As Accorin grows, we continue to explore partnerships with software and platform companies that help our clients achieve success. The latest addition to our e-commerce platform capabilities is BigCommerce. We’ve recently been accepted into their Solution Partner program and soon we’ll be offering it as an option to our clients for those we collaboratively believe it might be the right fit. In our experience, becoming an Official Solution Partner is always a strict, thorough process and the experience with BigCommerce has been no different – which is why we’re confident that gaining their approval is proof that we’ll be able to create e-commerce experiences on BigCommerce that will be of the highest quality.
We only offer our clients e-commerce platform options where we believe we can truly be experts, where we can leverage our deep experience and skills in system integration, and where we believe the option is complimentary (not exclusive) to the others. With BigCommerce, our total offering would only include three platforms that we would propose to clients:
- Magento
- Shopify
- and now, BigCommerce
Why We’re Adding BigCommerce to Our Offering
Mid-Range SaaS Offering with B2B Capabilities
Accorin has a strong record of working with manufacturers, distributors, and other types of B2B businesses that rely on B2B e-commerce for a significant portion of their revenue. Many of these businesses have complex requirements, integrations, and customer profiles that make Magento the right fit. Magento has the deepest out-of-the-box B2B functionality and that will continue with the release of new B2B features in V2.4 August 1.
However, some organizations want the simplicity of SaaS at the sacrifice of flexibility and they need also need robust B2B capabilities. Manufacturers and B2B Catalog businesses are just two examples of business types that have mid-range complexity but they need an offering that is a small “step down†from Magento.
We have encountered a number of prospective clients like this and so it is an important reason why we believe Big Commerce will help us and companies in this niche.
If You’re Looking for Headless e-Commerce, BigCommerce Allows Speed-to-Market
Because it is SaaS, BigCommerce will provide us with a faster-to-market headless option when compared to Magento. We sacrifice some customizability and flexibility, but we’re excited to work with some merchants that have creative ideas for new e-commerce user experiences and that create a lot of deep content around the actual catalog shopping experience.
We know with our experience we’ll be able to give these clients the type of webiste experience they want, but we’ll also be able to supplement that with our strong capability in system integration.
And on that point…
SaaS that Supports Complex Integrations Efficiently with RocketFlowz
The Accorin team has deep experience integrating e-commerce platforms with a number of ERP, CRM, PIM, ESP, and other types of digital business systems and marketing automation systems. 95% of our maintenance and support clients task us with enhancing and monitoring complex integrations, so we’re excited to offer our capabilities to current and prospective BigCommerce merchants.
To offer greater efficiency to our clients, we developed our own Enterprise Application Intergration (EAI) tool, RocketFlowz, that gives us a head start since our API integrations are already complete. We believe that RocketFlowz (which is already being offered to Shopify merchants) will offer BigCommerce merchants a way to improve their shopping experiences and reduce the overhead associated with system integration issues.
Furthermore, BigCommerce merchants that have been contemplating complex integrations can now inquire about getting it done with Accorin and RocketFlowz – which gives us a significant head start into even the most complex integrations.
SaaS, But with Incredible Front End Customization Opportunities
We like what we’ve seen so far out of the BigCommerce Stencil front end framework. We believe that the Stencil-based front end architecture will allow us to create more compelling front end design and UX. We have an incredibly talented UX and design team at Accorin – Stencil allows us to accommodate the visions of our the creative team, which can be hindered in other platforms.
To quote BigCommerce:
“Stencil is BigCommerce’s theme engine. It incorporates industry best practices in technology, design standards, SEO, and allows developers to build a stunning storefront that engages shoppers and encourages checkouts on any device.â€
We believe that using Stencil, we’ll be able to create compelling themes that have a deep variety of experiences that meet the needs of many different types of brands – quickly.
The Bottom Line
We’re adding BigCommerce to our bag of tricks because we know it’s a good fit for the SMB and midmarket merchants that need more than Shopify but that don’t have the complexity and the need for Magento. We also know that we can leverage our existing expertise in integration and our RocketFlowz offering to provide the BigCommerce Solution Partner program with an exciting new option: Accorin!
Get in touch if you’re considering an e-commerce website project or if you’re already running on BigCommerce and are ready for a fresh perspective on growing your e-commerce business.
