Shopify has evolved from a platform for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to a robust solution suitable for large and very large enterprises. It offers a flexible commerce engine with a thriving ecosystem of third-party apps, providing extensive customization and integration capabilities.
Shopify’s purpose statement is to improve commerce for everyone so businesses can focus on what they do best: building and selling products. Initially targeting entrepreneurs, Shopify now caters to large enterprises by emphasizing speed, adaptability, and total cost of ownership – all points covered by its core offering, which helped establish its strong foothold in the market.
Strengths and Misconceptions:
- Scalability: Shopify’s extensive user base and infrastructure support large enterprises, debunking the myth that it is only suitable for SMBs.
- Customization vs. Configuration: Contrary to the belief of limited customization, Shopify allows for extensive modifications and integrations, including the ability to build custom applications that are very well integrated into the core platform. In addition, its headless stack allows for very flexible content management capabilities.
- Features for B2B: Shopify provides robust features for B2B operations; furthermore, due to new global Fortune 100 clients (very complex international B2B environments), the Shopify product team has made significant investments to ensure their needs are met and benefit all enterprise brands on their platform.
- Integration Capabilities: Major integrations are supported, with the ability to build out any integrations your company desires as a custom application safely hosted on Shopify’s infrastructure.
- Security: World-class and resilient security practices within international standards and a solid commitment to governance.
As Shopify continues to move upmarket, it faces competition from established incumbents. However, innovative leaders in large enterprises are rethinking their technology stacks, recognizing Shopify’s potential to offer faster and cheaper commerce experiences while meeting their scalability needs. The unification of siloed commerce stores has also become a common theme that has accelerated the shift and focus to a single commerce core or engine, to serve customers better regardless of how they transact with the business.
Consumer behaviors from B2C are increasingly influencing B2B markets. Having dominated the B2C space, Shopify is well-positioned to lead in B2B by offering a cost-effective, flexible solution that enables rapid market entry. Although many of the customer journeys are different from traditional B2C experiences, the overall takeaway is that we must always take the initiative to consider the customer and employee journey to eliminate the pain where we can, putting the “human experience” at the core of any initiative should come before any technology discussions to achieve the best outcomes.
Shopify has stepped up its enterprise game over the last couple of years as a challenger platform, gaining much traction with extensive enterprise customers. The coming year will be the defining moment to see if Shopify’s platform can break the chasm and become more mainstream with large enterprise customers. We hope they continue to make the same strides and investments with the amazing attitude and energy we have seen these last couple of years. There is no doubt they will continue to rise as a top solution and partner.
If you have questions or need assistance executing these strategies, our team is available at hello@tidalcommerce.ca.
