It makes perfect sense when you think about it, assuming you still have your physical head of course.
Provide a customer with a consistent customer experience (CX), enabling commerce wherever they are, on a channel of their choosing; digitally, physically or somewhere in-between, when it comes to Mixed Reality. Offering a consistent set of products, prices, offers and rewards, can only be achieved efficiently in one logical way, adopting a headless, scalable and open commerce architecture. Which is exactly what Dynamics 365 Commerce has to offer.
What exactly is headless commerce?
Imagine you have just started a new online store, being able to provide your clients with that endless aisle of goodness. You have probably selected a commerce solution that has a built-in set of product, pricing and inventory management capabilities to get you started. In this traditional e-commerce situation, your front-end website is the “head” and the back-end (the engine behind the scenes) is the “body”. The two parts are tightly connected, any changes or updates to the back-end are tightly coupled to the front end, such as adding a new style of product.
Now you want to offer a dedicated mobile app, which gives you a slightly smoother shopping experience, perhaps an account and order management capability, loyalty program and a faster payment mechanism. You do your research and find a pre-integrated mobile application that links to your existing commerce solution, no development required. Congratulations, you are now an omni-channel retailer (barely, but let’s just skirt over that for the sake of the explanation).
Time passes, you are successful and want to open a brick and mortar store. You do some more research, and find the solution you want for the stores doesn’t quite integrate out of the box, but that’s ok, you have funding set aside as a result of your new success, and don’t mind spending extra to get some of the in store capabilities you wanted, including that collect in store capability that is almost expected at this point.
Little did you know, you have started your journey on a technical rabbit hole that goes deeper than Alice in Wonderland. Spending time in meetings deliberating how to synchronise pricing information between the new Point of Sale (POS) and eCommerce solution, and what pricing mechanisms are common to both systems, allowing you to attempt the same pricing in store and online. It’s a painful experience, but you get there in the end, even if you have a few not quite perfect collect-in-store processes as a result.
Now, picture a scenario where the front-end can operate interchangeably with the back end by design, like changing the head on a Lego figurine. This is where headless commerce comes into play.
In a headless architecture, the presentation layer (the “head”) is decoupled from the business logic and data management (the “body”). This separation allows for unparalleled flexibility and agility, enabling businesses to adapt quickly to changing market trends and customer expectations.
Isn’t omni-channel the same as headless?
Headless commerce is the technology foundation to offer not only seamless omni-channel experiences, but unlimited commerce experiences. Whether your customers are browsing your website, using a mobile app, engaging on social media, or shopping in mixed reality, the headless architecture ensures a consistent and delightful experience across all touchpoints. Headless commerce goes one step further than traditional omnichannel by presenting the underlying business logic layer, to any technology that wishes to interact with it, using well defined technology standards.
Traditional omni-channel systems don’t always expose the underlying mechanism to create new channels, you are therefore beholden to the software platform to bring out an offering for your channel of choice. Often the software provider themselves is tackling the challenges integrating several components behind the scenes, especially when they have grown by acquisition. Whilst this might work for typical and long established channels, it constrains your ability to innovate on your own terms, and creates a closed market of software offerings which commoditise each channel of engagement. Can you create that unique experience for your customers on a platform that has limited options for extensibility? maybe. Can your software vendor release new channels of engagement quickly? maybe, maybe not.
Headless commerce is the ability for you to either use the platforms first party option, ISVsAn Independent Software Vendor is a partner that builds, deploys, and sells industry-specific solutions., or extend / create something entirely unique using the same unrestricted access to the business logic, to either build an entirely new channel of engagement, or connect operational, fulfilment, logistical or otherwise technologies, to create a unique and differentiated customer experience like no other.
Inconsistencies in pricing, promotions, assortments, inventory, and any other technical challenge borne of not having a consistent a centralised set of business logic (such as buy online and return in store), are no longer a limitation of your systems, and instead are only limited by your appetite for growth.
Dynamics 365 headless commerce to the rescue
Microsoft know a thing or two about architecture, and they certainly put their technical eggs in the right basket with Dynamics 365 Commerce.
Since it was originally developed for Dynamics AX, originating as Axapta Retail by LS Retail (who are still market leaders today and operate as an ISVAn Independent Software Vendor is a partner that builds, deploys, and sells industry-specific solutions. for Business Central), Dynamics 365’s retail capabilities have undergone significant transformation into a headless commerce platform, rebranding twice:
- Once as Dynamics 365 for Retail, where Microsoft used the headless commerce capabilities to power several eCommerce providers such as Sana, Episerver, Sitecore and more alongside a native and web based Point of Sale, each powered by the headless capabilities.
- Secondly as Dynamics 365 for Commerce, where Microsoft introduced their own eCommerce platform, built on top of the headless engine and more.
In conclusion, headless commerce might sound like a tech buzzword term, but in reality, it’s a transformative approach that allows businesses to stay agile, responsive, and ahead of the competition. With Dynamics 365 Commerce and the open capabilities of headless architecture, combined with the Dynamics 365 customer experience platform, the future of e-commerce is not just about selling products – it’s about crafting seamless and unforgettable journeys for every customer, regardless of how, when, or where they choose to engage.