Industry Brief

Beyond Technology Hype: Is Your Commerce Stack a Launchpad or a Liability?

Q1, 2025

The commerce technology landscape has reached a critical inflection point as organizations struggle to balance innovation with practical implementation. As digital commerce expectations continue to converge across B2B and B2C sectors, organizations are increasingly finding that their technology choices can either drive innovation or hold them back, with 56% of organizations regretting their largest tech purchases. This fundamental tension has created a false dichotomy between rigid, monolithic platforms that limit growth and over-composed architectures that introduce unnecessary complexity, hidden costs, and extended implementation timelines—ultimately undermining the very business agility they promised to enhance.

This report examines how businesses can move beyond architectural debates to focus on what truly matters: a commerce stack that delivers integrated business services with selective flexibility where differentiation is essential. It explores how modern commerce technology should be evaluated based on four critical metrics—faster time-to-market, customer experience innovation, cost efficiency, and revenue growth—rather than technical specifications or architectural philosophies. The analysis in the report provides a framework for achieving the optimal balance between pre-built capabilities and targeted customization, enabling organizations to launch quickly, adapt strategically, maintain stability, and scale efficiently without becoming software companies by default.