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Where services can & should play in the AI era

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A Practical Guide for Services Leaders

WHAT ARE THE BEST SERVICES OPPORTUNITIES IN THE AI Era?

AI represents both the biggest opportunity and the biggest disruption services firms will face in the next two to five years. 

For services leaders, the question is no longer whether AI matters. It’s where to focus, what to stop doing, which partners to prioritize, and how to evolve the business without losing momentum.

This guide offers a practical framework for evaluating AI services opportunities, understanding the enterprise AI stack and evolving vendor landscape, and narrowing in on where your firm as the right to win.

commercetools

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Last updated: January 2025

About the Company:

commercetools is a global leader and a go-to player in the growing composable commerce segment. As the company that originated the term “headless”, it has shaped the movement to a more modern, modular architecture that decouples technology components within a broader commerce system so businesses can adapt quickly to market changes and shifting customer demands.

Founded in 2006 in Munich, Germany, commercetools now has more than 600 employees across 12 international offices. While its roots are in traditional retail segments, commercetools has seen growing traction in healthcare, automotive, telecom and other B2B segments that have complex business relationships and procurement processes.

Company Stats:

CEO:

Andrew Burton

Market Segment:

Commerce

Number of employees:

600+

HOW TO BECOME A PARTNER:

commercetools Partner Program

About the Partner Ecosystem:

commercetools is a partner-first business that relies on software and service partners to fully deliver on the promise of composability and a modern user experience. The company’s culture recognizes the critical role partners play in helping each customer create highly customized, contextualized commerce experiences that serve as extensions of their brands.

The number of partners in the commercetools ecosystem has grown significantly year over year, and its ecosystem remains in growth mode as the company deepens relationships with existing partners, expands its GSI relationships, and onboards new specialist partners. commercetools keeps the bar high for all its partners knowing that the shift to MACH (Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native, and Headless) systems requires exceptional customer support.

PARTNER PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS:

  • Global partner-first business model, with solutions that are fairly services intensive 
  • Little to no competition from in-house professional services 
  • Shared focus on customer outcomes and empowering individual partners to demonstrate a unique value proposition in crafting world-class commerce experiences
  • A tiered system for service partners that rewards high engagement and CSAT
  • Formal partner steering committee offering cross-functional engagement opportunities
  • Market development funds available for co-marketing and campaign opportunities
  • Client success organization offering design, code and go-live readiness reviews

“Helping customers get to the ideal commerce experience requires a set of people who understand and have different perspectives they can bring to that problem. The world’s leading brands need flexible solutions to meet their specific needs and to meet them without boundaries.”

– Andrew Burton, CEO

Keys to Service Partner Success:

Partner success in the commercetools ecosystem starts with having an intimate understanding of a customer’s specific challenges, and a point of view that commerce is not an area for cookie cutter solutions. Because customer solutions often include multiple components, partners must be able to collaborate alongside other software and service partners to deliver commerce experiences within the context of each brand.

For partners to succeed in this environment, having deep expertise in commercetools is table stakes. Those looking to truly stand out must be able to serve as advisors across all the different customer touchpoints – to help inspire and define what great looks like in commerce and to point customers toward the solutions that will bring those exceptional commerce experiences to life.

“If you view technology as an enabler to your business outcome, then you need that technology engine to be highly performant, highly scalable, highly flexible. Because if that slows down, if your engine is slow, your business is slow.”

– Andrew Burton, CEO

Near-term Opportunities for Service Partners: 

commercetools is looking for consulting partners that are willing to collaborate and innovate alongside the company and its customers to reimagine best practices and deliver world-class commerce experiences across the customer journey.

It is looking for partners that can augment and extend a customer’s internal expertise both vertically or horizontally in key areas related to commerce. Those that are business advisors and thought partners on how commerce and the commerce stack is evolving, as well as technologists that can implement highly performant, agile systems.

commercetool’s Approach to AI: 

commercetools is leveraging AI within its platform to allow businesses to deliver hyper-personalized shopping experiences through real-time recommendations, dynamic pricing, and predictive analytics. Its API-first, headless architecture offers the flexibility for customers to incorporate their own AI models or third-party AI solutions.

“commercetools is the commerce platform for the AI-enabled world.”

– Andrew Burton, CEO