What is Salesforce Commerce Cloud?

What is it and why is it the market leader?

Salesforce Commerce Cloud has become the market leader for multiple technical and functional reasons. Forrester, the popular independent market research company, has classified it as the leading solution in the sector after analysing and comparing the main B2B e-commerce solutions on the market. There must be a reason!

The program lets companies create very fluid purchasing experiences for professional buyers. The idea is to give brands the immense potential of native integration with other Salesforce CRM clouds, as well as with Einstein artificial intelligence.

All of this provides an overview to generate personalised purchasing experiences, as well as to manage content, and especially orders, very effectively. Professional buyers demand a purchasing experience that is increasingly similar to that of consumers in B2C environments, and unified omnichannel purchasing habits, and the Salesforce Commerce Cloud B2B platform makes that possible, with 84% of customers saying that the experience offered by a company is as important as its products.

The concept is simple, as companies look for new markets in order to evolve and reach more buyers. Commerce Cloud B2B creates innovative and personalised shopping experiences for professionals, which translates into increased customer conversions and loyalty and will help you take your B2B business solution to the next level.

The majority of companies are betting on online business, and Commerce Cloud B2B is a great ally to bring about this change. We are facing a growing digital economy, and we need to be able to rely on the confidence and speed of a program as effective as this one. One of its greatest advantages also has to do with technical support, which sets it apart from other revolutionary solutions on the market. We're talking about a cloud-based tool that is tremendously agile and supported by Salesforce and its cloud ecosystem, which is constantly growing and getting at least three releases a year.

After the Covid-19 pandemic, companies in all sectors embraced the digital transformation, and B2B organisations need to accelerate their digital sales strategy. Salesforce sums this up in three steps: How do you to launch an eCommerce B2B quickly?

But how do you move online quickly, and comprehensively, to get these benefits? These three practical steps can help you launch an eCommerce B2B store quickly.

Features of the eCommerce Cloud

Commerce Cloud B2B offers very complete digital shopping experiences so buyers can enjoy an effective service across different devices. This is made possible by this revolutionary program and its advanced features, making it a perfectly adaptable tool between web platforms, with versions effectively tailored to mobile devices.

The Commerce Cloud B2B technology is aimed at sales between companies. In other words, it involves sites created with the intention of placing large orders with shopping carts that have a large number of items or product lines.

Companies should therefore be able to rely on a program designed exclusively to facilitate the work of customers who need to place their orders. They can even repeat orders quickly and easily with "Quick Order". In this case, the customer base is not as extensive as in sales to end consumers, but purchases are usually larger and more frequent. Commerce Cloud B2B works with these two aspects, addressing needs through its basic functions, most notably:

• Responsive design, multi-device, enhanced for mobile devices
• Catalogues of specific products
• Specific price lists
• Multi-language and multi-currency
• Multi-account and contract order system
• Support for sales referrals
• Repeat orders and quick order system
• Order templates
• Integration of payment methods
• Complex shipping function allowing for multiple locations and delivery dates
• Advanced search system
• SEO friendly
• Real-time reports and analysis
• Integration with Salesforce

When making purchases and orders, the site should satisfy the needs and requirements of buyers. One of the maxims of Commerce Cloud B2B is to offer the best user experience by being as customisable as possible depending on the professional purchaser. In fact, one of its main features is the ability to customise each account or group of accounts, with separate logins, product catalogues, price lists, offers, changes in product search operations and unique styles and appearances, with the added possibility of offering real-time commercial support.

Being able to automate and manage information is essential to providing an excellent user experience. The program's options include organising products by price, campaign and promotion. It also allows catalogues to be created as needed based on the type of account or customer, and to segment prices within these groups.

In order for customers to have a good buying experience, it is important to customise the entire purchasing process, from order management to payment options. This way, the program lets buyers place orders in just a few steps, with the option of creating multiple shipments, setting different delivery dates, etc. One of the more relevant aspects in B2B e-commerce has to do with shopping carts, since it is important for the purchasing manager to be able to oversee multiple purchasing processes simultaneously but independently.

Commerce Cloud B2B Lightning Experience

The goal is to create a user experience that boosts workflow and productivity. In other words, the desired outcome is to somehow transform our business and carry out simpler and more intuitive operations. These are new features so that sales and support teams can focus on their customers or negotiations, leading to a more advanced and excellent service with suitable activities that further improve the user experience every time they log in. The Commerce Cloud B2B on Lightning Experience version includes fairly flexible and interactive tools with which to view data easily and manage your business correctly.

The new Commerce Cloud B2B Lightning Experience version was created based on the results obtained from the companies that have relied on Salesforce Commerce Cloud B2B services in recent years. All this expertise is reflected in this new version, which is currently the best sales and service application available in the field of B2B e-commerce.

It has redesigned pages and new features to greatly streamline work, and it has multiple benefits. Below, we will list some of the most appealing features in each product area to give you some idea of its great potential:

• It uses standard Salesforce objects
• Drag & Drop interface to customise the store with Experience Builder
• Native integration with Community Cloud and Salesforce CMS
• Lightning internal admin user interface
• Optimised for mobile devices
• More efficient browsing
• More efficient and faster search engine with Einstein artificial intelligence support
• Improved report panels and views
• Automatic updates with each Salesforce release, incorporating new features and functionalities into the product.

The Salesforce Commerce Cloud B2B Lightning Experience is here to stay. This is a solution based on Lightning components, a native Salesforce development with all the advantages that entails; it does not replace the current solution offered by Salesforce for B2B commerce. There will now be two different versions: Salesforce Commerce Cloud B2B Lightning Experience and Commerce Cloud B2B Classic (formerly CloudCraze).

We recommend watching the following 6-minute video, in which Salesforce announces the new features of its Commerce Cloud B2B Lightning Experience:

Salesforce CRM integrations

Salesforce CRM is a great platform for managing cloud-based customer relationships. It relies on an integrated platform to provide a 360º view of the customer's file to all the organisation's departments, including sales, marketing, e-commerce and customer service.

No matter the situation, Salesforce Commerce Cloud B2B integrates natively with the company's CRM. If you currently use Salesforce as your CRM, the concept is very simple: the company's departments will be able to access the information on the online channel in the file, as well as existing customer information.

And if you have another CRM, you don't have to worry. Commerce Cloud B2B will integrate easily with any existing CRM to expand on the information already available on B2B customers. It's that easy! For companies that still don't have CRM technology, Salesforce Commerce Cloud includes this functionality by default. With it, you'll be able to manage contacts, accounts, activities and all your commercial information for the B2B channel with the effectiveness and high profitability of Salesforce.

CONCLUSION

Salesforce Commerce Cloud B2B is the ideal solution for any company that wants to launch a new B2B e-commerce platform and make its business grow (and fast!). Our team of certified experts will guide you throughout the project, and we'll help you set up a digital showroom online in a very short time. Success is guaranteed with Commerce Cloud B2B!