The advantages of adopting composable architecture are numerous and can have a significant impact on a customer’s digital experience—and a business’ bottom line. Benefits include:
- Increased flexibility and scalability
- Accelerated development
- Enhanced performance and personalization
- Unified brand voice
- Maximized content
- Expanded capacity for AI integration
- Improved cost efficiency
Increased flexibility and scalability
Having a digital experience built of individual components allows for sites to be quickly modified as needs arise and does not lock an organization into a single website presentation and functionality for years in between major redevelopments; instead, new components can be added (and unneeded ones removed) on a rolling basis as needs change.
Composable architecture enables organizations to scale their digital experiences more easily than with traditional architecture. Because each component operates independently, specific parts of the system can be expanded quickly based on demand without overhauling the entire infrastructure.
This flexibility also means no longer being strictly bound by the technical constraints of a platform. Composable is technology agnostic and therefore, it is possible to choose a toolset and development methodology that best suits a business model—audiences can be engaged with a toolset that directly fits the purpose and direction of business objectives. This freedom can net considerable gains in development effectiveness by genuinely allowing for the “right tool for the job” approach.
Accelerated development
The modern ecosystem provided by composable enhances development agility and deployment efficiency, because each component of a site can be developed and tested separately. This allows for easier adaptation to market changes and reduces time-to-market for new products and services. Additionally, the modular nature of composable architecture allows organizations to experiment and innovate rapidly. It is possible to introduce new features or updates without disrupting existing functionalities, enabling continuous improvement and responsiveness to market trends.
Separating architecture from content, as happens with composable, also speeds development because it allows content and technical teams to work in parallel, rather than sequentially, which can dramatically reduce project timelines by as much as 50%. Usually, this is not possible in a traditional content management system (CMS) scenario, because the system must be built before it can be used by the content creators. This makes deploying large projects faster and speeds the launch of marketing campaigns and updates to digital experiences.
Enhanced performance and personalization
A composable system can deliver seamless, personalized digital experiences across multiple channels, such as custom recommendations, real-time analytics, and interactive elements. This sort of personalized digital experience enhances user engagement and satisfaction, fostering brand loyalty and driving conversions.
Composable architecture also creates a process for easily connecting systems such as customer relationship management (CRM), call centers, and social media channels to develop a complete picture of each customer. Machine learning can further enhance this, providing deep insights about customers to get the best information / product to them right when it is needed. This ability to accurately understand and predict customer needs leads to increased sales and loyalty.
Unified brand voice
The reality is that a traditional CMS is not focused on managing content—it merely manages websites. In today’s digital environment, the conventional website is just one aspect of a digital presence, and in many scenarios, other channels are gaining greater importance. This distribution of digital infrastructure means increasingly, content is being created and stored in many locations—and therefore needing to be updated in multiple places. This, of course, leads to errors. But it is crucial that customers receive the same message and brand identity whether they interact with a website, a social media network, a chat-bot answers question, or by talking to Amazon Alexa.
Storing content in a composable system allows it to be created and/or updated once but displayed across all interfaces. This ensures consistent brand messaging and improves overall efficiency.
Maximized content
Content is an asset that should be exploited to its full potential. Building on a platform dedicated to making content a primary focus instead of being beholden to the presentation model (i.e., website) will reap huge rewards in the long term.
All companies must have a strong digital presence to compete, which, in many cases, means it is no longer sufficient to have content be in the sole domain of a marketing team or copywriter. Those teams need to maintain responsibility for coordinating and guiding content creation, but it is becoming increasingly necessary for content to be aggregated from multiple sources and distributed through various workflows.
This means platforms for collecting and distributing content must change. Tools need to be more straightforward to be usable without web expertise, and at the same time, they need to be more flexible to fulfill the digital vision. Once content is placed on a platform, the platform needs to be capable of distributing it seamlessly, consistently, and on demand—exactly what a composable system is designed to do.
Expanded capacity for AI integration
The modular nature of composable architecture makes it ideal for AI integration. The ability to mix and match components – and therefore AI tools – allows for maximum flexibility in how AI is used as part of a digital experience.
In the same way that breaking down large digital experiences into individual components makes it easier to develop new experiences by mixing and matching, AI components can be re-used and re-combined. And as AI carries its learning with it, the reused components will improve with each implementation.
Improved Cost Efficiency
By leveraging reusable components and microservices, organizations can optimize resource utilization and reduce operational costs. Composable architecture minimizes redundancy and streamlines development, leading to significant cost savings.
Furthermore, the ability to update or replace individual components without affecting the entire system reduces maintenance costs. Organizations can adopt a phased approach to modernization, spreading costs over time and avoiding expensive, large-scale upgrades. This is an effective way to future-proof digital development, as massive, expensive one-time upgrades are replaced by components that are changed out routinely as business needs and customer demands evolve.
