Why complex pricing models do not need custom code

When most people think of “eCommerce,” they think of a digital shelf with products and a “buy now” button but commerce is actually much broader than that. It’s any time a customer transacts with your business.

One of the most enjoyable projects I have worked on recently was with an insurance company. If you know anything about insurance, you know their pricing models are incredibly complex. They use market aggregators that update rates periodically throughout the day, and they have massive lists of serviceable addresses that need to be cross-referenced in real-time.

Standard eCommerce solutions just aren’t built for that.

The challenge was linking these complex pricing structures to the website so a customer could perform an address lookup and get a real-time quote. Normally, a business would have to build a completely bespoke, in-house application to handle this.

Because StoreConnect is built with advanced server-side tools, we were able to look up that data directly and provide it to the customer from an object structure that is not even “native” to a typical eCommerce solution. We could reach out, touch those data objects, apply the logic and make it a seamless part of the experience.

The fun part of this project was proving that you do not need a custom-built, “janky” hack to solve a unique problem. This insurance company was able to take an off-the-shelf SaaS product and configure it to work with their complex market norms.

It’s a perfect example of why I say StoreConnect is a platform for your business, whatever that business may be. Whether you are selling a t-shirt or a complex insurance policy, the technology should work for you, not the other way around.

Have a complex pricing model that retail tools can’t handle? See how our advanced tools can help.