Full Suite Monolith or Best-of-Breed Solution- Part 2: Digital Maturity

Choosing between a Full Suite Monolith or Best-of-Breed Solution can be a difficult discussion. Some brands are looking for an all in one solution while other brands are looking for a more customizable solution. So which will be the right fit for you?

In this episode of Taco 'Bout Composable Commerce, Devon Hillard from Black Magic Consulting gives us the first consideration for choosing full suite monolith or best-of-breed solution: Digital Maturity

Shaneil

Full Suite monolith or best-of- breed. This can be such a tricky one for brands to decide on, because on one hand, some businesses want something that's quick and easy to set up, so they'd rather have one vendor provide everything.

Only to find out that set up can be a bit too rigid for their requirements. Now, on the other hand, we have businesses that want something that's highly innovative and highly customizable, like best of breeds solutions. But that's usually associated with more complexity and can seem a little bit more daunting to compose. So, which one is going to be right for you?

Well, today we have Devon Hillard, from Black Magic Consulting, and he's here to Taco' Bout it! So with these pros and cons, what are the main things that businesses should be looking out for in deciding whether or not they should go with full suite or best-of-breed?

So speed, flexibility, agility. Those are becoming even more important. So now that we've spoken about features, what's next?

Devon

I think the next thing really is for company to understand their digital maturity. And you mentioned that earlier in our discussion. But when we talk about Composable Commerce or best-of-breed commerce solutions, we are really talking about taking, you know, could be two or it could be dozens of independent solutions and weaving them together into a complete offering.

And that requires either a kind of strong in house technical team and knowledge and investment in being a technology company, as well as, a commerce company and a retail company. Or it means a very strong partnership with a system integration partner who has that leadership, that knowledge and that technical skill set to design, build, and maintain that integration network of those kind of components to build the overall solution.

So, I think digital maturity is a really big piece of whether or not a company could be successful with a Composable Commerce approach or not. And there's no shame in saying, "Hey, we're focused on being a retailer. We're not, you know, really invested in being a technology company, and we don't have you know, that level of strong technical team in house and we don't have that kind of partnership with a third party integrator."

There's no shame in that. Better to admit that upfront than to stumble down a road that you simply can't maintain as you're going.

Shaneil

Absolutely, I think we've echoed that point so much, we're not saying one is necessarily better than the other. But based on the circumstance that you're in or the situation that you're in, you may not be at the level of digital maturity required to deliver a Composable Commerce approach. Absolutely. And the last thing that you mentioned, I believe, is cost. So what? What are your thoughts on that