When commerce platforms become the constraint

A major media publisher running hundreds of websites reached a breaking point with SAP Commerce. Each new website required extensive customization, driving up both cost and complexity.

The challenge wasn’t scale alone — it was diversity. The business needed to support fundamentally different revenue models across sites, including:

• Physical products (textbooks)

• Digital products (eBooks, online courses, research databases)

• Rental products (120-day and 150-day textbook rentals with reverse logistics)

• Subscriptions (monthly and annual access with auto-renewal)

• B2C catalog pricing

• B2B customer-specific and volume-based pricing

At the same time, different business lines ran on different backend ERPs, including AS/400, SAP ECC, and Microsoft Dynamics.

SAP Commerce could not support this complexity without massive customization. Each new site took close to a year to launch. Licensing and hosting costs continued to rise. The platform dictated how the business operated instead of adapting to it.

The false choice between customization and consolidation

The publisher was presented with a familiar enterprise tradeoff.

They could continue customizing SAP Commerce, accepting:

• Escalating licensing and hosting costs

• Increasing technical debt

• One-year launch timelines per website

• Limited ability to experiment with new models

Or they could force standardization across the business, which meant:

• Abandoning unique business models per website

• Losing the ability to mix rentals, digital, physical, and subscriptions in one cart

• Sacrificing competitive differentiation in a rapidly changing media market

Neither option was acceptable. Customization didn’t scale, and standardization wasn’t viable.

A flexible commerce layer over a multi-ERP backend

Instead of doubling down on SAP Commerce, the publisher replaced it with viax as a flexible commerce and execution layer spanning multiple backend ERPs.

viax centralized commerce logic while allowing fulfillment and financials to remain where they belonged. This immediately delivered several benefits:

• Eliminated SAP Commerce licensing and hosting costs

• Supported mixed product types in a single cart

• Routed orders to the correct backend ERP transparently

• Reduced new website launch timelines from ~1 year to 1–2 months

• Preserved unique business models per site

Commerce stopped being a monolithic platform and became a reusable execution layer.

Modeling mixed product carts without custom code

No single commerce system could support the publisher’s full product mix. viax unified them through workflow-driven execution.

A single transaction could now include:

• A 120-day textbook rental with return logistics

• A physical supplemental product

• A purchased eBook

• A subscription to a research database

Subscriptions supported:

• Monthly or annual billing

• Auto-renewal

• Cancellation and proration

Digital products integrated with learning management and access systems, where entitlements were granted or revoked automatically based on purchase or subscription status.

Complexity wasn’t avoided — it was modeled explicitly and executed consistently.

Multi-ERP routing without customer impact

The publisher’s growth through acquisition created a multi-ERP landscape:

• Flagship B2C sites on AS/400

• Assessment businesses on Microsoft Dynamics

• Other business lines on SAP ECC (with S/4HANA planned)

viax handled routing logic based on originating website, directing orders to the appropriate ERP without exposing any backend complexity to customers.

The result:

• Seamless customer experience across all sites

• No forced ERP consolidation

• Faster onboarding of acquired businesses

• Clean separation between commerce execution and fulfillment systems

Speed, scale, and sustained flexibility

Before viax, launching a new website took close to a year and required deep platform customization. With viax, launches dropped to one or two months — an 83–92% reduction.

Teams gained the ability to:

• Experiment with new pricing and product models

• Launch B2B and B2C sites side by side

• Maintain a clean frontend architecture

• Reduce long-term technical debt

Hundreds of websites now run on a single commerce layer, each preserving its unique business logic while sharing execution infrastructure.

Why this pattern matters

Traditional commerce platforms force enterprises into a false choice: accept escalating customization costs or constrain the business to fit the platform.

This publisher chose a third path. By separating commerce execution from ERP and modeling real-world complexity once, they reduced costs, accelerated launches, and built a platform that evolves with the market.

They didn’t simplify their business to fit their systems.
They built systems that fit their business.