SCAYLE is designed for enterprise commerce
SCAYLE is an enterprise shop system enabling B2C brands and retailers to create unique customer experiences with ease. Its extensive feature set includes PIM, Shop Management, Checkout, and OMS, as well as functionalities for omnichannel, advanced promotions, and search—all unified within one intuitive user interface. In an interview with Fibre2Fashion, Country Manager UK & Ireland Craig Smith, explains how SCAYLE’s unified and composable approach is revolutionising enterprise commerce by seamlessly integrating critical functionalities, enabling rapid customisation to meet market trends, and driving efficiency and innovation while reducing the total cost of ownership.
SCAYLE promotes a ‘unified and composable tech’ approach. How does this differ from traditional microservices, and what advantages does it offer retailers?
Traditional microservices are not only highly granular but also complex, which requires a fairly large developer team and time to customise. Sometimes this can pay off, when you need to customise a lot, for example, in B2B use cases. However, most B2C use cases – no matter whether fashion, beauty, consumer tech, or another industry – need the same functionalities. For enterprise brands and retailers, these still come with a certain level of complexity, considering multiple brands, categories, and localisation efforts. Here’s where SCAYLE has its sweet spot. SCAYLE is designed for enterprise B2C, which offers a holistic and intuitive steering approach of all data within one central panel, while being able to customise on the go as needed, for instance to fit current market trends. So, we position ourselves in the middle between suite and microservice approaches, offering the best of both worlds, therefore driving efficiency as well as speed of innovation while cutting TCO (total cost of ownership).
Many enterprises worry about migrating their e-commerce platforms. SCAYLE claims a 100 per cent migration success rate. What key factors contribute to this track record?
We are deeply rooted in commerce and have many operational retail experts on board. That is certainly one of the contributing factors to conducting a successful migration in time, budget, and scope. Both sides speak the same language and can contribute to a swift migration. However, the process still requires great teamwork, full dedication and transparency from all involved parties as all migration projects are still complex, no matter what components you are implementing. Of course, it helps to have a unified platform, which already offers a comprehensive set of ready-to-use functionalities and integrations yet is highly flexible to adapt to each customers’ needs individually.
SCAYLE highlights predictable pricing and reduced TCO for businesses. How do you ensure cost-effectiveness without compromising on features?
SCAYLE offers a comprehensive set of native capabilities and ready-to-use integrations, accelerating speed and reducing costs because fewer third-party solutions are needed. But we not only maintain and advance these functionalities. We also continuously build new features, which are highly focused on creating value for all of our existing and new customers. In contrast to systems, which were not designed for enterprise commerce, we have few edge cases. That allows us to leverage the full technological benefits of our platform and quickly adapt to market developments as well as customer needs.
SCAYLE offers extensive developer resources and an academy. How do these initiatives help businesses optimise their use of the platform?
Our platform is highly intuitive. That is why we provide extensive resources for developers and business users alike. Business users need to be able to work independently without having to raise a ticket for creating a new country shop or setting up an advanced promotion. So, we provide them with everything they need to accelerate their workflows and maximise efficiency. This way, developers can focus on creating differentiating features, for example in the frontend. We believe developers need to have the freedom to code what they want. That is why we offer so many different options of support to leverage our platform.
With the rise of headless commerce, how does SCAYLE support brands looking to implement a headless or hybrid approach?
SCAYLE was built as a headless system, unlike traditional systems, which have merely added a headless functionality, for instance, a headless frontend. Our API-first approach therefore allows brands and retailers to easily extend the core with own-built or third-party integrations.
Headless commerce is being widely adopted by large-scale retailers. What are the biggest advantages and potential drawbacks of moving to a headless architecture?
Headless architectures benefit large brands and retailers because they allow for a high degree of customisation – at least when they are headless by design. The challenge comes when it is just ‘patched’ onto the originally monolithic platform, which is intrinsically tightly connected. That way you will have some components that are flexibly adapted – and for some, every update is a pain because you can never be sure what you will get. So, there are two guiding principles when you choose a headless architecture: It needs to be based on a modern, API-based architecture and should also include optionalities when it comes to feature use and extensibility.
How does SCAYLE’s AI-driven promotion engine enhance marketing campaigns for retailers? Could you share any success stories?
Our native-built Promotion Engine empowers business users to set up even complex logic themselves – without raising a developer ticket or making use of a third-party solution. We implemented best practices from high-growth retailers excelling in digital marketing. So now, customers can build campaigns in as little as 60 seconds, due to the intuitive workflow. Two examples of campaigns are: highly customised vouchers or buy X, get Y campaigns.
Our case studies give a great overview of how we help customers drive revenue and growth through our built-in features.
With the growing adoption of AI in e-commerce, how do you see AI-driven personalisation evolving in the next few years? What challenges do businesses face in implementing these technologies effectively?
AI will play a major role in how businesses will approach personalisation – that counts for search and product discovery just as much as customer service. As many solutions are still premature, the challenge will be how to adapt these capabilities reliably without compromising customer trust and loyalty. There is also a fair amount of scepticism among consumers regarding use of data. So, transparency is key when integrating new AI solutions. People are usually pretty adaptive if you do a good job explaining how this will benefit them and deliver solid results along with it. Testing the solution thoroughly, perhaps among a smaller target audience, can also help. If your commerce platform is flexible enough, you can easily run tests by on- and off-boarding tools as needed.
SCAYLE has helped luxury brands like Harrods expand globally. What are the biggest challenges in scaling an enterprise eCommerce business across multiple regions?
A short go-to-market, localisation, and connecting online with offline are some of the big challenges enterprise brands are facing in scaling their business internationally. With SCAYLE, brands have access to their data in one central location and can quickly set up a new country shop with a couple of clicks and using our built-in internationalisation features they can fully localise their content language, payment methods, warehouses, and more. They can also add local brick-and-mortar stores as pick-up options or fulfilment centres.
You have worked with major brands like Deichmann Group and Manchester United. What are some key lessons learned from implementing SCAYLE for such large-scale enterprises?
SCAYLE is designed for enterprise commerce, so we are all about growth and scalability. And in enterprise commerce it most prominently comes down to how you handle the complexity that comes with the sheer size of big enterprises. They usually have similar pain points but still require a certain level of customisation. That is why SCAYLE focuses on intuitive, powerful features that can easily be leveraged by business users in a unified panel experience while developers can dedicate themselves to creating differentiation instead of wasting time on maintenance and enabling business users.
The shift towards omnichannel retailing has accelerated post-pandemic. What key strategies should retailers adopt to create a seamless shopping experience across digital and physical touchpoints?
Do not think in silos. Sometimes store stock can still not be accessed online, to give one example. That causes major challenges in calculating and selling off stock either way. So be sure to get those hygiene factors in place first. The second step is to consider consumer needs. Retailers can drive foot traffic by offering exclusive drops in their stores by advertising them online. When brands create product passports, which are accessible in their online store but can also be scanned from physical tags in-store, they can meet customers’ expectations on sustainability information. Or retailers can connect their loyalty programme to targeted promotions across channels. And these are just a few examples.
The e-commerce landscape is evolving rapidly, especially in fashion and D2C retail. What key trends do you foresee shaping the industry in 2025 and beyond?
The use of AI, e.g., in search and personalisation, or the use of immersive content, like virtual try-ons / virtual reality, are certainly options retailers should explore this year. Particularly VR has come a long way and there are some pretty mature solutions on the market. In general, brands and retailers really need to focus on efficiency and profitability. When optimising their technology stacks, it is all about empowering business users to drive value with intuitive, powerful features, e.g., built-in promotions. Likewise, developers can create outstanding customer experiences, for example with dedicated loyalty programmes that adopt gamification to keep consumers in a native app and make them come back frequently. Mobile commerce is a must-win battle for retail with Gen Y and Gen Z.
How does SCAYLE plan to evolve its enterprise commerce offerings in the next five years? Are there any upcoming innovations or strategic partnerships one can look forward to?
We continuously evolve our platform and are in close collaboration with our customers to decide which capabilities will help them maximise their business results. We will introduce some of our latest developments in April, as part of our annual feature release ‘Enterprise Evolutions’.
