In the last two decades, the ways brands have delivered experiences, engaged customers and most importantly, made sales, has been in a state of flux.
We’ve gone from CMS to WEM to DXP (digital experience platform) and now via MACH to composable commerce and composable DXP.
In short, it’s been an upturned can of Alphabetti spaghetti.
In this piece, we track the progression of these approaches, namecheck this plethora of initialisms and try to explain where we are now.
We’ll be covering:
- CMS
- WEM
- MACH
- DXP
- Composable DXP
Although if you just came for the new stuff, why not download our report on DXPs and the future of eCommerce for free! (It’s basically this article but better – and it’s got pictures).
Download our composable DXP report here
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If you’re still with us, we’ll also get to:
- What exactly these platforms and approaches are
- How we got from one to the other
- What the future of digital experience and commerce will look like
A roadmap to composable DXP, stop one: the humble CMS
What does CMS stand for?
Content management system.
What does a CMS do?
Unlike the Swiss Army knives further down this list, CMSs have a simple remit.
As the tin suggests, a CMS allows marketers and webmasters to manage text, audio, video and multimedia web content.
The CMS’s place in the journey
If we place this in the context of the kinds of platforms that, for example, track users’ journeys across social, email and web – and make personalised recommendations based on AI insights, we can see that a CMS is a starting point.
However, it’s still an evolution from a hand-coded HTML site.
Stop two: the missing-link WEM
What does WEM stand for?
Web engagement management.
What is WEM?
Web engagement management is not strictly a technology in the same way that a CMS or DXP is.
Instead, it’s a framework for online marketing that emphasises the use of certain technologies.
The principles of WEM, which was a buzzword around 2010, include:
- Content optimisation
- Multi-channel management
- Conversational engagement
- Demand generation
- Sales automation
WEM’s place in the journey
We won’t spend too much time unpicking each principal, as the specifics are of their time.
For example, a key part of conversational engagement, in the WEM world, was the use of forums, whereas now community and engagement mostly takes place on social.
However, what you start to see – and what is in its most up-to-date incarnation in composable DXP – is an emphasis on technology that covers the entire customer lifecycle.
Stop three: not the return, but the arrival of the MACH (and composable commerce)
What does MACH stand for?
Microservices, API-first, cloud-native and headless.
What is MACH?
MACH is not a platform or a set of principles. It’s a group of technologies, which lay the groundwork for composable DXP.
So, let’s have a look at those letters:
- M – Microservices – a modular application architecture that splits an app up into microservices
- A – API-first – APIs enable communication between different software
- C – Cloud-native – more modern cloud technologies like serverless or containers
- H – Headless – a type of content management wherein content can adapt easily to various touchpoints, e.g. POS devices, mobiles and tablets
The effect of this combination of technologies is enabling modularity…or composability:
- Microservices are inherently modular
- APIs are the go-betweens that make all this modularity possible
- Cloud-native = same story for the infrastructure
- Headless means decoupling front and backend
And all this modularity is what enables ‘composable commerce,’ or composable DXP, in which digital experience platforms are ‘composed,’ from various best-of-breed services.
MACH’s place in the journey
MACH is the architectural and technological groundwork that makes this possible in most cases.
DXP/composable DXP – the final frontier
What does DXP stand for?
Digital experience platform.
What is a digital experience platform?
DXPs are more like CMSs than WEM or MACH in that they’re both types of platforms that aim to deliver on their acronymic promise.
In the spirit of WEM, DXPs aim to deliver at every stage of the customer journey. But unlike WEM, DXP means a purpose-built platform.
In practice, this often means DXPs are split into four functions:
- Content management
- Customer data and analytics
- Personalisation and marketing automation
- Integrations
This means that any DXP platform will be a workable CMS, have access to advanced customer analytics, use that customer data to personalise content across channels, and track all of these journeys, interactions and data at various touchpoints.
What is composable DXP?
Composable DXP is a modularised approach to building DXP capabilities. MACH technologies enable architects and developers to create compositions of services that best suit the business’s needs at any given time, leading to a leaner more flexible approach to eCommerce.
Composable DXP vs. monolithic DXP
In an interview singing the praises of composable DXP, one engineer told the story of a client paying six figures a year for a DXP feature they’d never switched on.
This story illustrates the general problem with out-of-the-box (monolithic) DXP: some of the elements – advanced ML-driven personalisation, for instance– are powerful, and go far beyond the requirements of many teams.
Composable DXP then, making use of MACH architecture, solves this.
Using microservices packaged to fulfil specific business needs – i.e. product search – a composable DXP solves the issue of redundancy while allowing scale-ups and enterprises to access the features they need as and when.
That’s why composable DXP is currently top dog – and why you should download our report!
Your place in the journey; our place in the journey
If you’re reading this, it’s likely you’re somewhere on that road from CMS to composable DXP.
And if that’s true, we’d like you to think of us as the conveniently placed Starbucks, KFCs, or handy fuel station along the way, though with more of a specialist, expert kind of connotation.
We’re a cloud-native MSP with a pioneering full-stack support offering, and what we can do is:
- Help guide you to the type of eCommerce, digital commerce or experience solution that fits your bill
- Manage and support your application 24/7
- Architect, manage and review your cloud-native infrastructure
From our work supporting Procook’s multi-million-pound eCommerce solution to the launch of Joe Wicks’ The Body Coach, we’ve made a name supporting complex, mission-critical apps.
So, a composable DXP is right up our alley. But wherever you are in your journey, it’s worth taking a look at our full range of managed services for eCommerce.
And, if you want to find out more about how we could help you, just get in touch.
