Complexity doesn’t arrive as a mistake. Often, it’s the by-product of trying to stay ahead.
A new integration, “just in case.”
A custom flow, “for flexibility.”
Another extension, “to future-proof.”
Over time, these well-meaning additions build up. The SAP Commerce environment grows cluttered with legacy configurations, redundant processes and bespoke logic that no longer reflects business needs.
In today’s fast-moving digital commerce landscape, especially sectors such as retail, where agility, customer experience and speed-to-market are everything, many organisations are discovering a hard truth: their SAP systems are doing too much.
A Quick Reality Check
- The Marketing team requests dynamic personalisation, but delivery takes months to be deployed because the platform has become too rigid.
- A regional rollout is stalled because of unnecessary code refactoring and dependencies.
- Business leadership find it hard to understand why a seemingly minor update triggers a cross-functional sprint involving multiple teams.
These are warning signs that your SAP Commerce platform may be over-engineered, solving problems that no longer exist, in ways that no longer create value.
What is Over-Engineering?
Over-engineering is the gap between ‘what and how’ something gets implemented and ‘how’ it should have been implemented. It often stems from designing solutions based on assumptions rather than validated use cases or from over-customising capability the SAP Commerce platform already provides out of the box. Some common examples include:
- A fully custom checkout experience built from scratch, even though SAP Spartacus templates could have met 90% of requirements with localisation.
- Real-time integrations with every backend system, where simpler, scheduled syncs would have delivered the same outcome with less complexity.
- Deep service abstraction for “future flexibility”, even when the business model hasn’t changed in years.
These decisions are usually made with good intentions: to future-proof, optimise or deliver faster. But when agility drops and delivery slows, it’s time to ask, is the extra complexity and cost worth it? The line between smart engineering and over-engineering is thin, especially with a platform as powerful and extensible as SAP Commerce. That’s why it’s critical to recognise the warning signs early and know when to simplify.
How Does Over-Engineering impact the Commerce Ecosystem?
When over-engineering takes hold, it doesn’t just affect the technology, it slows down the entire business. It introduces unnecessary complexity, drives up Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and creates risk and dependencies across areas where stability and speed are critical. Here’s how that impact can be felt across the organisation:
Building smart, doesn’t mean delivering less
A smart SAP Commerce implementation makes the most of what the platform already provides, meaning you build less, allowing you to move faster to deliver value. Here’s how to keep your SAP Commerce infrastructure efficient, scalable and sustainable.
SAP Commerce is a mature platform with a rich set of out-of-the-box capabilities, from storefront templates and headless APIs to promotional tools, data services and much more.
Before investing time and effort in custom development, take a step back. Many business needs can be met through configuration or by leveraging existing third-party integrations. Whether it’s multilingual localisation, identity and access management, rich media handling, fraud detection, or dynamic pricing, often there’s a native AddOn or proven integration already available. Examples include:
- Gigya for identity and consent management
- Certona for personalisation
- PayPal and Adyen for payments
- Adobe Analytics for performance and campaign insights
Tapping into the SAP Commerce ecosystem not only accelerates delivery, it reduces cost and implementation risk. But just as importantly, it requires discipline: knowing when to integrate and when to customise is key to keeping your platform lean and future-ready.
Design for Extensibility Without Compromising the Core
When custom functionality is needed, embedding logic directly into the SAP Commerce Cloud core creates long-term risk. It increases upgrade effort, introduces technical dependencies and potential technical debt and can compromise system stability.
That’s why SAP recommends applying Clean Core principles, an architectural approach designed to keep the core system lean, stable and upgrade-friendly.
This is where the SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) is essential. It enables a side-by-side extensibility model, whereby organisations can implement new business logic, services and integrations to run outside the SAP Commerce codebase. Here’s how the Clean Core + BTP model adds value:
- Preserve Upgrade Paths
Custom logic connects with the core via stable, well-defined, versioned APIs (REST, OData, GraphQL), reducing upgrade risk and promoting loose coupling. Therefore, keeping the core untouched. - Support Microservice-Based Extensions
Using SAP BTP’s Kyma runtime enables containerized, cloud-native development. This supports easier deployment of scalable, cloud-native microservices, event-based functions and API gateways that are independent of the SAP Core. - Reusable Services across the landscape
Extensions built on BTP can be standardised and reused across the broader SAP ecosystem, for example S/4HANA, Sales Cloud and Commerce. These make use of consistent APIs, security and integration patterns.
This approach protects platform integrity while accelerating innovation. It enables continuous delivery of new features without compromising the stability of your SAP Commerce foundation, which in turn lowers Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) over time. Smart extensibility protects your core and your future agility. Here are some real-world examples of smart, decoupled extensions using SAP BTP:
- Fraud Detection: Real-time order validation built via BTP, outside of core commerce flows, detects and blocks suspicious activity.
- Customer Feedback: Lightweight modules integrate into sales processes with no change to standard workflows, improving customer engagement and satisfaction.
- Sentiment Analysis: Machine Learning models analyse customer feedback in real time, delivering insights to sales and marketing, all running on SAP BTP.
- Dynamic Pricing: Market-specific pricing rules are managed independently via microservices, fully decoupled from commerce logic.
Apply Clean Engineering Principles
Clean engineering isn’t about doing less; it’s about doing what matters. By applying proven principles, you can reduce technical debt, speed up delivery and keep your SAP Commerce implementation focused on real business value. These principles help teams avoid over-engineering traps and keep commerce programmes agile, cost-effective and aligned to real-world needs.
- MVP Thinking
Not everything needs to be future-proof on day one. Start lean with a minimum viable solution that supports the customer journey and gets you live. Validate early with business users and evolve based on real feedback, not hypothetical use cases. - DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself)
Reuse templates, components and business logic across brands, regions and storefronts. It reduces redundancy, lowers maintenance effort and keeps your implementation streamlined. - KISS (Keep It Simple, Smart)
Simplicity isn’t a compromise, it’s a strength. Avoid unnecessary abstraction layers unless they clearly solve a business problem. Complexity should always have a purpose. - YAGNI (You Aren’t Gonna Need It)
Don’t build for what-ifs. If a feature isn’t on the roadmap or backed by a clear use case, hold off. Focus on delivering tangible value now, not imagined value later.
Lean Builds Start with Right Conversations
A scalable SAP Commerce implementation isn’t just about the architecture; it’s about the decisions made early on. The difference between a lean, future-ready solution and an over-engineered one often comes down to how you approach those first conversations.
A seasoned implementation partner can help spot where six weeks of custom code could be replaced with six lines of configuration and when extensibility is a better choice than deep customisation. The right partner delivers exceptional value by challenging assumptions, flagging complexity, before it creeps in and guide your teams toward smarter, more sustainable solutions.
Final Thought: Would You Build It This Way Again?
Your SAP Commerce platform should power your business, not hold it back.
Over-engineering adds friction, drives up costs and quietly limits your ability to innovate. But the good news? It’s fixable. You don’t need a complete rebuild to course-correct.
Start by auditing where complexity has crept in. Identify what’s genuinely needed and what’s not. Small, deliberate simplifications can unlock big gains. Because in omnichannel commerce, it’s not the most feature-rich platform that wins, it’s the one that delivers speed, flexibility and a sharp focus on the user.
