Insights
Going Headless? Know Your Business Type
- Article
- 6 MIN READ
- Jul 2, 2020
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Matt GouldChief Commerce Officer
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Dom SelvonChief Technology Officer
Summary
The business case for moving to a headless commerce and content platform is increasingly well understood. Small and large businesses alike are recognizing the benefits and competitive advantages that come with the microservices-enabled, future-fit approach.
But while appreciation for headless grows, many overlook what it takes to execute. Each business must navigate the process differently, and depending on its unique attributes, existing technology stack, and future goals, the journey can look quite different. In addition to rolling out new technology, the shift requires a major update to a team’s operational workflows.
So, how can businesses understand their unique position and what to look out for when embarking on the journey to headless?
Reflecting on our experiences from working with clients over the years, we’ve noticed there are a handful of categories that businesses typically fall into when looking to make the switch. We’ve outlined each type of business below, along with our observations of their strengths and weaknesses.
While these business types are not meant to be exhaustive, our framework is designed to provide some nuanced insight into the risks and opportunities of moving towards a headless setup, depending on your stage of business maturity. Let’s take a look at the four common categories we see.
1. DAMS: Digitally Ambitious, Mid-Size
DAMS, or digitally ambitious mid-sized businesses, often have the most to gain when moving to a headless setup.
Businesses in this category have likely been operating online for some time. They use an aging monolithic solution and know they have to re-platform soon. They need to evolve their brand and product to engage a younger audience in new ways but are often constrained in doing this because of their size, limited technical capabilities of their internal team, and their available budget.
They find themselves looking enviously at peers who are moving to headless, but struggle to get buy-in to move the business case forward internally. Often they end up moving to the next generation monolithic, or ‘shop-in-a-box,’ as the technical and operational overhead of moving to headless becomes too much. These businesses could benefit from enlisting the help of a seasoned guide to navigate conversations around setting expectations for ROI, charting growth milestones, and keeping budgets and timelines in check.
2. VIMS: Vertically Integrated, Mid-Size
VIMS, or vertically integrated mid-sized businesses, typically have very knowledgeable and able IT teams.
These companies may be fledgling startups and have a few successful years of doing business under their belt. They are already seeing success operating online by focusing on a specific set of products and services. This success has set them up for more growth, presenting them with the opportunity to upgrade their platform. Their IT team and UX designers are typically curious, growth-minded, self-learning engineers who embrace innovation and automation. They are genuinely interested in solving challenges that come with moving to new technologies.
Employees at these businesses are usually highly motivated and engaged in driving the transition and will invest significant time and effort in doing so. This often results in teams burning through more time and resources than they should, which can hold up delivering the business value needed to make the project a success long term.
3. LETS: Large Enterprise, Tech Savvy
LETS, or large enterprises that are tech-savvy, typically have the people, knowledge, and capital needed to succeed.
These businesses will often opt to pay for an external consultancy to help guide the project, and usually begin independent efforts to prepare for the coming changes. While they’re in a good position to progress nicely, they’ll be learning a lot along the way due to the sheer scale and complexity of the target architecture they’ll need to create. Often the project transition phase and steps are so massive that things will take much longer than anticipated.
As a result of project scope creep, the goalposts will often end up moving drastically as the business must continue to operate while the transition is still underway. Decisions made at the start may become rapidly outdated as the business responds to external pressures and challenges along the way. LETS will often re-organize themselves using entirely new team structures that are aligned to the increasingly popular ‘tribes and squads’ engineering operating model.
4. LENTS: Large Enterprise, Not Tech Savvy
LENTS, or large enterprises that are not tech savvy, have a significant opportunity to benefit from a move to headless and microservices technology. They typically possess the necessary budget and resources required to make the shift, and there is a positive appetite for the overall business case.
These businesses often have deep silos that exist between the strategy and IT teams and will have a gap in the skills and expertise needed to execute the plan. Often it is the executive team, not the IT team, that is driving the business case towards headless due to them seeing competitors or peers moving faster and reaping the benefits in the market.
LENTS are potentially quite vulnerable due to their lack of agility and innovation. They may have enjoyed significant revenue or success in the past, but urgently need to modernize their operations to hold on to their market position. They might find themselves increasingly at risk from startup disruptors or other large enterprises that are moving faster, like LETS or DAMS. These peers will often recognize the struggle LENTS have to innovate and will seek to capture their weakening market share. LENTS typically don’t know how to facilitate the level of feature development needed to move towards headless, never mind the operational changes required. This often makes them entirely reliant on third-party service providers (requiring deep pockets) to drive the change.
In Summary
The intention here is not to pigeonhole your business into one of these categories. It’s to bring to light some of the common challenges and opportunities we see in across the spectrum of clients that we work with, and provide you with an instructive framework with which to evaluate your situation.
Successfully moving towards a headless environment is possible for any business with the right mindset, commitment, and guidance along the way. If you’re looking for support in this process, reach out to someone on our team and we’d be happy to discuss your needs.
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