Guide

Understanding Spryker’s Recognition as a Visionary in the Gartner Magic Quadrant

An assessment of Spryker’s positioning in the 2023 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Digital Commerce
Content

Objective of this document

For enterprise commerce and IT executives, the 2023 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Digital Commerce is a highly valuable piece of analyst research that provides an understandable overview of a complex market. This document provides context and helps executives understand Gartner's assessment of Spryker in more detail. We will summarize the overall results and trends in the 2023 Magic Quadrant, and then zoom into the evaluation of Spryker. How did Gartner position Spryker on which criteria? What were the reasons for Gartner’s evaluation of Spryker? And what do these results mean for your business?

PART 01

The Hard Facts: Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Digital Commerce

What is the Gartner Magic Quadrant all about?

Founded in 1979, Gartner is one of the leading analyst firms worldwide. Its mission is to equip executives across the enterprise to make the right decisions and stay ahead of change. For that, their flagship publication is the annual technology research called Magic Quadrant where the most relevant industry vendors are assessed. It is called ‘quadrant’ as the final overview chart is segmented into four quadrants which divide the companies listed into four broad categories: niche, challenger, visionary, or leader.

The Gartner Magic Quadrant can be seen as a snapshot of the current market situation for digital commerce vendors. As the market’s overall direction is often evolving, so do Gartner’s evaluation criteria. The report also contains an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of each provider, which is a comprehensive and market-driven reflection of the current performance and vision of the providers.

With the increasing complexity of the digital commerce market, the importance of such an objective market overview to support the enterprise software selection process is critical. Gartner analysts have extensive relationships with enterprise business leaders and buyers of technology, and they study vendors very closely throughout the year.

The results of their comprehensive analysis are only published once a year. While Magic Quadrants are published for every conceivable tool and software category, this document focuses solely on the Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce in its most recent edition from August 2023.

Please note:

Gartner produces two annual evaluation reports on digital commerce; The Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce and Critical Capabilities for Digital Commerce. The Magic Quadrant report contains the Quadrant graphic and a detailed write-up on all the vendors as a business, as well as general conclusions and forecasted trends. The Critical Capabilities report looks at all vendors included in the Magic Quadrant, scoring and ranking each of them according to the depth of functionality for 5 separate use cases; B2C, B2B, B2C & B2B combined, Composability and Scale & Complexity. This document focuses primarily on the Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce report.

Overview of the 2023 Magic Quadrant

The 2023 Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce was released on XX August. The responsible analysts are Mike Lowndes, Jason Daigler, Aditya Vasudevan, Penny Gillespie, Sandy Shen and Yanna Dharmasthira. Overall, 18 vendors are included in the 2023 Magic Quadrant. The key results can be summarized as follows:

New Leaders Quadrant

  • Shopify has been recognized as Leader in the 2023 Magic Quadrant, while the other four players (Salesforce, commercetools, Adobe, and SAP) remain in the Leaders Quadrant. Both SAP and commercetools advanced in the Ability to Execute axis, while Adobe and commercetools moved backwards on the Completeness of Vision axis. Spryker is now squarely the most innovative vendor, farthest ahead in Completeness of Vision, with the exception of Salesforce.

Optimizely left the Quadrant & Shopware now a Visionary

  • Optimizely entered the Magic Quadrant as a Challenger in 2021, moved to a Niche Player in 2022, and in 2023, dropped out of the Quadrant entirely. Shopware has been a Niche Player for the past three years, moving gradually along the Completeness of Vision axis, and joins the Visionary Quadrant in 2023. Kibo has moved from Visionary to Challenger, while VTEX has moved up slightly in Ability to Execute.

2022 new entrants stayed as Niche Players

  • Sana Commerce, SCAYLE, and Infosys all joined the Magic Quadrant for the first time in 2022. In 2023, all vendors remain in the Niche Players Quadrant, along with Unilog. There is one new entrant to the 2023 Quadrant – The Hut Group (THG), entering as a Niche Player.

Spryker continues strong position as a Visionary

  • Spryker has advanced on the Completeness of Vision axis, securing its position as the strongest in this factor among the Visionary Quadrant. Oro has also advanced in Completeness of Vision, while VTEX has advanced in Ability to Execute.
PART 02

Spryker’s Evaluation in the 2023 Magic Quadrant

 

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Spryker is one of the fastest growing vendors in this Magic Quadrant.” – 2023 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Digital Commerce

 

Included in the Magic Quadrant for the fourth consecutive year, Spryker has been evaluated as ‘Visionary’ by Gartner. Spryker is positioned 2nd of all vendors for Completeness of Vision and 2nd highest for Ability to Execute in the Visionaries’ Quadrant.

In addition, Gartner scored Spryker in the top 5 (out of 17 vendors) in each of the five functional use cases in the Critical Capabilities supplemental report. Most notably, Spryker ranked top 2 for Composability against all B2B vendors. This positions Spryker very strongly, with enterprises increasingly looking for specific transformational functionality to move quickly, as well as change solutions or technologies rapidly.

By ranking Spryker as both Visionary in the highly competitive Magic Quadrant and top 5 for all Critical Capabilities use cases, Gartner is sending a clear signal that Spryker continues to be squarely positioned head to head with all large players in terms of composability and sophisticated B2B use cases.

In this section, we will take a closer look at Spryker’s evaluation to provide more context to Gartner’s assessment.

‘Completeness of Vision’ Axis

What does ‘Completeness of Vision’ mean?

‘Completeness of Vision’ stands for the forward-looking idea, strategy and future-proofness of the providers and how well they succeed in addressing the movements on the market and needs of tomorrow today.

Gartner definition: ‘Completeness of Vision' reflects the vendor’s innovation, whether the vendor drives or follows the market, and if the vendor’s view of how the market will develop matches Gartner’s perspective.

The standard criteria that are being assessed to evaluate the vendors’ ability to execute are:

  • Market understanding: The ability of a vendor to understand buyers’ needs and translate these needs into products and services.
  • Marketing strategy: Strength, clarity, and consistency of marketing messages throughout all channels.
  • Sales strategy: Strategy across sales channels to extend market reach, expertise, and customer base.
  • Offering (product) strategy: Solutions for current and future requirements in the vendor’s approach to product development and service delivery
  • Business model: The validity and logic of a vendor’s underlying business proposition in this market.
  • Vertical/Industry strategy: Ability to meet the needs of individual market segments.
  • Innovation: Marshaling of resources, expertise or capital for competitive advantage.
  • Geographic strategy: Quality of the locally adapted offerings outside vendor’s region of origin.

How did Spryker perform?

Spryker is in the 2nd spot on the x-axis Completeness of Vision among all vendors globally, solidifying Spryker’s innovative approach to digital commerce. For this category, Gartner measures understanding of market requirements, product features roadmap, and vision for the future of digital commerce. As the furthest along the Completeness of Vision axis of all the Visionary vendors, Gartner is sending a clear signal about Spryker’s ability to help enterprise businesses transform for the market of tomorrow.

As mentioned in the 2023 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce:

 

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Spryker is one of the few vendors that offers a modern, modular architecture yet also serves enterprise-level clients with B2B and/or marketplace business models.” – 2023 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Digital Commerce

 

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Spryker’s ACP is one of the few offerings in the market that seeks to make composable implementations easier by offering preintegrated solutions. Spryker provides access to a good set of tools and middleware to enable clients seeking composability instead of merely APIs.” – 2023 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Digital Commerce

What does Spryker’s result mean?

Included in the Magic Quadrant for four consecutive years, Spryker is one of the fastest moving vendors in terms of Completeness of Vision and Ability to Execute – with a solid position in the Visionary Quadrant and clearly competing with all other major players. Gartner is demonstrating the importance of innovation through composable architectures in driving the future of business commerce. Scoring highly for Composability in the Critical Capabilities report, Spryker’s modular architecture secures its spot as a strong vendor to help enterprise businesses with sophisticated transactional business models. This recognition by Gartner presents a bright future for composability and its impact on large enterprises across most industries.

‘Ability to Execute’ Axis

What does ‘Ability to Execute’ mean?

The ‘Ability to Execute’ stands for the already implemented, tangible and measurable business of the providers in the past year.

Gartner definition: ‘Ability to Execute’ summarizes factors such as the vendor’s financial viability, market responsiveness, product development, sales channels and customer base.

The standard criteria that are being assessed to evaluate the vendors’ Ability to Execute are:

  • Product: How well do the offered capabilities compete in the market?
  • Overall viability: The vendor’s financial health and practical success
  • Sales execution/pricing: Capabilities in (pre-)sales activities and their overall effectiveness
  • Market responsiveness/track record: Ability to respond to market changes flexibly and achieve competitive success as opportunities develop
  • Marketing execution: Clarity, quality, creativity and efficacy of the vendor’s activities to deliver their message and build a strong brand.
  • Customer experience: The relationship and enablement of clients to succeed.
  • Operations: The vendor’s ability to meet its goals and commitments.

How did Spryker perform?

In only its fourth year of inclusion in the Gartner Magic Quadrant, Spryker was once again recognized as Visionary. The strong advancement in both Ability to Execute and Completeness of Vision over the past couple of years has propelled Spryker close to the leader Quadrant in a relatively short period of time.

As mentioned in the 2023 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce:

 

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Spryker is one of the fastest growing vendors in this Magic Quadrant, boasting a high percentage of its customer base generating more than $100M in annual GMV, relative to most direct competitors.” – 2023 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Digital Commerce

What does Spryker’s result mean?

If the x-axis describes the potential and foresight of a solution, the y-axis represents the extent to which a vendor has been able to translate this vision into successful projects in practice. Spryker's strong advancement on the Ability to Execute axis reflects large enterprise B2B & B2C customer wins in all major regions, illustrating that Spryker is one of the fastest growing vendors in the Magic Quadrant.

Taken together, this result means that Spryker has demonstrated ability to execute its visionary understanding of the market and is recognized as a viable enterprise product by Gartner.

 

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As an organisation, Spryker have exceeded my expectations in terms of the support they have provided throughout the implementation and on-going operations of our marketplace. They assigned resources to our team during our initial development when we were having difficulties managing the project. We also had multiple requests above and beyond our initial contract which they approved and supported through to delivery in highly-efficient manner.” – Chief Operating Officer, Retail company, $50M Revenue – Gartner Peer Insights

 

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Spryker is probably The Most Modern E-Commerce System. Modern setup and architecture modularity, flexibility and agility perfect fit within an overall future-proof tech-stack excellent customer-support.” – Head of Global Digital Marketing, Consumer Goods company, $3B+ Revenue – Gartner Peer Insights

 

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Spryker's flexible features have significantly enhanced our digital presence, empowering our customers and boosting revenue. We successfully implemented it in various internal and external projects, customizing it to suit our unique business requirements. With the support of the Spryker team and active Slack community, we achieved our goals efficiently and on schedule.” – Sr. Software Engineer, IT Services company, $3B+ Revenue – Gartner Peer Insights

Spryker’s Vision for the Market

The following table shows several examples of how Spryker’s market understanding and solutions fit the future predictions by Gartner analysts. Gartner indicates concepts that will be crucial keys to success in the future of digital commerce. These future success factors match Spryker’s approach and value proposition today, which is why Spryker has been recognized as Visionary by Gartner.

Capability Capability
Definition Definition
Relevance according to Gartner Relevance according to Gartner
Spryker’s solution Spryker’s solution
Capability Enterprise Marketplace
Definition There are two different types of Marketplace models: Pure, or first party, Marketplaces and Enterprise, or first and third party, Marketplaces. In both models, the Marketplace Operator is running the platform. While only third-party Merchants are selling products in a Pure Marketplace, it’s Merchants and the Marketplace Operators that sell in an Enterprise Marketplace.
Relevance according to Gartner By 2023, organizations that have operated enterprise marketplaces for more than one year will see at least 10% increase in digital revenue.
Spryker’s solution Spryker is one of only three vendors to be recognized in the Magic Quadrant as well as the 2022 Gartner Market Guide for Marketplace Operation Applications. Spryker offers native Marketplace operation capabilities in the same platform as your regular B2B or B2C e-commerce. It is easy and profitable to transform existing online shops into an Enterprise Marketplace.
Capability Packaged Business Capabilities (PBCs)
Definition PBCs are a foundational technology resource of the composable enterprise. They act as the building blocks for rapid composition and recomposition of application experiences.
Relevance according to Gartner By 2024, 10% of digital commerce organizations will use packaged business capabilities (PBCs) to construct their application experiences.
Spryker’s solution Spryker’s modular platform architecture is based on PBCs. Customers can select and combine needed capabilities freely, enabling unprecedented flexibility and speed.
Capability Composable Commerce
Definition Composable Commerce architecture comprises of packaged components that can be individually used and connected with other providers, as needed. It is a way for businesses to select vendors based on “best-of-breed” principles instead of traditional “off-the-shelf” bundles.
Relevance according to Gartner By 2023, organizations that have adopted a composable approach will outpace competition by 80% in the speed of new feature implementation.
Spryker’s solution Spryker’s App Composition Platform allows customers to access 3rd party services in the most seamless, secure and curated way. Integration requires only a few clicks and provides the freedom to test different solutions with minimal effort and risk. Spryker’s ACP is one of the few offerings in the market that seeks to make composable implementations easier by offering preintegrated solutions. Spryker provides access to a good set of tools and middleware to enable clients seeking composability instead of merely APIs.
Capability Cloud / PaaS
Definition Platform as a Service (PaaS) is a model of cloud service for businesses. PaaS delivers a framework for developers who can focus on developing or extending the custom business logic on top of the fully managed application core.
Relevance according to Gartner By 2023, 80% of digital commerce implementations will be hosted on public cloud infrastructure.
Spryker’s solution Spryker is cloud-native. Spryker PaaS is best suited for digitally fast-growing environments with complex requirements. It is a fully managed, multi-tenant cloud offering with an end-to-end SLA that provides complete control over the application layer with no limits on customization and integration.

Digital commerce efficiency with Spryker

Spryker has been indirectly validated in both the Magic Quadrant and Critical Capabilities report for two consecutive years as one of the most visionary and cutting-edge commerce vendors. With an increased focus on cost saving and efficiency across the market, Spryker is able to assist customers with reducing spend in the short term with:

  • Pre-developed PBCs across all areas of commerce functionality. These reduce development and customization time, even for the most sophisticated use cases.
  • Industry-leading services and education (Spryker Composable Value Services). These are leveraged to reduce customer and partner time to MVP across the entire life-cycle, from ideation through to implementation.
  • Functionality across B2B, B2C, and Marketplace. Spryker’s one-stop-shop decreases overall cost of acquisition and integration of new business models.

In the long-term, Spryker can increase efficiency with:

  • Third-party integrations. With business users composing applications with one click, the time to market for new business opportunities is reduced.
  • The ecosystem of third-party modules. This curated selection reduces integration costs. 

Spryker’s Perspective

 

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The Gartner Magic Quadrant report is a must-read for any business leader. Technology selection is really tough, especially in digital commerce – different use cases, different markets, different industries make it a complex decision. That’s why I’m so grateful to the team at Gartner for their work on the 2023 Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce because all those different factors and metrics are embedded into the document, making it an invaluable asset for business executives evaluating commerce vendors. I really enjoy reading it every year because it also helps me to find out how we can position Spryker better, where we’re strong, where we can improve our functionality, and how we stack up against other vendors in the market. We’re thrilled to be included in the report for the fourth year running as a Visionary, and to be named one of the fastest-growing vendors in the Quadrant. We’re excited to see where the future takes us.” – Statement by Alexander Graf, Co-CEO

 

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Gartner impacts the buying decisions of thousands of enterprise B2B and B2C organizations, and Spryker’s evaluation in the 2023 Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce is an impressive validation of the progress Spryker has made in a very short period of time. As a former analyst at Gartner, I know how particular analysts need to be when evaluating companies for inclusion into the Magic Quadrant, let alone advancing their position to the top of the Visionaries quadrant. Spryker’s unprecedented move from new entrant to near market leader in only three years shows how Spryker has delivered value to businesses and pushed the market forward with a transformational vision.” – Statement by Chris Germann, Global Head of Analyst Relations

Disclaimer

All statements in this report attributable to Gartner represent Spryker Systems’ interpretation of data, research opinion or viewpoints published as part of a syndicated subscription service by Gartner, Inc., and have not been reviewed by Gartner. Each Gartner publication speaks as of its original publication date (and not as of the date of this document). The opinions expressed in Gartner publications are not representations of fact and are subject to change without notice.

Attributions

Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce, Mike Lowndes, Aditya Vasudevan, Penny Gillespie, Sandy Shen, Yanna Dharasthira, Jason Daigler, 21 August 2023.

About Spryker

Spryker is the leading global composable commerce platform for enterprises with sophisticated business models to enable growth, innovation, and differentiation. Designed specifically for sophisticated transactional businesses, Spryker’s easy-to-use, headless, API-first model offers a best-of-breed approach that provides businesses the flexibility to adapt, scale, and quickly go to market while facilitating faster time-to-value throughout their digital transformation journey. As a global platform leader for B2B and B2C Enterprise Marketplaces, IoT Commerce, and Unified Commerce, Spryker has empowered 150+ global enterprise customers worldwide and is trusted by brands such as ALDI, Siemens, ZF Friedrichshafen, and Ricoh. Spryker is a privately held technology company headquartered in Berlin and New York backed by world class investors such as TCV, One Peak, Project A, Cherry Ventures, and Maverick Capital. Learn more at spryker.com.

Spryker Website