The tremendous growth of the eCommerce industry has made trade companies think about choosing proper software solutions that will help them streamline their sales, improve customer interaction and enhance business efficiency. eCommerce system development with the help of SAP solutions can be easy and efficient because of valuable benefits the software provides.
This vendor does its best to help clients in difficult conditions: now that the COVID-19 pandemic has affected so many businesses, SAP is providing its clients with free product offerings and training.
Why Opt for an SAP-Based eCommerce Website
A longstanding leader of Gartner’s Magic Quadrants for Digital Commerce and of Forrester Waves™ for B2B and B2C, SAP Commerce Cloud (formerly SAP Hybris Commerce) solution is the industry frontrunner.
Its out-of-the-box capabilities ensure:
- A quick launch of the system into production
- On-the-go customization
- Significant streamlining of sales and internal processes
“Stability, large global implementation partner network, and vertical industry solution focus” — that is how Forrester described digital commerce experiences of SAP C/4HANA back in 2017.
While SAP C/4HANA has originally focused on large-scale enterprises, it has been extending its offerings with an eCommerce product for midsized companies.
If you are looking for a proper commerce platform, take a look at our insights into the following benefits of using SAP Commerce Cloud platform and the value that it will deliver to your business.
With SaM Solutions’ SAP Commerce Cloud team, you get a robust ecommerce system and deliver personalized omnichannel experiences that increase your customer loyalty.
1. Flexibility and Scalability
Over the years, businesses have created a requirement for an extensive eCommerce system: it should provide not only powerful B2B capabilities, but also opportunities for the B2C market.
SAP Commerce Cloud combines different retail business models:
- B2C — selling directly to consumers
- B2B — selling to organizations
- B2B2C — selling via distributors or resellers, marketplace (a united platform for various vendors)
It also offers various pricing options and is suitable for companies of all sizes.
Moreover, the platform’s industry-specific accelerators make it possible to adapt the system for companies from multiple industries.
This approach helps companies avoid the superfluous fuss and the back-and-forth between different-purpose solutions. Also, a combined sales experience facilitates in-house workflow and improves the delivery of results.
The platform is scalable and can easily grow with your business, fulfilling the increasing demands.
2. Seamless Integration
SAP Commerce Cloud can be easily integrated with other SAP solutions that a company has on its backend. The specific framework of SAP C/4HANA enables smooth integration of this commerce platform with any other SAP-based product, both legacy and modern, and smooth information exchange between the systems and web services.
Seamless integration with all of the SAP solutions allows for creating a full-fledged ecosystem that is capable of a wide variety of functions — sales, customer service, billing and marketing campaigns that feature efficiency monitoring.
The platform’s power to integrate with any third-party ERP solution enables the creation of a data hub, joining products and services, online and offline touchpoints, suppliers, payment and delivery options.
3. Omnichannel Capabilities
One of the key strengths of SAP Commerce Cloud is the creation of seamless omnichannel customer experiences.
The vendor realizes that businesses are no longer constrained by brick-and-mortar stores and shops, and modern technologies create new sales channels, such as:
- Websites
- Mobile applications
- Social media
- Chatbots
- Digital marketplaces
- Self-pickup points
That is why SAP Commerce Cloud integrates all of the company’s sales channels into a single ecosystem to exchange real-time consistent information on current orders and warehouse stocking across all touchpoints.
The platform’s adjustable user interface looks great on all devices, using APIs to mobile applications, as well as to third-party frontend solutions, to ensure an equally efficient shopping experience across all of the company’s user touchpoints.
An omnichannel commerce approach helps companies enhance customer acquisition, which significantly boosts their sales and profit opportunities. While delivering a unique user experience for end-users based on their personal shopping profiles, vendors can make repeat purchases.
4. Advanced Customization
More than likely, a company has its well-established business processes, procedures and corporate policy, an IT system and an accumulated amount of data. At the same time, eCommerce platforms are never ready for production and require proper fine-tuning and configuration in accordance with specific business requirements.
The modular structure of SAP Commerce Cloud that features low interdependence among its components makes it an easily customizable platform. Companies can tailor the necessary components and business logic to their specific needs.
5. Cloud-Based Deployment
SAP Commerce Cloud gives customers an opportunity to use its solution either on-premises or in the cloud on the basis of the Microsoft Azure infrastructure.
A SaaS (software as a service) model eliminates the need for a company to create and maintain its own infrastructure, providing insightful predictions, process execution and unique data-driven customer experience while avoiding high-cost license fees.
6. Data-Based Personalization
Through the Product Content Management system, Commerce Cloud can deliver powerful contextual customer experience based on the individual shopping activity of every user. Data-driven personalization includes the following features:
- Automated customer segmentation to provide the most relevant information based on individual targeting
- Personal recommendations on products and landing pages based on real-time self-learning algorithms that do not require maintenance
- Integration with targeted promotions and newsletters
- Preference comparison with those of other clients
- Compression of large data sets into a compact mode
- Search optimization to perform contextual searches according to specified requirements
These content personalization capabilities enable robust cross-selling that relies on delivering appropriate product and service offerings at the right time and in a suitable way.
SAP Commerce Cloud functionality can handle Big Data streams, managing large order amounts, high traffic and numerous in-house processes. Undoubtedly, it enables organizations to enhance their business efficiency and increase the loyalty of their clients.
At the same time, customers enjoy unique shopping experiences that rely on their needs and preferences.
7. Automated Updates
Cloud-native architecture automatically provides access to the latest releases of upgrade packages, code checks and quality gates.
8. Disaster Recovery
The system provides automatic weekly full database backups and hourly incremental backups. Standard Recovery Point Objective (RPO) is one hour, and the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) is 24 hours. In the premium offering, RPO is five minutes and RTO is four hours.
SAP Commerce Cloud Shortcomings
Some disadvantages of this platform should be also considered:
- High cost
- Complicated implementation process
- Steep learning curve
Despite extensive training that is required for developers to become proficient platform users, there is a sufficient pool of suitable specialists in the market who can be retrained. SAP Commerce Cloud utilizes a modern technology stack — Spring Framework, Angular Drools, and is built on Java Spring, so every Java developer can learn to program this solution.
Use SaM Solutions’ SAP Commerce Cloud implementation to build a highly customizable ecommerce solution with complex catalogues and configurations.
Weigh Benefits against Shortcomings
The platform’s capability to launch quickly while enabling further customization can save a company a lot of time, which is particularly important for highly competitive markets. Also, SAP places an emphasis on the importance of the seamless shopping process, which is why it is based on contextual experiences and full-fledged content management.
However, the platform has some drawbacks, including its high cost, which is the main issue for small enterprises.
If the solution’s advantages outweigh the shortcomings and you opt for eCommerce system development with SAP, keep SaM Solutions in mind.
Our dedicated team designs configuration and functionality that best meet the requirements of our clients. We quickly develop powerful, customized SAP Commerce Cloud solutions that smoothly integrate into your business and IT landscapes. Our solutions will help you increase customer engagement, streamline workflow and enhance the efficiency of your business operations.