A few years ago, Headless Commerce was hailed as a breakthrough for digital commerce. In our 2021 blog, we explained how decoupling the frontend from the backend allowed companies to be more flexible and improve their digital customer experiences. Headless was the antidote to rigid monolithic systems where even minor changes required massive effort.
But times have changed. The companies that embraced Headless are now facing a new set of challenges:
So the question is no longer: Should you go Headless?
It’s: How can you gain flexibility without getting tangled in technical dependencies?
The answer isn’t more microservices or more flexible APIs. It’s a new mindset: Commerce Orchestration.
This concept builds on—and goes beyond—Headless and Composable Commerce. It empowers companies to control digital business processes with no-code tools, apply automation intelligently, and drastically reduce IT dependency. In other words, the agility Headless promised is finally becoming reality.
In this article, we’ll explore why Headless and Composable aren’t enough—and how Commerce Orchestration points the way forward.
As the limitations of Headless Commerce became clear, Composable Commerce emerged as the logical next step. Instead of relying on one monolithic platform, businesses could mix and match modular, API-first services to build a tailored solution. On paper, it seemed like the perfect answer to Headless Commerce’s challenges.
In reality, many companies that adopted Composable Commerce are now struggling with unexpected complexity and high costs.
The core idea of Composable is compelling: use best-of-breed solutions rather than one-size-fits-all platforms. Choose specialized services for product management, checkout, personalization, loyalty, and so on. But here’s the catch:
The result? Companies end up writing tons of custom code to tie their microservices together—exactly what they were trying to avoid.
Composable Shifted the Problem—It Didn’t Solve It
Rather than reducing reliance on big platforms, Composable Commerce introduced a new kind of dependency: the custom code trap.
In monolithic systems, everything was bundled in one place. In Composable architectures, companies have to stitch together all their own processes. What’s often overlooked:
The result? Slower innovation cycles, higher maintenance costs, and architectures so complex they become nearly unmanageable.
Composable was supposed to make companies more agile. But for many, the opposite happened: IT is overloaded with integrations, business processes can’t be adapted quickly, and development costs are spiraling out of control.
What’s needed is a fresh approach—one that retains Composable’s benefits while avoiding the custom code trap. That’s where Commerce Orchestration comes in.
How can businesses leverage Composable’s flexibility without falling into the custom code trap? The key isn’t more microservices—it’s a smart layer that orchestrates them all. No extra code. No manual integrations. No IT bottlenecks.
We call this layer: Orchestration
While Composable focuses on connecting services via APIs, Commerce Orchestration goes further. It lets you automate business processes intelligently—without writing a single line of code.
Say you want to add a new payment method. In a typical Composable architecture, you’d need to:
With Commerce Orchestration, it’s different: The new payment method is added via a no-code interface. The process remains fully controllable—with zero developer involvement.
Three Core Benefits of Commerce Orchestration
Emporix’s Orchestration Engine is one such orchestration layer for commerce. It lets you design digital workflows with drag-and-drop simplicity—instead of drowning in code.
Composable Commerce made digital business more flexible—but at the cost of rising complexity. Commerce Orchestration removes that complexity and enables true agility.
To stay competitive, businesses need more than just the right tools. They need a commerce platform with an intelligent layer that orchestrates their systems. That’s what makes Commerce Orchestration the next big leap in digital commerce.
Theory is good, but real business cases are better. Let's take a look at how companies are using commerce orchestration to reduce complexity, automate processes and respond faster to market changes.
With Emporix, AmerCareRoyal automated its entire order handling—without writing a single line of custom code.
Faster order cycles, reduced manual work, and a more agile business model.
Using the “Strangler Fig” approach, HABA modernized step-by-step:
HABA modernized its stack without replatforming—and now has a flexible system that grows with the business. The TCO, or total cost of ownership, has been reduced by 50%.
The Solution
Emporix enabled:
Faster market entry, lower IT costs, and a scalable architecture.
Like HABA, many companies want to modernize without tearing down everything they’ve built. Full replatforming isn’t always realistic—too costly, too risky.
Commerce Orchestration enables a smooth transition: Instead of replacing your platform all at once, you “wrap” it piece by piece with modern services. This “Strangler Fig Pattern” allows for safe, controlled modernization where legacy and new systems work together.
Learn more in our deep dive:
For HABA, this meant phasing out legacy system functions over time—avoiding a big bang replacement while still achieving modernization.
Many businesses hesitate to adopt new technologies out of fear of expensive replatforming projects. But Commerce Orchestration offers an alternative—a low-risk, step-by-step path to modernization that builds on what you already have.
With this approach, companies can evolve their digital infrastructure flexibly and cost-effectively—without the burden of massive migration projects.
Ready for the Next Step?
Digital commerce is evolving fast. Headless and Composable were important milestones—but many businesses are now stuck in a spiral of complexity and mounting IT costs.
Commerce Orchestration is the way out of the custom code trap—and the path to truly future-proof digital business.