Salesforce Commerce Cloud

Commerce Cloud is a multi-tenant, cloud-based commerce platform that empowers brands to create intelligent, unified buying experiences across all channels - mobile, social, web, and store.

History/Details

In 2016, Salesforce acquired Demandware, a cloud-based provider of e-commerce services, that provides a unified e-commerce platform with mobile, AI personalization, order management capabilities, and related services for B2C and B2B retailers around the world. The company was subsequently renamed Salesforce Commerce Cloud.

Salesforce Commerce Cloud is a highly scalable, cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) ecommerce solution which provides a hosted service that would enable companies to develop and manage easy-to-use, customizable e-commerce websites, rather than building a site from scratch.

The Commerce Cloud offers businesses a full suite of eCommerce applications for handling customers/clients and vendors/suppliers including data integrations, CDP for loyalty management, omnichannel inventory, social media integration, and a whole lot more. But the 3 Primary Applications that deal directly with sales, marketing, and supply chains are:

1. B2B Lightning Commerce
2. B2C Commerce
3. Order Management

History/Details

In 2016, Salesforce acquired Demandware, a cloud-based provider of e-commerce services, that provides a unified e-commerce platform with mobile, AI personalization, order management capabilities, and related services for B2C and B2B retailers around the world. The company was subsequently renamed Salesforce Commerce Cloud.

Salesforce Commerce Cloud is a highly scalable, cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) ecommerce solution which provides a hosted service that would enable companies to develop and manage easy-to-use, customizable e-commerce websites, rather than building a site from scratch.

The Commerce Cloud offers businesses a full suite of eCommerce applications for handling customers/clients and vendors/suppliers including data integrations, CDP for loyalty management, omnichannel inventory, social media integration, and a whole lot more. But the 3 Primary Applications that deal directly with sales, marketing, and supply chains are:

1. B2B Lightning Commerce
2. B2C Commerce
3. Order Management

B2B Lightning Commerce

Along with all original features which CloudCraze provided, B2B Lightning has the added advantage of speed and simplicity – storefronts can be configured with just a few clicks. It is a solution designed to help businesses sell more effectively to other firms, using advanced personalization features.

Vendors/suppliers working in low-volume, high sales price segments are the target demographic of this application. If you are looking to build a B2B eCommerce site from scratch, Lightning Commerce is the ideal solution.

If you have an already working site that was built on an older Salesforce framework, you can still use CloudCraze. Dubbed “B2B Classic” – it is still available for customers who already have their sites built on the Classic architecture.

B2C Commerce

Just as B2B Lightning is the modern iteration of CloudCraze, B2C Commerce is the evolution of Demandware into a fully native Salesforce application. It puts a lot of emphasis on creating unified digital experiences.

Retail businesses can create storefronts that work across many platforms, with a special focus on Salesforce mobile payments and purchases. The application allows extensive personalization of catalogs, accounts, payment options, ordering processes, and more.

Advanced features like multi-language support, social media linking, SEO, localized shopping, custom marketing campaigns, innovative promotions, and more. If you are into online retail and consumer packaged goods (CPG), with high volumes and low sale prices, this application is aimed at your business.

Order Management System

From providing payment options to processing orders, managing deliveries, returns, and cancellations, the eCommerce purchase journey has several stages. The new, Lightning-based order management system (OMS) is designed to provide maximum visibility from the start to the finish of a customer’s order fulfillment journey.

The service is available for both users of the B2B and B2C Commerce cloud applications. Salesforce has also given an option to use the OMS as a standalone app if your storefront is based on an external platform like Magento.

With Commerce Cloud and OMS, firms can add features like self-service, easy returns, accurate status on product inventory availability, full transparency on order status, and provide an overall better online customer experience.

Why Commerce Cloud and Value Proposition

What are its top features?

Since the platform has a range of market-leading features, there are several benefits to implementing Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

Robust Marketing Tools: Commerce Cloud's marketing toolkit enables customers to quickly and efficiently find the right products to increase conversions and sales. It also allows businesses to create, manage, and share engaging, optimized content across multiple sites and in various to help individuals make educated buying decisions.

What are its top features?

Since the platform has a range of market-leading features, there are several benefits to implementing Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

Predictive Intelligence: Einstein AI is Commerce Cloud's predictive intelligence platform. Modern shoppers expect a more personalized online experience now than they ever have in the past. With Einstein, retailers can automate processes, show more individualized results, and facilitate unique buyers’ journeys to close more sales and build customer loyalty.

Scalability: As a cloud-based product, Salesforce Commerce Cloud can cope with huge demand and traffic spikes without having to plan in advance. If there is a sudden spike in demand, the platform scales silently in the background with no intervention required. Salesforce Commerce Cloud makes it easy for you to seamlessly scale and handle traffic spikes, along with any other unforeseen events.

Unified commerce: Commerce Cloud can connect all digital and physical channels to create a cohesive customer journey. In other words, you can benefit by connecting the customer’s entire shopping experience via digital channels – from marketing to successful purchase and retention campaigns. In addition, you can personalize a customer’s journey to add relevant product recommendations.

Mobile optimization: As per study 73 % of online traffic comes from mobile devices, and 55 % of all orders are placed on mobile devices. Salesforce Commerce Cloud takes a mobile-first approach offering users a rich mobile experience along with providing a mobile-optimized eCommerce store with a user-friendly interface to attract and retain customers in order to make their shopping experience quick, pleasant and friction-free.

A suite of cloud services: As a part of Salesforce family, there are a range of related CRM and marketing SaaS services that can be integrated into any desired solution set.

Multitenant Cloud Platform / Seamless upgrades: SFCC is a multitenant cloud platform, meaning all users share the same software infrastructure and can access the same services, benefits, updates, and website maintenance. SFCC also provides a core set of services to all customers and automatically upgrades them three times a year, avoiding the need to install updates manually.

Since the platform is SaaS, Salesforce continuously rolls out many new features in the background. These are available through the administration panel, often with minimal or no technical intervention needed on client side.

Speed: Shoppers have short attention spans, which means online shopping experiences need to be flawless, convenient, and flexible. Websites need to give customers what they're looking for fast. A small delay in page loading can result in lost sales. Besides quickly connecting customers with inventory and product catalog data, MuleSoft Accelerator for Commerce Cloud produces -

Fast load times on desktop and mobile
Real-time data delivery
Powerful storefront presentation

Salesforce Commerce Cloud Customers

Adidas, American Golf, Burton, Butlers, Clarins Paris, ColeHaan, Columbia, EMU, GODIVA, Hurley, Kate Spade, Lacoste, Lush, Mothercare, PUMA, Wolverine, Vineyard vines etc.. to name a few

Use Cases of companies and how they are using it for B2C and B2B scenarios

RETAIL AND ECOMMERCE USE CASES:

Optimized Content Across the Globe - The customer’s goal was to improve data processing, delivery, and performance of video content across the globe. To improve end-user experience, the requested content needed to be optimized in real-time for each global end-user’s device and the local connection (bandwidth).

Implemented Framework & Solutions using B2C along Integration with 3rd party Apps - The customer chose multiple locations across the globe (having the choice of over 20) to house their content processing and delivery function. Each location is made up of a group of 5 servers. Three servers process front-end workloads and two GPU servers transcode video and images based on the end-user device and connectivity specifications. The end result was lightning-fast content delivery for end users anywhere in the world.

RETAIL AND ECOMMERCE USE CASES:

HEALTHCARE USE CASE:

Protecting Patient data - Board members of a regional hospital chain are concerned by the rising number of ransomware attacks on healthcare organizations. Until now they have been cautious about moving data off-prem, unsure about cybersecurity and HIPAA compliance in the cloud. The IT Director has been prompted to investigate options for off-site data backup that would meet security and compliance requirements.

Implemented Framework & Solutions using B2B along Integration with 3rd party Apps - Architect a strategy that would improve the organization’s security stance by installing a lightweight security agent to proactively monitor their network and devices and implement Managed Cloud Backups to maintain a secure copy of all their patient data.

NON-PROFIT SECTOR USE CASE:

Affordably Support Remote Volunteers - The customer has up to 600 part-time users that access a set of applications (time and attendance, financial apps, etc.) to support their organization. By setting up 100 instances to host their key applications, they could cost-effectively support logins to their operations. The solution needed to fit within their current HIPAA Compliant environment, with security being a key driver. Another key driver for the customer was keeping costs down to maximize their mission’s impact.

Implemented Framework & Solutions using B2B along Integration with 3rd party Apps - Migrate the old environment to transition data over various locations to Cloud Platform. The DaaS solution gave the customer a shared pool of critical operations applications cost-efficiently. The solution consists of a Virtual Private Cloud, Backups, and SD-WAN to connect all of their locations. Eight powerful virtual servers were deployed to deliver the client’s key applications. One hundred workspaces were delivered in a shared resource model. Active and automated backups of all workspaces need to be implemented and managed by Support Team. The migration, environment setup, DaaS deployment, networking configuration, and onboarding was completed in less than 30 days.

Challenges that company face

B2B sellers face challenges internally driving their organizations to adopt digital commerce and bridging online and offline selling. 3 Common Challenges of Salesforce B2B Commerce include -

Implementation

Despite the oncoming tide of B2B opportunities, Realizing effective time-to-value is one of the biggest challenges for businesses looking to create and execute a B2B e-commerce strategy. High time-to-value is a costly reality for many businesses who face months of implementation time before their B2B Commerce capability is ready to run.

While Salesforce tackles this obstacle by boasting the fastest enterprise B2B e-commerce implementation on the market today, that doesn’t take into account integration with SAP system.

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