Which Commercetools Implementation Partner Is Best for Your Ecommerce Needs?

Interview with Kelly Goetsch, Chief Strategy Officer at commercetools

This is the fourth and final part of the interview series with Kelly Goetsch. In the previous three parts, we talked about the future of commerce, the challenges companies face in preparing for it, and how headless commerce platforms can help these companies. If you have missed the previous parts, you find the links to them at the end of this article. Now we discuss why commercetools should be the headless commerce solution of your choice and why Bright IT might be a suitable implementation partner for you.

Dennis: Let us talk about the vendors of headless commerce solutions. commercetools is, of course, not the only headless commerce vendor. Why exactly should someone choose commercetools over other vendors?

Kelly: We invented headless commerce back in 2013. And we have a different approach. We are just doing commerce, and we are doing it really well. Our competitors are trying to build a suite that is also headless and they are trying to do a little bit of everything: Call center, A/B testing, analytics, content management, etc. We fundamentally believe that commerce platforms are increasingly commoditized. And I think commerce is and should be commoditized and we, as the vendor, should just do core commerce really well. The other thing is a question of the size and scale of the company. We now have more than 300 employees. We are growing very quickly. We have most of the big enterprises running on our platform around the world, but especially in the US and Europe. For example, LEGO, AT&T, and Burberry. Companies that make billions of pounds or dollars a year online. They all went to us. So, we have the products. We have demonstrated scale. We quite literally invented this whole concept of headless commerce. And we were also named a leader by Gartner, Forrester, and IDC Marketscape. We are the only headless commerce platform to have been anywhere near that ranking.

“We invented headless commerce back in 2013.”

,says Kelly Goetsch, Chief Strategy Officer at commercetools.

Dennis: So, you just focus on the commerce component and enable all the other components to connect with it. And this is where the commercetools partners such as Bright IT come into play. They are the bridge between the commercetools platform and the client, advising them what other components to connect.

Kelly: Right. We at commercetools do not touch implementations. We have a handful of architects who are there just to get things started and then they leave. But we explicitly are not a services company. We require our partners to make our customers successful. They are the ones doing the implementations. So yes, our partners are a very integral part of our ecosystem.

Dennis: How many implementation partners does commercetools have?

Kelly: About 120 to 130 partners around the world. Among them are a lot of big partners, for example, EPAM, Valtech, Deloitte, and Accenture. We spend a lot of time with them as well.

Dennis: And next to those big names there are many smaller partners such as Bright IT. What are the advantages and disadvantages of choosing a smaller partner versus a bigger one?

“You have to find the partner that most overlaps with what you are using and what you need.”

, so Kelly Goetsch.

Kelly: I think working with a smaller partner you have a lot more control over who you get for your project. A lot of the success or failure of a project is dependent upon who staffs it. So, if you can book up Bright IT, you are in a better position to win the business and be successful with it. It is also a matter of specialization. Where and how regional are you? Do you do any vertical specialization? Do you have specific skills around the frontend or backend or around a specific cloud? It is a matching game. You have to find the partner that most overlaps with what you are using and what you need. Then, I think you are in good shape.

Dennis: One more interesting aspect about commercetools: Unlike most leading companies in the IT world, they are not based in Silicon Valley or Austin, Texas, but from Germany.

Kelly: Yes. We have to remember: Germany is the home to Hybris, which was bought by SAP; and Intershop, which was bought by Demandware, which then was bought by Salesforce. There are a lot of commerce solutions from Germany...

Dennis: … and from other countries, including the US and China. Thank you for the interview.

Kelly: You are welcome.