SELECTING YOUR TECH STACK

Why Discovery & Strategy is Critical to Success 

The right technology for your business is highly dependent on your business needs. Having the newest platforms in your tech stack isn’t worth it in the long run if they don’t meet your objectives and needs. The goal: make your tech stack fit your business, not the other way around.

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Acro Commerce has a robust partnership network. It is one of the many reasons clients choose to work with us. Does that mean if you work with Acro Commerce, you are guaranteed to utilize our partner network’s technologies as well? In reality, that depends on your needs. 

Finding The Right Tech For Your Exact Use Case

Working in the B2B and manufacturing sectors, a myriad of factors determine our recommended path forward for you. Thankfully, our in-depth Discovery and Strategy process helps navigate that path, weighing the pros and cons of each proposed technology while accounting for your existing tech stack, complex operations/workflows, and hundreds of other influencing factors.

From there, our team and a Solution Architect will assemble a plan and a technical architecture document outlining our advised solution for your needs. It may include platforms and integrations from within our partner network, or it may not. 

At the end of the day, we partner with these companies because they are the “best in the business,” but we want to ensure they’re the best for your business first. 

The Newest Tech Doesn’t Always Fit

Companies that have had Drupal in their technology stack for several years often come to us looking for advice on improving their tech stack. These setups no longer align with current objectives, and every stakeholder, from Marketing to IT, has their own pains and complaints about the platform. Unfortunately, this is not uncommon, but we can tackle it.

Case Study: Presenting All The Options

We recently had a company come to us in this situation. We were excited to show off and introduce them to our partner network on the ecommerce and CMS side of things. 

The meetings went great, as expected, with talented and knowledgeable people on both sides of the table. We presented each solution and were open about its benefits and limitations. After all, B2B ecommerce is a complex beast still in its infancy. 

Afterwards, we set up demonstrations with the client to see the application of our partner systems and Gesso, our headless development accelerator, in real life. The client was excited by all the options and eager to get into the nitty-gritty and find out how it would fit their exact business. 

Uncovering A Perfectly Tailored Solution

The client allowed us to take this away, understand their feelings about each technology, and continue our discovery and strategy process. The next step included looking at every piece of the puzzle and comparing it against the client’s needs.

Allowing our Solutions Architect time to dig into the existing technical architecture, we aimed to understand their business nearly as well as the client and how our partners might affect the ecommerce ecosystem. By understanding the root of the client’s technical pains, we were able to weigh them against the other factors at play (budget, time-to-market, etc.) and come up with a comprehensive recommendation. 

Ultimately, our recommendation was to decouple the existing Drupal architecture, leverage our Gesso accelerator to help scale our efforts across their multiple properties and update existing frameworks to eliminate the need for rebuilding. 

This solution did not use the technology we demonstrated from our partner network. The client’s need simply didn’t warrant using any of our partner’s tools, even though they were the latest and greatest.

Factors that played into our recommendation

• Custom functionality
• Size of the migration
• Need for highly specific roles and permissions
• Existing architecture 
• Commerce limitations
• Multi-site demands
• Budget

In this scenario, our custom solution didn’t include our new partners just because they are the “best in the business.” We believe in a combination of best-of-need and best-of-breed, with the client’s requirements coming first. 

Opportunities to integrate our partners may come later for this client, but until then, we will hone and focus on the client’s needs first.

Want to know how to set your tech stack up for success?

Reach out to our team of experts and let us find the exact solution that works for your business.