What does SAP Commerce Cloud do?

Here is a quick overview of SAP Commerce Cloud capabilities:

1. Omnichannel commerce

Different companies use varied combinations of go-to-market models, which means reaching customers through multiple and diverse touchpoints.

This can be incredibly hard to manage, creating complexity and data fragmentation for the seller, lack of personalization and reliability for the customer, and can lead to higher costs for both.

Commerce Cloud aims to solve these issues with modules aimed at both B2B and B2C users.

Core B2C capabilities include an omnichannel, responsive storefront that promotes consistency across all devices, with powerful search functionality and tailored promotions and recommendations to increase customer engagement.

The B2B Accelerator module manages complex B2B relationships through intelligent pricing models, price lists, and quote generation.

Also, through self-service options like “Organization Management,” where customers can define order approval workflows, and “Quote Negotiation”, where customers can request quotes to be reviewed by managers. The checkout has B2B-friendly features like PO number entry, auto-replenish, and the ability to charge an account rather than a credit card.

2. Product content management

All the product content management capabilities within Commerce Cloud are housed in one easy-to-use, centralized content repository.

From here, users can effortlessly catalog products by diverse attributes, and bulk-edit, bulk-publish, and bulk-upload multiple products simultaneously, saving time and ensuring consistency.

Users can also:

• Curate bundles (products and services combined into unique, personalized offers)
• Define flexible pricing rules
• Use built-in templates to increase average order value and streamline the buying process

3. Customer experience management

Commerce Cloud comes with a WYSIWYG website editing tool (they call SmartEdit) with a drag-and-drop interface for creating websites, pages, promotions, and banners for mobile, tablet, and desktop.

Users can even use SmartEdit to build on top of old designs on multiple storefronts to maintain a consistent customer view.

(SAP Commerce Cloud – SmartEdit | Source)

It’s all about personalization at the individual level, using Commerce Cloud’s so-called “Context-Driven Services.” These services measure patterns of customer intent, action, behavior, and affinities, right down to preferences for sizes and colors.

Armed with this data, users can curate deeply personalized shopping experiences for their customers by refining online product displays (merchandising), recommendations, offers, and remarketing at the individual level.

4. Order management

Order management represents a significant challenge for companies operating on multiple channels and from numerous physical locations.

Customers want a seamless experience across all touchpoints and expect medium-sized operations to offer levels of customer service only Amazon can afford. With Commerce Cloud, that’s more-or-less possible.

Commerce Cloud gives users a single view of inventory across an entire organization. This means a single source of truth for the seller and complete omnichannel flexibility for the customer. Customers can buy, collect, and return anywhere without messing up stock levels.

5. Industry-specific features

Commerce Cloud comes with a portfolio of unique, out-of-the-box, industry-specific “Accelerators” designed to meet the challenges, opportunities, and requirements of specific sectors.

Each Industry Accelerator has a ready-to-launch storefront for rapid time-to-value and several bespoke features.

These accelerators include:

The financial services accelerator

• Designed for: Insurance companies, retail banks, and other financial services providers
• Core features: Customers can apply for insurance products, and policyholders can view policy information and file on-screen claims.

The travel accelerator

• Designed for: Travel agents and booking companies
• Core features: Customers can search with advanced filters through flights and hotels and manage their entire travel itinerary before being guided through a smooth booking process.

The citizen engagement accelerator

• Designed for: Local government agencies
• Core features: Customers can browse a simple overview of all local government services, submit and manage online applications, pay for services like water and tax, and access documents like driving licenses and birth certificates.

The telco & media accelerator

• Designed for: Businesses selling device and service bundles
• Core features: Customers can browse highly complex packages straightforwardly and intuitively

6. Real-time customer support

Assisted Service Mode offers real-time customer support, both online and instore. Customer service agents can get a 360-degree profile of the customer they’re serving, complete with demographics, purchase history, preferences, and past support tickets.

Agents can see what products a customer has recently viewed, and can go above and beyond the call of duty by adding products to a customer’s cart and giving discretionary discounts and free gifts.