. Now, Thomas, you're you're on kind of the opposite side of the fence as an agency, helping brands like, like Sri and Sephora and others like, navigate to composable. But not just navigate, I, you know, I always say it's moving to composable is not the end state or like, that's not the goal.

00:24:13:10 - 00:24:36:05

Thomas Mowry (Orium)

That's the goal is to unlock new channels or unlock different ways of selling or own different components. But to maximize the revenue that composable can unlock. And I know, one of the brands you refer to on other panels we've been on and our podcast and different things is, is, Harry Rosen, as a true, or another example of a great composable success story.

00:24:36:05 - 00:24:52:16

Unknown

And there also a mutual client, we work together, we work on the checkout side with them. When you think back on that project and ask you about any other words you have in mind, too, but I just know you've referenced that before. What were some of the things you thought they executed? Well, that set them up for success?

00:24:52:18 - 00:25:10:26

Thomas Mowry (Orium)

Yeah. It's, it's always interesting to look back on it. I think you never you never knew what decisions you were making at the time, I think. Sure. You mentioned. No, we were lucky we made this decision before COVID and all the stores closed. I think Harry Rosen were a little bit closer to D-Day as it related to that shift.

00:25:11:17 - 00:25:31:11

Unknown

They had to move very quickly, to the point of which there wasn't a planned ecommerce project in that year. And once the once COVID hit, once the stores were closing, it was like, well, we got to do it, so let's go get it done. But they they adopted what is just launched quickly. It's not about the feature party.

00:25:31:17 - 00:25:57:12

Thomas Mowry (Orium)

It's not about the 15 years of your website that you're bringing with you. I really appreciated your perspective of it's maybe not MVP. Does the button press button? Yes. But does it actually transact? Are people going to convert on it? Once they got to that point, they they managed to to find the courage to launch. And what I like to think now is Harry Rosen is probably one of the most feature full websites out there in terms of what they've built incrementally ever since.

00:25:57:12 - 00:26:23:18

Unknown

But to Sree's point, I mean, it's really just like, you know, each sprint is valuable features for the business, but it's the fact that you've got to get live on the foundational layer to be able to take advantage of that. So I suspect that, you know, I've seen many, many of these projects over the years, and the word we always hear on day one of that, the mapping in the features is feature parity or same thing, or at the very least it has to do what we do today.

00:26:23:21 - 00:26:40:29

Unknown

The bit that maybe sometimes people don't realize is these are all best of breed technologies. So there's 50 things you don't know they can do that you can take advantage of. That means you don't have to bring, you know, along what you've built custom and you know all those little scripts that you run to make things work in their quirky ways.

00:26:40:29 - 00:27:02:05

Unknown

You might not have to bring that along. And that's another use case where I think they they got their life, they got there quick, and then they managed to develop from there on land. And they they're the most successful projects because people can get momentum and excited behind it. And then you can shift towards your more product focused delivery teams, the team that works on the checkout, the team that works on the app.

00:27:02:07 - 00:27:23:24

Unknown

It's not about that team that works on the ecommerce as a whole. Any other brands I know they're they're they're a great example. Any others come to mind of examples that, you think stand out? The list is actually getting much bigger than it historically was. I remember back in 2020, you used to have to look for the two life case studies that had actually done this.

00:27:23:24 - 00:27:53:17

Unknown

I think, you know, I've seen 40 or 50 different brands migrate from Oracle, ATG, for example, or a lot of the S&P migrations are kicking in now. Like express is a really interesting one. I think Lululemon have done a really good job pulling in some composable elements into their broader strategy. Ulta beauty have a big multiyear model of how they're rolling out a lot of these benefits, but it's really when you're breaking down your channels, you're thinking of one technology to be used in many places.

00:27:53:20 - 00:28:12:29

Sree (Sephora)

Those are the examples that I always look back on because it's truly omnichannel at that point, and you're getting the most out of the technology that you're using as well. Sree, when you were going through all this, did you have any, brands that you, you modeled your approach off of or anyone, any brands that inspired you at all?

00:28:13:02 - 00:28:36:24

Sree (Sephora)

Now? I think, going back to what I was saying. Right. So composable and headless and all of this have been there in the industry, I think we haven't talked about market ads, as such. So when we started, journey looking at some of this in 2017, 2016, we looked at different, different organizations, but many of them had this concept of coupled architecture because it it was easier for them.

00:28:36:24 - 00:29:03:03

Sree (Sephora)

It was probably easier to choke one throat from like from an engineering to the business standpoint. Right. Because there is only one person who's responsible for ecommerce. But all of these organizations had challenges of growing, right and, and pivoting to the market trend, which is why I think I strongly believe that when we started in 2016 and when we launched our first headless website, we were the only ones, out there.

00:29:03:03 - 00:29:25:04

Unknown

And there were not many, there are companies. I mean, of course there are. Like I came prior to Sephora I came from Walmart. They have created the whole composable ecosystem in-house within their organization, and they were all way ahead of the game. Right? They were already decoupled from website to the backend. So some of those were inspirations because of my past experience as well.

00:29:25:07 - 00:29:49:15

Unknown

But when I came into Sephora, surprisingly, there were not many organizations who has this monolithic ecosystem which had decoupled architecture in mind. So that also became very challenging because you need to then educate the leadership and executives, explain them what are the benefit? And I keep, repeating myself sometimes saying that, okay, you need to look at the opportunity cost about this, right?

00:29:49:15 - 00:30:09:14

Unknown

I mean, it's not it's not about what is that you can do, which you are not able to do today. Right? It's about what if you are not able to do certain things, if things to change. Right? So I think that is where I think many organizations were not there. But as I said, the larger technology organizations have been doing this for quite many years.

00:30:09:16 - 00:30:30:09

Unknown

Yeah, yeah. Well now you're an inspiration to others. So you kind of paved the way a bit. The title of this webinar is, is, maximizing the ROI of Your Composable Journey transformation. So I definitely want to hone in a bit on that, because, you know, like, we mentioned, it's not composable for the sake of composable.

00:30:30:09 - 00:31:05:10

Jay Myers (Bolt)

It's composable for the sake of ROI in some capacity. I'll unassisted both of you. Sure. I'll start with you. Of all the things that you changed during your transition, what aspect do you think had the biggest impact on ROI or revenue? I think composability gives you the speed and agility. All right. And how quickly can you turn around to a market condition, whether it is induced by consumer like consumer is looking for a new trend or new way of doing things like omnichannel is a great, great topic to discuss about.

00:31:05:10 - 00:31:27:02

Unknown

Right? I mean, organization like Best Buy. I used to consult with Best Buy long back in earlier stages of my career. They started Omni channel in 2000. The early 2000, right when the.com boom happened. They already had omni channel. So when organizations are still fighting to figure out how it is done, that's primarily because of their, their monolithic architecture.

00:31:27:03 - 00:31:54:18

Unknown

Right. And the organization, of course, the organizational readiness of operations are there, but when it comes to even if your organization is ready to operate and they have figured out there are architectures which are not letting them all, at the pace which they need. Right. And that's where I think composable architecture comes in. And that has truly helped us in terms of return on investment, because, as I said, the advantage of composability is you don't truly build a whole castle altogether, right?

00:31:54:18 - 00:32:19:03

Unknown

I mean, you just build one room at a time, and each room you build is giving you the return immediately. And you can see whether to build, continue to build the rooms. Or should I stop at this point? I mean, all of that flexibility is there with composable architectures, which is truly what I would say is the differentiating factor for return on investment, because you're not looking at millions of dollars of investment and expecting the ten times of the revenue to come, come back.

00:32:19:03 - 00:32:45:03

Unknown

Rather look at very tiny investment and then you immediately get the return for it. Right? That's that plus the opportunity cost, which I talked about. Right. I mean, which is a key factor which many executives don't think about that. What if I was able to launch it eight months in advance, right? I mean, what is the ROI which it could generate, right versus and monolithic architecture, which you might have to wait for a year to return, get to the return point, right?

00:32:45:03 - 00:33:12:11

Unknown

I mean, that's where, I would say organization need to think the ROI calculation in, in different way. Right. In the new world. Yeah, yeah, I, I really appreciate the comment about, seeing ROI in steps versus it being a multi-year project. And you hope that it's at the end, but it you're realizing at each step of the step of the way, Thomas, you work with with a lot of brands.

00:33:12:23 - 00:33:32:06

Thomas Mowry (Orium)

What do you see as the biggest impact on ROI? Is it is it the same or does it vary depending on on the brand or the vertical there in. Yeah, I mean, we've built, a business case or two in our time. And if I wrap my brain for what doesn't work, it's definitely not things like sight speed.

00:33:32:21 - 00:34:01:01

Unknown

I need to get, you know, two points per second off my load time on my homepage, or I need to bump the conversion rate up a couple of basis points. I mean, you can replatform from demand. Where? On to Salesforce reference architecture and get that same lift. It's just all technology to new technology. When you're doing the smaller stuff, I think it's it's it's tough for some brands to realize what the real benefit of ROI is, because the composability is what gives you that.

00:34:01:01 - 00:34:22:07

Unknown

To Sree's point, the speed and agility to move faster. It can be from moving away from what you're on today, like in a bold case where we've got a project at the moment there on Oracle, let's just do checkout the rest of my experience. It's actually working okay. My checkout is in. Let's just fix that problem and find incremental value.

00:34:22:09 - 00:34:42:22

Unknown

But then it's also once you're on a composable stack that is at that the forest stage, you become that composer of your composable commerce tech stack. I think that's the fun part for me, where frankly, you just go shopping. It's what's the visual merchandizing tool I need? What's the personalization engine? The SMS thing? The integration model is just so much faster.

00:34:42:22 - 00:35:04:29

Unknown

The time to value is seen and to to. Oftentimes what you see in a development team is the shift from feature building and how much more feature building you do within your sprints versus just trying to get workarounds and keeping up. And then on the other side of the business, it's it's the it's the enablement of your your content teams, your product teams, your search teams.

00:35:05:01 - 00:35:23:28

Unknown

They don't need to ask it to do stuff anymore. So, you know, an hour spent inside of our goal. Yeah, they can actually make thousands of dollars for their business without logging a ticket or changing your homepage for a promotion without asking anyone. You can just do these things quickly and that's when it gets more enjoyable or more fun for a brand.

00:35:23:28 - 00:35:46:04

Unknown

And I think it's not always a bottom line. You know, look at our conversion rate benefit. But if you really dig into it, it equally goes down things like employee satisfaction and how much more people enjoy their jobs and are more motivated to do well at that point. Yeah. I was going to ask some other benefits of besides revenue increase.

00:35:46:04 - 00:36:04:23

Unknown

What are some other benefits? But you both mentioned a bunch numerous other benefits of composable, so I won't I'm going to skip that one. I want to jump into, actually, I want to just mention to any any questions. Feel free to answer them or in the question section in the panel, I'm going to we're going to have a couple more topics here and then we'll answer any, any questions.

00:36:04:23 - 00:36:40:01

Jay Myers (Bolt)

And then and then we'll wrap up. But feel free to enter any now so that they're there for the time. Next question I wanted to ask was, you know, one of the things that that we've really seen in the past few years, especially, you know, the past three years with the pandemic, it's been unprecedented is is how fast the demands and not just demands, but like the actual need of how customers have to shop, changes, you know, from, from 2020 to 2023, how you bought online or in-store or a combination of both, or at a curb or at a kiosk or all these different touch points.

00:36:40:01 - 00:36:59:04

Unknown

It's all changed so fast. And my question to to both of you is, you know, given the seems to be the new norm, this is this rapid change of how customers buy. And like two years from now, it's probably going to be different again. It's maybe all going to be AI assisted or something else. We don't know. But we know it's rapidly changing.

00:36:59:06 - 00:37:18:13

Unknown

What what benefits and advantages does composable commerce bring to the table to to help with this? Thomas, let's start with you on this one. It's not going to we're not going to see last change, I think, where everybody's aligned at this point, we're given up saying, oh, it'll stabilize, and next year is going to be an easy year.

00:37:18:13 - 00:37:39:26

Unknown

It nothing crazy is going to happen. I think if every business is taking a pretty sober look at what's going to happen in the next three years of what they need to do, it's it's more agility, it's more speed that they need to keep up. I think a lot of this stuff is like, you don't know what you're going to get hit with tomorrow, and you have to be able to do it, or else you're going to lose.

00:37:39:28 - 00:38:00:04

Unknown

And and this isn't always from the perspective of you might not get that one customer. I mean, we've seen specific use cases in the market now where I mean, you lose by going bankrupt because you just cannot keep up with what you need to do as a company. And like there's some companies literally naming a lack of investment in technology is the reason why they went bankrupt.

00:38:00:18 - 00:38:19:15

Unknown

I think composable commerce is the next wave of what that modern approaches, what agility is. How do you kind of break down the barriers between different sides of your business and get them working together? There are some of the core compounding effects for me, where it's not so scary when you get you get hit with a shock.

00:38:19:15 - 00:38:38:12

Unknown

In your business, if you're built to expect it. And I think that's what, you know, composable commerce has to be rooted in, because you can pull in a loyalty engine if you need it. You can pull in a mobile app if you need it. There's more speed to market in terms of these things that you have to bring into your business.

00:38:38:15 - 00:39:03:08

Unknown

Yeah. Sree, any any thoughts on that as well? Yeah. I will add to that. Right. I agree that the organizations who are probably no more, there or have bankrupted because they have not seen technology the way it has changed over the years. Right? I think traditionally organizations have seen technology as a call center, and it's, it's a cash burning mission.

00:39:03:20 - 00:39:27:27

Unknown

And it is a support organization. That's why it was always called it help or it helped us get all of this. Right. Because that's what they think. I mean, if something is not working, you reach out to them. What is this? In the current world, I think the technology is a driver of innovation. Technology is driver for business and even opportunity creating additional business revenue opportunities, is done through technology and composability.

00:39:27:27 - 00:40:07:29

Unknown

When I come back to composability topic, I think traditionally I think composability has come around, in ecommerce and more and more we see the benefits of composability is over, overlaid with many different channels like just talk about. Sephora I think the composable journey have created us an easier integration and bringing the same consistency, whether it's in the stores, it's in our partner sites, or even like, you know, that Sephora is partnering with Kohl's, like giving the same level of experiences, for the consumer and for the Sephora consumer across all channels is done only through, having this composable architecture right?

00:40:07:29 - 00:40:37:15

Unknown

I mean, it creates that omni vision, the unified customer experiences, which traditional and organic organizations have grown, creating their own siloed ecosystem, which is because of the monolithic nature. Right? I mean, you traditionally look at point of sale, just take like stores and and digital point of sale is monolithic by itself. You have created an ecosystem which works only for stores, and you created an accessory organization called digital, traditionally because you just want to have a presence in.com.

00:40:37:18 - 00:41:04:18

Unknown

Right. And you created another monolithic ecosystem for.com. And because of the nature that they don't talk to each other, they've created silo organizational customer accounts and experiences and whatnot. And now now the consumer demands same level of experience as across the board. Right. And when you look at it, you can continue to invest and pour in money to, enhance your experiences both in the AWS and on the .com side, or all channels for that sake, or create composable architecture.

00:41:04:18 - 00:41:25:16

Unknown

So that it can be consistent and it is available across the board. And that is where your total benefit comes in. Right? So the consumer demand is changing. How quickly can you change and give that consistent experience across the platforms? I think that's almost impossible to do. Multiple monolithic ecosystems serving only one channel at a time, right? Yeah, yeah yeah I agree.

00:41:25:22 - 00:41:43:23

Unknown

So I well I there's a couple things I want to dig into there, but I want to make sure I get to a couple points on, on if there's anyone, listening who their organization is, is thinking about going down this path. You know, they're, they're bought in. They, they get it, they see the benefits, they see the value.

00:41:44:13 - 00:42:03:10

Unknown

You know, Thomas, I'll throw this one to you because you maybe have these conversations with a lot of brands. If their organization is thinking about going this path, what is the first thing they should do? Where do they start? Yeah, I think, if I go back about two years ago, a lot of people's opinions was I'm on this thing.

00:42:03:10 - 00:42:24:17

Unknown

How do I get to this new group of things? And let's go start building this package of it. What has happened is this market's moving extremely quickly. I swear, what happens one quarter is not the next anymore. Now it's a case of these strangler approaches to get there are getting very creative in terms of adding value in different ways.

00:42:25:01 - 00:42:50:17

Unknown

So I thought we'd now no longer recommend the word replatform because one the new thing you have is not really a platform. It's a group of technologies, but two in this economy, in this time or in what you're taking on to your business, it's too much risk. You cannot afford a failed replatform project anymore. So really, it's about finding those strategic approaches that make sense for the pain that you're in today.

00:42:51:02 - 00:43:09:12

Unknown

Everybody's in pain. I mean, that's technology. Everybody has found a weak spot in what they're trying to do every day. For us, it's around breaking down. What is that pain and what is the levers that we can bring away from that limitation that you have today and layer in one of these, you know, MACH solutions that can actually accelerate the change.

00:43:09:12 - 00:43:27:23

Unknown

And it could be as simple as a couple of components on your homepage managed by a headless CMS. Or it could be search on top of your monolith because your product it is not clear. It could be the checkout first approach where you need things like bopis and tax and shipping, and you just can't get it done on what you're on today.

00:43:27:26 - 00:43:53:09

Unknown

There's money, money, money, different levers to pull. And I think really where we start is just uncovering the pain, lifting the stones underneath them. And then the second part is understanding the limitations that your older technology won't let you do, because there is there's clear road blockers that you can't get to. If you know them very clearly, then you can find those areas of opportunity in front of you and and unlock them very quickly by finding the right technology.

00:43:53:09 - 00:44:13:01

Unknown

And the nice shopping list that you can find is on the MACH Alliance page these days. You can skim that one and get a lot of ideas very quickly of what you can plug and play with quite, quite easily. Yeah, well, I certainly agree with you on the checkout component. Selfishly. Sree, is there anything that you would say?

00:44:13:01 - 00:44:35:18

Sree (Sephora)

So someone's getting started. Anything to watch out for? Was, you know, any gotchas, like, I'm sure you must have had 1 or 2 hiccups in your journey. Any any warnings? Early, maybe few years ago. If we were to start this journey, I think you will have less and less support. And, there was no concept of MACH Alliance.

00:44:35:18 - 00:44:54:05

Unknown

There was no concept of, like, coming up with a reference architecture. So you make a lot of mistake going through it. Even talking about just one piece, which is composability of it, like if you decide to build it yourself. And I think that's going back to the build versus buy, I think it's a hard decision. Many technologists believe that I should build it myself.

00:44:54:05 - 00:45:18:27

Unknown

And I mean, I, I used to be that guy. But I think you do need to understand the business you are in, the organization you are in. Right. And look at the strengths which you have and try to amplify the strength and differentiate where you can differentiate. But don't try to build it everything yourself. That's my POV because you will end up spending a lot and not creating that agility which you are expecting, right?

00:45:18:27 - 00:45:41:17

Unknown

So that's where I would say, like going back to what Thomas said, I think there are so many platforms which are out there which gives you this easy couple solutions, which you can just plug and start using it immediately, operationally, and also effectiveness of it. It's pretty fast and you can start using it. So try to use those rather than building everything yourselves and differentiate where you can differentiate.

00:45:41:17 - 00:46:09:08

Unknown

Like for us, I think we internally created our own loyalty ecosystem. I mean, even though there are products out there, there were certain unique factors of loyalty which we have, and we ended up creating our own loyalty ecosystem. Right. So but we did not decide to build everything ourselves. So which again, is the recommendation I have that consider build versus buy as a strategic opportunity for you to think rather than taking pride into the the, the decision making.

00:46:09:08 - 00:46:31:25

Unknown

Right. Because as a technologist, as I said, I can take pride in building everything myself. Right. But, think about what you are doing today and what it could cost in terms of, agility. Yeah, yeah. If you just had to keep going on that one. Just for a second, though, would you have any perspective on building a monolith in a composable architecture?

00:46:31:25 - 00:46:52:11

Unknown

I've. I've seen this one happen once or twice in my time now of, hey, we've got this thing. We launched it, but it doesn't really do what it promised. When you look under it, you're saying, well, you know, you kind of build the old thing on the new thing. And now, functionally, it doesn't actually deliver the value that you need it in your business.

00:46:53:00 - 00:47:13:08

Unknown

Maybe even from a bit of a technology perspective, like where can you see that happening? Or where is that, you know, taking the left instead of the right at the crossroads happening for for people that may go down that route? Yeah, I think that's a great call out. I think granularity of what you build and if you decide to build, I think that is critical, right.

00:47:13:12 - 00:47:35:28

Unknown

If you end up conceptualizing the composability, but you end up building, an architecture which has everything in one which, which you are creating another monolithic architecture. Right. So which again, people don't understand because they naturally tend to say, oh, this is already there. I have already an ecosystem working, I have my server up and running. Why don't you just add to that feature to to that existing server.

00:47:36:02 - 00:48:09:00

Unknown

And that's where you get derailed and then you end up having another ecosystem to manage. All right. I would say it's a decision, but also going back to one of the things if if somebody's starting the journey, I would say don't start the journey with people who are not familiar with composability and composable architectures. Right. So start and I mean, I have in prior, experience when we started the I think I've always used a partner who have done it before, knows what they're doing, come and and maybe co-develop with us.

00:48:09:00 - 00:48:37:03

Unknown

Right. And that way you are also transitioning certain skillset in-house and then slowly then transitioning to in-house development teams. Right. But if you were to start a journey by yourself without, without understanding what you are ending up building, then you might end up in the whole situation where you are, right? Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I, I want to ask this before we we're getting close on time here, but this this obviously I can't go without stating it.

00:48:37:03 - 00:49:00:03

Unknown

That composable is not for everyone. How do you think about that when, you know it? How where do you draw the line? Like, what is what? I'll phrase it this way. What is the single biggest reason a brand should consider composable, and what's the biggest indicator? They should not. Either of you have thoughts on that. But yeah, I mean I can go first.

00:49:00:03 - 00:49:19:12

Unknown

I think it is a strategic decision, right? I mean, it's not the technology alone decision. So if you're an organization, again, I don't want to tie the revenue to the decision making process because the current revenue doesn't mean that you are there or not. That right? I mean, I think where you need to think is like, how do you think your consumers are today?

00:49:19:12 - 00:49:41:13

Unknown

What is the agility which they are expecting? What is the consumer demand? Do you have current ecosystem and the technology which is supporting the the needs of the consumer? Right. If it does and if it doesn't harm you or block you from growing as an organization, then you continue doing it and but think about like, when do you need to switch over to composable architecture in the future?

00:49:41:16 - 00:50:09:18

Unknown

But if you have everything which you need, which is working right now, I would say that's not there yet. Second thing is the organization itself. Like, don't try to force the organization to be composable, right. And this is going to people who are non technologist. I think they should not just force the technology team to get into composability, because if they don't understand what that is and they've not been trained, they don't know the the glitches and the pros and cons, they might end up building another ecosystem which you need to sustain.

00:50:09:18 - 00:50:36:24

Unknown

And I have seen that in organizations. Many organizations have created this culture of composability without really looking into it. And they have truly spent too much, amount in the technology architecture. Right. So those are the areas which I would say that, try to get an external perspective right, about an evaluation of both people in the organization, the process, and also the technology aspects, and come back and see if this is something which you need.

00:50:36:24 - 00:50:58:11

Unknown

I mean, it's not like a cookie cutter for every organization for sure. Yeah. Agreed. Thomas. Yeah. I'm sorry. Have any thoughts on that? I'm pretty good for, a good LinkedIn post about composable commerce and, played by some in a certain direction. But you wouldn't believe how many people I tell not to do it. It's it's pretty phenomenal.

00:50:58:11 - 00:51:19:00

Unknown

I mean, there's FOMO and there's hype. There's buzzwords. There's, you know, teams that think, hey, we're going to get we'll get this done because we're different and revenue is not the metric. I will I I'll agree on that for sure. I think maturity is probably one of the measurements that we could use, but it's not very tangible.

00:51:19:00 - 00:51:40:18

Unknown

You can't say you're a six out of or a seven out of ten. Team structure is probably one of the one, but the one that I usually come back to is business model. Like, if you if you're on Shopify and you have a transactional website, a homepage through checkout, and you have 100 SKUs, you're good. Like you don't even need to be headless.

00:51:40:18 - 00:52:06:06

Unknown

You're good. Like the themes are fine. Get some nice add ins in the marketplace. Keep scaling as a business. Do your marketing well. That's fine. I think it's when you go outside of the realm of what is normal is when you fall into that box. Oh wait, there is no thing. I can't buy my solution anymore. There's an element of build, and it's not to overindex and go buy an open source thing and then start building.

00:52:06:10 - 00:52:29:15

Unknown

It's just composable. Commerce gives you more of the build capability than what buying a shop in a box gives you. For me, it's always, yes, you have an ecommerce website, but what do you have outside of the ecommerce experience that will then impact your customer's experience? And I think that starts to to weigh up some of the pros and cons of what composable commerce can offer you.

00:52:30:13 - 00:52:46:07

Unknown

But yeah, I'm pretty quick to say don't do it if if I don't see it, immediately. And, yeah, I get quite a lot of people saying, I want to go get it done when ultimately, you know, they've got five years ahead of them with a lot more opportunity in front of them. Okay. I'm a fair enough.

00:52:46:26 - 00:53:08:24

Unknown

I want to, answer question here from the audience. I'll just read it out. I don't know if if you too can see it or not, or just me, but the question came in. Brands with a strong ecommerce presence have scaled even faster into other markets in the past three years. How does composable help manage complexity, risk, and cost in working with multiple multiple payment types in different regions?

00:53:08:27 - 00:53:33:13

Unknown

Is sorry, is there an intersection with payments and scale? And the question is that to me, either one I have actually some some thoughts on this too. Okay. Do you want to take us I mean, my, I think well, I'll just speak to this one because we, I mean, we do checkout, I mean, that payments is a huge part of part of that.

00:53:34:05 - 00:54:05:08

Unknown

I think, composable, one of the biggest strengths of it, specifically for, for us with checkout is that it unlocks, selling in, in, in various not just different channels, but different different regions with different, you know, like the, the one of the, the multiple payment types in different regions. Like one thing that comes up is with, with us is, you know, brands doing, if they sell any type of restricted goods, CBD or it could be it could be anything.

00:54:06:06 - 00:54:27:06

Unknown

Generally if you sell, restricted goods, you have to use certain payment processors, and they generally don't give the best processing rates. So you, you have but you're forced to use a certain one and then you use that for all your products. But if you have the ability to create and and we do this but different checkout flows depending on what's in a cart.

00:54:27:06 - 00:54:45:15

Unknown

So if a product is if they have CBD products in a cart, use a certain gateway. If they don't have CBD, CBD products in a cart, use a different gateway that they're getting, you know, like one point for processing versus like the CBD processes that they might be getting 2.9%. And change it by country, change it by region.

00:54:45:25 - 00:55:12:23

Unknown

So there's definitely a huge advantage that composable can bring, when you're selling in different regions, different products, different different, risk, risk, when like risk profiles. So I think that's actually an area where composable really shines. And if either of you do have thoughts on that. Yeah, I would I would add just an analogy.

00:55:12:23 - 00:55:37:13

Unknown

Right. If you are thinking of fixing something at home, you probably usually use, a handyman. Right? He could do multiple things at once, but they are not experts in everything. But if you do need to do at scale and you are going to a construction company and you're saying that I need to build 15 houses of similar nature or different variations, constructor is not going to use a handyman to do the job.

00:55:37:14 - 00:56:01:14

Unknown

Right. So they have experts in specific areas. So if you have plumbing experts, you have plumbing experts for different variations of the house. But the key goal there is that you have consistency and you need to give expertise in the areas where you need. Right. So you that's what composability is for me, I am the construction guy and the business is the guy who's asking me to build something consistently across multiple different channels, right.

00:56:01:14 - 00:56:21:24

Unknown

Sephora me, I would rather use composable architecture, which is very focused and expert in, in specific areas. So if it is about checkout and cart, I would not have a common ecosystem which is out there, which can do 200 things but doesn't do anything good at deep. Right. So that's that's what monolithic architecture for me is. Right?

00:56:21:24 - 00:56:53:25

Unknown

Sephora me, that's what I would say, that if you are an organization looking at like how composability really drives the speed, agility, consistency and even optimal cost, I would say you are if you are composable, then you are the right place to give that experience and the flexibility and and creating that roadmap, as you said, do that like you have different reasons why we would use a certain type of payment and based on the size of the cart, maybe products in the cart, maybe the way consumer is and the consumers preference of the payment.

00:56:53:27 - 00:57:14:10

Unknown

There are so many factors. Even personalization comes to an end to it in the deriving the payment rules. And if you end up creating monolithic, you just consistently give the same set of options for every customer. And they have only those options. And every time you need to add something new, then you need to customize the whole ecosystem, which will be another six months project to just release one new payment type.

00:57:14:12 - 00:57:37:19

Unknown

Right? So that's that's not composability. And that that is what I would say that the composability gives you that, delivering the features at scale consistently for multiple different channels. Yeah, yeah. Well said. We're we're basically at time here. I had some more questions. I'm going to just end on one, one, one fun one I always have.

00:57:37:22 - 00:57:53:20

Unknown

I had a bunch of lightning round questions, but I wanted to ask each of you to end this off on kind of a fun note. What is the single best online purchase either of you have ever made? And this isn't related to composable, just the best thing you've ever bought online and the worst thing you've ever bought online.

00:57:53:20 - 00:58:21:06

Jay Myers (Bolt)

Kind of a fun way to end. And then we'll we'll wrap it up. Thomas, I'll start with you. Yeah, I think I've used this one, a few times now, but, I, I've bought, I bought, from Patagonia one time, could not figure out how to get their Amex to work on the checkout flow and then could not figure out how to get them to deliver to the store that was 400m from my house.

00:58:21:17 - 00:58:40:29

Unknown

Ultimately had to then go through a different credit card, through the shipping policy to my home just because I wanted that one. Good. So that was a pretty frustrating one. Oh. Luckily they fixed it since. So, that one, that one's definitely come through. And then the bit for me that, you know, is great for great for the wrong reasons is how efficient things like Amazon are.

00:58:41:14 - 00:59:02:10

Unknown

Everything shows up in two days. That's awesome. It's a shame that the boxes are twice the size that they need to be, and that they're like they're not quite there from an efficiency perspective. But that supply chain model is just a great experience. And for anyone that can duplicate that, direct across customer use case, I think it's something to be, respected as well.

00:59:02:12 - 00:59:24:15

Unknown

Yeah. Great. Yeah. I think talking about the experience online, I was thinking the product which I bought, I mean, for me, well, yeah, I'll go for like. Yeah, let's hear the product. 2000, 2009 I bought during the Super Bowl season. I bought a TV, Samsung TV. And that's my best purchase of it is still working amazing. I've never bought a TV.

00:59:24:21 - 00:59:48:03

Unknown

I mean, I have bought a TV after that. And none of them work for more than like two, three years. Everything get damaged, or get recycled and and so on. But this one, somehow it's staying still there. So that's my best purchase of for online Made without even looking at the TV itself. Case it was purchased, I would say I've had many purchases, unlike you, Thomas, on Amazon, especially related to the marketplaces.

00:59:48:03 - 01:00:09:11

Unknown

Right. And I, I ordered things which comes either broken some. Sometimes it doesn't even come. Sometimes it gets stolen in front of the house. So, so many experiences. But unfortunately, because it's marketplace, there is only certain things which Amazon can do. And you are just, the, at the mercy of marketplace itself. So I've had many such occurrences.

01:00:09:14 - 01:00:31:18

Unknown

Yeah. I bought a book one time that when I got it at a, it was literally maybe two inches by three inches. And it was, it did. I mean, I would have never thought to check that the dimensions of the book, that it's a full size book, but that's, a current. Oh, I don't know if I call it a scam, but a trick like going on at Amazon.

01:00:31:18 - 01:00:52:07

Unknown

So, always check the dimensions of what you're buying. Sometimes they're miniature, but you don't know it. So anyways, this has been, a really, really fun conversation. I had a lot more questions. I mean, we could talk for hours where we're at time. You know, we'll make sure we send out the recording to everyone. Thank you both for for all the knowledge and insight.

01:00:52:07 - 01:01:04:28

Unknown

I know the emails are up on the screen. If anyone has further questions or wants to reach out and, I think we'll we'll leave it at that. Thank you both so much for for being on today.