Ranosys

Ranosys, a 3X award-winning Salesforce Summit (Platinum) Partner, is thrilled to co-host a networking happy hour in-person event with Salesforce on Humans + AI: Elevate Customer Experience and Productivity with Agentforce. AI Agents are the next frontier of Generative AI, given their ability to learn, reason, and execute complex multi-step workflows. Coming off the back of Salesforce’s flagship event, Dreamforce 2024, this event focuses on Agentforce, their latest innovation in AI-powered customer engagement and how it empowers enterprises to drive productivity and increase business margins.

Event Details

Here is the overview about the event:

Date: Wednesday, 15 January 2025
Time: 5:30 PM – 7:30 PM
Location: Singapore

This event will explore Agentforce’s transformative capabilities in redefining customer service, enhancing operational efficiency, and delivering AI-driven marketing and sales strategies. Attendees will gain deep insights into leveraging Agentforce for business growth and industry-specific applications.

Event Overview

The “Humans + AI: Elevate Customer Experience and Productivity with Agentforce” event focuses on Salesforce’s Agentforce, a cutting-edge solution integrating human intelligence with AI to redefine customer experiences and organizational productivity. Attendees will discover how AI enhances productivity, supports smarter decision-making, and drives customer-centric strategies, ensuring business growth and innovation in the competitive landscape across industrial verticals.

Key topics to be covered:

How Agentforce assists enterprises in delivering better service, achieving higher efficient sales, and executing assisted marketing
The various use cases of Agentforce across industrial verticals
Deep dive into your business and explore opportunities for growth
Learn how Salesforce Agentforce can align with your business plan
Unlock the secrets to driving customer experiences with Agentforce and Ranosys

Event Agenda

Welcome Note & Refreshments: Begin with light refreshments and casual networking to connect with peers.
Salesforce X Ranosys Presentation: Explore Agentforce with an introduction by Ranosys and an engaging demo by Salesforce.
Networking and Refreshments: Wrap up the evening with engaging conversations and refreshments in a relaxed setting.

About Ranosys

Ranosys, a 3X award-winning Salesforce Summit (Platinum) Partner and Managed Services Expert is trusted by businesses of all sizes for cost-effective, flexible, innovative, and efficient Salesforce multi-cloud consulting, implementations, and integrations. From consulting to implementation and managed services, we ensure a successful go-to-market within timelines and budget.

Our expertise spans the entire Salesforce ecosystem, including Commerce Cloud (B2C, B2B, and SiteGenesis to SFRA migration), Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, MuleSoft, Data Cloud, Sales Cloud, Order Management, Einstein, and more. Whether you’re looking to implement a new Salesforce solution, optimize your current setup, or effectively manage your platform, we’ve helped enterprises, including Fortune 500 brands drive maximum returns from their Salesforce investments.

With global teams in North America, APAC & EMEA regions, and delivery units in the Salesforce Capital of India – Jaipur, we can also provide scalable staff augmentation services for short-term support, long-term external expertise, or specialists with niche skills across the multi-cloud ecosystem.

About Salesforce

Salesforce, a global leader in CRM solutions, empowers businesses with cutting-edge cloud tools to connect with customers and enhance experiences. Known for pioneering AI-driven and data-centric innovations, Salesforce revolutionizes business operations across industries. Its latest innovation, Agentforce, integrates AI seamlessly into customer service, enabling smarter decisions, boosting productivity, and enhancing customer interactions. This solution exemplifies Salesforce’s commitment to leveraging technology for transformative growth and operational excellence.

Register Now: Event Page

We look forward to seeing you there!

Ranosys, a multi-award-winning Global Digital Consulting and Managed Services Expert is excited to welcome Prithwiraj Deb as Director of Technology in the US. With over 16 years of experience in multi-platform content management, digital commerce, experience strategy, and transformative digital solutions, Prithwiraj will play a pivotal role in strengthening Ranosys’ presence in the US and driving impactful digital journeys for our clients.

Prithwiraj’s rich experience spans end-to-end digital program management, from ideation and product selection through to steady-state support. He has successfully led multi-platform integration projects, combining Adobe and non-Adobe solutions to provide data-driven insights and enable high-impact, multi-channel campaigns for industry-leading clients. His proven track record includes delivering solutions for some of the world’s largest enterprises, including JPMorgan Chase, Prudential, Dolby Labs, Intel, GE Healthcare, Anheuser-Busch, and Siemens Healthcare, among others.

Talking about joining Ranosys, “I am thrilled to join Ranosys as Director of Technology, leading the charge in content, commerce, and personalization. Together, we aim to deliver transformative solutions that drive growth and create tangible business value for our customers,” said Prithwiraj Deb, Director of Technology – Ranosys.

“Bringing Prithwiraj on board as Director of Technology reflects our commitment to growth and innovation within the US market,” said Rameshwar Vyas, CEO – Ranosys. “His expertise aligns seamlessly with Ranosys’ capabilities in digital transformation and enterprise solution delivery, and his experience will enable us to nurture existing client relationships and extend our reach to new partners seeking impactful digital solutions.”

Prithwiraj shared his excitement about joining Ranosys, saying, “I am thrilled to join Ranosys as Director of Technology, leading the charge in content, commerce, and personalization. Together, we aim to deliver transformative solutions that drive growth and create tangible business value for our customers.”

In his role, Prithwiraj will work closely with Ranosys’ technology and business teams to create tailored digital strategies and roadmaps that support each client’s unique goals. His hands-on knowledge of Adobe’s suite of solutions, combined with his leadership in managing diverse, large-scale implementation teams, will drive even greater success for our clients in sectors such as banking, healthcare, retail, and publishing.

With Prithwiraj joining the leadership team, Ranosys is poised to further elevate its US market operations, delivering solutions that drive business value, enhance customer experiences, and lead digital innovation for enterprises across North America.

About Ranosys

Ranosys is a multi-award-winning global digital consulting company and managed IT services provider, serving customers with cost-effective IT solutions that prioritize value, quality, and excellent client services. Leveraging powerful and long-standing partnerships with Salesforce, Adobe, and Shopify Plus, we create a unique advantage for our clients, driving their eCommerce, digital transformation, managed IT services, and product engineering initiatives.

Ranosys addresses the various milestones in a company’s digital transformation roadmap, identifying, designing, developing, deploying, and measuring their digital skills. Their experienced and expert workforce renders solutions that secure their client’s lead in the digital community.

For further details, please visit our website at https://www.ranosys.com/.

Or, fill out the form and email us at sales@ranosys.com

We can help setup Agentforce for you

Artificial intelligence has redefined the way we work and for workforces, it has resulted in considerable spike in productivity. Enterprises can free their teams from manual tasks so that they can focus on high-value deliverables by leveraging AI automation. Meanwhile, customers’ expectations are at an all-time high—they want seamless, personalized experiences, instant support, and efficient interactions every time.

Imagine a world where your team is not constrained by capacity or time. What if your workforce could handle more, deliver better service, and never feel overwhelmed? That’s where Agentforce comes in.

Agentforce combines the power of human expertise with AI-driven agents on the Salesforce platform to create a seamless, scalable workforce. It’s not just about automating tasks; it’s about empowering your team to focus on what matters most—building meaningful connections and driving success for your business.

With Agentforce, there are no limits.

At the Dreamforce 2024 event, Salesforce introduced Agentforce, a set of tools, as part of the “Third Wave of AI.” Salesforce developed Agentforce, via Agent Studio to empower the creation, management, deployment, and measurement of AI agents for various business operations.

There are 2 types of Agentforce AI agents:

Autonomous: They will do the job for you
Assistive: They will help you do the job

Salesforce Agentforce allows you to build, activate, and manage AI agents across customer service, sales operations, marketing, commerce and more. You can deploy these Salesforce AI agents across industries, including healthcare, banking, retail, manufacturing, IT, analytics, and more. As they operate autonomously, Agentforce AI agents do not require human input, thereby empowering your workforce to focus on ROI and innovation-driven tasks.

Here we explore what Salesforce Agentforce is, its features, use cases across industries, and how it can revolutionize business operations.

Before we dive into Salesforce Agentforce, let’s understand what AI agents are.

An AI Agent is an intelligence system that understands human queries and responds to it just like a human would. It works on machine learning and natural language processing capabilities to handle complex tasks autonomously.

Salesforce AI agents leverage the data model to learn about its surroundings, process information, and take action without any human input. As they are self-learning, they can improve their performance. This is also how they differ from traditional AI agents, which require human input for complex or unique tasks.

Salesforce AI agents can be leveraged across several business cases , like responding to customer inquiries, suggesting product recommendations, or managing complex tasks based on what they have learned over time.

How is Salesforce Agentforce different?

Many companies, from startups to large enterprises, offer agent solutions that promise better customer service, more efficient sales, and assisted marketing. But what sets Salesforce Agentforce apart is how it combines the power of the Salesforce Platform to empower humans and AI agents to work together and drive success. Here’s what makes us different:

#1: The power of the Salesforce Platform

For over 20 years, customers have used the Salesforce Platform to tailor and extend core applications. Enterprises have created workflows with Flow, used Apex code for complex logic, and recently started leveraging generative AI. These tools form the building blocks of Salesforce AI agents. For instance, if your service team needs to process returns and update an ERP system, chances are you already have automation in place with Flow and MuleSoft. Agentforce lets you seamlessly integrate these as “Actions,” enabling AI agents to handle tasks autonomously when needed—improving efficiency without reinventing the wheel.

#3 Humans and AI working together to achieve higher productivity

Many solutions claim to replace the entire breadth of human workforce with their AI agents. While this seems promising, Salesforce believes that rather than replacement, higher growth and better ROI can be achieved with human + AI collaboration. And this is exactly what Salesforce Agentforce is all about, humans and AI agents working together to drive higher customer success.

For example, while onboarding a new sales rep or business development representative is a tedious and sloe process, it also requires dedicated assistance from a personal sales coach. With Agentforce AI agents, you can give all your sales rep a digital coach that guides them throughout the training process, provides feedback, and offers real-time support, ensuring that they excel. Not only does it save time of your sales team, but provides the best training to your new sales reps and achieve better output.

#3: The right data is paramount here

For AI agents to perform actions, they need access to the right data. This is where Salesforce Data Cloud comes into play. With its data model, Salesforce Data Cloud accesses the right data to deliver hyper-personalized experiences to each customer at the right time across the right device. And since all of it is built on a secure and enterprise-grade platform, enterprises can scale these Salesforce AI agents without worrying about data security.

Unlike the traditional AI tools that do not possess this level of autonomy and control, Salesforce Agentforce is leaps ahead ensuring that your AI agents within trusted and secure environment.

How can enterprises leverage Salesforce Agentforce?

Salesforce Agentforce empowers enterprises to create as many AI agents as required per your business cases. Regardless of departments, you can easily create AI agents to fulfill the manual requirements of your specific business requirements. These are just some use cases and areas where you can employ Agentforce AI agents:

#1: 24/7 support with Agentforce Service Agents

How about having a service representative that can assist with your customer queries? With Salesforce Agentforce Service Agents, you will have round-the-clock support assistants for your customers. These AI agents can handle common queries so that your customers can get the help you need. Also, you they can handle complex queries as well or route them to a human service representative. This puts less stress in your support staff.

#2: Maximizing pipeline with Salesforce Agentforce Sales Agents

Salesforce Agentforce Sales Agents work as extra hands in your sales team. They can reach out to potential customers, qualify leads based on attributes specified, and build a better sales pipeline. This means your sales team can now focus on closing deals while AI agents can handle the initial outreach. This makes your sales process even more efficient.

#3: Optimizing campaigns with Agentforce Marketing Agents

Salesforce Agentforce Marketing Agents can help make your campaigns more targeted and personalized. Based on data analysis, customer preferences, behavior, and other details, Salesforce AI agents can suggest the best strategies to ensure you send the right message to the right customer at the right time and across the right channel. This improves the ROI of your marketing campaigns and also the engagement.

#4: Giving shoppers a concierge experience with Commerce Agents

In the world of eCommerce, making customers feel special and providing them with an engaging shopping experience is key. Salesforce Agentforce Commerce Agents can act as your shopper’s personal assistants, providing personalized product recommendations, tracking orders on their behalf, and even handling returns. Such personalization improves customer experience, loyalty, and trust. And most importantly, it encourages customers to return.

#5: Launching custom agents with Agentforce Platform agents

Apart from creating AI agents for Service, Commerce, Sales, and Marketing, you can also create custom agents for specific business needs with Agentforce Platform Agents. Just like with other Salesforce Clouds, enterprises can build AI agents to perform specific tasks related to unique business needs. From automating workflows to helping with insights for particular processes, these AI agents can support your business goals and make operations smoother.

Technologies used in Salesforce Agentforce

#1: Atlas Reasoning Engine

Atlas Reasoning Engine is the core intelligence engine behind the Salesforce Agentforce. It equips AI agents with the ability to understand and respond to user queries in a human-like manner. It also empowers these AI agents to self-learn and improve their responses for better assistance. You can even elevate the accuracy of these agents by defining topics, classifying them to specific categories, and detailing them with well-defined scopes and rules.

Key Features:

Analyzes large datasets to find correlations for human queries
Can interpret complex datasets to deliver more human-like reasoning
Can be scaled for all industry use cases
Provides accurate insights to improve decision-making

#2: Agent Builder

Agent Builder is where you create these intelligent AI agents. As you build these agents via low-code, your team doesn’t have to spend extensive time in coding these agents. Agent Builder leverages Flow, Apex, MuleSoft APIs and prompt templates to streamline the agent creation process.

Salesforce Agentforce Agent Builder lets you define the specific tasks or actions you want your agent to perform in a natural language. You can extend the ability of your AI agents by adding new topics and giving actions to those topics. Agent Builder also allows you to build a library of actions so that your AI agent can equip all tasks efficiently and effectively.

Key Features:

Pre-configured templates to create different types of agents
Customize agents in just a few clicks to extend to the existing Salesforce Platform
Seamless integration with APIs, databases, and other software
Easy configuration of agents for service, commerce, sales, and other teams to complete tasks in the workflows

#3: Prompt Builder

Salesforce Agentforce Prompt Builder, the first low-code prompt management tool, lets you create, maintain, test, and optimize your prompts. With Prompt Builder, you can simply pull relevant data fields into a prompt and then adapt data dynamically based on a customer’s unique context. Agentforce Prompt Builder retrieves data from CRM and Data Clouds via Flows, Apex, MuleSoft, and more. Then, AI experts can test the output of the prompt before sending it to LLM.

Other capabilities of Prompt Builder includes:

#1: Building, testing, and optimizing AI prompts within the Agentforce Trust Layer. This masks all sensitive information.

#2: Grounded AI prompts with dynamic CRM data via Merge fields and Flow for dynamic data input, even for complex logic

#3: Unlock prompted actions across Customer 360 for several unique use cases for both desktop and mobile

#4: Model Builder

Model Builder is a tool in Salesforce that makes it easy to create and use AI. With Model Builder, you can build custom AI models that work with your Salesforce data to help automate tasks or make predictions. It connects with other AI tools to help you build, train, and set up these models, so you can take advantage of powerful AI capabilities right within Salesforce.

Key Features:

Drag-and-drop interfaces for easy model configuration.
Pre-built algorithms and model types (e.g., classification, regression, clustering).
Tools for data preprocessing, feature selection, and scaling.
Automatic hyperparameter tuning and cross-validation.
Performance metrics and visualizations for model evaluation.

#5: Trust & Guardrails

Trust & Guardrails guarantees that AgentForce operates as a secure and ethical AI system. Trust is built upon reliability, openness, and accountability, while guardians, conversely, avert detrimental choices, guaranteeing that these agents adhere to industry standards. This encompasses data privacy protocols, bias identification algorithms, and human oversight, creating a balanced framework for AI to thrive while protecting users’ interests.

Key Features:

Builds user trust by providing a transparent understanding of the decision-making process.
Stops discriminatory results by identifying and addressing any biases present in the algorithm.
The natural adherence to industry regulations and ethical norms guarantees legal usage.
Builds user trust by providing a transparent understanding of the decision-making process.

Transforming Industries with Use Cases

Salesforce Agentforce, equipped with AI-driven capabilities, can be utilized in various industries to streamline operations, improve customer service, and increase sales. Here’s how it can be implemented across different sectors:

#1: Retail and eCommerce

In Retail and e-commerce industry, AI agents can be used for managing product availability, shipping, returns, and order management regarding customer inquiries. These AI agents also provide customized product recommendations based on the customer shopping history and preference to drive sales and enhance customer satisfaction.

#2: Health Care

In the health care sector AgentForce may be utilized in scheduling meetings, clarification of frequently asked questions, updating patient records, analyzing patient data and predicting issues that will arise with health and appropriate treatment plans, thus saving medical staff more time for focusing on critical tasks.

#3: Financial Services

Agentforce may be applied by banks and financial institutions for account inquiries, verifying the transaction history, or simply to keep the customer updated on the detection of fraud. Through security protocols from Salesforce, customers get ensured access while maintaining privacy. Agentforce AI Agents could examine the financial data of the customer and give prudent advice on investment opportunities, savings plans, and credit options.

#4: Manufacturing

AI agents can oversee the entire supply chain, including tracking and managing orders, handling cancellations or returns, communicating with suppliers, and ensuring seamless operations. These AI agents can also predict equipment breakdowns through data analysis, enhancing the efficiency of the manufacturing process and conserving time.

#5: Telecommunication

Network Monitoring: AgentForce AI agents can aid in quicker resolution of technical problems and can also assist in observing network performance.

Customer Support: AI Agents can address customer inquiries, handle billing concerns, detect and fix technical issues, and recommend the most appropriate plans to customers according to their usage patterns.

#6: Travel and Hospitality

Reservations and Bookings: AgentForce AI agents can provide personalized travel suggestions to users by considering their previous bookings and preferences when arranging flights, accommodations, and tours.

Customer Support: AI assistants can help customers with their travel questions, and handle cancellations, or any other changes while ensuring they enjoy a smooth travel experience.

#7: Education

Administrative Automation: Agentforce can optimize administrative tasks, such as student enrollment, exam planning, and course administration.

Student Assistance: AI agents can aid educational establishments such as schools, coaching centers, and colleges in handling admissions, as well as offering personalized support to each student in addressing their questions about courses.

#8: Real Estate

Property Recommendations: AI agents can help real estate companies provide property suggestions based on customer preferences and answer questions related to pricing, property features, and scheduling viewings.
Lead Generation and Nurturing: AI agents can qualify leads based on customer interactions and follow up with potential buyers, improving conversion rates.

How Salesforce Agentforce is different from Einstein AI?

Here is the table with the differences between Salesforce Agentforce and Salesforce Einstein AI.

Features	Salesforce Agentforce	Einstein AI
Intelligence	Uses advanced AI with the Atlas Reasoning Engine to tackle complex problems	Relies on standard AI models for pattern matching and programmed responses.
Natural Language Processing	Advanced NLP that understands purpose and context in multiple languages	Basic NLP focused on intent recognition and keyword matching
Autonomy	Highly autonomous, making decisions and taking actions independently	Needs human input and follows set routines for complex tasks
Integration	Deeply integrated with the Salesforce ecosystem and third-party systems through the Agentforce Partner Network	Primarily integrates with Salesforce but has limited third-party connections
Customization	Offers extensive customization with low-code options via the Agent Builder	Customizable with a bot-building interface, but with narrower use cases
Data Handling	Quickly accesses and analyzes data in real time from multiple sources	Limited to predefined connectors and data sets
Scalability	Highly scalable, managing complex, multi-step tasks simultaneously	Scalable enough to handle multiple conversations efficiently
Task Complexity	Handles intricate, multi-step activities across various fields	Best suited for simple, repetitive tasks in specific areas
Learning Capability	Adapts and improves over time with each interaction and results	Has limited learning capability and requires manual updates
Use Cases	Designed for complex processes across multiple departments	Primarily used for customer support and basic information retrieval

We can help set up Agentforce for you

As a 2X award-winning Salesforce Summit Partner, we understand the specific complexities in leveraging Salesforce Agentforce across industries. However, we can help deploy these AI agents across the Salesforce ecosystem, helping your business run smarter and more efficiently. From Sales and Service to Marketing and Commerce, enterprises can integrate the Salesforce AI agents across operations. Let’s discuss how Salesforce Agentforce can transform business processes and deliver tangible results.

Your trusted partner for Agentforce
implementation

Achieve your business goals with Adobe AEM.

Explore now

For enterprises, keeping track of all their digital content and assets, organizing them, and using them effectively in a way that delivers engaging content experiences is a complex task. Businesses need an enterprise-level CMS that can help manage all digital content and assets in a simplistic manner. Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) is one such content management system that makes managing of content and digital assets easy and streamlined.

Adobe Experience Manager combines the potential for digital asset management with the power of a content management system, providing seamless, consistent, optimized, and customer-centric experiences across all digital channels, including web, email, social, and mobile.

What is Adobe Experience Manager (AEM)?

Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) is a content management system (CMS) and digital asset management system (DAM) that empowers extended teams to establish full control over web content and offer best tailored user experiences throughout. For companies who are looking to regain control over their digital content and related assets distributed across websites, channels, and apps and give their CMS a much-needed structure, then Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) is the best option. Not only does Adobe Experience Manager reduce the complexity of content management but it also saves time on content delivery.

A report from Forrester concludes Adobe Experience Manager CMS to be the best and most robust CMS in the market. With over 128,000 websites currently running on Adobe Experience Manager (AEM), including several leading Fortune 500 enterprises, this enterprise-level CMS is trusted for its agility, scalability, and easy content and digital asset management.

That said, with Adobe Experience Manager CMS you can create, manage and distribute context-driven messages scalable across countries, products, services, and enterprises.

As per Adobe, AEM CMS empower teams to deliver brand and country sites experiences 66% faster with 23% higher productivity. In an experience-driven ecosystem, Adobe Experience Manager CMS allows you to deliver the right message to the right person at the right time and across the right channel. Also, unlike other content management solutions that do not allow marketers to manage and sync content across all different content-facing channels, Adobe Experience Manager (AEM), provides a more unified and holistic customer experience, saving time and money in the long run.

The best part, the Adobe content management system, although it isn’t limited to only being that.

For designers, it is a powerful, feature-rich, and user-friendly tool great for building front-end applications.
For marketers, it is perfect for content management and optimization without any external dependencies.
For developers, it is a vital tool to create access and reuse content elements across other projects and customer interfaces.

As Adobe AEM allows non-tech marketers to take complete charge of the site content, it leads to faster releases and easy publishing of new content without spending days on it. It is why AEM CMS is one of the fastest-growing web platforms today, used by big corporations like Nike, National Geographic, AT&T, Nvidia, Chipotle, The Wonderful Company, etc.

What does Adobe Experience Manager do?

Adobe Experience Manager is a content and digital asset management system that makes it easy for enterprises to build and launch superior content-led experiences for websites, mobile apps and forms, quickly. As a component of the Adobe Experience Cloud (AEC), Adobe AEM makes it easy to manage your marketing content and other assets and seamlessly works with other Adobe Marketing Cloud platforms such as Adobe Analytics, Adobe Target, Adobe Audience Manager, Adobe Commerce Cloud, and Marketo Engage. Its central capabilities include:

#1: Open and extensible content creation

Adobe Experience Manager CMS and DAM is an open and extensible platform, meaning it simplifies the digital content creation process and makes it easier for marketers to access, change, and improve. Non-tech marketers can keep on adding new features and capabilities to it without having to create it from scratch every time. In this sense, Adobe AEM’s openness and flexibility makes it easier for people to create, collaborate, and share content faster.

Moreover, Adobe Experience Manager simplifies cross-platform asset management by making it easier for you to keep track of all your digital assets, images, videos, and more, regardless of where they were created. You can even organize and manage all your assets in one place with Adobe Experience Manager (AEM), like a well-structured library for all your digital materials.

Along with a secure brand portal, AEM Adobe protects your assets from any unauthorized access. Coupled with its end-to-end content management capabilities, AEM effortlessly manages all your tasks related to content creation and sharing with internal teams and external partners.

#2: Omnichannel content delivery

As for retail and eCommerce brands, AEM (Adobe Experience Manager) empowers developers to quickly create and launch dynamic content-led shopping experiences, leveraging the tool’s CMS and DAM capabilities. Adobe AEM supports industry standard query language, such as GraphQL to easily request and retrieve dynamic information across databases or systems and drive up-to-date frontend experiences.

With Adobe AEM’s capabilities of content fragments, experience fragments, and SPA Editor, enterprises can now deliver interactive content experiences at scale

#3: Experience intelligence

Adobe Experience Manager AI helps you with several tasks related to content and digital asset management, delivering personalization at scale. It transforms your manual and tedious tasks into automated workflows, letting team members focus on more growth-driven objectives. You can even analyze the performance of your digital assets and marketing efforts by leveraging real-time insights via a centralized reporting system. More ahead, Adobe Experience Manager AI lets you convert your legacy PDF forms and traditional input fields to mobile-responsive and easily adaptable digital forms.

#4: AI-powered scalability in Adobe Experience Manager Sites

When content and data combine together, personalized experiences follow. While the explosion of devices and channels make it challenging for marketers to deliver experiences that quickly and automatically adapt to a user’s needs and wants, Adobe Sensei GenAI in Adobe Experience Manager Sites is set to break that norm.

Leveraging the power of AI and MI, Adobe Sensei GenAI in Experience Manager Sites helps brands generate, manage, and deliver the right content across the right channel. From authoring, re-writing, text summarization, and tone of voice, the generative AI capabilities of Adobe Sensei GenAI can be easily leveraged with in-context Experience Manager Sites editing. This empowers brands to create and launch content and optimize its performance with real-time insights. Instead of personalizing content for each user, Adobe Sensei GenAI and Experience Manager Sites together allow you to reach millions of users without any extra leg work.

#5: Accelerated time-to-value

Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) expedites the creation of new applications and digital experiences, by-result of its cloud-native CMS framework that dynamically adjusts its capacity to handle varying workloads. So, if your website or app were to experience a sudden surge in traffic, it can handle it effortlessly without any manual intervention. This eliminates the need for constant monitoring and resource allocation.

Keeping in line with the changing tech trends and customer demands, Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) is regularly updated with new features and capabilities, making it easy for marketers to keep pace with the ecosystem without requiring any extensive upgrades or reconfigurations. Content automation reduces the manual effort required to manage content, and a powerful app builder simplifies the creation of new applications. Adobe AEM’s intuitive web development tools empowers enterprises to easily build and expand digital experiences.

The six modules of Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) CMS

AEM or Adobe Experience Manager consists of five modules: AEM Sites, assets, mobile, AEM Forms, and communities. These Adobe AEM modules form a comprehensive content management solution to build websites and mobile apps and manage site content.

So, what do these Adobe AEM modules actually do? Here’s a brief description of it:

#1: Adobe AEM Sites:

Also known as Experience Manager Sites, this module allows you to create, manage, optimize, and publish site content experiences across multi-location websites, mobile sites, and other channels. You can tailor your site content look and feel as per the available functionalities and personalize digital experiences to make them more targeted and relevant to your business. Other capabilities include:

Build and manage responsive designs and mobile sites from one platform.
Optimize shopping carts to deliver a unified virtual experience across several devices.
Manage and control multiple sites across several geographies and languages from one centralized location.
Manage and launch marketing campaigns from one place.
Store and organize assets to make them easily accessible for all marketing campaigns.

#2: Digital Asset Management (AEM DAM)

Assets can be anything you employ to create site experiences for users. It consists of files, collections, shared links, templates, and jobs. You store all your images, videos, GIFs and associated custom variations in this module. Adobe AEM DAM helps you create, manage, and deliver images, videos, and content across devices, channels, and screens. Its workflow capabilities allows you to organize and store all your assets in a way that they can be easily accessed based on the path they follow. Other capabilities include:

Employ workflow capability to store, organize, customize, and access assets from one location.
Integrate assets to Creative Cloud to reduce the gap between creative and marketing workflows.
Assign metadata and tags automatically to your assets.
Deliver personalized and targeted experiences to boost customer engagement.

#3: Adobe AEM Mobile

Adobe Experience Manager is highly specific on its mobile experiences, which is why it has a separate module to assist with mobile app development for all devices, easily integrated with your overall strategy. Other capabilities include:

Build mobile apps for multiple platforms using a single codebase.
Update content and review analytics on a single dashboard.
Analyze the performance of the mobile apps using Adobe Mobile App Analytics.
Update apps with drag-and-drop blocks and review change instantaneously.
Integrate mobile app strategy with asset management to provide a consistent browsing experience.
Send creative push notifications to draw back your users.

#4: Adobe AEM Forms

Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) Forms is an end-to-end digital document management system that makes it easy for you to create responsive and manageable forms and share them with your customers to easily complete and e-sign, making the entire process paperless, automated, and efficient. Other capabilities include:

Simplify complex digital transactions on any device.
Offer an incredible form experience to customers based on their location, profile, and device type.
Create interactive forms accessible from anywhere.
Ensure security and tracking of Adobe Forms.
Merge form data and documents with your existing systems.
Measure effectiveness using insights from Adobe Analytics, Target, and Campaign.

#5: Adobe AEM Community

Adobe AEM Communities helps you to create a community specific to your brand and customers to promote knowledge sharing and facilitate seamless discussions. A community can include forums, learning forums, user groups, and so on based on your business. Other capabilities include:

Encourage interaction via forums, ratings, blogs, and more.
Create and customize web communities using user-friendly wizards and interfaces.
Enable learning and social knowledge sharing within the consumer group.
Employ community content analytics to optimize engagement.

#6: Adobe AEM Cloud service

With Adobe Experience Manager, you build a scalable and secure foundation for your website. Adobe Experience Manager architecture, your team gains anywhere-and-anytime access to your experience management systems. As cloud service comes pre-configured and tested to meet your enterprise needs, you can optimize it easily to ensure peak performance at all times. The AEM Adobe tool is also safe against outages, which means you can create, innovate, and publish content and assets for websites and apps at scale. Other capabilities include:

Instantly accessible by teams to let you focus on content planning rather than version upgrades.
Adobe AEM Cloud services is modular, scalable, & global, designed to auto-scale within seconds
Follows all industry standards to ensure complete protection and privacy of your data and content
Built-in redundancy and proactive monitoring protects against any outages during peak traffic times
Flexible and scalable in a way that your CMS grows with your business

How to select the right content management system?

How does Adobe Experience Manager CMS work?

Enterprises trust Adobe Experience Manager also called as AEM because of its simplified and streamlined experience across channels and mediums. Adobe Experience Manager helps you manage content via experience fragments and content fragments along with responsive web designs and more. The AEM modules consist of six solutions all of which are known to save time and energy. These include:

#1: Content Management System (CMS) through Adobe Experience Manager Sites

Adobe Experience Manager Sites also called as AEM Sites is a user-friendly content management system designed for both marketers and developers. It allows marketers to build a website quickly using ready-made templates and components, and developers can further customize it with minimal coding. This makes it perfect for teams looking to speed up their site-building process.

Another important feature of Experience Manager Sites is that marketers and developers can publish content together on almost any platform. Its generative AI tools make it simple to adjust your content’s tone, add variations, and make large-scale updates effortlessly.

For example, if your company targets both businesses and individual consumers, you can easily create personalized landing pages for each audience in just a few clicks. It’s fast, easy to use, and secure, making it ideal for small businesses and large enterprises alike.

#2: Digital Asset Management (DAM) through Adobe Experience Manager Assets

Adobe Experience Manager Assets is a cloud-based digital asset management (DAM) system that helps you store, organize, and access your digital files, such as images, videos, and 3D models. This means marketers do not have to search through computers or accounts, instead you can access all of these assets in a shared environment.

For example, if you have a social media post template, you can store it in the DAM and share it with your team, ensuring consistent branding across all platforms. Adobe Experience Manager Assets even tracks any changes made, so you can review the history of updates.

Since it’s hosted on Adobe’s Cloud, you don’t need to worry about local storage for large files. It’s scalable, fast, and integrates seamlessly with other Adobe tools, simplifying your workflow.

#3: Digital Enrollment and Forms

Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) includes tools for digital enrollment and forms, allowing you to streamline onboarding processes. It helps eliminate paper-based workflows and speeds up your operations through digital transformation.

You can easily build forms, collect e-signatures, and automate tasks. For example, a sales team can create a digital form for new clients. Once the client completes and signs it, the system can automatically trigger the next steps, saving time for the team and improving the client experience.

These forms are simple to use and can work across multiple platforms, making them useful for both internal and external purposes.

#4: Digital Screens

Adobe Experience Manager’s Digital Screens feature gives you control over digital signage for stores and venues. This tool is particularly useful for businesses that operate both online and offline. You can manage and update digital signs across multiple locations from one central dashboard.

For instance, if you have several physical stores, you can display personalized product recommendations on in-store screens based on the clientele at each location. This enhances the shopping experience and helps your staff provide better service.

In today’s omnichannel world, Digital Screens ensures that your customers receive a consistent experience, whether they’re interacting with your brand online or in person.

#5: Digital Guides

Digital Guides is a specialized tool for creating product documentation and help content. Unlike traditional content management systems, Digital Guides,a solution from Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) organizes content into components, making it easy to update as products evolve.

For example, if you modify a product feature, Digital Guides allows you to update all related user guides and documentation quickly and consistently. Without this system, you’d have to make these updates manually, which can be time-consuming and error-prone.

This helps both employees and customers stay up-to-date and reduces confusion when product features change.

#6: Adobe Learning Manager

Adobe Learning Manager helps you create customized training programs for a variety of purposes, including customer education, employee training, and compliance. Normally, building such programs can be time-consuming, but Learning Manager provides access to over 86,000 ready-made courses.

It also features gamification, leaderboards, and social learning tools to make training more engaging. For example, you can use it to train new managers within your company on leadership skills or offer external training to customers to boost engagement and sales.

Adobe Learning Manager simplifies training development while making it more interactive and impactful.

How Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) matches against popular CMS characteristics

The below table shows how Adobe AEM stands against the popular and most asked for AEM content management system features by business users:

CHARACTERISTIC	ADOBE EXPERIENCE MANAGER
Intuitive admin dashboard	Adobe AEM allows you to manage all content and asset tasks from creating, distribution, to management via a single dashboard. You can create, manage, optimize, and track multimedia blog posts and web pages on Adobe AEM.
User and role-based administration	You can leverage the role-based accessibility feature of Adobe AEM to make your users only access content and features relevant to them.
Multilingual content capabilities	In case you serve an international audience, Adobe AEM provides you with multi-lingual editing tools and workflows to offer localized experiences to your users.
Flexibility, scalability, and performance	Adobe AEM CMS is scalable, which means it grows as your business grows. It comes as an on-premises and cloud solution, and you can choose as per your business requirements. However, in both versions, it possesses the agility to handle traffic spikes and evolving market demands.
Personalization and analytics	With Adobe AEM, you can create content and quickly repurpose it for several platforms via content fragments. With its automated tools and workflows, you can match your content for the right audience across channels, devices, and touchpoints. With native integrations across Adobe Analytics and Target, you can get better clarity on which content to create to deliver personalized experiences.
Content and commerce integration	By integrating Adobe Experience Manager with your eCommerce stores, you can scale into new geographies and publish content for the right audience at the right time. A scalable platform like Adobe AEM will empower you to publish multiple product pages in a day, personalize content as per your users, and even implement the live search and product recommendations feature via Adobe Sensei.
Built-in SEO Tools	With Adobe Experience Manager built-in SEO tools, you can customize URLs for search engines, use sling selectors to cache pages on dispatcher to improve security, localize page names as per region, add canonical URL tags to let search engines know the intent of the page while indexing, build a XML sitemap to improve the understanding of your website structure, and so on.
Robust Integrations	Adobe Experience Manager CMS seamlessly integrates with other Adobe Experience Cloud platforms like Adobe Experience Cloud tools and other third-party platforms like MarTech, CRM, Social media, Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and so on.
Detailed analytics	You can easily integrate Adobe AEM as a Cloud Service and Adobe Analytics to track web page activity. With this combined solution, you can analyze data from any digital point in the customer journey, create reports, and tailor content to suit the needs.
Built-in content staging	With Adobe AEM CMS, you can stage and preview content to test it before making changes to your live site. This helps you evaluate visitor experiences before publishing them.
Security protocols	In Adobe Experience Manager, all content is protected during upload via the HTTP TLS v1.2 or higher. Until an author publishes the content, it remains private and protected on the Adobe AEM servers. Adobe Experience Manager is compliant with LDAP, SAML, and SSO systems.
Extensive support	The Adobe support community offers extensive support. With thousands of product documentations and digital guides available freely, Adobe AEM developers can even engage with the Adobe support team for quick resolutions.
Pre-built templates	When working with Adobe Experience Manager CMS, you will be working with templates to function as a base for new pages. Adobe AEM offers basic templates (editable and static) for page creation, content fragment templates to assist with page creation.

Is Adobe Experience Manager CMS the right CMS tool for my business?

Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) CMS is a versatile solution for businesses across verticals- digital commerce, manufacturing, healthcare, financial services, and so on. AEM capabilities are not limited to publishing content but creating compelling product pages that form the very foundation on online shopping. Adobe AEM centralizes asset and data storage and management, simplifies workflows, and offers personalized experiences at scale.

As non-technical marketers can easily and efficiently navigate the CMS tool without indulging in tedious coding to build superior experiences, Adobe AEM becomes the tool of choice for startups, SMBs, and large enterprises.

If you’re still wondering if Adobe CMS makes sense for your business, here are some challenges that the tool solves for you.

If you’re suffering from a lagging time-to-market and complex workflows that make it difficult to optimize and update content experiences for your users, Adobe AEM is for you.
If you’re leveraging a legacy technology stack that lacks the speed, flexibility, and scalability demanded today and want to improve your site performances and experiences, Adobe AEM is for you.
If you are unable to collect customer behavior data and details around your customer’s digital journey that results in unsatisfactory or blind experiences, Adobe Experience Manager CMS is for you.
If you wish to establish a direct-to-customer channel that captures data, engages with them and offers tailored customer experiences across channels, CMS in AEM is for you.

Key features of Adobe Experience Manager

Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) is packed with features designed to simplify your workflow and improve customer experiences across all channels. Here’s how it works:

#1: Project Dashboard

Adobe Experience Manager CMS offers a streamlined, user-friendly dashboard that provides a clear, high-level view of all your projects. Each project is represented as a tile for easy access. For example, you can organize all your training materials under a single tile, making it simple to access, add tasks, upload assets, or link external resources.

#2: Out-of-the-Box Features

AEM Adobe Experience Manager is a plug-and-play platform, so you don’t need to be a coding expert to get started. Its intuitive interface offers features like:

A WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor for seamless content creation.
Editable templates and core components like headers and footers with flexible styling.
A responsive layout to ensure your content looks great on any device.

#3: Custom Add-ons

While Adobe Experience Manager AEM platform doesn’t require coding, developers can add custom features if needed. But even if you’re not a developer, the platform’s low-code options make it easy to customize. Plus, AEM includes example code to help you understand what’s possible, and because it’s built on open-source Java, there’s a large community of developers available to offer support or inspiration.

#4: Cloud Services

Since AEM CMS capabilities also include its cloud-based features, it’s incredibly scalable and always up-to-date. Adobe manages upgrades, saving you the hassle and cost of IT management. With robust security features like encryption, access control, and multifactor authentication, your data is protected.

#5: Visual Media Conversion

Adobe Experience Manager AEM makes resizing and formatting images and videos for multiple platforms a breeze. You can quickly convert files for different channels, like Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, without manual resizing. This feature saves time and ensures your content looks great across platforms.

#6: Omnichannel Content Delivery

AEM’s headless CMS supports omnichannel delivery, meaning you can manage multiple websites, even in different languages, from one place. You can push content to mobile apps, websites, and even IoT devices, ensuring a consistent, seamless experience for customers no matter where they engage with your brand.

What are the benefits of Adobe Experience Manager (AEM)?

By now, we’ve established that Adobe Experience Manager CMS platform makes it simple for digital professionals to create, manage, and distribute content and resources and deliver them to the right person at the right time. Well, its biggest perk is that it simplifies the delivery and management of website content and its assets, reducing the complexity and struggle associated with delivering online experiences to the right customer. Every Adobe AEM component plays an integral role in deciphering the success of your marketing efforts across channels-web, social, mobile, email, and so on.

Coupled with the power of Adobe Marketing Cloud, it erects a formidable path for digital marketing professionals that results in more qualified leads and relevant site experiences for users. The following are some portions that stand out as a competitive edge to AEM.

Let’s discuss the features and capabilities of Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) CMS:

#1: Simplified managed of assets with Adobe AEM DAM

AEM’s built-in digital asset management functionality allows you to store content and visual assets on the cloud so that your employees can access a project file from anywhere, anytime. It introduces the concept of centralized storage, thus adding greater efficiency to the business processes. This means your marketers don’t have to go around looking for a certain asset and can easily access it by following the workflow path. This way, Adobe AEM digital asset management empowers editors to work on a comprehensive set of information per asset, making editing and publishing content a smooth affair.

#2: Easy-to-navigate and creative Adobe AEM dashboard

Adobe AEM CMS creates a central environment for your content and assets, enabling editors to manage projects through a custom project dashboard. Each project is represented as a tile in the dashboard where users can add information like external links, project information, team details, etc.

#3: Integration with other Adobe Marketing Cloud and Experience Cloud tools

A business’s marketing efforts aren’t limited to customer experience; it also includes analytics, creating campaigns, and expanding the customer base. As Adobe Experience Manager is a part of Adobe Experience Cloud, it easily integrates with Adobe Analytics, Adobe Target, Adobe Audience Manager, Adobe Commerce, and Adobe Marketo Engage.

Once you integrate Adobe Experience Experience to other Experience Cloud and Marketing Cloud solutions, you secure your marketing efforts, simplify workflows, and deliver high-quality content that syncs with your goals. You can integrate Adobe AEM with other third-party tools and add robustness and extensibility to your marketing strategies.

#4: Enhance SEO and user experiences

Whenever you’re uploading assets, you’d be asked for metadata and tags required for SEO purposes. However, if you’re uploading hundreds of assets every day, it’s going to be too much of a task for you. It is where Adobe AEM can help you. Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) can detect the critical information associated with the content and then automatically fill in metadata and tags. You can edit the tags if you feel they’re not relatable. The best part, you don’t have to repeat this task in case of a multi-location website and instead optimize SEO of your site content in a few clicks.

#5: Easy and quick content updating and editing

Content is the backbone of any content management software. There are all types of content available in the Adobe AEM digital asset management – images, videos, and documents. The Adobe AEM DAM structure permits editors to visualize how their project will look after designing. Along with this, you can use the building blocks to create additional site content for web pages.

#6: Access the out-of-the-box (OTB) components in Adobe Experience Manager

Designers can visualize certain content in web pages using pre-installed out-of-the-box components. The most significant advantage of using OTB components is faster deployment and lowered development costs. It means that the developer doesn’t have to code content blocks. Since it is an Adobe product, regular updates, including standard layout, forms creations, and workflows to collect, store, and manage data, are a given.

#7: Media conversion and video management in Adobe AEM

AEM can convert your files into different formats to engage audiences across several online channels. Using AEM, you can showcase products via multiple videos, hence driving engagement, garnering customer attention, and forging brand loyalty. Using analytics and insights, you can study visitor behavior and distribute content accordingly.

#8: Content personalization at scale

Every second, millions of digital content pieces are added online. But not every content appeals to customers the same way. So, it is crucial to refine the content as per users’ interests to garner high traffic and better leads.

When users navigate the web pages, Adobe AEM stores their information like location, relationship, search history, etc. Using such details, Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) CMS delivers personalized content to every user who lands on the webpage, resulting in better relevancy and improved search performance.

Moreover, Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) CMS integrates easily with other third-party systems- CMS, POS, CRM, it aggregates data from all these platforms to offer a unified holistic customer view. Adobe AEM uses Adobe Sensei features like expert scoring, visual search, smart crop, smart tags, and automatic text summarization to manage and reuse content and build targeted experiences for various audiences and delivery formats.

#9: Headless CMS capabilities

You can utilize various technologies to provide content across all channels with the help of Adobe AEM’s headless CMS features. You can control how the content is displayed across various platforms, including desktop, mobile, IoT, and PIM systems. Moreover, this provides you the flexibility and capacity to deliver your customers a true omnichannel experience.

#10: Accelerate speed-to-market

No longer do marketers need to spend days and weeks creating, managing and distributing content on different channels. With Adobe AEM CMS, they can design new engaging webpages from scratch in just a few clicks. Moreover, marketers can employ the in-built Adobe AEM tools when editing content, preview in real-time what their web pages would look like on desktop, IoT devices, mobile screens, tablets and other devices. They can clone webpages and leverage marketing-friendly templates to offer consistent experiences with AEM platform.

#11: Flexibility and scalability

Adobe Experience Manager AEM allows you to create and manage diverse content variations with ease, making it ideal for businesses that need to engage multiple audience segments. With its intuitive tools, you can quickly adjust content to fit different personas, regions, or product lines, all from one platform. This flexibility enables you to scale your content strategies as your business grows without the need for complex processes. Whether you’re launching a small campaign or managing a global content hub, AEM adapts seamlessly, ensuring a consistent and relevant customer experience across all touchpoints.

#12: Personalized content

AEM Adobe content management system robust personalization features let you tailor content for hyper-specific audience segments, creating unique experiences for each customer. By leveraging user data, you can deliver content variations across different channels, such as mobile apps, websites, or social media, ensuring that every interaction feels personal and relevant. This level of personalization helps you engage customers on a deeper level, improving brand loyalty and conversion rates. Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) makes it easy to deliver the right message to the right audience, at the right time, increasing the overall effectiveness of your marketing efforts.

#13: Ability to target customers wherever they are

In today’s omnichannel world, customers interact with brands across a variety of platforms—websites, apps, emails, and even IoT devices. AEM empowers you to reach your audience on any channel they choose, providing a unified experience. Its content delivery capabilities allow you to maintain a cohesive brand voice while tailoring your messaging to suit the context of each interaction. Whether customers are browsing your mobile app, receiving a personalized email, or engaging through social media, AEM CMS ensures you can target and deliver relevant content seamlessly, no matter where they are in their journey.

#14: Better task management

Managing a complex content ecosystem requires careful coordination, and Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) simplifies this by streamlining digital asset management workflows. With its project dashboard, you can easily assign and track tasks, keeping teams aligned and projects on schedule. By integrating task management within the content creation process, AEM ensures that your teams stay focused on priorities, reducing bottlenecks and improving efficiency. This built-in task management system reduces the need for external tools, providing a centralized space to organize workloads, track progress, and maintain accountability, ultimately enhancing productivity.

#15: Improved search for digital assets

Adobe Experience Manager’s (AEM) powerful asset management system organizes all your digital assets—images, videos, documents into a centralized library, making it easy to find and reuse them when needed. The platform’s intelligent search capabilities allow you to locate assets quickly by using tags, filters, or metadata, saving time and reducing frustration. Instead of hunting through multiple folders or platforms, your team can effortlessly access the right assets, ensuring brand consistency and faster content creation.

Why choose a component CMS?

Why integrate Adobe AEM with other Adobe Cloud tools?

#1: Adobe AEM integration with Adobe Commerce to drive revenue & conversions

Magento and Adobe Commerce Cloud are incredibly compatible with Adobe Experience Manager. You can easily integrate the Adobe CMS (AEM) and the eCommerce arm (Adobe Commerce) to give merchants a smoothly integrated experience. AEM and Adobe Commerce are both a part of Adobe’s Experience Cloud offering. In a headless commerce model, eCommerce brands using or choosing Adobe Commerce can use AEM as their front-end and Adobe Commerce as their back-end operations. In other words, AEM and Adobe Commerce work best together to give any eCommerce brand the best possible experience in terms of marketing, content, and commerce.

The business value of Adobe Commerce and Adobe AEM integration

The Magento and AEM integration enables the marketer to bring the brand to life with a built-in page builder, Product Carousel, Product Teaser, etc.
With this integration, you can integrate your marketing capabilities into your eCommerce platform.
The AEM and Magento integration provides a seamless omnichannel experience, which helps marketers extend the eCommerce brand’s reach.
Managing the brand and the commerce experience with a single tool is faster and more agile with Magento and AEM integration.
The integration of Magento and AEM aims to make every moment shoppable by providing the brand the capability to sell and merchandise the product.

Explore more of competitive benefits of Adobe AEM + Commerce integration

#2: Adobe AEM and Adobe Analytics integration for omnichannel marketing

Adobe AEM integration with Adobe Analytics allows marketers to combine their content and data to centralize customer insights under one dashboard, implement them to the strategies, and deliver seamless omnichannel marketing campaigns. With evolving customer behaviors, Adobe AEM and Adobe Analytics integration allows marketers to update content across channels and offer tailored solutions.

Checkout our Adobe AEM integration with Analytics resource.

#3: Adobe AEM integration with Adobe Sensei to deliver customized solutions at scale

Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) with Adobe Sensei integration invokes the latters power of machine learning & artificial intelligence to create real-time user profiles, tailor experiences for different audiences, and amplify results at scale. With Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) digital asset management (DAM) helps you save time in organizing your assets and workflows so you can focus on creating experiences for different audiences and channels.

Adobe Experience Manager developer role

It is the responsibility of AEM developers to design, build, and test software that is based on the Adobe Experience Manager. After an initial examination and data analysis, the developer assists with integrating AEM with the existing setup in accordance with the needs of the enterprise. They focus on the AEM system but are just as accountable as software developer responsibilities.

You’ll conduct tests as an AEM Developer to evaluate software builds for problems like performance and troubleshooting and work to enhance existing systems. Agile methods, responsive frameworks, and front-end development techniques are also used in a fast-paced development environment to meet deadlines.

Is coding required for Adobe Experience Manager?

Digital asset management, content translation/localization, and maintenance on the AEM cloud are a few components that are truly low-code. Reporting, workflows, and integration with marketing products can also be low-code if the requirements are not very complex. But developers will almost always be required to write proprietary code when developing web components. It is difficult for a powerful enterprise content platform like AEM to be totally low-code/no-code because it offers a high level of customization. AEM is still the CMS of choice for marketers and IT experts because of its immense power for enterprises, even though some require coding.

Cost of Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) platform

The pricing for Adobe Experience Manager depends on the different AEM modules you want to leverage to improve your website experience amongst the available ones of AEM Sites, AEM Assets, and AEM Forms. As for how much AEM Adobe Experience Manager costs, their plans start from $100,000 per license. There is no free version or trial version available as Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) is an enterprise-grade platform. However, the pricing for various modules vary based on the following aspects/attributes. Let’s discuss them:

Is Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) easy to use?

AEM, a powerful and easy-to-use CMS, allows your marketing team to manage online and mobile content from a single platform. It has a modern interface incorporating inline editing with drag-and-drop features to make it easy to develop, publish, track, and report your digital assets in minutes. Whatever your goal, from website personalization to email marketing, Adobe Experience Manager helps you connect with customers at every touchpoint seamlessly.

Cost of Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) platform

The pricing for Adobe Experience Manager depends on the different modules you want to leverage to improve your website experience amongst the available ones of AEM Sites, AEM Assets, and AEM Forms. As for how much Adobe Experience Manager costs, their plans start from $100,000 per license. There is no free version or trial version available as Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) is an enterprise-grade platform. However, the pricing for various modules vary based on the following aspects/attributes. Let’s discuss them:

Adobe Experience Manager Sites: The Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) Sites pricing and packaging can be easily customized based on your requirements. Currently, the following are the features offered by AEM Sites:

Editable templates
Intuitive What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WISYWIG) interface
Style system
Multi-site manager
Core components
Style systems
Translation workflows
Experience audit
Intuitive headless visual editor
Unstructured content with layout
Preview content
Structured content
GraphQL API
Events and webhooks
Adobe IP-enabled code testing and deployment (CI/CD)
SDKs and CLIs
Rules-based authoring
Integrated with Adobe Analytics and Adobe Target*
Automated product updates
Adobe-managed capacity elasticity and auto-scale
24/7 monitoring, event response, and disaster recovery
Default CDN optimized for Adobe Experience Manager
Application-level SLA
Security certifications: ISO-27001, SOC-2

There are several add-ons available with Adobe Experience Manager Sites such as Commerce Integration Framework, Adobe Learning Manager, Adobe Experience Manager Screens, Adobe Developer App Builder, Enhanced security, and Adobe Experience Manager Guides. If you want to add-on any of these AEM Adobe Experience Manager modules, then the pricing will be customized for you.

Adobe Experience Manager Assets: With Adobe Experience Manager Assets, there are two versions available:

The Department version with Essential DAM capabilities, native integrations, search and smart tagging, and other collaboration features.
The Enterprise version that takes into consideration your enterprise-wide workflows. It comes with several features such as metadata management, taxonomy, Automated and scalable content creation, Advanced rich media, integrations, Configurable and customizable media portals, and global governance tools.

Although most of the features are almost-common in both these versions, the Enterprise version offers high-end capabilities such as Customization, integration, and extensibility, Dynamic Media, content automation, brand portal and asset sharing.

Adobe Experience Manager Forms: The pricing for AEM Forms depends on the following metrics:

Volume: Pricing for Adobe Experience Manager Forms is based on volume of transactions, including form submissions or communications generated or delivered.
Managed Services: Pricing also depends on the level of uptime for your service level agreements.
Extensibility: As a part of the Adobe Experience Cloud suite, AEM Forms seamlessly integrates with the rest of tools for advanced security, access controls, personalization, or electronic signatures.

For Adobe Experience Manager pricing related to other modules, get in touch with us and we will structure a customized plan for you.

Success Story: Improving site experiences for Ranosys’ with Adobe Experience Manager (AEM)

By leveraging the competitive power of a leading Adobe AEM Content Management System, Adobe Experience Manager (AEM), we migrated our corporate website to the platform to boost its lead generation efforts, offer consistent experiences to its visitors, and improve its website performance and scalability.

Migrating our corporate website to Adobe Experience Manager empowered our non-tech marketing team to easily and effortlessly create engaging new pages in minutes rather than weeks. Moreover, in migrating our website, we focussed on simplifying navigation and creating more consistent web pages to improve customer journeys. As these journeys catered to five different regions, we could offer localized content experiences without building web pages from scratch.

With the help of AEM’s drag-and-drop functionalities, we tutored our teams, including several non-tech marketers on Adobe Experience Manager, who can now design, create, edit, and manage content creation in a matter of a few clicks.

Today, we have not just achieved this major feat of migrating to the leading CMS, Adobe Experience Manager. We are even assisting other leading organizations in making a move. This proves that when we can do it for ourselves, we can confidently say that we can do it for our clients as well.

Leverage the competitive Adobe AEM tool for your business

AEM is known to be an enterprise-friendly web content management solution mainly because of its robustness, personalized content delivery, and easy third-party integrations. Adobe Experience Manager follows a flexible approach, perfect for meeting rapidly-changing consumer demands and improving website user experiences considerably.

About Ranosys

Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) is a comprehensive suite that combines digital asset management and content management capabilities. It empowers enterprises to create, manage, and deliver rich-media assets on their websites. Ranosys, a leading expert in Adobe Experience Manager solutions and a 3X award-winning Adobe Partner. With 15+ years of experience in Adobe Experience Cloud suite and strategic expertise across AEM Sites, Forms, Assets, and Managed Services. AEM developers can help you navigate development challenges across the Adobe Experience Platform to provide end-to-end solutions ranging from AEM Adobe Experience Manager implementation, consulting, development, optimization, integration, migration, and critical support. You can connect with our certified Adobe Experience Manager consultants to explore more of its business-driven features.

Explore what AEM can do for your business

Our experts will love to walk you through the process.

Ranosys, a 2X Salesforce Partner of the Year Award Winner and Salesforce AppExchange Managed Services Expert, has earned the prestigious Summit (Platinum) Partner status with Salesforce.

This appraisal is a testament to our dedication to delivering customer success, our strong track record of successful implementations across the globe, our expertise across Salesforce’s multi-cloud and industry solutions, and our commitment to continuous learning and skill development.

What is the Salesforce Partner Program?

The Salesforce Partner Program aims to evaluate a partner’s expertise and dedication to the partnership. Based on performance, Salesforce assigns partners to one of four tiers: Base, Ridge, Crest, or Summit.

What does it take to become a Salesforce Summit Partner?

To become a Summit Partner, the highest partnership tier with Salesforce, partners must meet several objectives related to customer success, innovation, growth, equality and sustainable development.

#1: Customer success

Salesforce places great emphasis on customer success. As a Salesforce Summit Partner, Ranosys has demonstrated a consistent focus on delivering high-quality solutions that drive real results and help achieve their business goals using Salesforce.

#2: Salesforce expertise and certifications

Summit Partners must have a large team of certified Salesforce professionals, including developers, consultants, and architects, who are experts in various Salesforce clouds such as Sales, Service, Marketing, Commerce, and more. Ranosys has 150+ certified experts collectively holding 300+ Salesforce certifications with a continued focus towards learning and skill development.

#3: Innovation and specialization

Summit Partners must also show specialization in certain industries or Salesforce products (e.g., Commerce Cloud, MuleSoft, Tableau), highlighting their proficiency in specific areas. Ranosys’ expertise across the multi-cloud ecosystem includes Commerce Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, MuleSoft, Data Cloud, Sales Cloud, Tableau, and other industry solutions.

What does it mean for our clients?

Since 2018, we have been growing our capabilities and assisting businesses of all sizes in leveraging the Salesforce ecosystem and achieving success. As a Salesforce Summit Partner, we strive to stay committed to delivering customer satisfaction with our cost-efficient Salesforce services.

“Achieving Summit (Platinum) Partner status with Salesforce is a remarkable milestone that underscores our unwavering commitment to customer success and our deep expertise across Salesforce’s multi-cloud and industry solutions,” said Rameshwar Vyas, CEO of Ranosys. “This journey wouldn’t have been possible without the invaluable guidance and support from the exceptional Salesforce team and our professionals. With our elevated partner status, we are excited to strengthen our strategic partnership with Salesforce, unlocking new opportunities to drive innovation, deliver greater value to our customers, and accelerate their digital transformation and commerce objectives.”

Over the years, we have quickly matured its Salesforce delivery, becoming one of the few select partners with strategic expertise across all Salesforce Clouds and related solutions – Commerce Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, MuleSoft, Data Cloud, Sales Cloud, Salesforce Order Management, Tableau, and Slack. With a 5/5 rating on Salesforce AppExchange, multiple dedicated Salesforce delivery centers across the globe, and certified Salesforce experts, we have been delivering innovative and impactful business solutions with rapid time-to-market.

With this elevated Summit status, Ranosys is well-positioned to continue its aggressive growth, expand its service portfolio across the Salesforce ecosystem, and deliver high-value and successful business outcomes to its global clients. Visit us on Salesforce AppExchange here.

For further details, please visit our website at https://www.ranosys.com/.

Or, fill out the form and email us at sales@ranosys.com

Ranosys, an multi-award-winning Salesforce Partner and Navigator Expert in Managed Services will be attending Salesforce Dreamforce 2024 from 17 – 19 September at the Moscone Center, San Francisco, CA. Our CEO – Rameshwar Vyas and CRO – Anand Ramdeo are excitedly looking forward to attending the most trusted AI event of the world.

Since its inception in 2003, Salesforce Dreamforce has been the premier event for visionaries, partners, community members, and customers to explore the latest advancements within the Salesforce ecosystem. Dreamforce 2024 is set to be the year’s standout AI event, gathering the entire Salesforce community—customers, partners, trailblazers, and experts—to engage with groundbreaking product announcements, dive into sessions focused on AI and data-driven innovation, draw inspiration from customer success stories, and network with peers. As always, Dreamforce 2024 will spotlight innovation, offering attendees endless opportunities to harness AI, smart CRM, and data to reimagine customer experiences.

Ranosys at Dreamforce 2024

Ranosys is thrilled to participate in Salesforce Dreamforce 2024, with CEO Rameshwar Vyas sharing, “We’re excited to attend Dreamforce in person this year and look forward to connecting with the community. Salesforce events are renowned for their wealth of insights, grand atmosphere, and unparalleled networking opportunities. We’re counting down the days to the AI Event of the Year. As a Salesforce Partner, embracing the latest innovations empowers us to better serve our customers, anticipate their needs, and deliver transformative solutions. Dreamforce isn’t just a conference; it’s where the future is shaped, and we’re here to help shape it with excellence.”

As one of the select Salesforce partners with strategic multi-cloud expertise across the Salesforce Cloud ecosystem and industry solutions—including Salesforce CRM, Commerce Cloud, Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Salesforce Order Management, Marketing Cloud, and MuleSoft—Ranosys has been driving digital commerce and transformation initiatives for global enterprises and brands for 15+ years. Ranosys is top-rated on Salesforce AppExchange and is globally recognized for executing complex implementations across industry verticals with rapid market delivery. With a team of 150+ Salesforce consultants and experts, Ranosys has collaborated with leading global brands and Fortune 500 companies across the Americas, APAC, and Europe to deliver superior and engaging customer experiences.

Ranosys has also earned accolades like the 2023 Innovation and Impact Partner of the Year, the 2023 Growth Partner of the Year, and Salesforce Talent Alliance Champion Award and has been featured as a success story on the Salesforce website for their internal intranet system, Pulse. They have also launched two Salesforce solutions for B2C Commerce Cloud, the Back in Stock & Low Stock Cartridge and the CSV Import Export Cartridge, published on Salesforce AppExchange.

As Ranosys continues to make significant investments in revolutionizing customer experiences through cutting-edge Salesforce solutions powered by AI and advanced analytics, Dreamforce 2024 presents the perfect platform to advance these shared goals.

The Ranosys team looks forward to connecting with you at the Moscone Center during the event. Schedule your meeting here: https://www.ranosys.com/us/contact-us/

About Ranosys

Ranosys is an award-winning Salesforce Partner with 8 offices in the US, UK, Middle East, and APAC regions. Ranosys’ expertise spans across multiple cloud and industry solutions, including Customer 360, Commerce Cloud, Sales Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Service Cloud, Revenue Cloud, Mulesoft, Financial Cloud and Lightning Experience. Along with their globally-located team of 150+ certified experts, Ranosys has assisted clients from SMBs to large enterprises to implement, optimize and scale their Salesforce solutions. Throughout, they’ve built a staunch reputation for their data-driven designs, innovative thinking, robust planning, seamless delivery, and client experience goals.

For more information, visit https://www.ranosys.com/

Ranosys, a leading Shopify Plus Partner and award-winning eCommerce Consulting Company is excited to announce an upcoming interactive webinar titled “Navigating Retail Trends with Shopify.” This insightful webinar is designed to provide retail leaders with the latest industry insights, innovative strategies, and practical tips for thriving in the dynamic retail landscape.

Date: Thu, 1 Aug 2024
Time: 1:30 – 2: 30 PM (EST)
Register here: https://page.ranosys.com/navigating-retail-trends-with-shopify-webinar

The speakers for the webinar, Ashish Sharma and Sourabh Modi will be discussing the vibrant landscape of retail, from the latest trends to the transformative fusion of commerce and data that can elevate omnichannel strategies to new heights. Our experts will also be discussing the realm of AI and its profound impact on reshaping customer experiences and ways to foster customer engagement and optimize conversions through the innovative approach of Circle Of Commerce.

We are thrilled to host this webinar and share valuable insights with the retail community,” said Ashish Sharma, AVP – North America at Ranosys. “With the rapid evolution of retail, it’s crucial for businesses to stay informed and agile. This webinar aims to equip attendees with the knowledge and tools needed to navigate the current trends and drive success.”

Sourabh Modi, Director of Technologies at Ranosys further continued, “If your key objectives include enhancing customer experience, reducing platform costs, scaling your business efficiently, adapting quickly to market trends, and integrating various systems seamlessly, this webinar is for you.”

As a leading Shopify Plus Partner, Ranosys brings over 15 years of strategic expertise in eCommerce implementation and trusted platform knowledge. Ranosys has a strong track record of empowering businesses with innovative solutions and strategic insights specializing in development, consultation, customization, integration, migration, and support. With a certified team of experts, developers, and consultants, Ranosys has been assisting numerous global brands and Fortune 500 companies in enhancing customer experiences across the Americas, APAC, and Europe. The diverse portfolio spans industries such as Fashion & Apparel, Food & Beverages, Retail & Consumer Goods, Home & Lifestyle, Beauty & Skincare, Health & Wellness, and more.

This webinar is part of Ranosys’ commitment to fostering knowledge sharing and industry advancement. Moreover, it provides retail leaders across the globe in pinpointing the key retail trends and how to deliver superior shopping experiences while driving business growth and value.

Don’t miss this opportunity to gain a competitive edge in the retail industry. Register now and join us for an engaging and informative session.

About Ranosys

Ranosys is a leading Shopify Plus Partner with global footprints across USA, UK, and APAC regions. Our innovative digital commerce solutions have empowered several globally renowned brands to achieve their digital transformation objectives, establish well-integrated unified digital ecosystems, and embrace future-ready technologies. By harnessing the capabilities of the Shopify Plus platform, Ranosys is uniquely positioned to redefine both retailer and customer journeys, crafting digital commerce solutions that drive accelerated revenue growth for brands. For further details, please visit our website at https://www.ranosys.com/.

Or, fill out the form and shoot us an email at sales@ranosys.com

Ranosys, a leading and 2X award-winning Salesforce Gold Partner and expert in managed services, proudly announces the launch of its latest innovation; the CSV Import Export Cartridge for Salesforce B2C Commerce Business Manager. This new cartridge is set to revolutionize how eCommerce businesses manage their product catalogs, pricebooks, and custom objects.

Designed to address the challenges faced by business managers in importing and exporting data, the CSV Import Export Cartridge offers a robust solution for seamless bulk creation and updates. By leveraging CSV format, businesses can now efficiently handle large volumes of data, significantly reducing the time and effort traditionally required for manual entry.

“Our goal with the CSV Import Export Cartridge is to empower eCommerce businesses with a streamlined approach to data management,” said Ashish Anand Solanki, Delivery Manager – Salesforce at Ranosys. “This cartridge simplifies the complexities of managing product catalogs and pricebooks, ensuring accuracy and enhancing operational efficiency.”

Key features of the CSV Import Export Cartridge

User-Friendly Interface: Simplifying the process of bulk data manipulation through an intuitive interface.

Customization Options: Supporting both standard and custom attributes, tailored to meet diverse business needs.

Easy Installation: Straightforward setup with minimal configuration requirements, ensuring quick deployment and integration into existing systems.

Pricebook Operations: Effortlessly manage and update prices in bulk using CSV files, ensuring pricing data accuracy and saving valuable time compared to traditional XML methods.

Catalog Operations: Streamline product management with simplified CSV import/export capabilities. Easily update headers and import files directly from ERPs and CRMs, enhancing operational efficiency.

Custom Object Import Export: Empower merchants to perform CRUD operations on custom objects with ease using CSV files. This feature facilitates streamlined data management and analysis.

Menu Options for CSV Import Export: Access CSV operations directly from the Merchant Tools Menu dropdown in Business Manager for convenient and efficient data import, export, and update processes

Know More about the CSV Import Export Cartridge

Ranosys continues to innovate and deliver cutting-edge solutions that empower businesses to thrive in the digital economy. The CSV Import Export Cartridge underscores Ranosys’ commitment to providing scalable and efficient solutions tailored to enhance Salesforce B2C Commerce capabilities.

The CSV Import Export Cartridge is now available for Salesforce B2C Commerce Cloud users. For more information or to schedule a demo, please visit: https://www.ranosys.com/contact-us/ or contact sales@ranosys.com

About Ranosys

Ranosys is a 2X award-winning Salesforce Gold Partner, Managed Services Navigator Expert, 1% Pledge member, and a Salesforce Talent Alliance Champion. Ranosys’ expertise spans across multiple cloud and industry solutions, including Customer 360, Commerce Cloud, Sales Cloud, Data Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Service Cloud, Revenue Cloud, MuleSoft, Financial Cloud and Lightning Experience. We are the proud winners of the 2023 Salesforce Innovation & Impact Partner of the Year and Salesforce Growth Partner of the Year Awards. Along with their globally-located team of 150+ certified Salesforce consultants, Ranosys has assisted clients from SMBs to large enterprises to implement, optimize and scale their Salesforce solutions. Throughout, they’ve built a staunch reputation for their data-driven designs, innovative thinking, robust planning, seamless delivery, and client experience goals.

For more information, visit here.

Ranosys, a leading and 2X award-winning Salesforce Gold Partner and Navigator Expert in Managed Services, is thrilled to announce the launch of its cutting-edge Back In Stock & Low Stock Notification Cartridge. This groundbreaking solution is designed to enhance inventory management and customer satisfaction for Salesforce B2C Commerce Cloud users.

In today’s fast-paced eCommerce environment, out-of-stock situations can lead to significant revenue loss and dissatisfied customers. Ranosys’ Back In Stock & Low Stock Notification Cartridge addresses these challenges by ensuring that customers are promptly informed when their desired products are back in stock, thus converting missed opportunities into potential sales.

Key features of the Back In Stock & Low Stock Notification Cartridge

Customer Email Alerts: Shoppers can subscribe to receive email notifications when out-of-stock products become available again, keeping them engaged and ready to purchase.

Admin Dashboard: Merchandisers have access to a comprehensive dashboard displaying product IDs and the email addresses of customers who have opted for notifications, allowing for better inventory planning and management.

Notification Preferences: The cartridge offers the flexibility to enable or disable back in stock and low stock notifications according to business requirements, ensuring a tailored approach to customer engagement.

Notification Thresholds: To prevent over-promising, admins can set a notification threshold, ensuring that customers receive alerts only when sufficient stock is available. This feature helps in maintaining customer trust and satisfaction.

Low Stock Alerts for Merchandisers: Admins receive timely email alerts when product quantities fall below configured thresholds, allowing for proactive inventory replenishment and preventing stockouts.

Reporting and Analytics: The cartridge includes robust reporting and analytics capabilities, providing insights into customer interactions and the effectiveness of the notification system. Admins can view detailed reports with product IDs and customer data, enabling data-driven decisions for inventory management.

Know More about the Back In Stock & Low Stock Notification Cartridge

Ranosys is committed to providing innovative solutions that empower eCommerce businesses to optimize their operations and enhance customer experiences,” said Ashish Anand Solanki, Delivery Manager – Salesforce at Ranosys. “Our Back In Stock & Low Stock Notification Cartridge is a testament to our dedication to helping our clients succeed in a competitive market.”

The Back In Stock & Low Stock Notification Cartridge is now available for Salesforce B2C Commerce Cloud users. For more information or to schedule a demo, please visit: https://www.ranosys.com/contact-us/ or contact sales@ranosys.com

About Ranosys

For more information, visit here.

Know how AEM, Adobe Analytics and RT-CDP together improves CX.

In today’s digital landscape, delivering personalized, seamless customer experiences across multiple touchpoints is crucial for business success. Enterprises are increasingly turning to integrated solutions to harness the power of data and content management to stay competitive. Combining Adobe Experience Manager (AEM), Adobe Analytics, and Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform (RT-CDP) offers a comprehensive approach to managing customer experiences, leveraging data insights, and personalizing interactions in real-time.

Benefits of combining AEM, Adobe Analytics, and Adobe RT-CDP

#1: Enhanced personalization

Benefit: Deliver highly personalized content and experiences across all customer touchpoints.
Why: Customers expect relevant and tailored interactions, and meeting these expectations can lead to higher engagement and loyalty.

#2: Comprehensive customer insights

Benefit: Gain a holistic view of customer behavior and preferences.
Why: Deep insights allow businesses to understand their audience better and make informed decisions to optimize marketing strategies.

#3: Real-time data utilization

Benefit: Use real-time data to adjust and improve customer experiences on the fly.
Why: Immediate access to up-to-date information ensures that interactions are timely and relevant, enhancing customer satisfaction.

#4: Streamlined content management

Benefit: Efficiently manage and deliver content across multiple channels.
Why: Consistent and cohesive content delivery strengthens brand identity and improves customer experience.

#5: Improved campaign performance

Benefit: Execute targeted and effective marketing campaigns.
Why: Precise targeting based on real-time data and behavioral insights can significantly improve campaign ROI and conversion rates.

#6: Optimized customer journeys

Benefit: Continuously refine and optimize customer journeys.
Why: Identifying and addressing pain points in the customer journey can lead to smoother experiences and higher retention rates.

Why enterprises must invest in AEM + Adobe Analytics + Adobe RT-CDP

#1: Competitive advantage

Enterprises that invest in integrated solutions gain a competitive edge by delivering superior customer experiences. The ability to personalize interactions and optimize content delivery sets these businesses apart in a crowded marketplace.

#2:Increased customer loyalty and retention

Personalized and seamless experiences foster stronger customer relationships. Satisfied customers are more likely to return and remain loyal, reducing churn and increasing lifetime value.

#3: Data-driven decision making

Access to comprehensive and real-time data empowers businesses to make informed decisions. This data-driven approach leads to more effective strategies and better resource allocation.

#4: Scalability and flexibility

The combined power of AEM, Adobe Analytics, and Adobe RT-CDP provides a scalable solution that can grow with the business. As customer expectations and market dynamics evolve, the integrated platform ensures businesses can adapt and thrive.

#5: Enhanced efficiency and productivity

Streamlined workflows and centralized management reduce redundancy and increase efficiency. Teams can focus on strategic initiatives rather than manual processes, driving productivity and innovation.

#6: Measurable ROI

The integrated solution provides clear metrics and KPIs to measure success. This transparency allows businesses to track the impact of their investments and demonstrate ROI to stakeholders.

10 business use cases of Adobe Experience Manager, Adobe Analytics, and Adobe RT-CDP

#1: Personalized customer experiences

Use Case: A retail company wants to deliver personalized shopping experiences to its customers across web and mobile platforms. The company aims to show product recommendations, special offers, and content tailored to each customer’s preferences and browsing history.

Adobe Experience Manager (AEM): AEM allows the company to manage and deliver dynamic content personalized for each user. This could include personalized product recommendations, banners, and landing pages.
Adobe Analytics: Tracks user behavior, such as pages visited, time spent on pages, and products viewed. This data is used to understand user preferences and engagement patterns.
Adobe RT-CDP: Aggregates and unifies customer data from various touchpoints (website, mobile app, email campaigns) to create comprehensive customer profiles. These profiles are used to inform personalization strategies in real-time.

Example: A customer visits the retail website and browses through several categories of products. Adobe Analytics tracks this behavior and sends the data to Adobe RT-CDP, which updates the customer profile with the latest browsing history. AEM uses this updated profile to display personalized product recommendations and offers the next time the customer visits the site or opens the mobile app.

#2: Targeted marketing campaigns

Use Case: A travel company wants to create and deploy targeted marketing campaigns based on real-time customer data. The goal is to promote travel packages and deals to customers who have shown interest in specific destinations.

Adobe Experience Manager (AEM): Manages and delivers the campaign content, including emails, banners, and landing pages.
Adobe Analytics: Provides insights into customer behavior, such as searches for travel destinations, booking history, and engagement with previous campaigns.
Adobe RT-CDP: Segments customers based on their real-time behavior and interactions, enabling the company to target specific groups with relevant offers.

Example: A customer searches for flights to Paris on the travel company’s website. Adobe Analytics captures this search behavior, and Adobe RT-CDP updates the customer profile to reflect interest in Paris. AEM then delivers a personalized email campaign to the customer, promoting travel packages to Paris with special discounts.

#3: Customer journey optimization

Use Case: An insurance company wants to optimize the customer journey from initial inquiry to policy purchase. The company aims to identify and address drop-off points to improve conversion rates.

Adobe Experience Manager (AEM): Delivers consistent and relevant content at each stage of the customer journey, such as informational articles, policy details, and application forms.
Adobe Analytics: Tracks the customer journey, identifying where customers drop off or encounter issues.
Adobe RT-CDP: Provides a unified view of the customer journey across all touchpoints, enabling real-time adjustments to content and interactions.

Example: A customer starts an insurance quote application but abandons it midway. Adobe Analytics identifies this drop-off point, and Adobe RT-CDP updates the customer profile with this behavior. AEM can then trigger a follow-up email with a personalized message encouraging the customer to complete the application, possibly offering assistance or incentives.

#4: Cross-channel campaign orchestration

Use Case: A financial services company wants to synchronize its marketing campaigns across email, web, and social media to provide a cohesive brand experience.

Adobe Experience Manager (AEM): Centralized content management, ensuring consistent messaging and visuals across channels.
Adobe Analytics: Measures campaign performance across different channels, providing insights into customer engagement and effectiveness.
Adobe RT-CDP: Ensures that customer data is up-to-date and accurate across all channels, allowing for real-time adjustments to campaigns.

Example: The company launches a campaign promoting a new credit card. Adobe Analytics tracks engagement on the website, email, and social media. Adobe RT-CDP updates customer profiles based on interactions with the campaign. AEM uses this data to deliver consistent and personalized follow-up messages across all channels, ensuring that customers receive relevant information based on their engagement history.

#5: Real-time personalization

Use Case: An entertainment streaming service wants to personalize content recommendations in real-time based on the latest viewing behavior of its users.

Adobe Experience Manager (AEM): Manages and delivers personalized content, such as recommended shows and movies.
Adobe Analytics: Monitors real-time engagement with content, such as what users are currently watching and how long they watch.
Adobe RT-CDP: Provides real-time data on user behavior, enabling instant updates to recommendations.

Example: A user watches several episodes of a new TV series. Adobe Analytics tracks this viewing behavior, and Adobe RT-CDP updates the user profile with this data. AEM then immediately adjusts the homepage to recommend similar shows and movies, enhancing the user’s experience with timely and relevant suggestions.

#6: Enhanced customer support

Use Case: A telecommunications company wants to improve its customer support by providing agents with real-time insights and a complete history of customer interactions.

Adobe Experience Manager (AEM): Powers the customer support portal with relevant content, such as FAQs, troubleshooting guides, and service updates.
Adobe Analytics: Tracks support interactions, identifying common issues and measuring the effectiveness of support content.
Adobe RT-CDP: Supplies support agents with comprehensive customer profiles, including past interactions, purchase history, and current issues.

Example: A customer contacts support about a recurring issue with their internet service. The support agent accesses the customer profile via Adobe RT-CDP, which includes data from Adobe Analytics on previous interactions and attempted solutions. The agent uses this information to provide a more informed and efficient resolution, referencing relevant content managed by AEM.

#7: Automated content recommendations

Use Case: An online news platform wants to automatically recommend articles to readers based on their reading habits and preferences.

Adobe Experience Manager (AEM): Manages the recommendation engine and displays personalized content on the platform.
Adobe Analytics: Analyzes user interactions, such as articles read, time spent, and engagement levels, to refine recommendation algorithms.
Adobe RT-CDP: Uses real-time data to ensure that recommendations are relevant and updated based on the latest user behavior.

Example: A reader frequently reads articles about technology and finance. Adobe Analytics tracks this behavior, and Adobe RT-CDP updates the reader’s profile accordingly. AEM then uses this data to recommend new technology and finance articles on the reader’s homepage, enhancing the personalized reading experience.

#8: Behavioral segmentation

Use Case: A fashion retailer wants to segment its customers based on their real-time browsing and purchasing behavior to deliver more precise marketing messages.

Adobe Experience Manager (AEM): Delivers segmented content, such as targeted emails and personalized web pages.
Adobe Analytics: Identifies and analyzes behavioral patterns, such as frequent browsing of certain categories or repeated purchases of specific brands.
Adobe RT-CDP: Creates and updates customer segments in real-time based on their actions and interactions.

Example: A customer frequently browses and purchases athletic wear. Adobe Analytics captures this behavior, and Adobe RT-CDP segments the customer into a “Fitness Enthusiast” group. AEM then delivers targeted marketing emails featuring new arrivals and exclusive offers in athletic wear, increasing the likelihood of engagement and conversion.

#9: Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

Use Case: An e-commerce company wants to improve its conversion rates by testing and optimizing content and offers on its website.

Adobe Experience Manager (AEM): Facilitates A/B testing and manages content variations.
Adobe Analytics: Tracks conversion metrics, such as click-through rates, add-to-cart actions, and completed purchases, to measure the effectiveness of different content variations.
Adobe RT-CDP: Provides data-driven insights to inform optimization strategies, ensuring that tests are based on comprehensive and up-to-date customer data.

Example: The company tests two versions of a product page to see which one drives more purchases. Adobe Analytics tracks the performance of each version, and Adobe RT-CDP updates customer profiles based on their interactions. AEM uses this data to determine the winning version and automatically implements it across the site, optimizing the customer experience and boosting conversion rates.

#10: Data-driven content strategy

Use Case: A media company wants to develop and refine its content strategy based on data insights to increase user engagement and retention.

Adobe Experience Manager (AEM): Manages and executes the content strategy, ensuring that content is relevant and engaging.
Adobe Analytics: Provides deep insights into content performance, such as which articles are most read, how long users stay on the page, and which topics generate the most engagement.
Adobe RT-CDP: Informs strategy with comprehensive customer data and trends, allowing the company to tailor content to audience preferences and behaviors.

Example: The company analyzes data from Adobe Analytics to identify that articles about health and wellness are particularly popular among its audience. Adobe RT-CDP corroborates this trend with detailed customer profiles showing a high interest in health topics. AEM then focuses on creating and promoting more health and wellness content, driving higher engagement and retention rates.

Experience the combined power of Adobe Experience Manager, Adobe Analytics and Adobe RT-CDP

In a rapidly evolving digital environment, businesses must leverage advanced technologies to meet and exceed customer expectations. Investing in the combined solution of Adobe Experience Manager, Adobe Analytics, and Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform empowers enterprises to deliver personalized, data-driven experiences that drive engagement, loyalty, and growth. By integrating these powerful tools, businesses can create a seamless, optimized, and responsive customer journey, ensuring long-term success and competitive advantage. As an award-winning Adobe Solution Partner, we have been assisting enterprises in leveraging the combined capabilities of Adobe AEM, Adobe Analytics, and Adobe RT-CDP. Consult with our Adobe experts to analyze how your business challenges can be mitigated or existing solutions be optimized with Adobe’s suite of products.

Transform your customer experience strategy with Adobe & Ranosys.

Optimize your content management today!

In today’s competitive digital ecosystem, most businesses either operate digitally or have embarked some form of digital transformation. Central to this transformation is the adoption of a robust content management system to efficiently create, manage, and deliver digital content, supporting KPIs of enhanced digital presence and customer engagement.

A content management system (CMS) is not just how an enterprise manages their digital content, it is the backbone of the website, affecting everything from user experience to SEO performance. With several content management systems available in the market, ranging from open-source platforms to proprietary solutions, finding the right CMS can be overwhelming.

For marketing or IT leaders still evaluating a CMS for their business, this guide highlights the six must-have critical capabilities of a CMS to assist in making an informed decision.

What is a content management system (CMS)?

A Content Management System (CMS) is a software application that enables creators, designers, and administrators to build, author, publish, manage, and modify digital content on the website. Its user-friendly interface simplifies the process of building and maintaining websites, allowing non-technical users to handle content updates, page creation, and other administrative tasks.

Key content management system features include:

A centralized dashboard to gain a complete view of all your projects
What you see is what you get (WYSIWYG) editor
Editable templates and core components, such as headers and footers, with adjustable styling
Responsive layout
Low-code setup
Example code to show what’s possible in the platform
Open source
Cloud service
Omnichannel content delivery
Visual media conversion

How to choose a CMS: The six capabilities to look for in a content management system

#1: Better site performance to boost conversions

Web performance is a critical factor that influences SEO rankings, page views, site engagement, and conversion rates. Even small delays in page load times can have significant negative impacts.

47% of users won’t wait longer than two seconds for a website to load, leading to billions in lost sales annually for brands

Improving load times by just 0.1 seconds can boost conversion rates by 8-10%

Key capabilities in a CMS to deliver superior site performance

To ensure superior site performance, your CMS must be designed to optimize for fast load times and responsiveness. This involves leveraging an Edge architecture, which facilitates data processing at the outermost edges of the network, closest to where the user experiences the content. This setup contributes to maintaining healthy Core Web Vitals and achieving high Google Lighthouse scores, both of which are essential for maximizing site performance and boosting conversions.

A CMS with built-in performance optimization features ensures that your digital properties provide a fast and responsive experience, keeping users engaged and reducing bounce rates.

Team Needs	Key CMS Capabilities
Fast website: Essential for lower bounce rates and improved SEO rankings, ensuring a positive user experience.	Phased rendering: Ensures that the most critical parts of each page load first, optimizing user experience and reducing bounce rates.
Minimal delays: Maintains rapid content loading, even during updates to design or code, to prevent user frustration and abandonment.	Persistent caching: Speeds up access to frequently used elements by storing them locally, minimizing delays even with design or code updates.
Real-time insights: Provides continuous monitoring to verify pages are loading correctly, allowing for immediate action on performance issues.	Real-user monitoring (RUM): Tracks page load times and user interactions in real-time, providing insights into performance issues and enabling proactive optimization.

#2: Make content creation fast and scalable

Efficient content creation lies at the heart of every successful digital strategy. A robust CMS enables seamless content creation, editing, and publishing, ensuring agility and scalability in marketing efforts. This also helps non-technical marketers and team members to easily manage content and pages across multiple locations.

Key capabilities in a CMS to deliver the right content to the right audience at the right time and across the right channel

An optimal CMS must come with easy-to-use authoring to assist in the quick creation, editing, and publishing of the content. Also, it must allow seamless content scalability across teams, channels, and regions.

Team Needs	Key CMS Capabilities
The power to create, edit, publish, and manage web content with relevant tools	Create and edit web content using familiar tools like Microsoft Word and Google Docs with document-based authoring
Non-technical users to create web content without any developer help	Use drag-and-drop templates and a visual editor to build and edit web content, with live previews to see changes in real-time
A centralized way to manage all regional and language-specific sites	Manage region-specific mobile and web properties from a single platform
The ability to translate content to different languages for different regions to deliver localized experiences in a few clicks	Automatically translate text and image metadata into different languages integrated within the CMS

How to select the right Content Management System

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#3: Quick experimentation optimization process

An agile content management system empowers non-technical content creators to build and run experiments for content optimization without requiring extensive team or cross-department collaboration or dependence on third-party systems.

A/B testing is an important activity for eCommerce sites and those that invest in it see a 50% increase in revenue per unique visitor

Key capabilities in a CMS to support content experimentation optimization

A/B testing for specific components on a webpage or the entire page provides performance insights, which when further leveraged boosts conversions, engagement, and maximizes return on investment on content efforts.

Team Needs	Key CMS Capabilities
The ability to test and optimize specific parts or the entire web page without requiring specialized support	Built-in A/B testing feature that is easy to set up and use
The ability to identify best performing content experiences to maximize ROI	Features that allow full-page experimentation and testing of functionalities, design, content against attributes like user location, device type, new/returning visitors, unique interactions
A detailed analysis of underperforming and successful content campaigns to refine future strategies and optimize content performance	Real-time user monitoring and analytics that provide both page and component-level insights, easy for teams to access and further optimize

#4: Seamless content delivery and management across all channels

An enterprise content management system must support omnichannel content delivery. They must empower marketing teams to easily create, manage, and distribute content seamlessly across all channels and touchpoints. The best content management system should also ensure that the content is delivered consistently without demanding any extensive IT support.

The benefits of an omnichannel content management system are immense, the most important being scalability, empowering enterprises to scale their content across regions, languages, and locations. Also, omnichannel content delivery engages your audience in a cohesive and personalized experience across all channels, catered towards their needs and interests.

89% of companies that focus on omnichannel content delivery retain 89% of their customers

On the other hand, companies without an omnichannel strategy retain only 33% of their customers.

Key capabilities in a CMS to support omnichannel content delivery

With cross-channel content strategy playing a pivotal role in customer retention and experience management, the right content management system must include reusable content components, responsive design tools, consistent design system, and easy access to assets. This empowers creators, authors, and distributors in building connected experiences once and distributing it across all digital channels.

Team Needs	Key CMS Capabilities
The ability to optimize and publish content on any channel with repeating tasks	Editable drag-and-drop components in a WYSIWYG interface, with live preview
The ability to ensure compliance across all content formats and touchpoints	Pre-built components such as text, images, grid columns to easily create and manage brand guidelines and template
Fast ways of creating and publishing content across channels without having to create from scratch	A complete library of assets and templates available globally
The tools to optimize and reuse content to save time while accelerating content delivery	The availability of reusable components that can be added to multiple pages. When changes are made in the master component, they are automatically updated to all referencing pages

#5: Flexible content delivery across traditional, hybrid, or headless models

When it comes to headless, legacy or hybrid content delivery, the best enterprise CMS platforms should stay flexible and provide a seamless platform for publishing content to any front-end. Legacy content management systems often result in isolated content repositories for each channel. They also demand manual content creation for every channel, slowing content delivery, hampering team productivity, and delivering inconsistent content experiences.

A hybrid approach to content delivery serves a two-faceted purpose. First, it provides developers with a flexible system to focus on innovation. Second, it results in an intuitive interface for marketers to manage, optimize, and scale content delivery across channels. This further results in cross-channel and consistent content delivery across all touchpoints.

59% of marketers believe that the lack of content reusability in a CMS slows them down.

79% of people rate an organization’s digital maturity with whether or not they employ a hybrid CMS.

Key capabilities in a CMS to flexible and hybrid content delivery

One of the foremost content management requirements is its ability to cater to headlines, traditional or hybrid content delivery approaches. It should support fast cross-channel content publishing and management. A robust content management system must allow teams to easily publish content across all front-ends – website, SPAs, mobile apps, etc.

Team Needs	Key CMS Capabilities
The ability to draft and preview content across all frontends in real-time	Real-time content editing and preview for all frontend frameworks
The tools to reuse and publish content quick across all digital touchpoints	Create once, publish anywhere features to support seamless content delivery
Seamless integration with internal and external apps without any infrastructure overheads	Pre-configured API endpoints, easy to customize and scale

#6: Develop and scale web and app experiences faster

An agile content management system must allow the development of web and app content experiences without sacrificing on performance. It must provide an optimized starting point and be compatible with relevant internal frameworks. An outdated CMS makes it challenging and time-consuming for developers to launch new web functionalities, sites, or pages. A scalable CMS streamlines this process, empowering both developers and marketers to build, manage, and deliver new content-led experiences faster into the market.

54% of marketers and developers state the lack of required skills and specialists as one of the top three pain points in launching new content experiences..

Key capabilities in a CMS to allow faster web and app experiences

An enterprise content management system must allow content authoring, design, publishing, and coding to take place parallely, unlike the traditional linear development process that occurs sequentially. This allows both developers and marketers to work together towards launching new web and app experiences at speed.

Team Needs	Key CMS Capabilities
Faster content development and launch cycles with fewer dependencies.	A flexible development approach allows content, development, and design to work simultaneously without dependencies on each other
The ability for cross-department teams to validate code changes and production content in parallel during the development process	Automatically generated code previews enable developers to view environments for each source code branch
Tools to edit and manage SPAs (single-page applications) without any extensive coding	A drag-and-drop layout editor with live preview features empowers marketers to make changes independently

Deliver content experiences faster with Adobe Experience Manager

The best content management system for an organization is the one that allows both developers and marketers to together work towards creating high-performing and scalable content for all touchpoints.

Adobe Experience Manager is a trusted CMS that achieves this goal. It allows marketers to quickly build, author, and deliver content across devices and channels, maintaining pace with current trends and market dynamics. Know more on how Adobe Experience Managers helps dramatically improve web performance here.

As a leading Digital Transformation Company and Adobe Solution Partner, Ranosys has been assisting several enterprises across verticals in improving their digital content delivery with successful Adobe Experience Manager consulting, implementation training, integration, critical support, and managed services. Talk to our AEM experts to bottom line how this industry-leading CMS can accomplish your goals for fast content delivery, scalability, and reusability.

Ready to transform your digital content strategy?

Ranosys, an award-winning Salesforce Gold Partner, is co-hosting the “Retail 4.0 Networking Happy Hour” with Salesforce. This exclusive in-person event is for retail leaders in the industry with the opportunity to participate and explore how Ranosys and Salesforce help in achieving retail goals with data and AI-driven decisions and customer experiences.

Here are the event details:

Date: Thursday, 18 July 2024
Time: 5:00 – 7:00 PM

Attendees will have the opportunity to engage with experts and industry thought leaders to understand the latest trends shaping the future of retail. The event will provide valuable insights into driving growth, boosting customer loyalty, and streamlining operations.

Event Overview

Retail 4.0 is about leveraging advanced technologies to transform retail operations. This Networking Happy Hour will focus on the role of data, artificial intelligence, and Salesforce’s multi-cloud ecosystem in driving commerce and delivering superior customer experiences. Attendees will learn how to leverage data-driven strategies and AI excellence for a competitive edge in the retail sector.

Key Topics to be Covered

Driving higher conversions and better customer experience: Discover how data-driven decisions can lead to higher conversion rates and improved customer satisfaction.
Leveraging a unified platform ecosystem for data-driven decisions: Learn how integrating various data sources into a unified platform can enhance decision-making processes.
Understanding how AI is transforming every aspect of Retail: Gain insights into the ways AI is revolutionizing retail, from customer service to inventory management.
Future-Proof your retail business with key focus trends: Explore the latest trends that are essential for maintaining a competitive edge in the ever-evolving retail landscape.

Event Agenda

Opening Reception: The event will commence with an opening reception, providing an opportunity for attendees to network with peers and industry leaders in a relaxed setting.
Interactive Session on Data-Driven Unified Commerce: This session will delve into the importance of data-driven strategies in unified commerce, highlighting real-world applications and success stories.
Networking: The event will conclude with a networking session, allowing participants to engage in discussions, share experiences, and build valuable connections.

About Ranosys

For more information, visit here.

About Salesforce

Salesforce is a global leader in customer relationship management (CRM) solutions. With a suite of cloud-based tools, Salesforce helps businesses connect with customers in new and innovative ways. The company’s commitment to data-driven decision-making and AI integration has made it a trusted partner for businesses looking to transform their operations.

We look forward to welcoming you to this exciting event.

Get started with your eCommerce store today.

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Creating a robust and adaptable eCommerce platform is crucial in today’s fast-paced digital marketplace. As consumer expectations evolve and technology advances, retailers must prioritize speed and flexibility to stay competitive. Whether you’re launching a new online store or revamping an existing one, understanding the essential features of a high-performance eCommerce platform is vital.

A fast and flexible platform can make launching your business faster and easier. It can help you reach more customers across multiple geographies and deliver a truly unique customer experience.

But the wrong platform can slow you down. Rigid templates can limit your creativity and leave you with a store that looks like everyone else’s. A lack of solution partners often means doing everything yourself. And an inflexible design can make it almost impossible to add new functionality as your business evolves and grows.

How can you get it right?

This blog highlights six questions to help you pick an eCommerce platform that’s fast and flexible enough to grow on.

What is an eCommerce Platform?

An eCommerce platform is software used by businesses to develop, run, manage and optimize their online stores (such as product listings, inventory management, order processing, payment integration, customer management, marketing and analytics) for seamless shopping experiences supporting business growth.

Choosing the right eCommerce platform is important for your business’s success. The ideal platform should provide speed, flexibility, and scalability to accommodate your business’s current needs and future growth.

How to select the right eCommerce platform?

Download eBook

Six questions to help you pick an eCommerce platform

#1: Is it in the cloud?

Cloud-based platforms often cost less and can easily scale to your needs. Instead of paying for all your costly hardware and software licenses upfront, you normally pay a subscription fee based on usage. Cloud solutions provide the flexibility to scale up or down based on your business needs, allowing you to respond quickly to changes in demand. Additionally, cloud-based platform vendors manage the underlying IT infrastructure for you, so you don’t have to deal with multiple vendors and service agreements.

For example, if you’re wondering how to start an eCommerce store, a cloud-based solution can simplify the setup process, allowing you to focus on your core business activities without worrying about IT complexities. It also supports multi-store eCommerce, enabling you to manage multiple storefronts from a single platform.

Key Takeaway: Whether you are just starting out or already have an eCommerce presence, choose an eCommerce platform that runs in the cloud.

#2: Are you locked into rigid templates?

Your eCommerce platform should work for your business now and in the future. You need a platform that can evolve as your business grows in size and complexity. “Plug-and-play” platforms with canned templates and purchase flows can be easy to set up but may lack the flexibility or breadth of functionality you’ll need in the long term.

For instance, when considering how to open an eCommerce store, you might be tempted by the simplicity of pre-designed templates. However, these templates can limit your ability to create a unique customer experience and restrict your business’s growth potential. As your business expands, you may outgrow these templates and face the costly decision of either investing in customizations or switching to a new platform.

Key Takeaway: Don’t force-fit your business needs to the capabilities of your technology vendor. Choose a vendor that provides enough flexibility to create an original customer experience.

#3: Does it support multiple channels, markets, and countries?

Today’s eCommerce often spans multiple touchpoints. Brick-and-mortar stores are going digital, and digital brands are partnering with retailers. Businesses of all sizes are rushing to sell on platforms like Amazon and reach new international markets. Even if you’re small now, it’s important to think ahead.

If your eCommerce platform doesn’t support multiple channels, sites, and languages, you could find yourself setting up a new environment for each new market segment and audience. This approach adds costly overhead and makes it difficult to track inventory, manage logistics, synchronize content, and deliver a consistent customer experience across your sites. A platform that supports multi-channel sales and international markets from the start will save you time and resources as you grow.

Key Takeaway: Think about what your business will look like in two, three, and five years. Ensure your platform can support your growth plans from Day One.

#4: Does it play nicely with others?

eCommerce doesn’t happen in isolation. For maximum efficiency, your eCommerce platform will need to communicate with various business systems like CMS, CRM, ERP, PIM, and more. It should connect easily to commonly used business systems through proven APIs without needing extensive custom code. Otherwise, you may have to spend more time and money on systems integration or risk critical data getting out of sync.

For example, when setting up your eCommerce online store, ensure it can integrate with your CRM to manage customer relationships effectively or with your ERP system to streamline inventory and order management. Seamless integration helps you maintain a cohesive operation and enhances the overall customer experience.

Key Takeaway: Your eCommerce platform should be a team player. Choose one that connects and integrates easily with your other business systems.

#5: How big is the ecosystem of partners and developers supporting the platform?

Most fast-growing businesses focus on their core product and sales, not IT. As your business evolves, you’ll need to extend your eCommerce experience quickly, and you may need help. This help could come from a solution partner who knows your industry or from installing new modules written by third-party developers. A large ecosystem of partners and developers ensures you have access to the resources and expertise needed to adapt and grow.

For instance, if you’re looking for the best marketing strategy for an eCommerce store, a platform with a robust ecosystem can provide you with access to marketing tools and partners who can help you implement and optimize your eCommerce strategy effectively.

Key Takeaway: More is better. Choose a platform from a vendor that fosters a large and geographically diverse community of solution partners and developers.

#6: Can it support different business models?

The line between retail and wholesale is blurring. Many direct-to-consumer businesses are adding wholesale stores and partnering with retailers, while a growing number of wholesalers are selling directly to consumers online. However, these models are different. Selling to businesses and distributors (B2B) can be more complicated and may require customized product catalogs, alternative payment options, and other special features.

For maximum flexibility, you need an eCommerce platform that offers native functionality for both retail and wholesale business models. Running two separate eCommerce systems is both time-consuming and expensive. If there’s even a modest chance your business will adopt multiple business models, choose a platform that supports them.

Key Takeaway: If there’s even a modest chance your business will adopt multiple business models, choose a platform that supports them.

Use Case: A Successful Multi-Store eCommerce Transformation

Consider the case of a mid-sized retailer, “TechWorld,” that started as a small online store but quickly expanded its offerings to multiple markets and customer segments. Initially using a basic eCommerce platform with rigid templates, TechWorld struggled to scale its operations. The platform couldn’t support the company’s growing need for customization, multi-channel integration, and international expansion.

By switching to a cloud-based eCommerce platform that offered flexibility and robust multi-channel support, TechWorld was able to:

Seamlessly integrates with its existing CMS, CRM, and ERP systems, reducing manual data entry and synchronization errors.
Customize its online stores to offer unique, personalized customer experiences without being constrained by rigid templates.
Expand into new markets with localized content and multi-language support, reaching more customers globally.
Leverage a large ecosystem of developers and solution partners to quickly implement new features and stay ahead of the competition.

Build a robust digital commerce store with Ranosys

Creating a fast, flexible, and scalable eCommerce store is essential today. By choosing a cloud-based platform, avoiding rigid templates, ensuring multi-channel support, prioritizing system integration, leveraging a large ecosystem of partners, and supporting multiple business models, you can set your business up for long-term success. As an award-winning Adobe Partner with a specialized Adobe Commerce badge, we have assisted several leading global brands with the right eCommerce platform. Talk to our experts to choose the right eCommerce platform that will not only meet your current needs but also scale with your business as it grows and evolves.

Looking for the best eCommerce platform for your business?

Implement, optimize & scale AEM with Ranosys.

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The power of content can be understood by its omniscient presence across marketing formats, be it videos, podcasts, blogs, or augmented reality and virtual reality. Undeniably, content marketing is the very essence of every organization’s marketing strategies and plays an instrumental role in lead generation, branding, sales, and nurturing campaigns across multiple channels.

With the widespread demand and rewarding results content marketing offers, brands cannot just do with any content marketing strategy. They need to take note of the current content marketing trends to stand out from their competitors and boost site traffic. In this blog, we will go through 7 content marketing trends for 2025 that will turn your overall marketing strategy from how to wow.

Moreover, we will also provide you with solutions to implement these trends through Adobe Experience Manager (AEM).

How to select the right content management system for your business?

Download the eBook

Delivering the right content to the right user at the right time across the right channel with Adobe Experience Manager CMS

Before brainstorming around these new trends in content marketing, let’s first know what Adobe AEM is and how it helps.

Adobe Experience Manager is a content and digital asset management solution from Adobe implemented for website, mobile apps and forms creation. Adobe AEM empowers you to manage your marketing content and distribute it via a single dashboard across multiple channels.

Know more about Adobe Experience Manager here.

The top content marketing trends for 2025 and how Adobe AEM accomplishes them

The below-mentioned Adobe content marketing trends for 2025 will empower your brand to practice content personalization and deliver custom web experience to every visitor across their preferred channel. Let’s understand these trends and associated Adobe Experience Manager tools to implement it.

#1. Artificial Intelligence & Automation

The launch of ChatGPT in late 2022 kicked off an AI wave, with brands quickly realizing the benefits of adopting generative AI. AI is empowering marketers to accelerate productivity and expand capacity through capabilities like:

AI-powered content creation
Analyzing customer data to identify pain points and areas for improvement
Generating code for websites and applications
Automatically organizing customers into segments based on preferences, demographics, and behavior
Deploying AI chatbots for instant customer service

How Adobe Experience Manager Helps:

AEM integrates with the AI-powered Adobe Sensei, the company’s AI and machine learning framework, to automate content workflows, personalization, and omnichannel delivery. Authors can leverage AI for automating tasks like:

Automatically tagging images and videos based on visual elements
Using smart translation to dynamically translate content
Automatically generating image maps and hotspots
Identifying patterns and insights in customer data for segmentation
Automating content workflows and approvals

#2. AI Image Generation

Taking AI a step further, imagery and graphics created by generative AI models like DALL-E, Midjourney, and Adobe’s Firefly will be one of the biggest digital marketing innovations of the decade. These powerful tools will allow marketers to generate virtually any type of visual content simply by describing it in a text prompt.

This AI-powered ability to create stunning graphics, product visualizations, creative concepts, and more on-demand presents marketers with limitless creative possibilities. Generative AI will spark new levels of imagination and visualization for campaigns while accelerating content production cycles.

How Adobe Experience Manager Helps:

AEM’s enterprise-grade Digital Asset Management (DAM) capabilities provide a centralized way to manage the influx of AI-generated assets. Creative teams can:

Create image and creative variations using generative AI tools
Import and store AI-generated visuals alongside other digital assets
Categorize, annotate, and track usage of AI assets
Integrate production of AI imagery with creative workflows
Collaborate and iterate on AI-driven creative content
Deliver AI-generated media across channels and experiences

#3. Influencer Marketing

Authenticity and relevance remain important, which is where the influencer marketing trend comes in. Partnering with the right influencers who have genuine connections with their audience can help brands effectively connect with consumers and reach new audiences.

Micro-influencers with 10,000-100,000 followers and nano-influencers with under 10,000 followers often have more personal, authentic relationships with their audience. These relatable influencers present opportunities for brands to resonate through influence built on expertise and closeness rather than pure follower numbers.

How Adobe Experience Manager Helps:

AEM’s marketing cloud capabilities provide an effective influencer marketing platform through tools for:

Influencer discovery and research based on audience data
Influencer campaign management and collaboration
Monitoring influencer engagement signals and attribution
Measuring influencer campaign performance and ROI
Optimizing influencer content distribution through omnichannel publishing
Integrating influencer marketing efforts with broader marketing initiatives

# 4. Voice Search Functionality

Screenless, voice-based search is becoming universal, with millions using voice assistants daily for shopping, information gathering, and media consumption. This trend will continue escalating, with 125.2 million people projected to use voice search in 2025.

Providing voice search functionality creates friendly, convenient user experiences by allowing consumers to use natural language to find information and interact with digital experiences hands-free. Voice interfaces open new frontiers for accessible marketing and commerce.

How Adobe Experience Manager Helps:

AEM allows marketers to voice-enable websites, apps, and digital experiences:

Implement voice recognition to translate voice inputs into actions like website navigation, searches, or transactions
Design voice user interfaces and conversational experiences
Create voice skills for virtual assistants like Alexa or Google Home
Orchestrate seamless voice handoffs across devices and touchpoints
Provide personalized voice services based on user identity and context

The global voice recognition market is projected to reach a value of $26.8 billion, with an estimated 8 billion voice-enabled digital assistants in use by 2024.

Source: Demandsage

#5. Virtual Reality and the Metaverse:

Currently, Virtual reality (VR) is being adopted by many industries for its life-like experiences. Therefore, 2025 will bring new developments in the field to create more realistic and immersive experiences. The rise of the metaverse is considered a mainstream marketing channel where businesses can conclude transactions remotely, efficiently, and intelligently. With AR, VR, and metaverse in action, shoppers can indulge in real-time understanding of the product and evaluate its fit with their physical surroundings. Overall, these technologies would reduce cart abandonment and product return rates.

How Adobe Experience Manager helps:

Adobe AEM allows you to smoothly process, manage, and deploy AR/VR content as well as 3D assets and other emerging file formats through its digital asset management capabilities.

Adobe AEM assets easily integrate with Creative Cloud to design immersive content. You can preview and control the rendered experience using Panoramic VR Viewer and Vertical Image Viewer

Adobe’s Substance 3D tools can be leveraged to create beautiful and realistic 3D objects and scenes

3D content can be created in Adobe Dimensions and imported into Adobe Asset Link, where you can manage and customize it like other content

# 6. E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness)

As AI increases content production, Google is putting enhanced emphasis on evaluating content quality based on E-E-A-T signals – Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.

This ranking criteria prioritizes the most helpful and credible information from expert sources. To stay competitive in search, brands must focus on creating authentic, high-E-E-A-T content that provides true expertise and establishes authority on topics.

How to achieve high E-E-A-T content marketing:

Produce substantial original content from credentialed authors
Cite reputable, authoritative third-party sources
Incorporate user-generated content like reviews and testimonials
Ensure content is readable, well-structured, and visually engaging
Implement fact-checking, governance and accountability

How Adobe Experience Manager Helps:

As an enterprise-grade content management system, AEM provides the tools and capabilities to produce quality E-E-A-T content at scale:

Roles, permissions, and workflow governance for controlled content production
Content editor roles for subject matter experts and credentialed authors
Version control, audit trails, and approvals for accountability
Integration with trusted data sources, research tools, and fact-checking
SEO recommendations, readability scoring, and optimization features
Tools for incorporating user-generated content responsibly
Omnichannel publishing of expert-driven content across touchpoints

Will AI Replace Digital Marketing?

The rise of AI certainly has many marketers wondering if the technology will eventually replace humans in the field. While AI can immensely assist and augment marketing capabilities across content creation, analysis, automation, and more, there will always be a need for authentic human expertise and personal connection.

According to research by Forrester, 63% of consumers are open to using AI for suggestions and recommendations, but only 37% would rely on AI for final purchasing decisions. This highlights that while AI can play a valuable role in the customer journey, human intervention is still critical for high-consideration purchases and complex decision-making. Similarly, a study by Salesforce found that 59% of consumers crave a human connection even when AI is deployed for customer service interactions.

AI should be viewed as an assistant for human marketers rather than a replacement. The technology can enhance marketing efficiency, scale, and analytical capabilities. However, the strategy, creativity, emotional intelligence, and relationship-building required to truly resonate with customers will remain a uniquely human domain. The brands that thoughtfully blend AI’s strengths with an empathetic human touch will be the biggest winners as this technology continues evolving.

Empower your content marketing strategies with AEM and Ranosys

While AI will revolutionize 2025 content marketing, brands must balance innovation with authenticity. Modern consumers crave personal connections – according to Sprout Social, over 50% would increase spending if they feel bonded to a brand, and 76% prefer brands they relate to over competitors.

Keeping up with these content marketing trends is tedious, but with the powerful Adobe Experience Manager tools and capabilities, you can deliver one-on-one digital experiences across several devices. As a trusted Adobe Experience Manager Partner, Ranosys follows a flexible approach to implement, customize, or migrate your content and related assets for superior digital experiences. In case you want to take advantage of these latest content marketing trends with Adobe AEM, connect with our certified experts for complete guidance.

Know more about Adoe Experience Manager as a CMS.

In the rapidly evolving financial landscape, delivering personalized and seamless customer experiences is paramount. Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform (RT-CDP) empowers financial institutions to harness the power of real-time data to drive customer engagement, enhance decision-making, and optimize operational efficiency.

Integrate data, create profiles, capture behaviors, govern privacy, and deliver one-on-one personalized experiences across all your destinations with Adobe RT-CDP.

How does Adobe Real-time CDP help?

Integrate data sources to create real-time customer profiles: Know your customers’ wants and needs by unifying your data into actionable profiles in real-time so your insights are always relevant. Easily enrich profiles with business data from any source via built-in connectors for popular platforms, custom APIs, and batch transfers. Manage via a marketer-friendly interface to deliver the right experiences to the right customer at the right time and across the right channel.

Link online and offline to create a single customer profile: Create a holistic view of your customer by unifying disparate identities and profile information across online and offline channels. Sync segregated customer records such as accounts, segments, opportunities, membership, communication, lead scores, and lifetime value. Manage customers’ known and unknown identities to deliver one-to-many experiences to anonymous states and one-to-one personalization to identified states.

Link devices and channels to optimize experience across all touchpoints: Plan coordinated, consistent, and data-driven experiences by mapping the user’s profile across all touchpoints, devices, and channels. Deliver optimized and personalized content for your customers across all digital screens and physical touchpoints no matter where or when they interact with your business.

Centralized customer profiling and identity controls at your fingertips: Easy-to-use interface of Adobe RT-CDP provides powerful and scalable profile management and at-a-glance insights. Drill into each individual profile to view and manage information, attributes, identifiers, communication channel preferences, and more. Discover customer opportunities, behaviors, and events to identify individual customer wants, needs, and intent.

Manage and enrich profile identifiers to personalize every interaction: Map relationships across various identifiers and validate the stitched identities that create the real-time customer profile. A deterministic algorithm reconciles a customer’s multiple devices, further enhancing mapping and extending the reach and depth of experience actionability in real-time. Build a private identity graph or augment your known customer base by sharing data with partners.

React to online and offline customer events in the moment: React instantly to customer events to deliver timely, relevant experiences to the right place, at the right time. Time-series events capture customer behavior at every interaction and at every engagement. Build a picture of your customers at every stage of the customer journey to enable smart decisions at the right time.

Create and manage segments that are universal across all channels: Marketer-friendly segmentation builder to classify audiences across all data types, centralize and make it actionable. Audience classification is valid across all activation points, whether it is group targeting or to execute one-to-one experience delivery.

Extend your audience’s size and reach by sharing segments across two or more businesses: Share segments across two-or-more brands and exchange audiences in a secure, governed, and privacy-centric manner.

Use AI-driven insights and data science on platform to drive experiences and opportunities: Personalize each user’s experience by serving them with the most appropriate offers and messaging. Drive customer opportunities like cross-sell, upsell, next best action or mitigate churn for any business.

Built-in governance, compliance, and security controls: Take control over data governance with consent and policy enforcement. Manage data usage by automated alerts and monitoring dashboards across data workflows. Manage every user’s privacy to build and maintain trust. Keep customer data safe with secure cloud tech.

Let’s understand with a financial services example

Unlock financial growth with Adobe RT-CDP and Ranosys

Deliver the right experience to the right customer at the right customer and across the right platform with Adobe RT-CDP and Ranosys experts.

Talk to our consultants to explore more use cases for the financial services industry.

Visit: https://www.ranosys.com/contact-us/

Email: sales@ranosys.com

About Ranosys

Ranosys is a 3X award-winning Adobe Solution Partner and global digital transformation agency empowering enterprises to craft engaging experiences through next-gen digital-first solutions. With 15+ years of experience in strategic digital innovation, we deliver unparalleled services across Adobe Real-time CDP, Adobe Commerce, Adobe Experience Manager, Marketo Engage, Adobe Campaign, Adobe Analytics and Target. Our agile approach involves integrating our technical proficiency with the cutting-edge capabilities of the Adobe ecosystem to achieve maximum ROI in minimum time-to-market. Our proven expertise has resulted in successful implementations for leading brands.

Create omnichannel experiences with Adobe PWA Studio.

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Gone are the days when businesses solely relied on walk-in consumers to drive sales. Retailers are increasingly turning to the digital realm to engage with their customers and create seamless omnichannel experiences. Customers are looking for personalized shopping experiences on their devices without the hassle of installation, updates, and consumption of mobile data. Since, retailers want customers to shop smarter, browse better and checkout faster without the load of installation of mobile apps, and accessing device like capabilities. Hence, businesses are looking to optimize their eCommerce stores for better browsing experience and offline app-like capabilities.

To address these challenges PWAs (Progressive Web Applications) are a significant push forward in the ongoing evolution of eCommerce. Therefore, enterprises are constantly looking for a robust platform that holds the power to deliver exceptional shopping experiences. Adobe Commerce PWA Studio, earlier known as Magento PWA Studio, enables your businesses to provide fast, engaging, and mobile-friendly shopping experiences to their customers, leading to increased conversions and customer satisfaction.

In this blog, we have discussed the evolution of mobile commerce and the rise of PWAs, the features and benefits of PWAs, and the powerful capabilities and benefits of Adobe Commerce PWA Studio.

The current state of mobile commerce and the rise of PWAs

As technology has changed the way we communicate, gather information, and shop online, mobile commerce will likely become an option and more of a necessity for eCommerce retailers. According to a survey, mobile commerce will account for 40.4% of all internet purchasing by 2024. mCommerce is evolving rapidly with technological advancements but mobile conversions are lagging behind. Mobile shoppers convert at 2.25%, less than half the rate of desktop transactions. So what is going on? Why are mobile conversion rates still lower than most merchants would like?

In 2007, Responsive Web Design (RWD) arose as a way to bring the desktop experience to the mobile phone. But as customer expectations are shifting dynamically towards more personalized content and seamless shopping experiences, RWD is lagging behind in terms of load times, content, navigation and is less interactive with all mobile devices. When it comes to mobile applications, they offer a shopping experience just for mobile users but they must be downloaded, installed, and updated. This whole process is time-consuming and takes up too much bandwidth, and consumes data, batteries and storage.

Therefore, today’s most popular mobile experience technologies are limited, and businesses are increasingly turning to Progressive Web Applications (PWAs) as a solution.

Embracing the Future: Transitioning to Progressive Web Apps

In an era where customers seek seamless and lightning-fast digital shopping experiences, traditional technologies are hindering the immense opportunities that eCommerce has to offer. Fortunately, a powerful solution exists in the form of Progressive Web Apps (PWAs). PWAs are a new way to deliver an amazing mobile experience. PWAs offer an enhanced mobile experience by combining the best aspects of both web and mobile app technologies.

What is PWA?

PWA (Progressive Web Apps) is a combination of web-based and mobile applications that can be accessed through a browser with an interface resembling a mobile app. PWA is an emerging headless commerce technology that facilitates highly adaptable web architecture. PWA provides seamless functionality across different devices while gradually incorporating native platform features to enhance the user experience. Here are some PWA features:

PWA uses the same code for multiple devices and software like iOS and android.
They leverage smartphone functionality offering a fast-app-like experience on browsers.
They use native app capabilities such as geolocation, camera, and notifications.
PWAs deliver higher engagement than responsive websites and higher adoption than native apps.

Benefits of PWA

A PWA plays a vital role in enhancing the shopping experience for your customers; along with this, it consists of several other PWA benefits that include:

Intuitive interface: PWAs interface shows a mobile-first visual environment that encourages user engagement and active site exploration. This can be done through significant user content, smooth animations, push notifications, fluid page scrolling, and an intuitive navigation experience.
Responsive browsing: PWAs load incredibly fast with quick transitions, eliminating slow rendering and sluggish page loads. The average load time for PWAs is just 2.75 seconds, 8x faster than the average mobile landing page.
Low-data consumption: PWA uses low mobile data and has minimal storage requirements, ensuring they perform consistently across a range of devices. They are also right at the user’s fingertips via their web browsers without the need to install and even capable of running offline.
Always up-to-date: PWAs actively update themselves in real-time, like a website, eliminating the need for periodic updates from an app store.
Cross-browser compatible: PWA sites work on all modern web browsers such as Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari.

So now you know why you should consider PWA, let’s look at the robust platform PWA studio with Adobe Commerce and how it creates shopping experiences for today’s customers.

What is Adobe PWA Studio?

PWA Studio is an open-source rich set of tools and libraries to build PWA, which are modern, providing mobile-first digital storefronts with app-like shopping experiences on Adobe Commerce or Magento-Open Source platform. PWA Studio offers a development environment, command-line tools, and a collection of ready-to-use components and themes, helping merchants solve the mobile conversion dilemma while creating highly personalized commerce experiences.

Adobe Commerce, formerly known as Magento Commerce, is a powerful eCommerce platform known for its flexibility and scalability. PWA Studio is designed to integrate seamlessly with Adobe Commerce, allowing you to leverage the platform’s robust features while delivering a modern and engaging front end experience.

Features of PWA Studio with Adobe Commerce

Build storefronts optimized for performance using modern tools and frameworks designed for a mobile-first experience.
Create immersive and engaging web experiences that adopt native application best practices.
Reduces development costs and faster time to market by unifying your storefront to a single app.
PWA Studio is a flexible, easy-to-use system and framework with the best-in-class Adobe Commerce backend.
PWA Studio is compatible with Page Builder drag-and-drop content tools giving marketers control over the site and design.

Capabilities of Adobe Commerce PWA Studio

Following are some of the key capabilities of PWA Studio that, when combined with Adobe Commerce, give immersive shopping experiences.

#1. Buildpack

Buildpacks is a set of pre-built tools and configurations that streamlines the development of PWAs. Buildpacks is a component of PWA Studio that enables developers to develop high-quality PWAs with enhanced performance and scalability. It comprises tools for project setup, configuration management, and an extensibility framework. It includes:

Extensibility API: Targets, Targetables.
Build Process API: Webpack tools, BuildBus, Transform requests.
Environment Setup: Command-line interface (CLI), Environment configuration.

#2. Peregrine

Peregrine is a JavaScript library that is part of the PWA Studio framework developed by Magento. It offers the logic for the features and UI components of a storefront. It promotes code reusability, improves development efficiency, and helps deliver fast and engaging user experiences.

It includes:

Custom React hooks: Custom React hooks in Adobe Commerce are functions that allow you to reuse code across your PWAs. It manages the state and data in your application. They are reusable, maintainable, and can be used to check the performance of PWA.
Shopping Cart Talons: Contains logic for a cart page component that manages the updating state of the cart while cart details are being fetched. These are APIs created for efficient shopping, improving the user experience of PWAs. It includes functions like Gift cards, Gift Options, a Cart Page, Price Adjustments, Price Summary, and Product Listing for efficient cart management, real-time data synchronization, performance optimization, and a seamless checkout experience.

#3. Venia UI

Venia UI provides a collection of reusable UI components that you can leverage to build the front end of your PWA. These components include buttons, forms, navigation menus, sliders, modals, and more. They are designed to follow modern UI/UX best practices and are highly customizable to match your brand and design requirements. It seamlessly integrates with other PWA Studio tools and libraries to provide consistent design, responsiveness, and customization for PWA

#4. PageBuilder

PageBuilder is a drag-and-drop content creation extension that allows marketers to create and edit content without coding, providing visually appealing content for their PWA storefronts.

Why should you choose PWA Studio with Adobe Commerce?

Adobe Commerce with PWA Studio are transforming how customers are using their devices by delivering fast, engaging, and app-like browsing experiences for PWAs. Some of the benefits of PWA Studio with Adobe Commerce are:

#1. Increase sales and ROI

PWA built with Adobe Commerce helps in increasing average order value. The user-friendly layouts and navigation help shoppers browse products and services quickly, reducing cart abandonment.

#2. Incredible features

PWA Studio with Adobe Commerce offers numerous advantages similar to mobile applications, like offline functionality, push notifications, home screen installation, for smooth performance across different devices and platforms and enhanced user engagement.

#3. Improved mobile experience

PWA Studio with Adobe Commerce features allows you to deliver a seamless and optimized mobile experience for your customers. PWAs designed from PWA Studio are responsive and lightweight, ensuring fast loading times and smooth navigation on mobile devices.

#4. Cost efficiency

PWA Studio with Adobe Commerce can help reduce development and maintenance costs. Instead of building separate native apps for different platforms (iOS, Android), you can create a single PWA that works across devices. This saves time and resources compared to maintaining multiple codebases for native apps.

#5. Enhanced performance

PWA Studio leverages modern web technologies and architectural frameworks to deliver high performance. Service workers enable caching of assets, allowing PWA to load quickly, even on slow or unreliable networks. The smooth user experience provided by PWA Studio led to higher customer satisfaction and increased sales.

#6. SEO-Friendly

Adobe Commerce PWA Studio recognizes the importance of website traffic, brand visibility, and increased conversions for their store. Hence, PWAs are built using standard web technologies, making them SEO-friendly. Unlike native apps, PWAs can be indexed by search engines, improving your website’s visibility and discoverability. This can help drive organic traffic to your eCommerce store and attract potential customers.

Read our resource on 8 ways Adobe Commerce SEO maximizes the power of your online store.

Advantages of Adobe Commerce PWA Studio

Here are some advantages of Adobe Commerce PWA Studio:

Compatibility: Ensures your PWA works across various devices and platforms, providing a consistent user experience.
Easy to Integrate: Seamlessly integrates with existing Adobe Commerce platforms, allowing for smooth transitions and upgrades.
Out-of-the-Box Architecture: Comes with pre-built tools and frameworks that make setup and development straightforward and efficient.
Easy to Maintain & Update: Regular updates and maintenance are simplified, reducing the need for extensive technical knowledge and resources.

Deliver exceptional eCommerce experiences via Adobe PWA Studio

PWAs are a major advancement in the ongoing evolution of mobile commerce. The technology fades between native applications and mobile websites. Adobe Commerce with PWA Studio is the one-stop platform to empower businesses to create app-like shopping experiences from PWAs. As an award-winning Adobe Solution partner, Ranosys can assist you in optimizing your storefront with Adobe PWA Studio delivering personalized shopping experiences. By leveraging Adobe Commerce PWA Studio, businesses can increase customer engagement, drive growth, and maximize ROI, ensuring their eCommerce platforms are future-ready. Ranosys has also developed its cutting-edge eCommerce accelerator, Falcon – built from the ground up on Adobe Commerce Cloud. Falcon, is a swift-to-implement solution that efficiently launches your online business, ensuring it’s thoroughly tested and optimized in record time.

Deliver connected shopping experiences with Adobe Commerce PWA Studio.

Ready to unlock the full potential of AEM?

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In today’s digital world, businesses need to provide outstanding online experiences to stay ahead. With tough competition and fast-changing technology, having a strong online presence and efficient operations is crucial. According to a Forrester study, companies that focus on customer experience make 5.7 times more revenue than their competitors. But achieving this high level of customer satisfaction can be hard, especially for businesses with limited resources and technical know-how.

This is where Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) comes into play. AEM is a powerful tool that helps businesses manage their online content and deliver personalized experiences across different channels. However, using AEM to its full potential can be challenging. It requires specialized skills, ongoing maintenance, and the ability to adapt to changing business needs.

To overcome these challenges, many businesses are using AEM Managed Services. These services offer expert support, proactive monitoring, and continuous optimization. This allows businesses to focus on what they do best, while ensuring their AEM system runs smoothly and efficiently.

In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore AEM Managed Services, their benefits, and how they can help your business succeed in the digital world. Whether you’re experienced with AEM or just starting out on a digital transformation journey, this guide will provide valuable insights and practical strategies to unlock the true power of AEM and drive business success.

What is AEM Managed Service?

Adobe Experience Manager is a powerful and comprehensive digital experience platform that allows businesses to create, manage, and deliver personalized content across multiple channels. However, harnessing the full potential of AEM can be a complex and resource-intensive work, requiring specialized expertise and continuous support. This is where AEM Managed Services come into play.

AEM Managed Services are a suite of offerings provided by certified Adobe partners and experts, designed to support businesses throughout the entire AEM lifecycle. These services include a wide range of activities, including implementation, hosting, infrastructure management, security and compliance, performance monitoring, content and asset management, technical support, and upgrades and patch management.

By leveraging AEM Managed Services, businesses can reduce the operational complexities associated with managing an AEM environment, freeing up internal resources to focus on their core competencies and strategic initiatives.

Adobe Experience Manager as a Managed Service

Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) is the industry-leading digital experience management solution for enterprises and SME businesses. AEM offers a modern, scalable foundation to create engaging experiences that enhance brand engagement, stimulate demand, and boost customer loyalty. AEM includes comprehensive tools to design, manage, and deliver digital experiences across all channels.

When leveraging Adobe Experience Manager as a Managed Service, the AEM solution is hosted in a dedicated environment, fully managed and supported by Adobe. Core infrastructure components such as web application hosting, redundancy, and storage are provided through Adobe-certified cloud service providers and maintained by Adobe experts. This setup ensures optimal performance, security, and scalability, allowing organizations to focus on delivering exceptional digital experiences.

What are the advantages of AEM Managed Services?

Implementing AEM Managed Services can significantly improve a business’s digital strategy and operations. Here are the key benefits:

Cost-efficiency and resource optimization: By outsourcing AEM management to a specialized vendor, businesses can avoid the high costs associated with building and maintaining an in-house team of AEM experts. Managed services providers offer flexible pricing models, allowing businesses to scale services based on their evolving needs, ensuring efficient resource allocation.
Expertise and Best Practices: AEM Managed Services vendors are dedicated experts who stay at the forefront of AEM capabilities, industry trends, and best practices. This expertise ensures that businesses can leverage the full potential of AEM without having to invest time and resources in training their internal teams. Vendors can deliver tailored solutions that align with business goals, ensuring optimal execution of digital strategies.
Security and Compliance: Security is paramount for any business, and AEM Managed Services vendors prioritize implementing robust security measures to safeguard digital assets, customer data, and sensitive information. They continuously monitor for vulnerabilities and address security threats promptly. Additionally, they ensure that the AEM platform remains compliant with industry regulations, which is crucial for businesses operating in regulated sectors like healthcare and finance.
Optimization and Performance: AEM Managed Services provide ongoing support and maintenance to ensure that the platform performs at its best. This includes monitoring system performance, addressing bottlenecks, and making proactive adjustments to optimize the AEM environment. Continuous optimization ensures a seamless user experience and allows businesses to adapt quickly to changes in user behavior and emerging technologies.
Scalability and Flexibility: Business needs can change rapidly and AEM Managed Services are designed with scalability and flexibility in mind. Whether a business is experiencing rapid growth or needs to downsize temporarily, these services can adapt to their requirements, ensuring that AEM resources align with the current state of the business, preventing overinvestment or resource shortages.

How can AEM managed services benefit my business?

AEM Managed Services can benefit businesses in multiple ways, enabling them to thrive in the competitive digital landscape:

Source: https://business.adobe.com/products/experience-manager/managed-services.html

Accelerated Time-to-Value: By partnering with an experienced AEM Managed Services vendor, businesses can increase the implementation and deployment of their AEM instance. This accelerated time-to-value ensures that businesses can quickly leverage the full capabilities of AEM, driving faster ROI.
Focus on Core Competencies: By offloading the operational complexities of managing an AEM environment, businesses can redirect their internal resources towards core competencies and strategic initiatives that drive growth and revenue. This allows for greater agility and adaptability in an ever-evolving digital landscape.
Seamless Integration and Migration: AEM Managed Services providers are experienced in integrating AEM with existing systems and migrating content and assets from legacy platforms. This seamless integration and migration process minimizes disruptions to business operations and ensures a smooth transition to the AEM platform.
Improved Customer Experiences: By leveraging the expertise of AEM Managed Services vendors, businesses can optimize their digital experiences, delivering personalized, engaging, and consistent content across multiple channels. This can lead to improved customer satisfaction, increased customer retention, and ultimately, increased business revenue.
Reduced Risk and Compliance Assurance: Adobe Experience Manager Managed Services providers prioritize security and compliance, implementing robust measures to safeguard digital assets, customer data, and sensitive information. They ensure that the AEM platform remains compliant with industry regulations, reducing the risk of non-compliance and potential penalties.

What do I expect from my AEM Managed Services vendor?

When partnering with an AEM Managed Services vendor, businesses should expect the following:

Comprehensive Services: An experienced AEM Managed Services vendor should offer a comprehensive suite of services covering the entire AEM lifecycle, from initial implementation and migration to ongoing support, maintenance, and optimization.
Expertise and Experience: The vendor should have a team of certified AEM experts with extensive experience in implementing, configuring, and managing AEM environments across various industries and use cases. They should stay up-to-date with the latest AEM features, best practices, and industry trends.
Customized Solutions: The vendor should work closely with the business to understand their unique requirements, challenges, and goals, and provide tailored solutions that align with their digital strategy.
Integration and Migration: The vendor should have the capability to seamlessly integrate AEM with existing systems and migrate content and assets from legacy platforms, ensuring minimal disruption to business operations.
Security and Compliance: The vendor should prioritize security and compliance, implementing robust measures to safeguard digital assets, customer data, and sensitive information. They should ensure that the AEM platform remains compliant with industry regulations.
Monitoring and Optimization: The vendor should continuously monitor the AEM environment, proactively identifying and addressing performance issues, and optimizing the platform for optimal performance and scalability.
Support and Communication: The vendor should provide responsive and timely support, addressing any technical issues or concerns that may arise. Clear and transparent communication channels should be established to ensure effective collaboration and knowledge transfer.
Scalability and Flexibility: The vendor should offer scalable and flexible services that can adapt to the changing needs of the business, allowing for seamless expansion or contraction of resources as required.
Competitive Pricing: The vendor should offer competitive pricing models that align with the business’s budget and provide a clear return on investment (ROI) through cost savings, increased operational efficiency, and improved customer experiences.

What is the process of implementing AEM Managed Services?

Implementing AEM Managed Services is a multi-phased process that should be carefully planned and executed to ensure a successful deployment and ongoing management of the AEM environment:

Assessment and Planning: The process begins with a comprehensive assessment of the business’s current digital landscape, requirements, goals, and challenges. The AEM Managed Services provider will work closely with the business to understand their specific needs and devise a tailored implementation plan.
Detailed Solution Design: Based on the assessment, the provider will create a detailed solution design, outlining the AEM configuration, integrations, migration strategy, resources required, and the scope of services.
Implementation: Once the solution design is finalized, the AEM Managed Services team will handle the implementation process. This includes configuring AEM to meet the business’s specific requirements, integrating it with existing systems, migrating content and assets, and ensuring that all necessary infrastructure is in place.
Deployment and Training: After successful implementation, the configured AEM environment is deployed to production. The provider will then conduct hands-on training sessions to ensure that the business’s team is equipped with the necessary knowledge and skills to effectively utilize the AEM platform.
Ongoing Support and Maintenance: AEM Managed Services extend beyond the initial implementation. The provider will offer continuous support, monitoring the system’s performance, and making necessary adjustments to ensure optimal functionality. This includes addressing technical issues, implementing security patches, and ensuring compliance with industry regulations.
Continuous Optimization: The provider will continuously work with the business to optimize the AEM environment, leveraging best practices, monitoring performance metrics, and making proactive adjustments to improve the user experience, scalability, and overall efficiency of the platform.

Can I switch from in-house AEM management to managed services?

Absolutely! Switching from an in-house AEM management approach to AEM Managed Services is a common scenario, and many businesses opt for this transition to leverage the expertise and benefits offered by specialized service providers.

This process typically involves the following steps:

Assessment and Discovery: The AEM Managed Services vendor will conduct a detailed assessment of the existing in-house AEM environment, including its configuration, customizations, integrations, and infrastructure. This assessment helps recognize potential challenges, dependencies, and migration requirements.
Migration Planning: Based on the assessment, the AEM Managed Services provider will create a comprehensive migration plan. This plan will outline the steps involved in transitioning the existing AEM environment to the managed services model, including data migration, system configuration, and integration strategies.
Migration Execution: The provider will execute the migration plan, working closely with the business’s internal team to ensure a smooth and seamless transition. This may involve migrating content, assets, and data, reconfiguring the AEM environment, and integrating with existing systems and processes.
User Acceptance Testing: Once the migration is complete, the vendor will conduct thorough user acceptance testing to ensure that the new AEM environment meets the business’s requirements and functions as expected.
Knowledge Transfer: The AEM Managed Services provider will conduct training sessions to ensure that the business’s team is equipped with the necessary knowledge and skills to work effectively with the new managed services model.
Ongoing Support and Optimization: With the transition complete, the provider will assume responsibility for the ongoing support, maintenance, and optimization of the AEM environment, leveraging their expertise and best practices.

Are AEM managed services a long-term commitment?

AEM Managed Services are typically designed as long-term partnerships, but the commitment level can vary depending on the specific needs and requirements of the business.

Many businesses opt for long-term AEM Managed Services engagements to ensure continuity, consistency, and ongoing support for their digital experiences. This long-term commitment allows for a deeper understanding of the business’s goals, processes, and challenges, enabling the service provider to deliver tailored solutions and optimization strategies that evolve with the business’s needs.

However, AEM Managed Services providers understand the dynamic nature of the digital landscape and the evolving requirements of businesses. As such, they often offer flexible engagement models that can accommodate both short-term and long-term commitments.

Short-term engagements may be suitable for businesses with specific projects or initiatives, such as implementing a new AEM environment, migrating from a legacy system, or addressing specific performance or scalability challenges. In these cases, the service provider can offer project-based or time-bound engagements to meet the business’s immediate needs.

Long-term engagements, on the other hand, are typically preferred by businesses seeking a strategic partnership for the ongoing management, maintenance, and optimization of their AEM environment. These engagements often involve multi-year contracts, allowing for a more comprehensive and proactive approach to digital experience management.

What is the difference between AEM Managed services and AEM resource augmentation?

AEM Managed Services and AEM Resource Augmentation are two distinct offerings that cater to different business needs and requirements:

1. AEM Managed Services:

AEM Managed Services provide a comprehensive and holistic approach to managing and maintaining an AEM environment. These services encompass a wide range of activities, including implementation, hosting, infrastructure management, security and compliance, performance monitoring, content and asset management, technical support, and upgrades and patch management.

With AEM Managed Services, businesses effectively outsource the operational complexities associated with managing an AEM environment to a specialized service provider. The provider takes full responsibility for ensuring the optimal performance, security, and scalability of the AEM platform, freeing up the business’s internal resources to focus on strategic initiatives and core competencies.

2. AEM Resource Augmentation:

AEM Resource Augmentation, on the other hand, is a more focused offering that addresses specific resource gaps or requirements within a business’s existing AEM team or projects. It involves augmenting the internal team with highly skilled AEM professionals on a flexible, contract, or project basis.

Resource augmentation services are typically leveraged for specific initiatives or scenarios, such as:

AEM implementation or migration projects	Major system upgrades	Architecture roadmaps and evaluations
Large-scale redesigns, site launches, or new channel rollouts	Optimizing experience performance and scalability	Technical audits and debugging
Developing complex custom components or integrations	Executing personalization strategies	Interim staff coverage during personnel changes

With resource augmentation, businesses retain overall control and management of their AEM environment while supplementing their team with specialized expertise and additional resources as needed.

AEM Managed Services vs AEM as a Cloud Service

While both AEM Managed Services and AEM as a Cloud Service are offerings from Adobe, they differ in their delivery models, deployment options, and management responsibilities:

Attribute	AEM Managed Services	AEM as a Cloud Service
Definition	AEM Managed Services is a service-based offering where businesses leverage the expertise and resources of a third-party service vendor to manage and maintain their AEM environment. The AEM platform itself is typically deployed on the business's own infrastructure or the service vendor's infrastructure. With AEM Managed Services, the service vendor takes responsibility for various aspects of the AEM environment, including infrastructure management, security, performance monitoring, upgrades, and ongoing support. The business retains control over the content and digital assets, while the service vendor manages the technical complexities of running and maintaining the AEM platform.	AEM as a Cloud Service, on the other hand, is a cloud-based offering from Adobe where the AEM platform is hosted and managed by Adobe in the cloud. It is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model, where Adobe handles the underlying infrastructure, security, and maintenance of the AEM environment. With AEM as a Cloud Service, businesses have less control over the technical aspects of the AEM platform, as Adobe manages the infrastructure, security, and updates. However, businesses retain control over the content, digital assets, and customizations within the AEM environment.
Deployment	AEM Managed Services can be deployed on the business's infrastructure or the service provider's infrastructure.	AEM as a Cloud Service is hosted and managed by Adobe in the cloud.
Management	In AEM Managed Services, the service provider manages the technical aspects of the AEM environment.	AEM as a Cloud Service, Adobe manages the infrastructure and technical components.
Control	With AEM Managed Services, businesses have more control over the technical aspects of the AEM environment.	AEM as a Cloud Service, Adobe has more control over the underlying infrastructure and platform updates.
Pricing	AEM Managed Services typically involve a pricing model based on the scope of services and resources required.	AEM as a Cloud Service is a subscription-based model with pricing based on usage and features.

The choice between AEM Managed Services and AEM as a Cloud Service depends on the business’s specific requirements, IT infrastructure, security and compliance needs, and the level of control desired over the technical aspects of the AEM platform.

How to Choose the Right AEM Managed Services Provider

Selecting the right Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) Managed Services provider is crucial for optimizing your digital experience platform. Here are key factors to consider:

Expertise: Look for a provider with a proven track record in managing successful AEM projects. Ensure their team includes certified AEM professionals whose expertise will be essential in maintaining and enhancing your AEM environment.
Service Level Agreements (SLAs): Ensure that the provider’s SLAs align with your organization’s needs for uptime, performance, and resolution times. Clear, well-defined SLAs help prevent misunderstandings and ensure reliable service delivery.
Client Reviews: Examine client reviews and testimonials to gauge the provider’s reputation and the quality of their services. Insights from previous clients can reveal the provider’s strengths and potential areas for improvement.

How can Ranosys assist with AEM Managed Services?

AEM Managed Services provides a strategic solution for managing an organization’s AEM environment, combining expert management, reliability, and cost-effectiveness. This empowers organizations to maximize their AEM investment while focusing on core operations. Selecting the right service provider, transitioning seamlessly, and continuous improvement are crucial for success. Ranosys, a leading Adobe Solution Partner with over 15 years of experience in Adobe Experience Cloud, specializes in AEM Sites, Forms, Assets, and Managed Services. As a leading Adobe Solution Partner, Ranosys offers comprehensive AEM Managed Services to unlock AEM’s full potential. Their end-to-end services cover the entire AEM lifecycle, from assessment and planning to support, maintenance, and optimization.

With extensive expertise and a comprehensive approach, Ranosys ensures clients’ AEM environments are optimized, secure, and aligned with business goals, enabling them to drive growth and deliver exceptional digital experiences.

Let’s talk about what AEM Managed services can do for your business.

At Ranosys, sustainability is more than a buzzword; it’s a guiding principle that shapes our operations, influences our policies, and drives our marketing strategies. We are committed to fostering a culture of environmental stewardship, ensuring that our business practices not only meet the needs of today but also pave the way for a greener, more sustainable future. In this blog, we explore the various dimensions of our sustainability efforts, highlighting the contributions of our leaders in operations, human resources, and marketing.

Operational Sustainability: A Perspective by Ashish Vyas, AVP – Operations

Ashish Vyas, our Operations Head, is a firm believer in integrating sustainability into the core of our business operations. Under his leadership, Ranosys has adopted several eco-friendly practices:

Reducing Carbon Footprint with 100% Laptop Usage

In a significant move towards reducing our carbon footprint, Ranosys has transitioned to using 100% laptops across the company. Laptops are known for their energy efficiency compared to desktop computers. This switch not only reduces electricity consumption but also minimizes the environmental impact associated with electronic waste. By opting for laptops, we are making a conscious effort to lower our carbon emissions and contribute to a more sustainable work environment.

Efficient Electricity Usage

Ranosys is committed to optimizing electricity usage within our offices. We have implemented energy-saving measures such as LED lighting, motion sensors to control lighting, and energy-efficient HVAC systems. These initiatives help in reducing our overall energy consumption, thereby contributing to our sustainability goals. By constantly monitoring and managing our energy usage, we ensure that our operations are as eco-friendly as possible.

“Every step we take towards energy efficiency is a step towards a sustainable future. It’s about making conscious choices that benefit both our business and the planet,”

Ashish Vyas, AVP – Operations

HR-Driven Sustainability Initiatives: Insights from Garima Agarwal, HR Head

Garima Agarwal, our HR Head, plays a pivotal role in embedding sustainability into the culture of Ranosys. Her efforts are focused on creating a workplace that values and practices environmental responsibility:

Plant Exchange Program

To promote green living and environmental awareness among employees, Garima introduced a plant exchange program. This initiative encourages employees to bring plants from home and exchange them with colleagues, fostering a sense of community and a shared commitment to sustainability. The plant exchange program not only beautifies our workspace but also improves indoor air quality and instills a sense of responsibility towards nature.

“Our plant exchange program has been a wonderful way to connect our team with nature and each other. It’s a simple yet effective way to promote sustainability in the workplace,”

Garima Agarwal, Head – HR

Collaboration with SankalpTaru

Ranosys is proud to collaborate with SankalpTaru, an organization dedicated to promoting environmental sustainability through tree planting and reforestation projects. As part of this collaboration, we actively participate in various initiatives to conserve and restore natural habitats. Our involvement with SankalpTaru underscores our commitment to combating climate change and enhancing biodiversity. By contributing to this impactful initiative, we are making a tangible difference in the environment and supporting the health of our planet for future generations.

Promoting Sustainability: Kali Charan Rajput, AVP Marketing

Kali Charan Rajput, our AVP of Marketing, emphasizes the importance of sustainability in our marketing strategies. His approach ensures that our brand message aligns with our commitment to environmental responsibility:

Promoting Eco-Friendly Practices

KC leads the charge in incorporating sustainability into our marketing campaigns. We prioritize eco-friendly practices in all our promotional activities, from using recycled materials in printed marketing collateral to leveraging digital marketing to reduce paper waste. By showcasing our sustainability initiatives in our marketing efforts, we not only enhance our brand image but also inspire our clients and partners to adopt greener practices.

“Sustainability isn’t just a trend; it’s a responsibility. Our marketing and branding strategies reflect our commitment to environmental stewardship, encouraging others to join us in making a positive impact,”

KC, AVP – Marketing

Educating and Engaging Stakeholders

A significant aspect of KC’s strategy involves educating our stakeholders about the importance of sustainability. Through webinars, social media campaigns, and thought leadership content, we aim to raise awareness about environmental issues and the steps Ranosys is taking to address them. By engaging with our audience on these topics, we foster a community of like-minded individuals and organizations committed to making a positive environmental impact.

Conclusion

At Ranosys, sustainability is a shared responsibility that permeates every aspect of our business. From operational efficiencies and HR initiatives to sustainable marketing practices, we are dedicated to creating a greener, more sustainable future. Our thought leaders, Ashish , Garima, and KC, exemplify our commitment to environmental stewardship and inspire us to continually seek innovative ways to reduce our ecological footprint.

Together, we are building a culture of sustainability that not only benefits our business but also contributes to the well-being of our planet. By championing these initiatives, Ranosys is proud to lead by example and demonstrate that sustainability and business success go hand in hand.

Join us on this journey towards a greener tomorrow.

Ranosys, an award-winning Adobe Partner and leading digital transformation company, will be exhibiting at the Best of Adobe Summit: Singapore Edition 2024 on June 27 at the Sands Expo & Convention Centre, Marina Bay Sands, Singapore, as a Silver Sponsor. Our Leadership Team members, Rameshwar Vyas, Sushma Vyas, Bharat Mungarh, Lalit Nama, Arjun Sharma, Valencis Lo, and Ashish Purohit will be exhibiting at booth no #S2.

The Best of Adobe Summit: Singapore Edition 2024 is a premier event that offers a unique opportunity to join the global Adobe community to learn, be inspired, and make meaningful connections. Attendees will gain insights on delivering personalized, experience-led solutions to customers. The conference will feature innovative keynotes, insightful sessions, major product announcements, and valuable networking activities.

Talking about Ranosys exhibiting at the Best of Adobe Summit: Singapore Edition, CEO Rameshwar Vyas said, “We are proud to sponsor the Best of Adobe Summit: Singapore Edition. This event offers an excellent opportunity for us to engage with industry leaders, Adobe professionals, and customers who leverage the platform. It allows us to showcase our expertise in digital consulting and Adobe Experience Cloud implementations. We are dedicated to empowering businesses with the right technology solutions, supported by the robust Adobe suite of tools, to drive exceptional customer experiences. We look forward to gaining insights into the evolution of Adobe’s product vision at the event.”

An award-winning Adobe Partner, Ranosys has been assisting leading global enterprises with their digital commerce and transformation goals, leveraging the industry-driven capabilities, platforms, and technologies from Adobe. Its expanding portfolio of strategic specializations across Adobe include Adobe Commerce, Adobe Experience Manager, Adobe Marketo, Adobe Analytics, Adobe Target, and Adobe RT-CDP. The state-of-the-art Adobe DX Accelerator has been a prime interest for organizations worldwide looking to build a robust digital foundation by acing content management, data & analytics, personalization, and cloud-agility. Ranosys has also developed its cutting-edge eCommerce accelerator, Falcon – built from the ground up on Adobe Commerce Cloud. Falcon, is a swift-to-implement solution that efficiently launches your online business, ensuring it’s thoroughly tested and optimized in record time. This empowers you to make strategic business decisions that drive online traffic, enhance conversion rates, and amplify engagement, all tailored to your specific goals.

The upcoming Best of Adobe Summit: Singapore Edition 2024 is a valuable opportunity for Ranosys to connect with industry leaders, merchants, and agencies, enhancing our existing market relationships. At this event, we will discuss the latest trends, technologies, best practices and the transformative power of Generative AI in shaping the future of customer experience in the Asia-Pacific region. Visit our booth to learn how our strategic expertise across Adobe Experience Cloud can benefit your business.

About Ranosys

Ranosys is a 3X award-winning Adobe Solution Partner and global digital transformation agency empowering enterprises to craft engaging experiences through next-gen digital-first solutions. With 15+ years of experience in strategic digital innovation, we deliver unparalleled services across Adobe Commerce, Adobe Experience Manager, Marketo Engage, Adobe Campaign, Adobe Analytics and Target. Our agile approach involves integrating our technical proficiency with the cutting-edge capabilities of the Adobe ecosystem to achieve maximum ROI in minimum time-to-market. Our proven expertise has resulted in successful implementations for leading brands. For more information, visit https://www.ranosys.com/.

Or, fill out the form and shoot us an email at sales@ranosys.com

Is Data Cloud right for my business?

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“Your data is only as good as the strategy behind it.”

Salesforce Data Cloud, unarguably is one of the most popular and significant products built and released by Salesforce (one of the few Salesforce products that is not acquired). Ever since Salesforce announced full access of Salesforce Data Cloud to Enterprise and Ultimate Sales Cloud customers at no any extra cost, there has been a buzz in the community. Said to be the Holy Grail of CRM, Salesforce Data Cloud is said to revolutionize the problem of data synchronization, identity resolution, and holistic customer view across all internal and external systems, one that has been existing since Salesforce’s infancy.

Salesforce Data Cloud’s role becomes even more imperative after Salesforce released a research stating that an average company has about 928 systems (with enterprises leveraging more systems and smaller companies lesser than the average), presenting a significant hurdle for cross-departmental efforts to accurately map all customer identities back to their source.

While the popularity of Salesforce Data Cloud has grown prominently, leaders can only make most of the platform once they have complete insights into the platform.

Here we demystify Data Cloud, its role in today’s CX management economy, its top use cases, how different industries can leverage the platform, benefits, and a lot more.

What is Salesforce Data Cloud?

Salesforce Data Cloud is a product of Salesforce that brings together all enterprise data on Salesforce’s Einstein 1 Platform, providing cross-teams with a unified view of a customer across all channels and systems. This empowers marketing, sales, and service teams to personalize engagement, trigger workflows and actions, and improve experiences. Data Cloud brings together all disconnected and diverse data (CRM, case, billing, telemetry, web engagement, and feedback data) across internal systems or external data lakes and warehouses to a single, trusted model, accessible to all, while leveraging the power of trusted AI across all Salesforce apps.

No matter where your data is from—whether it’s from inside your company’s apps, systems, or emails, or from outside sources like data lakes—Data Cloud can gather it all. It then builds a complete picture of each customer, which helps your team understand their current needs and predict what they might need in the future. This makes it easier for everyone in your company to use all the data available, which improves productivity and lets you provide more value to your customers.

Overall, leveraging Salesforce Data Cloud results in consistent, personalized experiences, boosting satisfaction, engagement, loyalty, and business growth. With Data Cloud, enterprise leaders ensure that all their teams have the right information about a customer, and in turn deliver the right experience to the right customer at the right time and across the right channel, in real-time.

The history of Salesforce Data Cloud

The journey of Salesforce Data Cloud is packed with several iterations since it was first introduced as Customer 360 at Salesforce Connections in June 2019. Then, in the same year, at Dreamforce 2019, Salesforce renamed it as Salesforce 360 Audiences, renamed to Salesforce CDP in May 2021. Let’s walk through it:

Customer 360: Salesforce’s initial CDP offering, launched in 2019
Customer 360 Audiences: The product renamed at Dreamforce 2019
Salesforce CDP: The term, CDP (customer data platform) added to the product, in May 2021, to align with the widespread boom of the CDP market
Marketing Cloud Customer Data Platform: Salesforce CDP renamed to Marketing Cloud CDP to align with Salesforce’s convention of naming its marketing products.
Salesforce Genie: At Dreamforce 2022, Salesforce Genie was born. Rather than a product renaming, Genie broadened the use cases of data-driven CX management to sales, service, and more.
Salesforce Data Cloud: In 2023, Genie was dropped from the product name, finally landing on the product name, Salesforce Data Cloud. This also forwards Salesfore’s vision of building a trusted CRM+ Data + Trust + AI ecosystem.

Salesforce worked on its CDP offering for over five years and now it is available in the market – free for Enterprise and Ultimate Sales Cloud customers and as a paid tool for others.

Is Salesforce Data Cloud a CDP?

Although it is true that Salesforce Data Cloud was once known as Salesforce CDP, it is not the same technology as the latter. Sharing Salesforce CDP’s purpose and benefits, it takes its capabilities and expands it across the Salesforce Customer 360 platform; beyond marketing to sales, service, and more.

Since Salesforce CDP, there has been an evolutionary and revolutionary change in the product’s capabilities, building upon CDP’s initial data ingestion, unification, identity resolution, and activation capabilities.

Data harmonization before and after Salesforce Data Cloud

To understand the competitive advantage of Data Cloud, let’s walk through how CDP’s achieved data harmonization in the past.

When setting up a CDP, the following actions had to be performed.

Get a cloud data warehouse
Create a ‘star schema,’ which is a way to organize data in a database with multiple dimensions
Link the schema to all the objects in the data models of the systems you want to connect (like Salesforce)
Use an enterprise service bus (ESB)
Develop ETL (extract, transform, load) jobs to take out data, change it, and put it in place

Salesforce Data Cloud simplifies this entire process, reducing the efforts to a fraction of what was initially required. With Data Cloud, you can easily link data between Salesforce and other systems just by clicking – whether it’s syncing data with Google Cloud, SAP, or a payment system. Even though you can still connect Salesforce to other data lakes, Data Cloud is simpler to set up, needing less effort to get started. As Data Cloud comes pre-wired to Salesforce objects (like product object, order object, etc), enterprise leaders can leverage the groundwork while only spending time to map the systems and improving/maintaining data quality.

Here is the technical capability map of Salesforce Data Cloud.

How does Salesforce Data Cloud work

Salesforce Data Cloud is a part of the Einstein 1 Platform and helps teams gain a 360-degree view of a customer’s profile and deep understanding of their behavior, interests and preferences. Data Cloud achieves this with the following capabilities:

By connecting all data sources: An enterprise’s data is stored in different places like spreadsheets, databases, or even cloud services like Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Google Big Query. Data Cloud unifies data on Salesforce and across external sources to create a holistic and trusted view of a customer. It leverages pre-built connectors and seamless integrations to pull data from across the enterprise’s internal and external systems.
By harmonizing data: Now that you have all the data in one place, it’s important to make sure it works well together. As Data Cloud is purpose-built on Salesforce’s metadata model, enterprises can access and utilize all of this data across Salesforce apps like Commerce Cloud, Sales Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and Service Cloud. A key aspect to note here is that Data Cloud makes it easy to harmonize disparate data into a singular model via point-and-click mapping and pre-configured bundles that automatically map the data for you.
By activating the data: Once all the data is unified and harmonized, Data Cloud now assists enterprises in putting it to use. This data accessible to all Salesforce apps and external systems can be used to automate tasks, trigger workflows, or create new processes that improve operational efficiency.

The benefits of Salesforce Data Cloud for marketing leaders

Salesforce Data Cloud empowers marketing leaders to create more personalized, efficient, and effective marketing strategies that drive better customer experiences and business outcomes.

Let’s learn how.

#1: A single view of a customer

As Salesforce Data Cloud brings together all disparate data sources across internal and external systems, marketers gain a holistic view of all customer/prospect activities. This means, they do not have to switch between platforms to view information about a customer. Even if an enterprise leverages thousands of platforms, Salesforce Data Cloud maps activities of a single customer to its original source, providing a unified customer profile ready to be activated across all Salesforce apps.

#2: Gain a deeper understanding of your customer’s preferences

A holistic customer view means a deeper understanding of a customer’s behavior and interactions, which in turn can be leveraged by marketing, sales, service, and other cross-department teams to deliver personalized solutions. Salesforce Data Cloud makes it easy to track and review a customer’s engagement with an enterprise across all marketing channels and even with other departments to engage in tailored solutions.

For example, a customer has recently purchased a product and has been browsing through FAQs related to shipping and delivery. After a few days, the customer connects with support. A service rep can review this information to answer questions proactively and assure them that delivery will be made within the stipulated time. Overall, with Salesforce Data Cloud all teams across the organization can view information about a customer regardless of whether it is pertaining to their department or not, and personalize engagement based on the data-driven insights.

#3: Improve marketing communication

A large-scale benefit of Salesforce Data Cloud is for the marketing team, especially when it comes to delivering tailored experiences. Complete visibility into a customer’s profile assists marketers in identifying their preferences, interests, purchase patterns, buying behavior, content/offer they most engage with, channel they prefer, etc. All these insights assist marketers in optimizing their marketing spend and efforts and instead redirect actions across the right channel. Marketers can easily activate this data across marketing.

For example, marketers can trigger, pause, or improve marketing campaigns via the Engagement Studio program in Account Engagement or a journey in Journey Builder in Marketing Cloud, all based on the data stored in Salesforce Data Cloud.

#4: Deliver hyper-personalized experiences

In today’s competitive experience-driven landscape, delivering hyper-personalized solutions in what makes or breaks a brand. In fact, a study by McKinsey stated that personalization reduces customer acquisition costs by 50%, boosts revenue by 5-15%, and increases marketing ROI by 10-30%.

Data Cloud focuses towards this one critical aspect, supercharging marketing efforts by providing

Comprehensive customer profiles that combine data from all touchpoints
Real-time insights to tailor marketing campaigns and interactions
Advanced analytics to predict customer behavior and preferences
Seamless integration with various data sources to ensure a unified view
Tools for personalized messaging and offers that resonate with individual customers

Instead of hitting in the dark, marketers can leverage Data Cloud to decipher true customer needs and interests, tailor marketing campaigns and messaging to deliver meaningful interactions, engage in one-of-a-kind experiences, provide exclusive offers, and fuel sustained growth.

#5:Trigger automated workflows

When prospects, leads and customers visit and take action on the website, marketers don’t just want to know, they must use this information for future marketing communications and campaigns and deliver experiences in real-time where it makes sense.

This could involve triggering automated workflows where a web page view or email engagement prompts further engagement or sales outreach.

For example, if a potential customer views a product page on your website, Data Cloud can trigger an automated workflow that sends a personalized follow-up email with additional information about the product. If the customer engages with the email by clicking on a link, the system can then prompt a sales representative to reach out with a tailored offer or schedule a demo. If an existing customer logs a complaint, marketers can trigger a workflow that routes the case to customer service teams who, in turn, prioritizes the issue, ensuring the customer receives immediate attention and support, removing any friction from their experience.

This seamless flow of actions ensures that every interaction is timely and relevant, enhancing the customer experience in real-time and increasing the likelihood of conversion.

#6: Promoting cross-team collaboration

Often times, cross-department teams work in siloed environments, which results in:

Inefficient communication and collaboration
Duplicate efforts and data inconsistencies
Delays in responding to customer needs and issues
A fragmented view of the customer experience
Missed opportunities for unified strategies and solutions

Therefore, aligning teams to ensure that everyone has the same unified up-to-date view of a customer is imperative. When implemented properly, Salesforce Data Cloud helps break down cross-department silos, aligns business teams, and ensures the delivery of consistent, relevant, and timely communications across the right channel.

Salesforce Data Cloud use cases

The following are some use cases for Salesforce Data Cloud.

#1: Enhanced customer segmentation

By using Salesforce Data Cloud, businesses can group customers into different categories based on things like age, what they’ve bought before, how they’ve behaved in the past, and what they like. This helps businesses send them messages and offers that are more likely to catch their interest. For example, if someone often buys shoes, a shoe store might send them a special offer on their favorite brand.

#2: Personalized marketing campaigns

With Salesforce Data Cloud, businesses can make their marketing messages feel more personal. They can use what they know about each customer to send them messages that are just right for them. For instance, if someone often buys coffee from a certain brand, the company might send them a discount on their next purchase.

#3: AI & predictive analytics

Salesforce Data Cloud helps businesses look at past data to guess what might happen in the future. By doing this, they can figure out what customers might want next and be ready to give it to them. For example, if a store sees that a lot of people are buying winter coats, they might guess that people will soon start buying gloves and hats too, so they stock up on those items ahead of time.

#4: Improved customer service optimization

Salesforce Data Cloud provides customer service teams with comprehensive profiles that encompass a customer’s purchase history, interaction records, and preferences. This holistic view enables service representatives to deliver highly personalized and efficient support. For instance, if a customer contacts support regarding an issue with a recent purchase, the service team can quickly access the customer’s entire history, anticipate potential issues, and provide solutions that are tailored to their specific needs.

#5: Cross-sell and upsell opportunities

By leveraging the extensive data within Salesforce Data Cloud, businesses can identify and act on cross-sell and upsell opportunities more effectively. Analyzing customer purchase patterns and preferences enables companies to recommend relevant products or services that complement previous purchases. For example, if a customer buys a smartphone, the system might suggest accessories like cases or headphones that align with the customer’s preferences.

#6: Real-time customer engagement

Salesforce Data Cloud allows businesses to engage with customers in real-time by utilizing data-driven insights. This capability ensures that marketing campaigns, customer service interactions, and sales outreach are not only timely but also relevant. For instance, if a customer browses specific products on a website, Data Cloud can trigger real-time personalized offers or messages, enhancing the likelihood of conversion and improving the overall customer experience.

#7: Comprehensive reporting and analytics

The advanced analytics and reporting capabilities of Salesforce Data Cloud provide businesses with deep insights into customer behavior and market trends. By generating comprehensive reports and visualizations, businesses can monitor key performance indicators (KPIs), track the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, and make informed decisions based on data-driven insights. For example, a retail company can analyze sales data to identify peak shopping periods and optimize inventory management accordingly.

Leverage Salesforce Data Cloud to deliver insightful experiences with Ranosys

Undoubtedly, Salesforce Data Cloud is the ‘Holy Grail of CRM’, solving the problem with disparate data across sources. However, Data Cloud is only a great investment if your enterprise can make the most of the investment. As a leading Salesforce Data Cloud implementation partner, we can help decipher the right use cases and timelines to achieve your goal, unify customer profiles, and deliver personalized experiences. For implementation, support, and ongoing management, Ranosys is here to help. Talk to our Salesforce certified Data Cloud consultants today.

Get started with Salesforce Data Cloud today.

Ranosys, a leading Digital Transformation Agency, will be attending the Retail Innovation Conference & Expo 2024. This highly anticipated event is scheduled to take place from June 4-6, 2024, at McCormick Place, Chicago. From our leadership team, Rameshwar Vyas, Anand Ramdeo, and Ashish Sharma are excited to be part of this premier retail event.

The Retail Innovation Conference & Expo (RICE) is the leading event for retail industry professionals focused on the latest innovations, technologies, and thought leadership. RICE brings together key stakeholders—from small startups to large retailers—to explore and discuss emerging trends that are shaping the future of retail. Attendees can network with peers, gain insights from top experts, and experience firsthand the latest solutions and strategies in ecommerce, store design, omnichannel strategy, and more.

Speaking about Ranosys’ attending #RICE24, CEO Rameshwar Vyas said, “We’re excited to be part of this year’s Retail Innovation Conference & Expo and look forward to engaging with the retail industry’s top decision-makers across eCommerce. This event is known for its insightful sessions, workshops, and exceptional networking opportunities. As leading partners with Salesforce, Adobe, and Shopify Plus, we believe that by embracing the latest innovations, we empower ourselves to serve our customers better, anticipate their needs, and deliver transformative solutions for their businesses. Through these discussions, brands can explore new experiences and business models.”

With a range of strategic sessions, intimate C-level panels, offsite networking events, and interactive learning experiences, attendees will have the chance to delve into the topics and trends shaping the future of the retail industry. Over 50 sessions spanning three carefully curated conference tracks – Content, Community, and Commerce – will provide actionable strategies on new storytelling methods, community-driven tactics, and commerce-powered business priorities.

As an multi-award-winning retail and eCommerce development company, Ranosys has been assisting global retail enterprises and brands in crafting multi-channel personalized experiences. Leveraging their technological expertise in Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Adobe Commerce, and Shopify Plus their certified experts have consistently implemented retail and eCommerce solutions. With a team of certified experts across platforms, Ranosys has collaborated with several leading global brands and Fortune 500 companies across the Americas, APAC, and Europe regions, enabling them to deliver exceptional and superior eCommerce solutions.

As Ranosys continues to take steps towards revolutionizing customer experiences through cutting-edge retail and eCommerce solutions, empowered by modern platforms that leverage AI, GenAI to improve search experiences, offer product recommendations, deliver omnichannel solutions, and boost customer loyalty.

The Ranosys team looks forward to connecting with you at the Retail Innovation Conference & Expo during the event. Schedule your meeting here: https://www.ranosys.com/us/contact-us/.

About Ranosys

Ranosys is a multi-award winning Digital Transformation Agency, with over 15+ years of cross-industry experience across industrial verticals, including Retail & eCommerce, Fashion & Apparels, Food & Beverages, and Health & Beauty, Ranosys has assisted clients from SMBs to large enterprises to implement, optimize, and scale their enterprise solutions. Combining the power of platform partnerships across Salesforce, Adobe & Shopify with our experience design and agile approach, we create a unique advantage for our clients by iterating solutions that effectively tackle today’s challenges while future-proofing your business for tomorrow.

For more information, visit https://www.ranosys.com/.

With companies extracting an enormous amount of data, implementing web analytics on a website is an essential aspect of gathering and organizing data that is useful for both businesses and the developers in order to create a superior user experience. And if you leverage Adobe AEM (Adobe Experience Manager), in that case, you can seamlessly integrate it with Adobe Analytics to track your web page activity by quickly analyzing large volumes of data on your website in real-time. This integration provides powerful visualizations to unveil deep, actionable insights and allows quick and effective decision-making to improve overall business performance.

Adobe Analytics and Adobe Experience Manager tools from Adobe

Adobe Analytics is a comprehensive solution that helps in understanding web behavioral data by giving a 360-degree customer view. It tracks and maps the entire customer journey and offers insights that enable you to deliver the best website experiences to every browser.

Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) is an enterprise digital asset and content management system that allows businesses to create, manage and deliver content across every digital touchpoint. Moreover, this comprehensive content management solution allows your extended teams to establish full control over web content and offer best tailored user experiences throughout.

Customer journey is a compilation of experience, analytics and more

Although data facilitates customer journeys, it is crucial to have a framework for mapping the entire buyers’ journey, measuring what is effective, and evaluate how to use it to optimize for maximum profitability. This makes it possible for experts to understand better how customers react when interacting with the steps involved in a service. These interactions, sometimes referred to as “touchpoints,” assists marketers in determining what their goals ought to be.

Businesses must enable customers to engage in a consistent and seamless experience across multiple channels in a digital world where smartphones, tablets, and other connected gadgets would allow customers to seamlessly transition from one experience to another before making the final decision.

Although offering a smooth multi-channel experience appears to be quite simple from the front, a lot is happening in the back end. To make the experience seamless, marketing professionals and analysts manage large volumes of data. They combine numerous data to analyze behavioral data and employ machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AL). They also piece together a client’s entire journey with the business to find the best ways to make the experience simple, better, and satisfying.

How does a modern CMS and data analytics tool help?

Every brand strives to analyze all of the data supporting the customer journey, which is different from the analytics you are accustomed to. From the very beginning of analytics, brands have always placed a strong emphasis on analyzing visitors and their behavior. With the development of tactics and technologies to comprehend user behavior, the devices used by these visitors also played a significant role. Today, companies use analytics to their fullest potential and ensure that their customers receive the best possible experience with the help of the right tools and targeted advertising.

Why Adobe AEM & Adobe Analytics integration?

Adobe Analytics and Adobe Experience Manager integration is nothing short of a eureka moment. The AEM & Adobe Analytics integration provides an ability to link data and content together. You can structure your content for maximum engagement via Adobe AEM and drill into data using Adobe Analytics to provide the most seamless and personalization website experience at scale. Integrating Adobe Experience Manager with Adobe Analytics improves transparency, visibility, and the visitor’s behavior towards your website content and boost lead generation efforts.

This integration ensures improved page conversion rate and easy tracking of pages, sections, form submissions, link clicks (along with positions), and transaction data.
The businesses using this integration can have a complete view of the customer journey.
By integrating your AEM-based website with Adobe Marketing Cloud, you can target individual customers or user groups and give them a more tailored experience.

Use cases of Adobe Analytics integration with Adobe Experience Manager

#1: Forge a seamless connection between content and data

With Adobe AEM and Adobe Analytics integration, you connect data and content together, empowering teams to be more productive and proactive with minimal IT indulgence. Adobe AEM allows you to centralize content for your multi-location website, without having to switch between sites and systems. Integrated with Adobe Analytics, this powerful combination drills into your content data to analyze what’s working for your audiences and what doesn’t. With the insights gathered, you can identify audience groups and push customized content to their preferred touchpoints, resulting in an efficient and higher sales.

#2: Push changes in real-time for better user experiences

When you integrate Adobe AEM and Analytics tools, you empower yourself with the ability to derive insights quickly and make changes in real-time. With Adobe Analytics artificial intelligence, you can evaluate page visits, page views, bounce rates, and more actionable insights to tweak your website content for better performance. This results in a personalized user journey that further acts as a catalyst for better website performance. Tailored UX improves user experiences, lead generation numbers, converting more prospects to customers.

#3: Optimize budgets for maximum ROI

Today, companies spend a lot of budget on campaigns across touchpoints, which is why it is essential to analyze how your marketing content performs. Adobe Analytics integrated with Adobe AEM studies the impact of content across every channel – paid ads, website, app, emails, and so on. Its AI and ML algorithm helps you identify the channel that garners the most traffic and leads so that you can optimize your marketing spend accordingly.

#4: Predict trends for the future

Adobe Analytics integration with Adobe AEM not only studies data to reveal insights that you implement in real-time, but its predictive tools powered by AI and ML helps you understand market trends for the future. This way, you can consistently take advantage of data in the present and take note of insights and features that would define the future.

How to integrate Adobe Analytics and Adobe Experience Manager?

You can monitor the usage of your web pages by integrating Adobe Analytics with Adobe AEM as a Cloud Service. The integration can be carried out by

Adding and configuring Adobe Analytics as an extension in Adobe Launch
By utilizing the Touch UI to create an Analytics setup in Adobe AEM-as-a-Cloud Service

A: Adding and configuring Adobe Analytics as an extension in Adobe Launch

Here are the following steps:

Step 1 – Creating the Adobe Analytics configuration

Navigate to Tools in the Adobe Experience Manager
Click on Cloud Services and select Adobe Analytics
Select the Create button and fill in the details (shown in Image 2)
Click on Connect

Step 2: Adobe Analytics with IMS authentication

Prerequisite: An IMS configuration is required to integrate Adobe Analytics with AEM as a Cloud Service.

The first stage of the configuration is to create an IMS Configuration in AEM and generate the Public Key.

In AEM, open the Tools menu.
In the Security section, select Adobe IMS Configurations.
Select Create to open the Adobe IMS Technical Account Configuration.
Using the drop-down under Cloud Configuration, select Adobe Analytics.
Activate, Create a new certificate and enter a new alias.
Confirm with Create certificate.

Select Download (or Download Public Key) to download the file to your local drive to be ready for use.

Step 3: Configuring IMS for Adobe Analytics integration with Adobe Experience Manager

Using the Adobe Developer Console you need to create a Project (integration) with Adobe Analytics (for AEM to use), then assign the required privileges.
Creating the Project.
Open the Adobe Developer Console to create a Project with Adobe Analytics that AEM will use:
Any projects that you have will be shown. If you do not have any project yet, Create a new project – the location and usage will depend on the following:

Then select add to project using API

Here you can see five areas select Adobe Analytics.

After that, you need to select a service account JWT, process, and click on next.

In the next tab, upload your public key, which was downloaded from AEM in adobe analytics configurations. Then verify your details and click on next.

Select the required product profile and continue with the save configured API.
Now returns the IMS configuration of open in AEM. Use the Details from the adobe configuration in the Adobe developer console

1. Title: Your text.
2. Authorization Server: Copy/paste this from the AUD line of the Payload section below, for example, https://ims-na1.adobelogin.com in the example below.
3. API Key: Copy this from the Credentials section of the Project Overview
4. Client Secret: Generate this in the Secret Client tab of the Service Account (JWT) section, and copy
5. Payload: Copy this from the Generate JWT tab of the Service Account (JWT) section

Now Confirm and Create .

Your Adobe analytics configuration will be shown in the AEM console.

Confirming the IMS configuration

To confirm your configuration, click on it and select Check Health from the toolbar, followed by check.

If it is successful, you will see a confirmation message.

In AEM, open the tools menu, then go to cloud services. And click on Legacy cloud services.

Select Adobe Analytics and click on show configuration. If you do not have any configuration, create a new one here.

Create an analytics framework to manage our data in the Analytics setting.

Now, then Click on Created Configuration. You will redirect to the Adobe analytics framework, where you can manage and track the user data.

B: By utilizing the Touch UI to create an Analytics setup in Adobe AEM-as-a-Cloud Service

To apply a Touch UI configuration to a site –

Go to Sites
Select any site page and then click on Properties
Select Advanced and click on the configuration
And select the configuration tenant

Implement Adobe AEM integration with Adobe Analytics by certified experts

There are some questions that every brand has when they implement or integrate anything on their website, is it working? Will it boost my earnings? How accurate are my efforts? Adobe AEM and Adobe Analytics integrations have answers to all your questions. Integrating Adobe Analytics and Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) will recognize each user and their behavior while also confirming the effectiveness of the brand’s efforts. This unique integration bridges customer behaviors and business outcomes by projecting the big picture and making every customer journey better than the last one.

Our certified Adobe experts have partnered with leading enterprises to build and migrate their sites to Adobe AEM and integrate it with Adobe Analytics. Connect with us for a free consultation and we’ll help you achieve the same goal.

Know more about Adobe AEM and Adobe Analytics integration.

Manoj Kumar Naga

Software Engineer

Manoj Kumar Naga is a 4x Adobe certified Adobe Experience Manager & Magento 2 Developer. His expertise lies in managing the full lifecycle of full-stack software development with the skills to develop high-impact solutions, design new products, solve challenging problems, and manage cross-functional collaborations.

Want to transform your CX strategy with low-code?

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Today, customer experience (CX) has become a crucial differentiator for businesses across industries. As consumer expectations continue to rise, organizations are under immense pressure to deliver seamless, personalized, and delightful experiences at every touchpoint. The BFSI sector is no exception, with customers demanding exceptional digital experiences that cater to their evolving needs. Embracing innovative technologies and adopting agile approaches have become imperative for companies to stay ahead in this highly competitive landscape. This blog discusses how OutSystems, a leading low-code platform, can help organizations in the BFSI industry craft omnichannel experiences that exceed customer expectations.

Breaking down customer experiences for SMBs and enterprises

Customer experience or CX is a significant interaction between a consumer and a brand across multiple touchpoints, as a user builds their perceptions and behavior around that experience. CX is built over a long period of time through a series of interactions, from introduction till the whole process of the sales cycle. CX amplifies all the departments sales, marketing, customer service encouraging new sale, referral and customer retention. Customer experience is vital for every business operation as it impacts the key metrics and creates impressions of the brand. In fact, 64% of consumers are more likely to recommend a brand if they have a great experience hence according to a survey, 25% of organizations will unify marketing, sales and CX by 2023. A good customer experience has a lot of importance such as:

Improves customer retention
Decrease customer acquisition cost
Increases brand loyalty, awareness and builds reputability
Gives businesses a competitive advantage by connecting with customers in more dynamic ways
Increases accessibility and provides personalized CX everywhere.

Often customers go out of their way to buy from brands they are loyal to hence attracting and retaining customers in a competitive business environment is no easy feat and brands that provide seamless, effective customer exp leads to better profits and achieve customer satisfaction. This means if the customer experience that does not align with customers expectations could impact brands reputation and customers can switch to competitors. A great CX has an impact on how effectively a company is acquiring customers. Furthermore, now businesses are approaching delivering exceptional CX and connecting with customers in a more dynamic way by leveraging technology. Earlier a great CX was a straightforward approach about optimizing touchpoints, mapping out customer journeys and user experience that customers want. But today how we interact with brands and what we need has transformed exponentially and requires constant change. To adapt with these changes rapidly often legacy systems are incapable and hence a low-code platform like OutSystems.

The current state & trends of CX in BFSI industry

Customer experience stands as a significant competitive advantage in the banking and financial industry. Whether it is to call customer service, transferring money in your mobile app, or paying bills, with every transaction customer is expecting a seamless digital experience across all the channels. Banking and financial industries are constantly looking to wow and retain customers. The current state customer experience in BFSI has heavily influenced the industry. Banks and other financial institutes were struggling to meet customer expectations which now have changed overnight as it required digital transformation to handle a higher number of transactions, user inquiries and new financial products. Let’s take a look at the current state and how it has impacted BFSI:

According to PwC’s survey for digital banking customers it is estimated that 61% of banking customers interact on a weekly basis with their institutions’ digital channels. On the other hand 32% of customers actually prefer to avoid going to branches.
Customers are seeking for a hybrid experience wherein they opt to go branch to resolve complex issues and this has made the relationship between banks and customers more vulnerable. Now banks pay close attention to customers’ behavior patterns to provide seamless customer experience across demographics.
Now banks are expected to provide immediate assistance through live chat support and also to adapt to real-time digital payment technologies.
Customers are looking for personalized and self-service portals that are tailored to every unique customer expectations.

Now that we know the current state of CX in banking let’s talk about trends that are shaping BFSI industry and more in 2023:

Prioritizing personalizing digital interactions in the form of alerts, notifications, chatbots for personal interactions.
Building great customer experiences through artificial intelligence(AI), big data, machine learning allows us to detect customer behaviors and personalized services.
Enabling access for people with disabilities for online banking, remote services and offline capabilities.
Customer self-service portals and automated onboarding are two of the emerging trends that are shaping the BFSI industry.

The challenges while crafting CX

Focusing on CX is now more important than ever and creating customer experience can be a challenging and complex process. Dealing with high customer expectations, savvy fintech competitors, and cybercrime on the rise making businesses find themselves in a constant state of evolution. Here we will talk about some of the major challenges that impacts CX:

#1. Development takes too long

One of the significant challenges in crafting an effective CX is the time it takes to develop and implement new technologies and systems. Businesses are continuously looking to adapt and innovate to meet evolving customer expectations. However, lengthy software development cycles can hinder their ability to respond quickly to market demands.

#2. Difficult and expensive to hire talent

Building a team with the necessary skills to design and implement cutting-edge CX solutions can be challenging and expensive. Attracting and retaining top talent can strain businesses financially in this competitive economy.

#3. Integration with legacy systems

Some organizations still rely heavily on legacy systems that do not easily integrate with modern CX solutions. And, bridging the gap between traditional systems and legacy systems can be complex and costly, limiting the agility of businesses to deliver seamless customer experience across channels.

#4. Evolving customer expectations

Customer expectations are in a constant state of flux, influenced by market trends, technological advancements, and competitors’ offerings. Adapting to these shifting requirements while maintaining a consistent and exceptional digital CX can be challenging. Companies must be agile and willing to adjust their strategies to stay relevant.

#5. High quality UI/UX is very hard to achieve

Creating a high-quality UI/UX is essential for a positive CX. However, achieving this level of excellence can be challenging. It involves in-depth research, design, and continuous improvement. Meeting user expectations for intuitive and visually appealing interfaces demands a dedicated effort.

To overcome these challenges and ensure a superior CX, businesses need to adopt strategies that prioritize agility, innovation, and customer-centric thinking. For thriving in this ever changing landscape a great customer experience is not just a priority it’s a necessity and effortless, consistent and self-service CX will delight customers.

Nowadays customers are impatient and want everything to be fast and easy. So a great CX is when you make everything effortless for the customer. A business can do so by reducing friction in customer journeys and improving CX.
Customers look for consistent omnichannel experience across all the devices hence consistency is essential be it in customer journey, communication or the brand messages that you are providing.
Sometimes customers expect to solve their issues themselves hence self-service portals help users to do it instantly and in their own way. Self-service helps customers and leaves a good impact showing a positive ROI.

How OutSystems help crafting omnichannel experiences for BFSI?

Delivering a great customer experience is hard and it demands significant changes, budget, technology, people and processes altogether. OutSystems, a leading high-performance low-code platform, has always been a top priority when thinking about delivering customer experiences. OutSystems provides you with tools, features, and pre-built integrations which is fast, cost-effective and non-disruptive to deliver innovative banking applications. Here are some of the use cases that can be developed through OutSystems ensuring superior CX in banking like simplifying onboarding process, self-service portals, token generation portals etc.

#1. Onboarding in banking:

Currently BFSIs are still following traditional customer onboarding processes i.e. manual and inefficient. A bank needs to capture data from customers, process it, check with third parties and file it. All this is a manual and time consuming process happening on Excel docs, CRMs and external databases leaving customers frustrated, with no idea where they are in the process.

How does OutSystems help in the onboarding process for banks?

OutSystems allows you to build an application layer that sits on the top of your existing systems binding them together to make the information flow seamlessly and securely between departments.
OutSystems enables you to plan workflow efficiently using an intuitive drag and drop interface.
SMS or email based alerts are automatically updated which reduces churn and accelerating onboarding while keeping customers in loop.

#2. Token generation portals

Token generation in banks provides a great customer experience with ease of managing your passwords, reducing unnecessary frictions. Customers who are tech savvy generally look for easier banking processes using their mobile devices, and prefer contactless services. Banks generate two kinds of tokens i.e. hard token like smart cards, and soft token such as standalone authentication application from an app store or integrated with a mobile banking application. The tokens can be used for two-factor authentication like OTP(One time password). Traditionally banks were having tabs or systems for customers in the branch itself which was hard to maintain due to heavy costs, wear and tear. Hence banks switched to mobile apps, and self-service portals which made banking procedures easier, contactless and with the convenience of transacting from anywhere. In the present day banks are now replacing these systems with websites or apps and then generate a token to guide the customers for specific requests.

How does OutSystems help in token generation portals?

OutSystems provides you with CI/CD approach to modernize legacy systems and keep your existing systems updated through integration of new functionalities.
OutSystems modernizes your legacy systems and helps BFSIs to move from monolithic systems to modernize systems in just a few weeks.
OutSystems also reuse pre-built components, and virtual development assets such as data models, business processes, logic, APIs and UI components.

Why Ranosys for customer experience transformation?

Delivering exceptional customer experiences is no longer an option but a necessity for survival and growth. By leveraging OutSystems’ low-code platform and partnering with Ranosys, organizations can accelerate their CX transformation journey, streamline processes, and create seamless, personalized experiences that resonate with modern customers. As a trusted OutSystems partner, Ranosys’ industry expertise, combined with OutSystems’ powerful capabilities, empowers BFSI businesses to stay ahead of the curve, adapt to changing customer demands, and drive long-term success through continuous innovation and exceptional customer experiences.

Deliver exceptional digital customer experiences with Ranosys.

Start personalizing with Adobe RT-CDP.

A growing or established retail and consumer goods brand leverages several mediums such as a website, app, social store, and offline channels to serve its customers. With the rampant competition in the industry, marketing leaders are obliged to enhance the customer experience of the brands they serve and accomplish their associated KPIs.

As an integrated eCommerce system is leveraged, data is scattered across different sources and departments. With a significant budget spent on marketing, there is a desire to prevent overexposure and avoid annoying customers with options they wouldn’t be interested in.

Currently, marketing leaders face the following challenges:

Data dispersed across multiple sources, making it even tedious for marketing team to collect all that data from different departments
Time-sensitive campaigns not yielding enough ROI as there is no single view of customer
Even if the team strategizes to collect and unify all this data, it will take them significant amount of time and by the time this task is accomplished, it will become redundant for the marketing teams and no longer fit for use
Without a holistic view of customers across all touchpoints, personalization of experiences cannot be achieved

The only way to solve these challenges and stay competitive is by creating a single view of customers and managing this data at scale. And this is exactly where Adobe Real-time CDP (Customer Data Platform) can help.

With Adobe RT-CDP, marketing leaders can:

Collect data across different platforms and make it available for marketing activities, all in real-time
Create a 360-degree view of customers, regardless of where data originates
Run targeted marketing campaigns and deliver hyper-personalized experiences across touchpoints.

Let’s discuss this in more detail below.

Adobe Real-time CDP: An overview

Built on Adobe Experience Cloud, Real-time Customer Data Platform (RT-CDP) collects data from known and anonymous sources to create customer profiles that can be employed by marketers to learn about their customers’ behavior, preferences, interests, likes/dislikes, etc. and deliver hyper-personalized experiences across all touchpoints.

It includes tools for data governance, identity management, advanced segmentation, and data science, all of which assist in building customer profiles, define audiences, and gain actionable insights while complying with all data privacy policies.

Natively integrated with other Adobe Experience Cloud products, enterprises can build customer profiles and activate them across Adobe Experience Manager, Adobe Analytics, Adobe Target, and more; delivering engaging experiences across channels, be it an offline store, email, paid media, in-app personalization, connected devices, customer support, etc.

The following is how Adobe RT-CDP helps:

Collecting data: Consider all the different sources of customer information—such as websites, mobile apps, emails, social media, and in-store visits. Adobe Real-Time CDP gathers all this information onto a centralized platform.

Organizing data: Once the data is collected, Adobe RT-CDP organizes it, merging activities that correspond to a single customer, throwing away duplicates.
Creating customer profiles: Adobe RT-CDP creates a unified profile of each customer after collecting and merging all known and unknown data from across sources. Regardless of where and in which system the data about a customer is stored, RT-CDP brings it all together under a centralized dashboard.
Real-time updates: As and when new data about a customer becomes available, RT-CDP keeps updating the customer’s profile. From every click, item wishlisted, added to cart, products browsed, and the channel used, RT-CDP merges all this new data in real-time. This means marketers leverage all the current information about a customer resulting in personalized experiences.

Activating the data across platforms: All the data can be easily activated across Adobe Experience Cloud products to deliver personalization across the entire customer journey. For example, sending personalized emails of products they wishlisted, recommending products they might like based on their recent purchase, or creating targeted ads that are more likely to interest them.

Adobe Real-time CDP available editions

Currently, Adobe has made three editions available, all in Prime and Ultimate packages.

#1: Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform – Business-to-Consumer (B2C) edition

This edition is purpose-built for B2C marketers to unify, activate, and govern all B2C customer data across sources, systems, and channels, while delivering personalized customer experiences.

#2: Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform – Business-to-Business (B2B) edition

This edition is purpose-built for B2B marketers to unify, activate, and govern all lead and account data across channels and systems, while delivering more targeted and contextual experiences. Adobe RT-CDP creates cohesive customer profiles of all leads and accounts; enrich, segment, and export this cross-source data; leverage data governance tools available at every step of the centralizing process to ensure strict compliance.

#3: Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform – Business-to-Person (B2P) edition

This edition empowers marketers to unify, activate, and govern B2C and B2B customer data via a single CDP, targeting the same person across both B2C and B2B business lines, delivering a seamless experience at all times. Ideal for businesses that operate for B2C and B2B business lines and wish to deliver personalized experiences to the same customer across.

To know more about Adobe RT-CDP editions, contact our experts here.

How does Adobe RT-CDP work?

Let’s understand this with an example.

Suppose, a visitor visits an eCommerce store for the first time. As they navigate through the store, they perform actions, this data is captured in real-time and sent to the report suite in Adobe Analytics and also to the Adobe Experience Platform. As more data is collected, it results in a single view of the customer.

It is highly possible that they are repeat customers browsing from a new device. It is imperative that the messaging, offerings, and recommendations are personalized for them. This should also happen in real-time for new visitors as more and more data is collected about them.

Now suppose, they added products to their cart and mid-session, they log in. A visitor, which up until now was being identified as new or anonymous, is now known to RT-CDP, which in turn, merges two identities – the anonymous browsing data and the existing data with the associated account.

As the customers’ journey continues, a clearer picture emerges, with all the data being sent to Adobe Analytics and Adobe Experience Platform. With this holistic customer view, RT-CDP empowers marketers to use this data to personalize their messaging across the web, in-app, social store, email, connected devices, etc.

Marketers can go a step ahead in welcoming the customer with personalized messaging on the homepage, curating a product catalog that suits their interests, all of which is dynamically delivered. All this content is personalized, thanks to Adobe Sensei in-built in Adobe Target that takes into account the customer’s previous purchases.

This level of hyper-personalization makes decision making easy for the customer, closing sales more often and of high-volume, boosting conversion rates, and brand loyalty.

This is a high-level idea of what merchants can achieve with Adobe Real-time CDP.

Adobe Real-time CDP benefits for the retail industry

Although Adobe RT-CDP holds immense potential for all industrial verticals, here we would talk about its benefits for the retail and consumer goods industry. eCommerce brands can leverage Adobe Real-time CDP to deliver personalized product recommendations, abandoned cart reminders, and targeted offers. It becomes even more powerful when used with an Adobe Commerce store.

#1: Run targeted marketing campaigns

Adobe RT-CDP empowers merchants to deep dive into each customer’s preferences, shopping behavior, past purchases; every click or interaction they have had with the website. Once marketers have all these insights handy, marketers can create personalized marketing campaigns, tailoring product recommendations and offers across channels that will result in closed sales.

#2: Deliver consistent omnichannel experience

Once the data is unified, it can be activated across multiple touchpoints both online and offline. This results in a seamless and consistent experience across all channels, whether a customer shops in-store, online, via app, on a social store, via an email, or places an order via customer support.

#3: Real-time updates

As Adobe RT-CDP updates customer profiles in real-time, it empowers marketers to quickly respond to changes in customer behavior and market trends. For example, if a customer abandons their cart, a personalized follow-up email can be immediately triggered with a discount offer on all their favorite products, encouraging purchase.

#4: Enhanced decision-making

As marketing leaders get access to up-to-date and accurate customer insights, it results in informed decision-making about marketing campaigns, inventory, promotional offers, and customer service strategies. Overall, marketers can segment their audiences based on their unique attributes and run targeted campaigns.

#5: Gain a unified customer view

By bringing together data across multiple sources to form a single customer view, Adobe RT-CDP breaks down data silos that exist across departments (marketing, sales & customer service) so that all teams access the same information. This leads to better coordination and efficiency, especially between cross-department teams.

#6: Automate processes across the customer journey

Several processes throughout the customer journey such as audience segmentation, triggering personalized messages, etc. can be easily automated. Adobe RT-CDP assists with workflow automation, saving a lot of time and resources while delivering customer engagement timel.

#7: Tailored rewards and loyalty programs

Using the detailed customer profiles, merchants can design and implement loyalty programs or rewards based on each customer’s past buying habits and tailored to their individual preferences and shopping behavior. Such loyalty programs improve customer retention, reducing churn and enhancing long-term value.

#8: Personalized support and proactive assistance

Customer service representatives can access detailed customer profiles to offer personalized assistance, making interactions more efficient and satisfactory for shoppers. With real-time insights into customer behavior and preferences, customer service teams can provide proactive support, addressing issues before they escalate, and ensuring a positive customer experience.

#9: Improved customer engagement

By understanding customers’ browsing and purchasing habits, marketers can target them with specific messages or offers that are more likely to resonate. Retailers can engage customers with relevant and timely communications, whether it’s through personalized emails, SMS, or push notifications. This relevance helps to build stronger customer relationships and increase loyalty.

How to implement Adobe Real-time CDP?

Implementing Adobe RT-CDP requires a few simple steps. This is a brief walkthrough of how to implement the tool, the technical steps are way more diverse and require certified experts’ assistance. Consult with our Adobe RT-CDP experts to implement the solution for your business.

#1: Define business objectives

Purpose: Clarify what is to be achieved with Adobe RT-CDP.

Identify key goals: Determine the specific outcomes aiming for, such as increasing customer engagement, improving marketing ROI, enhancing customer satisfaction, or driving sales growth.
Use cases: Define the primary use cases that will help in achieving these objectives. For example, RT-CDP can be implemented for personalized marketing campaigns, improving customer support, or optimizing inventory management.
Measurable targets: Establish clear, measurable targets for each objective. This could be increasing the average order value, reducing cart abandonment rates, or improving email open rates.

#2: Identify data sources

Purpose: Select the data sources that will feed information into the RT-CDP.

Internal sources: Identify all internal data sources like website, mobile app, CRM system, email marketing platform, and point-of-sale systems.
External sources: Consider any third-party data sources that can enrich customer profiles, such as social media platforms, customer surveys, and demographic databases.
Data availability: Ensure the access to necessary data from these sources and that the data is accurate and up-to-date.

#3: Define data model

Purpose: Create a structure for organizing the collected data.

Customer attributes: Determine the key attributes that need to be captured for each customer. This might include personal details (name, email), preferences, and behavioral data (purchase history, browsing activity).
Events: Define the significant events that need to be tracked, such as website visits, purchases, cart abandonments, and email interactions.
Interactions: Outline the types of interactions that will be recorded, such as customer service inquiries, social media engagements, and loyalty program activities.
Unified view: Develop a unified customer profile that combines all these elements, providing a comprehensive view of each customer.

#4: Configure data ingestion

Purpose: Set up processes to collect data from chosen sources into the RT-CDP.

APIs: Use Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to connect directly to data sources and stream data into the RT-CDP in real-time.
Batch processing: Schedule regular batch uploads for data sources that do not support real-time streaming. This involves collecting data periodically and sending it in bulk to the RT-CDP.
Real-time streaming: Implement real-time streaming to ensure that data is continuously updated as events occur, providing the most current information possible.

#5: Configure data unification

Purpose: Link data from different sources to create a single, comprehensive customer profile.

Identity resolution: Use algorithms to match and merge records from different data sources that belong to the same customer. This might involve matching email addresses, phone numbers, or other unique identifiers.
Profile stitching: Combine fragmented data into a single profile. For instance, link online browsing behavior with offline purchase history to get a complete picture of customer activity.
Data cleansing: Ensure that the data is clean, deduplicated, and standardized to maintain accuracy and reliability in the unified profiles.

#6: Configure data activation

Purpose: Use the unified customer data to drive actions across various channels.

Personalized campaigns: Set up systems to use customer data for creating highly personalized marketing campaigns. This might include targeted emails, personalized website content, and tailored advertisements.
Cross-channel engagement: Ensure that customer data is available across all engagement platforms. This allows for consistent and personalized interactions whether the customer is on the website, mobile app, in-store, or interacting with customer support.
Analytics and reporting: Leverage the unified customer data to gain insights through analytics and reporting, helping to refine strategies and improve customer interactions continuously.

Adobe Real-time CDP use cases for the retail industry

The following are some use cases of Adobe Real-time Customer Data platform for the retail and eCommerce industry.

#1: Personalized product recommendations

As Adobe RT-CDP keeps learning about the shopper, they send this data to the Adobe Experience Platform, where Adobe Sensei-powered personalization and triggered workflows personalize content and recommendations based on their past purchases, browning history, most recently viewed items, and preferences. Such hyper-personalization helps shoppers find their preferred items quickly, increases conversions, and delivers a more delightful experience.

#2: Abandoned cart reminders

Suppose a shopper gets distracted and even after adding products to the cart, they leave the site. Adobe RT-CDP can use all the aggregated data in the Adobe Experience Platform to send an email reminder with special offers on the products they added to the cart or send a message with a discount coupon to encourage sale. Such personalized abandoned cart reminders will help bring the shopper back to the site and close the purchase.

#3: Tailor loyalty offers

Merchants can also employ Adobe Real-time CDP to structure loyalty offers tailored to customers who purchase frequently from the brand. They can leverage RT-CDP to learn their interests and most liked products, make aware of special discounts and offers based on their tier of loyalty, and offer them exciting deals for when they visit in-store.

#4: Run marketing campaigns in real-time

As RT-CDP updates customer profiles in real-time, marketers can leverage these details to personalize their marketing campaigns, deliver targeted content and offers based on their preferences and past buying behavior. Marketers can also run targeted ads for customers who have shown interest in some products but haven’t purchased it yet. Overall, it improves the ROI of marketing efforts and also results in dynamic customer experiences across touchpoints and channels.

#5: Inventory management optimization

Adobe RT-CDP can also help in optimizing inventories to predict demand and adjust inventory levels. By analyzing purchase patterns and customer behavior for specific products, RT-CDP assists with demand forecasting. Suppose a customer interacts frequently with a product, however, it is currently out of stock. Once the product returns in stock, personalized stock alerts can be sent via phone, email, or customer support as soon as the customer visits the website.

#6: Enhanced customer support

Adobe RT-CDP equips customer service reps with detailed customer profiles so that they can offer personalized assistance and resolve issues faster. As soon as a shopper connects with a service rep, they can view their entire profile – past behavior, any ongoing issue, past interactions, etc. to identify and effectively address potential issues before they escalate. Such proactive support improves customer satisfaction and retention.

Bring real-life experiences to life with Adobe RT-CDP

For marketing leaders, the only goal is to deliver the right experiences to the right customer at the right time and across the right channel. Adobe RT-CDP along with its marketer-friendly interface enhances engagement and profitability, provides a holistic view of every customer, and hyper-personalized experiences. By integrating data across sources, creating singular profiles, capturing behaviors, and governing privacy, Adobe Real-time CDP delivers one-on-one personalized experiences across all destinations.

Since the launch of Adobe RT-CDP, Ranosys have been assisting several global retail and consumer goods brands in implementing it and training their teams on how to personalize customer experiences to the core. Consult with Ranosys to underscore the direct benefits of Adobe RT-CDP for your business today.

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Transform your retail strategy with our Adobe RT-CDP experts.

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Undeniably, data in today’s enterprise ecosystem is everything. From decoding customer preferences, understanding user behavior or making crucial business decisions, data controls it all. It is why enterprises invest in leading analytics tools to ensure continuous excellence and innovation.

When it comes to data analytics, Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics are both popular tools, well-known for their respective capabilities. Depending on the level of analysis you wish to perform, you might employ either of these tools or any other data analytics system.

Here, we compare Google Analytics vs Adobe Analytics, how to migrate from Google Analytics to Adobe Analytics, and the mid-size and enterprise-level use cases that Adobe Analytics solves.

Google Analytics vs Adobe Analytics: An overview

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is one of the most popular analytics tools leveraged by enterprises to gain insights about their conversions, traffic, and visitors. Its latest version, Google Analytics 4 (replacing its predecessor Universal Analytics, know more here) takes a more detailed approach to allow for:

Event-based tracking: Focussing more on user interactions and events tracking rather than page-views, event-based analytics allows to gain insights into clicks, views, downloads, form submissions, and more along with page views. This results in more granular understanding of user behavior and engagement.
Cross-platform tracking: GA4 allows data gathering across all your websites and/or apps in a single property. This results in a more holistic view of how users interact across different platforms, regardless of their device.
Enhanced privacy: GA4 complies with GDPR and CCPA regulations to focus more on user privacy and data protection. This covers built-in features for user consent, data retention/deletion, and aggregated/anonymized data reporting.
Lifecycle reporting: GA4 covers all four key stages of acquisition, engagement, monetization, and retention. This allows enterprises to track and analyze users across their entire journey, resulting in optimized marketing campaigns and overall improvement in user experience.
ML and AI integration: GA4 offers a more predictive and actionable approach to data analytics. ML and AI features help identify trends, predict user behavior, automate audience segmentation, and more.
Enhanced analytics tools: GA4 offers new analytics tools and reports like the Exploration tool for ad-hoc analysis, the Funnel Analysis tool for visualizing conversion funnels, and the Path Analysis tool for understanding user navigation paths on your site or app.

And more.

Adobe Analytics, an offering from Adobe, is a more advanced analytics tool that empowers marketers to track visitors across devices while also allowing for detailed segmentation and real-time analytics. Its powerful capabilities of Analysis Workspaces, Report Builder, Ad Hoc Analysis, reports & analytics have made it an enterprise choice across industrial verticals. Some of its state-of-the-art features include:

Data collection and tracking: Adobe Analytics allows you to aggregate data across touchpoints – website, apps, IoT devices, and offline sources; use tags and SDKs to track user interactions and events like pageviews, clicks, conversions, views, and custom actions.
Real-time reporting: With Adobe Analytics, you get to monitor user activity in real-time, resulting in optimized marketing campaigns, identifying issues and addressing them.
Advanced segmentation: You can segment your audiences based on several criteria – demographics, behaviors, location, etc. This results in more targeted campaigns based on the analyzed behavior patterns.
Customizable dashboards and reports: Visualize and analyze user data as you want with customizable dashboards and reports. Adobe Analytics also makes it easy to create custom reports and dashboards to help visualize and track KPIs as required to monitor campaign effectiveness.
Path analysis and conversion funnels: These tools result in a complete view of the user journey from acquisition to conversion. Path analysis helps identify common user paths and navigation patterns. Conversion funnels help identify drop-off in the conversion process, empowering enterprises to solve the friction for enhanced conversions.
Predictive analytics: Adobe Analytics leverages AI and ML algorithms to forecast future trends and behaviors based on historical data. This helps enterprises pinpoint customer needs, identify opportunities for growth, and optimize campaigns accordingly.
Integration with other Adobe solutions: Adobe Analytics seamlessly integrates with other AEC solutions like Adobe Experience Manager, Adobe Target, Adobe Campaign, Adobe Audience Manager. For enterprises leveraging any of the Adobe solutions, it results in cohesive digital experiences across channels.
Data privacy and security: Complying with GDPR and CCPA, Adobe Analytics promises data privacy and security.

Google Analytics vs Adobe Analytics: Key differences

Here’s a breakdown of Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics based on some key attributes

Attributes	Adobe Analytics	Google Analytics 4
Cost	Paid subscription	Free subscription
Data capture	Up to 1000 custom dimensions and events	Up to 25 custom dimension and events
Data retention	Up to 25 months and extendable	2 months extendable to 14 months
Cross-platform tracking	Available with integrations	Native cross-platform tracking available
Predictive analytics	Yes with advanced machine learning predictions and forecasts	Basic predictive capabilities available
Reporting & data visualization	Comprehensive and highly customizable reports and dashboards features available	Moderate customizable reports and dashboards
Ease of use	Technical expertise required	Basic, can be easily setup , hence a more user-friendly interface
eCommerce tracking	Advanced features available	Basic tracking can be done not advanced
Integrations	Seamlessly integrate with Adobe Experience Cloud suite	Can be easily integrated with other Google products like Adwords, BigQuery
Cohort analysis	Advanced audience segmentation and analysis available	Basic segmentation available
Data Studio integration	Seamlessly integrated	Additional set up required
Anomaly detection	AI-powered alerts available	Basic detection available
Customer journey analysis	Adobe Journey Optimizer available for detailed analysis along with path analysis and conversion funnels	Path analysis and conversion funnels
Data privacy	Compliance with privacy regulations	More emphasis on cookie-based tracking
API access	Yes	Yes

Migrating from Google Analytics to Adobe Analytics: Key considerations

Migrating from Google Analytics to Adobe Analytics is not as easy as it seems, considering that both platforms use varied terminologies and marketers are then challenged to find an equivalent functionality between the two. A quick terminology comparison between the two is below:

Activity description	Adobe Analytics	Google Analytics
An event metric that represents a page (or screen on an app) has been viewed	Page View	Views
A metric that represents a group of interactions on your website or app that take place in the same time frame	Visit	Session
A metric that defines an identified device (based on multiple criteria including cookies and other behavior patterns to stitch user information)	Unique visitor	User

The following are some points that must be considered when migrating from Google Analytics to Adobe Analytics.

Reviewing tracking codes, analytics variables, tag management, and opportunities for cleanup, including marketing pixels, and documenting as necessary.
Planning for accessing historical data and migrating dashboards, segments, and reporting configurations, while also considering data governance measures for analytics maturity and privacy compliance (e.g., GDPR).
Understanding marketing attribution models and devising a clean migration strategy for campaigns.
Reassessing organizational initiatives, KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), and reporting needs to align with the capabilities of Adobe Analytics.
Considering additional marketing and optimization tools that integrate effectively with Adobe Analytics during the migration process.
Implementing best practices for data layer setup and tagging optimization to maximize the effectiveness of analytics tracking.
Architecting solutions and preparing a comprehensive migration plan with contingency plans (backout plans) as necessary.
Developing quality assurance test plans and validation procedures to ensure the accuracy and reliability of data post-migration.
Providing training sessions for analysts, report builders, and end-users of the analytics dashboards to familiarize them with the new platform.
Periodically reassessing the analytics implementation for potential improvements and adjustments based on evolving objectives and changes in the digital landscape.
Involving stakeholders from different departments and ensuring clear communication throughout the migration process to mitigate any potential challenges or disruptions.

Google Analytics to Adobe Analytics migration strategy

Refer to the following migration strategy when transitioning from Google Analytics to Adobe Analytics.

#1: Document requirements and catalog current implementation

Review the current documentations for tag implementation and conduct a thorough audit of the website. Document all tagging functionalities, KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), reporting structures, tools, and external integrations. Ensure comprehensive documentation to facilitate a smooth transition.

#2: Historical data and data governance measures

Evaluate the usage of historical data and develop a plan for migrating dashboards, segments, and reporting configurations. Consider data governance measures to ensure compliance with analytics maturity standards, as well as privacy regulations such as GDPR. Implement strategies for securely handling sensitive data during the migration process.

#3: Re-assess organization’s initiatives, KPIs, and reporting needs

Beyond reviewing current functionalities, take the opportunity to reassess the organization’s initiatives, KPIs, and reporting requirements. Align these with the capabilities of Adobe Analytics to optimize performance and insights generation.

#4: Marketing campaign tracking & attribution models

Gain a deep understanding of marketing attribution models and devise a clean migration strategy for campaigns. Analyze the similarities and differences between attribution models in Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics, ensuring a seamless transition without compromising on data accuracy or campaign performance tracking.

#5: Integrated tools

Recognize that each analytics platform integrates with specific tool sets more effectively. Evaluate additional marketing and optimization tools that can enhance the capabilities of Adobe Analytics and consider migrating them during the switch. Ensure compatibility and seamless integration to maintain continuity in data analysis and reporting workflows.

#6: Technical implementation and tag migration

Develop a detailed technical implementation plan for migrating tags, ensuring accuracy and consistency throughout the process. Employ best practices for tag management and optimization to maximize the effectiveness of analytics tracking in Adobe Analytics. Conduct thorough testing and validation to verify the functionality of migrated tags and ensure data integrity post-migration.

#7: User training and adoption

Provide comprehensive training sessions for analysts, report builders, and other stakeholders involved in using Adobe Analytics. Familiarize them with the new platform’s features, functionalities, and reporting capabilities to facilitate smooth adoption and maximize utilization of its potential.

#8: Continuous monitoring and optimization

Establish protocols for continuous monitoring and optimization of Adobe Analytics implementation post-migration. Regularly review analytics performance, identify areas for improvement, and implement necessary adjustments to align with evolving business objectives and changing market dynamics. Stay updated on platform updates, best practices, and emerging trends to leverage Adobe Analytics effectively for informed decision-making and strategic planning.

10 steps to seamless Google Analytics to Adobe Analytics migration

Refer to the following steps to ensure a seamless data migration from Google Analytics to Adobe Analytics.

#1: Adobe Analytics design documentation

Create Solution Design Reference (SDR) document outlining analytics architecture.
Develop a KPI Handbook detailing key performance indicators for measurement.
Map Google Analytics variables to Adobe Analytics for seamless transition.
Define marketing channel models and related documentation for tracking.

#2: Tagging guide

Develop a comprehensive tagging guide for website development teams.
Include instructions for implementing tag management code snippets.
Outline data layer and events architecture for efficient data tracking.

#3: Reporting and insights design

Define KPIs and reporting hierarchy for analytics insights.
Set up reporting configurations for users and admin access.
Plan for historical data usage to maintain continuity in reporting.

#4: Marketing tags, product management, and design

Design and document marketing tags and integrations for tracking.
Outline usage of other products and their integration with Adobe Analytics.

#5: Backout plan

Architect measures for backing out in case of unexpected incidents.
Maintain active Google Analytics free version as a backup system.

#6: Develop

Guide website development team in implementing functionalities as per tagging guide.
Implement analytics tags using tag management systems and conduct unit testing.
Prepare analytics quality assurance test plans for thorough testing.

#7: Quality assurance

Conduct functional testing of tags to ensure accuracy.
Set up data dashboards for QA and go-live readiness.
Perform functional testing of websites to validate analytics implementation.

#8: Go live

Publish tags and website changes to production environment.
Conduct post-production tags and functionality testing to ensure smooth transition.

#9: Training and knowledge transfer

Provide training to analysts, report builders, and dashboard end-users.
Assist in building dashboards and analyzing data to derive insights.

#10: Usage and sustainability

Periodically reassess analytics implementation for improvements and alignment with objectives.
Adapt analytics strategies based on changes in objectives or business landscape.

Migrate from Google Analytics to Adobe Analytics with Ranosys

We understand how challenging it can be to migrate data from one platform to the another that too when their terminologies don’t match. As an award-winning Adobe Solution Partner with strategic expertise in Adobe Analytics, our certified experts simplify this entire process. We ensure seamless and worry-free data migration with zero data loss while gathering all the insights about your users in real-time. We even prepare custom dashboards and reports, customize the interface, and train your teams on Adobe Analytics.

Make the switch to Adobe Analytics.

A few days ago, the Salesforce World Tour Essentials Singapore 2024 concluded, the leading conference to discover how to succeed in our new era of artificial intelligence with the #1 AI CRM. The World Tour Essentials Singapore 2024 unlocked AI potential with the transformative capabilities of the latest Data Cloud and Einstein innovations. 1000+ attendees from around the world witnessed how integrating AI with CRM is not just enhancing business processes but is also essential for driving growth and maintaining a competitive edge.

The event was an action-packed day filled with valuable insights into the latest Salesforce innovations that are reshaping customer success, driving business growth, and enhancing service excellence with the combined power of CRM + AI + Data + Trust.

As a Gold Sponsor of the Salesforce World Tour Singapore 2024, Ranosys got the opportunity to explore the future of AI and how Salesforce plans on leveraging it to improve customer experiences and relationships. Ranosys also discussed the brimming potential of Salesforce Einstein, Data Cloud, MuleSoft, Slack, and more can elevate team performance.

As a Salesforce Crest (Gold) Partner, it is Ranosys’ responsibility to learn new ways to deepen customer relationships, increase productivity, and grow the bottom line with CRM + AI + Data + Trust on one integrated platform, Einstein AI, and share the insights.

In this blog we will discuss some key takeaways and announcements from the event.

Salesforce World Tour Essentials Singapore 2024 highlights & key announcements

#1. Empowering experiences with MuleSoft 

At the 2024 Salesforce World Tour Essentials Singapore, Salesforce unveiled how MuleSoft is enabling enterprises to create valuable experiences for both customers and employees alike through GenAI and hyper-automation. Experts demonstrated how MuleSoft’s integration platform, combined with Salesforce’s AI capabilities, can seamlessly connect data, applications, and devices, enabling organizations to automate processes, enhance efficiency, and deliver personalized experiences at scale.

#2. Enhancing Data Management with Data Cloud 

During the event, Salesforce highlighted the pivotal role of Data Cloud in enhancing existing data systems like data warehouses and data lakes. Experts explained how Data Cloud offers a differentiated approach to solving the “last mile” of data activation, empowering businesses to unlock valuable insights and drive data-driven decision-making.

#3. Salesforce for Financial Services 

At the World Tour Essentials, Salesforce showcased how leading financial institutions are leveraging its trusted AI CRM to unlock valuable financial insights. Siam Commercial Bank demonstrated how Salesforce’s industry-specific solutions enable financial organizations to deliver better outcomes for their clients, members, and policyholders responsibly while adhering to stringent regulatory requirements.

#4. Personalized experiences with Marketing Cloud and AI 

Salesforce highlighted how enterprises are harnessing the power of Marketing Cloud and AI to deliver digital-first personalized experiences across the customer lifecycle. At the event, they discussed how AI is reshaping multiple facets of customer engagement. In sales, AI is providing smarter insights for lead scoring and customer engagement, enabling sales teams to prioritize their efforts and drive more effective outreach.

Furthermore, AI is transforming service by predicting customer needs and automating responses, allowing service teams to proactively address issues and provide seamless support. For marketing teams, AI is empowering them to personalize interactions and craft powerful campaigns at scale, delivering tailored messaging and offers that resonate with individual customers.

#5. Boosting productivity with Sales Cloud 

At the World Tour Essentials, Salesforce provided valuable insights into how sales organizations can enhance productivity, leverage data effectively, and increase revenue through trusted AI integrated into Sales Cloud. Experts demonstrated how AI-powered features, such as Einstein Lead Scoring and Einstein Opportunity Insights, can streamline sales processes, prioritize leads, and drive better decision-making.

#6. Redefining customer service with Service Cloud 

They also showcased how leading enterprises are reimagining customer service and engagement by activating AI within the Service Cloud. Experts emphasized how leveraging the #1 AI platform enables organizations to scale their service capabilities, enhance team productivity, and optimize costs while delivering exceptional customer experiences through intelligent chatbots, predictive case routing, and AI-driven insights.

#7. Unlocking Profitability with Commerce Cloud 

Salesforce highlighted how Commerce Cloud is playing a pivotal role in boosting omnichannel sales, delivering personalized customer experiences, and optimizing operational efficiency through digital transformation. At the event speakers demonstrated how Salesforce’s AI-powered commerce solutions enable businesses to create seamless shopping experiences, leverage predictive merchandising, and drive customer loyalty, ultimately unlocking profitability and growth.

With these announcements and takeaways at the Salesforce World Tour Essentials Singapore 2024, Salesforce showcased its commitment to empowering businesses with innovative solutions that leverage AI, automation, and data-driven insights to create exceptional customer experiences and drive growth across various industries.

Conclusion

As the digital landscape continues to evolve it’s essential to stay up-to-date with the latest tools and technologies at your fingertips. At the 2024 Salesforce World Tour Singapore, we discovered how integrating AI with CRM is not just enhancing business processes but is also essential for driving growth and maintaining a competitive edge. As a proud Gold sponsor of Salesforce World Tour Essentials Singapore 2024, Ranosys got the opportunity to see and experience firsthand how you can transform your customer experiences with trusted AI. Our team of Salesforce experts can help you leverage these insights to transform your customer experiences.

Amplify your Salesforce ROI with Ranosys.

At Ranosys, our dedication to corporate social responsibility (CSR) is at the core of who we are. It shapes our actions, guides our decisions, and connects us to the communities we serve. Recently, our Bikaner Development Center (DC) team had the honor of visiting the nearby Government Blind School as part of our ongoing CSR initiatives. This visit was not just an activity but a profound experience that left an indelible mark on our hearts.

#1. A Day of Inspiration

The visit was a truly uplifting and humbling experience. Walking into the school, we were greeted with smiles and an atmosphere brimming with resilience and determination. Each interaction revealed stories of perseverance and strength that inspired us beyond words. These remarkable individuals demonstrated a level of determination that reminded us of the power of the human spirit. Witnessing their daily challenges and triumphs was a profound experience that filled us with a renewed sense of purpose.

#2. Gratitude to Our Team

This meaningful visit was made possible by the invaluable efforts of our dedicated team members. Their commitment to making a positive impact on the lives of others is truly commendable. We extend our heartfelt gratitude to everyone involved in this initiative. Your compassion and hard work not only brightened the day for the students but also reflected the core values that define the Ranosys family. Together, we are making a difference, one act of kindness at a time.

#3. Building a Brighter Future

As Ranosys continues to grow, our commitment to actively engaging in initiatives that support and uplift our community remains steadfast. We believe that through small acts of kindness, we can create a ripple effect of positive change. Our visit to the Government Blind School is just one example of how we strive to make a meaningful impact. It reinforces our belief that giving back to the community is not just an obligation but a privilege.

#4. Looking Ahead: Creating Lasting Positive Change

As we continue to grow, we eagerly anticipate more opportunities to contribute to our community’s well-being. Each act of kindness, no matter how small, has the power to create meaningful change.

We are excited about the future and the countless opportunities to contribute to our community’s well-being. Each CSR initiative we undertake brings us closer to our goal of fostering unity and creating lasting positive change. We look forward to many more moments of shared joy, inspiration, and support as we continue on this journey together.

Let’s make the world a brighter place, one initiative at a time.

Need help with your AEM migration strategy?

For enterprises leveraging Adobe Experience Manager, it is always a concern as to if they are making the most out of their investment. Most organizations on AEM On-Premises rely on Adobe Experience Manager managed services to accomplish KPIs around scalability, cost efficiency, flexibility, improved performance, enhanced security, integration with other cloud services, and simplified management.

At Ranosys, we’ve been assisting enterprises in smoothly transitioning to AEM as a Cloud Service from AEM On-Premises or their legacy CMS. In this guide, we discuss:

The difference between AEM On-Premises and AEM Cloud
Why it’s time to transition to AEM Cloud from On-Premises or otherwise
The steps involved to successfully migrate from AEM On-Premises to the Cloud
Key aspects to consider when planning for AEM On-Premises to Cloud migrate
The common challenges and pitfalls to consider beforehand

AEM On-Premises to AEM as a Cloud Service : Key differences

Enterprises looking to migrate from their legacy infrastructure find Adobe Experience Manager On-Premises to be a compelling choice due to multitude of benefits. Full control over the environment, easy fulfillment of compliance requirements, the power to fine-tune every aspect of your AEM setup, and more. However, with time, as organizational demands around scalability, management, and seamless integrations with other cloud services and third-party apps gain momentum, most enterprises go for Adobe managed services as the middle ground.

Adobe managed services solves the prominent and upfront challenges of scalability, security, agility, and reliability. Most importantly, it frees them from the burgeoning task of infrastructure management, which is the primary reason why enterprises look for such services. Overall, an investment in Adobe managed services results in high availability of the AEM environment, improved performance, regular patches and upgrades.

So, why would enterprises still choose to invest in Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud service? Simple reason, to establish more control of the AEM environment. Let’s break down how.

Introduced in 2020, AEM as a Cloud Service is Adobe’s vision of gaining complete control over digital experience management. With Cloud Services, enterprises leverage the power of cloud to scale automatically, implement stringent security protocols, take compliance one step ahead, and deliver engaging experiences across channels.

Attribute	AEM On-Premises	AEM as a Cloud Service
Licensing cost	Depends on infrastructure. Cost includes hardware and AEM instance	Depends on usage, not infrastructure
Scalability	Scalability depends on infrastructure hardware and licensing cost. On-demand auto-scaling not available	Allows on-demand auto-scaling owing to its infrastructure flexibility
Maintenance	High maintenance cost managed by the enterprise	Maintenance cost is managed by Adobe
New features and upgrades	Not easily available, plus they are costly. Features become available only post CFP deployment	Enterprises get their hands on new features and upgrades automatically with new Adobe releases
Security fixes	Takes more time to become available in production, less secure	More secure as fixed are applied regularly and automatically
Publish/unpublish	Changes are possible directly on the publish instance. Employ custom or available replication agents for content publish/unpublish.	Employ Sling content distribution for publishing content. Changes are not possible directly on the publish instance. No option to use or create replication agents for content publish/unpublish.
Deployment	No such restriction on usage of Adobe CDN.	Adobe CDN recommended. License required to employ other CDNs.
CRX/DE Access	Access restricted on higher STAGE and PROD environments	Available on STAGE and PROD environments
Instance Setup Cost	A monolithic architecture, significant cost and efforts spend to set up environment and components	Microservices-based architecture, no cost involved for instance setup
Content type	No restrictions on mutable or immutable content	Strict approach followed for mutable and immutable content
Logs	Requires server-specific access to download logs	All logs (author, dispatcher, and publisher) can be easily downloaded from Cloud manager
Code Deployment	Any custom tool can be used	Only cloud manager used for deployment
OSGI Configuration	Permits creation of environment variables as a part of the OSGI configurations	Allows creation of environment variables as a part of the OSGI configurations

Benefits of moving to AEM as a Cloud Service

As an enterprise, it is imperative to highlight the ROI impact of any significant upgrade/migration. When moving from AEM On-Premises to the Cloud, you can expect to reap the following benefits:

#1: 99.99% website availability

AEM as a Cloud Service ensures that your website is always online and at peak performance. It empowers operational growth both horizontally and vertically to deliver engaging experiences at all times. AEM Cloud smoothly handles even the most intensive traffic loads, ensuring maximum uptime without any tedious indulgence of your team. In fact, you can easily scale up or down based on their requirements without the need to invest in additional hardware or infrastructure.

#2: Better security

Security has always been a pressing concern for enterprises, both big and small. And with AEM Cloud, you can expect stringent security measures to protect your infrastructure and customer data. Adobe itself releases security patches and bug fixes regularly, monitors the infrastructure continuously and provides upfront support whenever a security issue is raised.

#3: Simplified content management

Managing AEM in the cloud is often simpler and more streamlined compared to On-premises deployments. Cloud providers handle tasks such as infrastructure maintenance, backups, and updates, allowing IT teams to focus on more strategic initiatives.

#4: Reduced total cost of ownership

AEM as a Cloud Service drastically reduces TCO and mid-term ROI. Since the cloud-model is usage-driven, enterprises can save on licensing by saving on fixed hardware costs. Instead of spending on Adobe managed services, with AEM as a Cloud Service, enterprises leverage automatic version updates and environment management, which means you will always be leveraging the latest version of the CMS. Plus, you can scale up and down as per your organizational demands.

Another substantial cost parameter deleted is infrastructure and hosting spent. Since you don’t have to maintain your infrastructure or spend a fortune on On-premises hosting, it reduces your mid-term ROI drastically.

Of course, there will be costs incurred when migrating from On-premises to the cloud, but the investment is mostly one-time.

#5: Improved Performance

Cloud platforms often provide better performance and reliability compared to On-premises solutions. Enterprises can leverage the global infrastructure of cloud providers to ensure low-latency access for users across different regions.

Migrating from AEM On-Premises to AEM as a Cloud Service: A step guide

The following steps are strategically designed, after careful planning, to help enterprises migrate successfully from On-premises to the cloud. Our team follows a week-by-week plan to ensure a smooth transition to AEM as a Cloud Service.

#1: Study, analyze, and document the steps

The first step is to dive deep into AEM as a Cloud Service, how the changes would impact your current operational environment, features available/unavailable, and discuss all the possible requirements with your Adobe Experience Manager service provider.

The major discussion points would be:

Separate Mutable and Immutable Filters into corresponding packages: In the cloud environment, it’s crucial to organize filters into separate packages for better manageability and performance.
Custom Run modes are not permitted: Unlike On-premises setups, custom run modes are restricted in the cloud, necessitating adjustments to configuration management.
Sling Content Distribution replaces Replication Agents: The cloud paradigm favors Sling Content Distribution over traditional Replication Agents for more efficient content distribution.
Built-in CDN and option to procure your own: AEM in the cloud offers a built-in CDN option, or you can opt for your own CDN for enhanced content delivery.
Asynchronous Operations: Cloud deployments prioritize asynchronous operations for improved efficiency and resource utilization.
File IO and Disk Usage considerations: Cloud-based AEM requires careful management of file IO and disk usage for optimal performance and cost-effectiveness.
Transition to Cloud Manager Pipeline Execution: Cloud Manager Pipeline Execution becomes the primary method for deployment in AEM cloud environments.
CRX/DE and Package Manager changes: Expect adjustments in CRX/DE and Package Manager functionalities when migrating to the cloud.
Implementation of Long Running Jobs: Long running jobs may require reconfiguration or adaptation to suit the cloud environment.
Adoption of Token-based authentication: Token-based authentication and integration strategies become pivotal in ensuring secure access to AEM resources.
DAM Update Asset Workflow enhancements: Expect changes and enhancements in DAM Update Asset Workflow functionalities in the cloud environment.
Workflow Launchers modifications: Workflow Launchers may need adjustments to align with cloud-specific requirements.
Authentication alterations: Changes to authentication mechanisms are necessary to align with cloud security protocols.
Dispatcher Configurations and Caching adjustments: Dispatcher Configurations and Caching mechanisms may need reconfiguration for optimal performance in the cloud.
Not all maintenance tasks are configurable: Certain maintenance tasks may no longer be configurable in the cloud environment, requiring alternative approaches.
Custom Rendition Steps considerations: Custom Rendition Steps may require updates to function seamlessly in the cloud.
Supported workflow process steps and asset upload methods: Verify supported workflow process steps and asset upload methods to ensure compatibility with AEM as a Cloud Service.
Backup and Restore procedures: Adapt backup and restore procedures to suit the cloud environment’s architecture and capabilities.
Changes to Publish repository: Expect changes to the Publish repository structure and management in the cloud environment.
Content Search and Indexing optimizations: Optimize content search and indexing processes to leverage cloud infrastructure capabilities effectively.
Architecture adjustments with automatic horizontal scaling: Cloud deployments offer automatic horizontal scaling capabilities, necessitating adjustments to architecture design.
Project code structure adaptations: Modify project code structures to align with cloud deployment best practices and guidelines.
Dispatcher configuration enhancements: Enhance Dispatcher configurations to leverage cloud-based caching and delivery mechanisms effectively.
Network, API connections, DNS & SSL configuration: Reconfigure network settings, API connections, DNS, and SSL configurations to ensure seamless operation in the cloud.
Integration with CI/CD pipelines: Integrate AEM deployments with CI/CD pipelines for streamlined development and deployment processes.
AEM author access via Adobe account: Access to AEM author instances may require authentication through Adobe accounts in the cloud environment.
User groups & permissions adjustments: Adjust user groups and permissions configurations to ensure proper access control in the cloud-based AEM setup.

When planning a migration, it is imperative to bring your current stakeholders, partners and Adobe team up-to-date. This should include the efforts required, tasks at hand, timeframes, teams involved, etc. Your Adobe POC will ensure that you have the required licensing agreements and appropriate subscriptions for AEM as a Cloud Service.

#2: Preparing the code and environments for AEM as a Cloud Service

This step is completely technical and involves getting your AEM environment ready for the Cloud.

Adobe provides a related tool called Adobe Best Practices Analyzer that reviews your current AEM setup to suggest upgrades and best practices. Certified AEM experts can access the report to provide insights into the health of your current AEM environment and suggest changes for the Cloud.

AEM teams will also clean up code and other outdated features to ensure seamless migration to the cloud and improve performance. Next step would be to set up the AEM Cloud Manager, the very backbone of AEM as a Cloud Service.

Of course, your AEM migration service provider will also test everything thoroughly post migration but the key is to ensure that you have a robust setup for AEM as a Cloud Service.

#3: Migrating code and projects to the AEM Cloud

By now, your code has been cleaned and adjusted to work on your current AEM instance and in the Cloud. Ensure that all your environments (staging, production, etc) have been configured for the Cloud and are ready to use. Now, all you need to do is push your code to the Cloud GIT repository. It is suggested to not make any big changes to your code during this time.

#4: Checking for integration with external systems and core services

Your website might be integrated with external systems via APIs for performance optimization. Therefore, it is imperative that your AEM Cloud environment is also seamlessly integrated with these services. All of the required configurations are to be conducted in AEM Cloud Manager.

Also, AEM as a Cloud Service gives you a static IP that needs to be allowed on your end. This lets your website connect with our programs that are on-site.

#5: Integration with other Adobe Experience Cloud applications

While this is not a mandatory step, you can also leverage other AEC apps like Adobe Analytics and Adobe Target for your website. As the integration is pretty easy, you can derive insights via web analytics and personalize every experience with these tools.

#6: Content Migration

All your webpage content, assets, and data is categorized under content. To ensure seamless content migration, you can leverage Adobe’s Content Transfer Tool to move your content from On-premises to the cloud. As you change content in your production environment, this tool ensures it is reflected on the cloud as well.

#7: Test the migration

This is where you test your entire AEM environment via UAT session. This is where the QA teams and business users come into play. Onboarding your marketing and content team (authors) is also a plus in this step as they are the actual individuals who will work most on it and determine how a component should function.

Once you’ve undergone comprehensive testing, you can expect uninterrupted operations in the new environment and deliver engaging experiences to your visitors. Now, it’s time to go live.

#8: Train your teams on the new instance

As the admin interface remains the same, your authors won’t notice much of a difference. However, it is essential that you make them aware of Adobe Cloud Manager.

Also, the entire management of this new tool should be under the IT or DevOps team. Our AEM experts can train your teams on the new environment and answer specific questions as they arise.

Whether or not you keep the On-premise instance totally depends on your scalability goals. While it is rare that you might go back to the On-premise instance, you must keep it running for some weeks post migration. This is in case any issue arises with the AEM Cloud architecture.

How can Ranosys assist with AEM On-Premises to Cloud migration?

While we’ve tried to cover the functional aspects of migration, the actual process is highly technical and demands the expertise of certified AEM experts. As a leading Adobe Experience Manager Consulting Partner, we’re aware of the entire process and can help in swiftly migrating from AEM On-Premises to the Cloud. Our team of AEM developers can strategize the entire migration process and even provide post-migration support, training and managed solutions. Connect with our Adobe AEM experts to discuss your migration needs.

Ready to migrate from On-Premise to Cloud?

At Ranosys, we firmly believe that gender equality is not just a fundamental human right but a necessary foundation for a peaceful, prosperous, and sustainable workplace. Our commitment to gender equality permeates every aspect of our organization, from hiring practices and pay structures to our workplace culture and policies. Here, we outline the key initiatives and policies that underpin our dedication to creating a gender-equal workplace.

50% of our leadership team are women
20% of our workforce are women
90% of our HR team are women
30% of new hires are women
29% of our managers are women

“Currently, women make up 20% of our overall staff. Recognizing the need for greater gender diversity, we aim to increase this to 40% within the next two years. This goal underscores our commitment to fostering an inclusive and diverse workplace.”

Rameshwar Vyas, CEO

#1. Equal Pay for Equal Work

One of the cornerstones of our commitment to gender equality is our unwavering policy of equal pay for equal work. We ensure that all employees, regardless of gender, receive fair compensation for their contributions. This policy is rigorously enforced through regular salary audits and adjustments, ensuring that any disparities are promptly addressed. To maintain transparency, we conduct annual salary reviews where we compare compensation across roles and experience levels. These reviews help us identify any unintentional biases and take corrective measures. Our goal is to foster an environment where everyone feels valued and rewarded for their hard work and talent.

#2. Skills Development and Career Advancement

We understand that equal pay is just one aspect of gender equality. Providing equal opportunities for skills development and career advancement is equally crucial. At Ranosys, we offer a range of professional development programs designed to help all employees enhance their skills and advance their careers. Our mentorship programs pair experienced leaders with emerging talent to provide guidance, support, and opportunities for growth. We also offer workshops, training sessions, and courses focused on leadership development, technical skills, and soft skills. By investing in the continuous growth of our employees, we ensure that everyone has the opportunity to reach their full potential.

“We are dedicated to creating an environment where every employee has the resources and support they need to grow and succeed. Our commitment to skills development and career advancement is a testament to this.”

Sushma Vyas, COO

#3. Anti-Harassment Policies

A safe and respectful workplace is essential for fostering gender equality. Ranosys has implemented comprehensive anti-harassment policies to protect our employees from any form of discrimination or harassment. These policies are designed to create a safe environment where everyone can work without fear of discrimination or harassment.

Our anti-harassment policies include clear guidelines on what constitutes harassment and the procedures for reporting and addressing complaints. We have a zero-tolerance approach to harassment, and any reported incidents are thoroughly investigated and addressed promptly. We also provide regular training sessions to educate employees about these policies and their rights and responsibilities in maintaining a respectful workplace.

#4. Promoting Work-Life Balance

We recognize that achieving gender equality also means supporting work-life balance for all employees. To this end, we offer flexible working arrangements, including remote work options, flexible hours, and generous parental leave policies. These measures help employees balance their professional and personal responsibilities, which is particularly important for those with caregiving duties.

Our parental leave policy is designed to support both mothers and fathers, encouraging shared responsibility for childcare. We also provide resources and support for parents returning to work, ensuring a smooth transition and continued career growth.

“Supporting work-life balance is crucial for fostering a healthy and productive workplace. At Ranosys, we are committed to providing flexible options that help our employees thrive both professionally and personally.”

Garima Agarwal, HR Head

#5. Creating an Inclusive Culture

At Ranosys, we strive to create an inclusive culture where diversity is celebrated, and everyone feels a sense of belonging. We believe that a diverse and inclusive workplace leads to better decision-making, greater innovation, and improved performance.

We actively promote diversity and inclusion through various initiatives, such as diversity training programs, employee resource groups, and inclusive hiring practices. Our recruitment efforts focus on attracting a diverse pool of candidates, and we use blind recruitment techniques to minimize biases in the hiring process.

Employee resource groups provide a platform for employees to connect, share experiences, and support one another. These groups play a crucial role in fostering an inclusive culture and providing valuable feedback to leadership on how we can continue to improve.

#6. Celebrating Successes and Learning from Challenges

We believe in celebrating our successes and learning from our challenges. Regular feedback sessions, employee surveys, and open forums allow us to gather insights from our employees and make informed decisions about our policies and practices. We are committed to continuous improvement and transparency in our efforts to achieve gender equality.

Our leadership team is actively involved in promoting gender equality and setting an example for the rest of the organization. They regularly communicate our commitment to gender equality and the importance of these initiatives, reinforcing the message that it is a priority for everyone at Ranosys.

#7. Looking Ahead

While we are proud of the progress we have made, we recognize that there is always more work to be done. Gender equality is an ongoing journey, and we are committed to making continuous improvements. We will keep evaluating our policies, learning from best practices, and adapting to the changing needs of our employees.

Our vision is to create a workplace where everyone, regardless of gender, can thrive and succeed. By fostering an environment of respect, fairness, and inclusion, we believe we can unlock the full potential of our diverse workforce and drive innovation and success for our organization.

Conclusion

At Ranosys, gender equality is more than just a policy—it’s a core value that guides everything we do. From equal pay and skills development to anti-harassment policies and work-life balance initiatives, we are dedicated to creating a workplace where everyone has the opportunity to succeed. We are proud of our commitment to gender equality and will continue to strive for a more inclusive and equitable future for all our employees.

Ranosys, a 2X award-winning Salesforce Crest Partner, is proud to be a Sponsor of Salesforce World Tour Essentials Singapore 2024 on 8 May (Wednesday) at Marina Bay Sands Convention Centre. Join our leaders, Sushma Vyas, Bharat Mungarh, and Ashish Sharma in Singapore to discover how to succeed in our new era of artificial intelligence with the #1 AI CRM.

Where: Marina Bay Sands Convention Centre, Singapore

When: Wednesday, 8 May 2024, 8:00 AM – 5:30 PM SGT

Salesforce World Tour Essentials Singapore 2024 is an event to discover how to succeed in our new era of artificial intelligence with the #1 AI CRM. With inspiring sessions, learn new ways to deepen your customer relationships, increase productivity, and grow your bottom line with CRM + AI + Data + Trust on one integrated platform, Einstein 1. This event provides an excellent opportunity to gain unique insights from customer Trailblazers, AI experts, and thought leaders on their experiences overcoming challenges in our new era of AI. You will get the opportunity to hear remarkable stories of customer success and dive into how our latest innovations can help develop your blueprint for growth.

Talking about Salesforce World Tour Essentials Singapore 2024, Sushma Vyas – COO of Ranosys said, “We’re excited to announce our participation in Salesforce World Tour 2024. This event provides a unique opportunity to connect with trailblazers, visionary AI experts, and thought leaders, exchange ideas and insights, and discuss how to deliver personalized experiences and drive business growth with data and AI. As a Salesforce Partner, we believe that by embracing the latest innovations, we empower ourselves to serve our customers better, anticipate their needs, and deliver solutions that truly transform their businesses. At World Tour Essentials Singapore, we’ll discover how integrating AI with CRM is not just enhancing business processes but is also essential for driving growth and maintaining a competitive edge.”

As one of the few Salesforce partners with strategic multi-cloud expertise across the Salesforce Cloud ecosystem and industry solutions- Salesforce CRM, Commerce Cloud, Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Salesforce Order Management, Marketing Cloud, and MuleSoft, Ranosys has been assisting global enterprises and brands with their digital commerce and transformation initiatives for 15+ years. Ranosys has been top-rated on Salesforce AppExchange and is globally recognized for driving complex implementations across industrial verticals with rapid market delivery. With their team of 120+ Salesforce consultants and experts, Ranosys has collaborated with several leading global brands and Fortune 500 companies across the Americas, APAC, and Europe regions and helped them deliver superior and engaging customer experiences. Ranosys has also been recognized with the Salesforce Talent Alliance Champion Award and has been published on the Salesforce website as a success story for their internal intranet system, Pulse.

As Ranosys continues to transform customer experiences through cutting-edge Salesforce solutions, empowered by modern technologies such as AI, and World Tour Essentials Singapore 2024 stands out as an ideal stage to advance these shared objectives, so our customers are prepared to lead in the AI revolution.

The Ranosys team is eagerly anticipating the opportunity to connect with you at the Marina Bay Sands Convention Centre during the event. Schedule your meeting here.

About Ranosys

Ranosys is a full-service Salesforce Agency that enables organizations to deliver connected and personalized experiences across all digital channels. With a team of 120+ Salesforce consultants and specialists across global delivery centers, Ranosys leads in end-to-end multi-cloud consulting, implementation, optimization, integration, and industry cloud services. As a full-service Salesforce Partner, we can help you with implementations across SFDC, Commerce, Marketing, Sales, Data & Service Clouds. We are the proud winners of the 2023 Salesforce Innovation & Impact Partner of the Year and Salesforce Growth Partner of the Year Awards.

For further details, please visit our website at https://www.ranosys.com/.

Or, fill out the form and shoot us an email at sales@ranosys.com

Earth Day is a global event celebrated every year on April 22nd, dedicated to promoting environmental protection and sustainability. It’s a day when individuals and organizations worldwide come together to reflect on the impact we have on our planet and take steps towards creating a more sustainable future. At Ranosys, we believe in the importance of this mission and aim to make a positive difference through our actions.

This year, our team celebrated Earth Day with a unique and engaging activity that combined creativity with sustainability. We hosted a DIY Planting & Painting Activity, transforming our office into a vibrant space filled with colorful planters and lush greenery. Here’s a glimpse into our day of eco-friendly fun and artistic expression.

#1. A Day of Creativity and Commitment

Our Earth Day celebration started with an exciting DIY Planting & Painting Activity. Teammates gathered with enthusiasm, ready to get their hands dirty and their creative juices flowing. Each participant received a plant, a planter, a tray, colors, and brushes, all provided by the company. The mission was simple: to create a personalized piece of living art that would brighten up our workspace and symbolize our commitment to a greener future.

#2. Unleashing Artistic Flair

With paintbrushes in hand, our teammates transformed ordinary planters into vibrant masterpieces. The designs were as diverse as our team—some opted for bold, abstract patterns, while others chose delicate, nature-inspired motifs. The colors and designs celebrated the beauty of our planet, turning each planter into a unique testament to our love for the Earth.

#3. Planting for a Greener Future

After the painting session, it was time to plant our saplings. Each plant found its home in the newly decorated planters, creating a beautiful blend of nature and art in our office. But our commitment didn’t stop there. We also planted several larger saplings in our office garden, a collective effort to enhance our immediate environment and contribute to a sustainable future. These plants will grow and flourish, serving as a lasting reminder of our dedication to environmental stewardship.

#4. Extending the Green Initiative

To extend the impact of our Earth Day activities beyond the office, we distributed additional plants to our employees. Each team member took home a plant, encouraging them to incorporate more greenery into their personal spaces. This initiative not only spreads the joy of planting but also promotes a culture of sustainability within our community.

#5. Why It Matters

This Earth Day event was more than just a fun activity; it was a meaningful gesture of our commitment to nurturing our planet. Plants play a crucial role in improving air quality, reducing stress, and enhancing the overall aesthetic of our surroundings. By engaging in this activity, we took tangible steps towards fostering growth and sustainability, one plant at a time.

#6. A Celebration of Joy, Color, and Sustainability

As we decorated our workspace with these personalized creations and planted saplings, we celebrated Earth Day with action. Our office is now a more vibrant and greener space, reflecting our shared dedication to environmental stewardship. This celebration of joy, color, and sustainability is a testament to what we can achieve when we come together for a common cause.

#7. Looking Ahead

Here’s to a greener, brighter future! Let’s continue to nurture our planet and foster growth in our everyday lives. Together, we can make every day Earth Day, spreading joy and sustainability wherever we go.

By celebrating Earth Day with such enthusiasm and creativity, Ranosys has reaffirmed its commitment to environmental responsibility. We are proud of the steps we have taken and look forward to continuing our journey towards a sustainable future.

Ranosys, a leading Shopify Plus Partner and Digital Transformation Company will be hosting Retail Networking Happy Hour on 25 April 2024, at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in collaboration with Shopify. Our esteemed Leadership team members, Sushma Vyas and Bharat Mungarh will lead this event alongside experts from Shopify.

Where: Colony, The MET, Mont Kiara, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

When: Thursday, 25 April 2024, 4 – 7 PM

Register here

In this insightful event, we’ll be exploring the vibrant landscape of retail, delving into a wide array of topics, from the latest retail trends to the transformative fusion of commerce and data that can elevate omnichannel strategies to new heights. Our experts will also be discussing the realm of AI and its profound impact on reshaping customer experiences. And ways to foster customer engagement and optimize conversions through the innovative approach of Circle Of Commerce. Additionally, we’ll discuss why sustainability has emerged as a central focus within the retail industry, capturing the attention of both businesses and consumers alike.

Sushma Vyas, our COO, expressed her enthusiasm about hosting this event, stating, “We are thrilled to collaborate with Shopify and host this Retail Networking Happy Hour. It’s a fantastic opportunity to engage with retail leaders of APAC and the region and showcase our expertise in Shopify implementations. Our focus remains on empowering businesses with technology solutions that drive growth, scalability, and high conversions.”

As a leading Shopify Plus Partner, Ranosys brings over 15 years of industry experience, specializing in development, consultation, customization, integration, migration, and support. With a certified team of experts, developers, and consultants, we have helped numerous global brands and Fortune 500 companies enhance customer experiences across the Americas, APAC, and Europe. The diverse portfolio spans industries such as Fashion & Apparel, Food & Beverages, Retail & Consumer Goods, Home & Lifestyle, Beauty & Skincare, Health & Wellness, and more.

This upcoming event offers an invaluable opportunity for Ranosys to engage with esteemed retail leaders representing renowned groups with a rich portfolio of high-end luxury brands. Their insights will enrich our fireside chat session, providing valuable perspectives and experiences.

About Ranosys

Ranosys is a leading Shopify Plus Partner with global footprints across USA, UK, Middle East, and APAC regions. Our innovative digital commerce solutions have empowered several globally renowned brands to achieve their digital transformation objectives, establish well-integrated unified digital ecosystems, and embrace future-ready technologies. By harnessing the capabilities of the Shopify Plus platform, Ranosys is uniquely positioned to redefine both retailer and customer journeys, crafting digital commerce solutions that drive accelerated revenue growth for brands. For further details, please visit our website at https://www.ranosys.com/.

Or, fill out the form and shoot us an email at sales@ranosys.com

2023 has been the breakthrough year of generative artificial intelligence. From predictive models that assist with accurate forecasting and foster better decision-making to leveraging generative AI tools to empower developers in building enterprise-grade applications faster, artificial intelligence, specifically GenAI, opens up several new avenues of opportunities and benefits. It has become rather understood that enterprises must embrace this technology to streamline business processes or risk falling behind their competitors.

Over the past years, low-code development platforms like OutSystems have been gaining traction mostly because of how it accelerates software development and helps fill development gaps. And now, low code AI is set to further advance the playing field with its AI-coding assistants, process automation, and advanced auto-completion. In fact, the new low code generative AI era will lower the rapid application development barrier, with enterprises already incorporating low code practices and operations to their enterprise operations.

Here we discuss the prospects of AI low code development, the popular low code AI tools to invest in, and what to expect from this unification of two impressive technologies.

Breaking down low code AI: What it means?

Let’s start by first defining low-code development. While most are aware, low-code software development involves leveraging visual development environments and drag-and-drop interfaces to build enterprise-level applications fast, right, and for the future without spending hours in extensive coding. Such apps can be employed to build customer-facing apps, core apps, or internal business apps, serving four major use cases – customer experience transformation, workplace innovation, process automation, and legacy app modernization.

Now let’s explore the role of AI in software development. Fundamentally, artificial intelligence mimics human intelligence using algorithms and data. It might automate manual tasks or even replicate cognitive functions. Essentially, AI software development takes care of a great deal of repetitive tasks when building a software application. This includes manual testing, creating/updating UI elements, code duplication, developing layouts for multiple screen resolutions, configuring build scripts, and more. Advanced AI-assisted software development even takes care of data analysis, provides recommendations, fosters intelligent decision-making, and advanced problem-solving.

Low code AI brings together machine learning models, natural language processing, image recognition, and other AI capabilities into rapid application development. The combination of low-code and AI enables faster development and deployment of AI-powered applications, making it more accessible to a broader range of developers and organizations.

How can low code and AI coexist?

The capabilities of both GenAI and low-code development platforms are perceived to be synonyms as both technologies help in accelerated code generation. However, one distinct difference between the two is – generative AI is targeted towards professional developers while low-code technology is targeted towards citizen developers.

While generative AI is a great way to bridge the gap between cognitive human intents and computer algorithms that solves challenges, software development has a much broader scope spanning across architectures, data modeling, product engineering, maintenance, support, and more; all of which go beyond the capacity of generative AI. Therefore, the only possibility for AI is to enable and empower low code development environments. And on that note, low code AI will co-exist together, enabling faster innovation, enhancing efficiency and unlocking rampant automation for every industry, much to the likes of OutSystems AI.

Key benefits of low code AI software development

The infusion of low code AI for software development opens up doors to incredible opportunities and technical advantages, all directed towards improving customer experience, product quality, and improving the software development process. Here is a technical breakdown of low code AI software development:

Accelerated time-to-market: With AI-driven automation and accelerated rapid application development with low-code, technical teams don’t need to focus on repetitive tasks. Low-code development platforms like OutSystems enable developers with varying expertise to leverage its visual development environment and pre-built components, without spending hours in hard coding, hence simplifying and expediting the development process. Integrated with AI, developers can leverage machine learning models and NLP algorithms for faster prototyping, testing, and deployment. Overall, low code AI software development shortens SDLC and accelerates time-to-market of software products.
Endless task automation: Low code AI automates repetitive tasks like code generation by analyzing patterns in code, suggesting improving and even providing code snippets. In rapid application development, AI can be used for intelligent test automation to deliver superior software quality. AI algorithms integrated to low code development platforms automate bug and vulnerabilities detection in the code by analyzing patterns and historical data. Natural language processing capabilities in low code AI assists with workflow automation and automating various steps in the CI/CD pipelines.
Enhancing customer experience: With personalization a critical differentiator of customer experiences, AI ensures that enterprises deliver it across channels and devices. AI algorithms analyze user behavior and preferences, resulting in tailored experiences that boost engagement and retention.
Predictive modeling: The heart of AI’s technical power is predictive modeling. Using advanced algorithms and machine learning, AI can make data-driven predictions of next steps in logic flows, identify potential application issues, and anticipate user behavior and market trends.
Improved decision making: AI algorithms can analyze large volumes of data in real-time, providing valuable insights and actionable intelligence to developers and stakeholders. By integrating AI capabilities into low-code platforms, developers gain access to powerful analytics tools that enable data-driven decision making throughout the software development process, from design and testing to deployment and maintenance.
Scalability and flexibility: Low-code platforms with built-in AI capabilities offer scalability and flexibility, allowing applications to adapt and evolve based on changing business requirements and user needs. AI-powered features can automatically adjust to new data patterns and user behaviors, ensuring that applications remain relevant and competitive in dynamic market environments.
Reduced technical complexity: Low-code platforms abstract away much of the technical complexity associated with software development, making it easier for non-technical users to participate in the development process. AI further simplifies development by automating complex tasks and providing intuitive interfaces for configuring and deploying AI-driven features, democratizing access to advanced technology for a broader audience of developers.
Increased productivity: Low-code platforms abstract away much of the manual coding traditionally required for application development. AI augments this by automating tasks such as data analysis, natural language processing, and image recognition, freeing up developers to focus on higher-value tasks. This results in increased productivity and efficiency throughout the development lifecycle.

OutSystems AI: Unlocking the power of AI-driven rapid application development

According to Forrester’s Total Economic Impact Study commissioned by OutSystems, organizations experienced a 50% faster time-to-market for applications developed using low-code platforms, with AI-driven automation further accelerating development processes by up to 30%.

Here’s how an AI-driven high-performance low-code platform results in 100X productivity increase and 30% increase in team skills:

AI enables developers to streamline repetitive tasks:	When combined with the benefits of high-performance low-code:
Coding	Governance required to safely reap AI’s benefits
Debugging	Power to deliver whatever the business asks for
Testing	Agility to adapt apps to evolving business needs
Deploying	Security to build mission-critical customer apps
	Scalability to grow with your success

In efforts to unlock the full potential of AI-led software development, OutSystems has infused AI to its rapid application development platform, unveiling OutSystem AI – the AI-powered high-performance low-code platform.

The idea behind this platform is to make the lives of developers and IT teams easier by handling the repetitive and mundane tasks of building apps fast and for the future. Whether it’s having AI mentors guide them through development, adding AI to their apps, or both, your developers and IT teams encounter less friction and get more done faster.

Here is how OutSystems AI empowers AI-driven software development:

#1: AI Mentor System

The superpower of OutSystems AI is its Mentor System aimed at enhancing the expertise and lives of developers with powerful AI guides called mentors. Just like the living world, mentors are experts that assist developers throughout SDLC; guiding, automating, and validating the work of developers. AI Mentor System empowers developers to be more productive and develop high-quality mission-critical applications fast, right and for the future.

AI Code Mentor: An AI-based coding expert that assists developers throughout complex builds, saving time and enhancing productivity.
AI Architecture Mentor: Embedded AI-based enterprise architect that ensures your code meets architectural standards
AI Security Mentor: An AI-based security lead that constantly reviews your code to check for inconsistencies, vulnerabilities, and future issues.
AI Performance Mentor: Functions like a performance expert that ensures your app is stable, secure, and at peak performance levels.
AI Maintainability Mentor: Your very own analyst that runs through your app looking for ways to reduce technical debt and ensure you follow all the best practices.

#2: AI Agent Builder

OutSystems AI Agent Builder makes it easy for you to build your AI agent without too much coding. This way, you get to channelize the power of generative AI to your apps and workflows. It employs the large language models (LLM) and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) models to provide speedy and highly relevant responses. LLMs in AI Agent Builder reads and understands user queries to generate human-like text. RAG looks for relevant details in the user query and searches for answers from a large dataset to result in even better responses. Together, RAG and LLMs result in contextual inputs, delivered by your very own AI agent.

To test its own technology, OutSystems rolled out its own AI agent built using Azure OpenAI models, and RAG to access internal data sources like related documentation. It is known to ease the lives of customer support reps who instead of answering all user queries, can now focus on critical ones while the AI agent provides accurate and relevant answers. Also, it has improved response time and improved support reps’ productivity.

#3: ChatGPT connector

OutSystems AI empowers you to seamlessly integrate ChatGPT to your existing applications in mere minutes, improving user experiences. Named ChatGPT Connector, you can find it in the OutSystems Forge repository.

Consider this example in the insurance industry. When selecting insurance policies, customers often struggle to compare from amongst the overwhelming number of options. With ChatGPT connector embedded into your apps, users can instantly compare different insurance policies, evaluate their differences, and generate the summaries of different coverages. Based on all this analysis, the policyholder can choose the right one.

Other use cases include:

Document summarization: Department verticals, especially legal and finance struggle with analyzing and summarizing lengthy contracts and documents. With the ChatGPT connector, you can easily build apps embedded with ChatGPT, and it can provide recommendations, summaries and insights.
Customer support: The ChatGPT connector when embedded in your virtual assistants can improve your response time and answers. Utilizing NLP algorithms, these virtual assistants can provide personalized responses, answer questions, and perform tasks, improving customer experiences and rep productivity.
Personalized recommendations: The OutSystems ChatGPT connector when embedded to your web store, social store, app, or portal can provide personalized recommendations, reading a user’s historical data, preferences, behavior, most browsed items, and more.

Accelerating rapid application development with OutSystems AI

There are several industry-driven use cases where OutSystems AI simplifies user experiences and productivity. With existing OutSystems apps, you can easily incorporate AI functions to your apps leveraging its pre-built components seamlessly integrated with AI models.

The bottom line is AI revolutionizes your software development in a way that empowers you to stay competitive. In today’s evolving landscape, incorporating AI is not an option, it’s a must. With the AI revolution catching heat, our team of OutSystems developers have been assisting several enterprises across BFSI, healthcare, eLearning, and logistics and transportation in implementing AI to its core functions. As an OutSystems Partner and System Integrator, we are committed to ensuring that your IT and development teams embrace AI and low-code together to build transformative solutions.

Discuss the low-code AI possibilities with our experts.

A few days ago, Adobe Summit 2024, the leading conference for digital experiences, concluded. There, Adobe unveiled a wave of new tools for businesses. These tools leverage cutting-edge AI and real-time data to personalize customer experiences at scale. Over 10,000 attendees from around the world witnessed demos and real-world examples of how these improved Adobe products can be integrated into their workflows.

Beyond Adobe’s presentations, the event offered attendees a chance to connect with partners, clients, and vendors. The Community Pavilion buzzed with companies showcasing the latest technology and software through interactive demos.

As a proud sponsor of the year’s Adobe Summit, we first-hand listened to these actionable insights centered around latest innovations in generative AI, delivering personalization at scale, and content supply chain.

An Adobe Solution Partner, it is our passion and duty to share with you some of the noteworthy announcements and insights that expand the Customer Experience Management (CXM) solutions to bring data, content and customer journeys together to delight and build loyalty over time.

Here’s a look at some key takeaways and announcements:

Adobe Summit highlights & key product feature announcements

#1. Adobe GenStudio

At the Summit, Adobe introduced GenStudio, a new generative AI-first tool to empower marketing teams. GenStudio streamlines the entire content creation process, allowing users to plan, create, manage, activate, and measure brand-compliant content efficiently. This translates to an automated and optimized content supply chain, saving marketers valuable time and resources.

The live demonstrations at the conference showcases GenStudio’s impressive speed. It can generate multi-channel content assets in just a few minutes, going from the initial concept to the finished product. Essentially, Adobe foresees GenStudio as a one-stop shop for marketers, comprising all aspects of content creation – from ideation and storage to measurement and activation.

https://business.adobe.com/media_1bc111fed12df340d3243c9bc3f851d1d7068923a.mp4

#2. Adobe Experience Platform AI Assistant

Another exciting announcement was the unveiling of the Adobe Experience Platform AI Assistant. This AI-powered tool promises to streamline workflows and unlock new creative possibilities.

The Assistant manages marketing inefficiencies in three key ways. First, it automates redundant tasks within Adobe Experience Cloud applications, freeing up valuable time for strategic planning. Second, its user-friendly interface allows everyone on the team, regardless of technical expertise, to access data insights and complete tasks with ease. Finally, the Assistant leverages cutting-edge AI to analyze your business’s unique data and goals, generating personalized recommendations for new audience segments and customer journeys. This encourages a culture of marketing innovation while adhering to strict brand safety and privacy-first principles.

“Generative AI enables a fundamental shift in the relationship between brands and their customers, creating a transformative moment for business leaders to drive organizational productivity while delivering new digital experiences. The ability to personalize interactions at scale has become the key growth driver in customer experience management for enterprises around the world, and Adobe is leading the way in making this a reality with powerful generative AI deeply integrated into existing workflows.” – Anil Chakravarthy, President, Digital Experience Business, Adobe

#3. Partnerships and Customer Momentum

Beyond the product announcements that took center stage at Adobe Summit 2024, they also highlighted its commitment to fostering a robust ecosystem through strategic partnerships.

Adobe announced a deepened collaboration with Microsoft. This translates to seamless integration of Adobe Experience Cloud data and insights directly into Microsoft Copilot for marketers. This unlocks the power of generative AI (GenAI) within familiar workflows, streamlining the marketing process. Additionally, a new partnership with IBM Sterling facilitates a seamless connection with their Order Management solution (currently in beta). This collaboration bridges the gap between marketing efforts and order fulfillment, creating a more cohesive customer journey for businesses.

Furthermore, Adobe emphasized its ongoing commitment to expanding partnerships with industry leaders like Google. This focus on collaboration underscores the importance of working together to drive innovation and enhance product offerings across the board.

#4. Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) Assets content hub

With the new Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) Assets content hub, teams can now seamlessly distribute brand-governed assets across their organization and external partners, ensuring consistent messaging and visual identity. Acting as a central hub, the content hub facilitates effortless collaboration and access to assets.

Moreover, the content hub serves as a vital link between GenStudio and AEM Assets, enabling users to easily search for assets and leverage them to create personalized variations. With the integration of Firefly in Adobe Express, users can further customize assets to suit specific needs, enhancing the flexibility and efficiency of content creation processes.

#5. Adobe Real-Time CDP Collaboration

At the conference, a major announcement addressed the cookieless future of marketing. The new Real-Time CDP Collaboration empowers brands to navigate this changing landscape.

This innovative solution tackles the challenge of audience discovery and campaign measurement in a world without third-party cookies. It empowers teams to leverage the power of first-party data and collaborate securely with trusted partners, all while prioritizing user privacy.

Here’s how Real-Time CDP Collaboration tackles the cookieless challenge:

First-Party Data Focus: Brands can leverage their own valuable customer data to discover and reach high-value audiences.
Secure Partner Collaboration: The platform facilitates safe and privacy-centric collaboration with trusted partners, maximizing the effectiveness of marketing efforts.
Data Source Flexibility: Real-Time CDP Collaboration offers a flexible approach, allowing secure data integration from various sources like AWS, Databricks, Google, Microsoft Azure, and Snowflake, among others.
Identity Partner Integration: Partnerships with leading identity providers like Acxiom and LiveRamp ensure audience scalability and campaign success.
Real-Time CDP Collaboration empowers brands to deliver personalized experiences and measure campaign effectiveness without compromising user privacy.

#6. Adobe Commerce Storefront

The introduction of Adobe Commerce Storefront at the conference heralds a new era of powerful tools designed to elevate the creation of immersive storefront experiences. This represents a significant leap forward on the frontend, following Adobe’s acquisition of Magento. With the debut of Commerce Dropins, businesses now have access to innovative solutions that facilitate the effortless development of micro, serverless frontend components that seamlessly integrate with any framework. This evolution promises to revolutionize the way online storefronts are crafted and experienced.

#7. Federated Audience Composition in Adobe Experience Platform

Adobe also introduced Federated Audience Composition, a new feature within the Adobe Experience Platform. This innovation empowers brands to leverage valuable data stored in enterprise data warehouses directly within customer experience workflows.

Federated Audience Composition eliminates the need for cumbersome data transfers. Instead, it creates a secure bridge, allowing marketers to leverage this valuable data directly within their customer experience workflows. This is made possible by federating data and audiences from a variety of data warehouses and platforms, including AWS Redshift, Databricks SQL, BigQuery, Snowflake, etc.

#8. Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) Sites variant generation

Another noteworthy announcement at the Adobe Summit 2024 was the introduction of Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) Sites variant generation. Leveraging the capabilities of generative AI, this innovative feature provides brands with the ability to create personalized variations of marketing assets. This cutting-edge feature ensures that the copy is not only audience-centric but also aligns seamlessly with the brand’s identity. Additionally, with Edge Delivery Services, brands can guarantee lightning-fast page load times, optimizing the user experience and enhancing engagement.

Moreover, AEM Sites introduces document-based authoring, allowing the broader team to effortlessly create web pages using familiar tools such as Microsoft Word or Google Docs. This intuitive approach streamlines the content creation process, empowering teams to collaborate efficiently and deliver captivating digital experiences across all channels.

#9. New B2B Capabilities

At the Adobe Summit event, the unveiling of B2B 1.5.0’s new features, scheduled for release this summer with an anticipated launch in June. Among the key enhancements showcased were advancements in parent/child company account management, negotiable quote draft functionalities, duplication capabilities, and a versatile quote template system.

One standout feature of this system is its ability to facilitate the creation of pre-approved quotes tailored to specific conditions. This functionality promises to streamline the quoting process significantly, enabling enhanced efficiency and agility in B2B transactions. With B2B 1.5.0, businesses can expect a more seamless and intuitive experience, empowering them to navigate complex transactions with ease and confidence.

#10. New Firefly capabilities

Adobe also unveiled a major update to the Adobe Firefly web application, empowering creators with a whole new level of creative control. This update introduces the groundbreaking “Structure Reference” feature.

Structure Reference allows users to leverage the structure of an existing image as a template for generating new images. This eliminates the tedious trial-and-error process of crafting the perfect prompt to achieve the desired layout. With Structure Reference, users can simply provide an existing image and have Firefly generate multiple variations that maintain that same fundamental structure.

Furthermore, when combined with Adobe’s existing “Style Reference” capability (which applies the style of a reference image to your prompt), users gain an unprecedented level of control. This powerful combination allows creators to reference both the structure and style of an existing image, dramatically accelerating the process of bringing their creative visions to life. By simplifying the creative process and delivering state-of-the-art visual quality, Structure Reference positions Adobe Firefly as a leader in the field of AI-powered image generation.

#11. Adobe leads the charge against deep fakes

In a world increasingly susceptible to manipulated content, Adobe addressed the growing concern of deep fakes at the recent Adobe Summit 2024. Deepfakes, hyper-realistic AI-generated videos or audio recordings, pose a significant threat to online trust and have the potential to disrupt everything from elections to consumer confidence. To overcome this challenge, Adobe is spearheading an industry-wide initiative focused on content transparency and provenance. This initiative centers around a groundbreaking concept called “Content Credentials.”

Think of Content Credentials as a “nutrition label” for digital content. They provide valuable context, including details like who created the content, where and when it was created, and even what tools were used for editing or generation. By equipping consumers with this crucial information, Content Credentials empower them to make informed judgments about the content they encounter online. The momentum behind Content Credentials is promising. Just weeks prior to the Summit, major players like Leica (embedding the technology in their cameras), OpenAI, Meta, Google, and BBC all announced their support for the standard.

With global elections on the horizon, Adobe emphasizes the importance of collective action. They urge industry leaders, governments, and the public to collaborate in restoring trust in digital content. Content Credentials represent a significant step towards achieving this goal.

#12. Adobe Journey Optimizer

Adobe Journey Optimizer (AJO) supercharges B2B brands’ ability to craft exceptional customer journeys. AJO B2B Edition, built within the Adobe Experience Platform, is a game-changer for managing account-specific buyer group journeys. This innovative platform empowers marketing and sales teams alike, facilitating seamless synchronization of efforts. Acting as a cohesive and unified revenue force, AJO B2B Edition empowers organizations to enhance personalized B2B purchasing experiences significantly. Moreover, it serves as a catalyst for refining demand generation strategies with unparalleled precision and efficacy, ensuring that every interaction resonates deeply with target audiences across their unique journey paths.

These are just some of the key insights, there is more that you can check out here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7Fkn3UclHZOLzMl0OksYO9wmXQygIpZI

Conclusion

The 2024 Adobe Summit showcased a future powered by data, automation, and responsible AI. Key themes included effective data management, streamlined workflows through automation (Federated Audience Composition, Real-Time CDP Collaboration), and the efficient implementation of generative AI (GenStudio, Experience Platform AI Assistant). Sustainability remains a priority, while a commitment to continuous innovation promises exciting solutions and experiences for customers. As a proud sponsor of this year’s Adobe Summit, Ranosys gained valuable insights firsthand. The discussions centered around cutting-edge advancements in generative AI, achieving personalized experiences at scale, and optimizing the content supply chain. Our team of Adobe experts can help you leverage these insights to enhance your Customer Experience Management (CXM) solutions.

Maximize the Power of Adobe with Ranosys.

For B2B marketers, one of the most challenging tasks is to forge a powerful and rewarding B2B marketing strategy.

Developing a B2B marketing strategy is a trial and error method- you test several tips and tricks until you discover the ones that ensure a positive business ROI.

However, one aspect that remains the same is that every B2B marketing strategy is created keeping your specific customers in mind. A marketer needs to consider the business genre, its positioning and unique value proposition in the market, and the resources available for marketing before finalizing on a full-proof marketing plan.

That said, the right B2B marketing strategy can make a massive difference to your market reputation, customer base, profit margins, future ROI projections, and competitive edge.

Defining B2B marketing and B2B marketing strategy

B2B marketing refers to the marketing efforts, tactics, or strategies directed at marketing your business to other businesses or organizations. It means a company sells products or services to other companies requiring such products or services to run their daily operations or resell to other customers. A B2B marketer entertains business executives, procurement officers, or other professionals that make purchasing decisions on behalf of an organization.

However, constraints like creative demands, budget limits, and channel decisions make it difficult to effectively execute a B2B marketing strategy. Moreover, even Google and Facebook don’t always provide profitable lead connections.

So, what should marketers do in such scenarios?

You create a B2B marketing strategy that fulfills your business goals and accelerates revenue growth. A B2B marketing strategy is more like a plan that lays out your goals for marketing, how you measure success, the customers you target, how and where you target them.

Directing your efforts to understand your customers, keeping tabs on new trends, implementing modern technologies, and considering B2B marketing to be more than a form of transactional analysis are just a few bullets that will help you kickstart your B2B marketing strategies.

The top B2B marketing strategies for 2024

In this article, we’ve compiled the most effective, conversion-oriented, and up-to-date B2B marketing strategies that will definitely boost your sales and ROIs.

Strategy #1: Replace the funnel with the flywheel marketing approach

For quite some time now, marketers have been obsessed with the marketing funnel concept that includes the AIDA model (awareness, interest, desire, and action). However, experts at HubSpot found several inconsistencies with the funnel model. Although it served its purpose during the traditional B2B marketing schemes, it was no longer fit to support modern consumer demands.

Enter the flywheel model.

This approach helps marketers move beyond the traditional sales funnel that considers a purchase to be the end of the process. Instead, the flywheel model treats customers as potential marketers holding lifetime value. It embraces the underlying truth behind every brand formation- the initial purchase should be the beginning of a lifelong customer-brand relationship.

With the flywheel approach, you don’t just forget about a customer after purchase; you keep them close, attend to their needs, and ensure they never go to your competitors. After all, keeping existing customers is seven times cheaper than getting new ones. So, position your marketing strategies around the flywheel model.

Strategy #2: Content is King, even in the B2B market

We know that B2B clients are focused on expertise, logic and hold a strong desire for informative articles. What better medium to satiate their needs than high-quality content!

One of the most popular yet under-priced B2B marketing strategies- content influences 80% of decisions made by B2B professionals.

Unlike customers who are new to a trend, experts have a gist about it and would only value content that persuades them into reading the entire piece. Therefore, you don’t have to educate them about their own company, product, or service. Rather, tailor your content around the tips and tricks that solve their bottleneck issues.

Consider a B2B buyer’s journey and pitch them with content that solves their needs and fulfills their requirements. Include content pieces like checklists, eBooks, whitepapers, industry reports, solution-oriented blogs, etc., to your B2B marketing strategy.

Strategy #3: Get really good, really fast at email marketing

Do you know, every $1 spent on email marketing results in $38 in revenue?

Email marketing isn’t the same cold technique that lost all its importance with time. Instead, this new revamped form has garnered some tangible results, especially in the B2B arenas.

However, there is one trick to writing focus-driven and clickable emails- how your business can help other companies grow. Till the time your products keep solving those issues and your emails keep on presenting them as trophies, your B2B email marketing strategies will keep on accomplishing your revenue goals.

Stick to writing eye-catching subject lines, an indirect but direct CTA (one that talks about your services without actually talking about it!), and incorporate responsive and intuitive designs. Also, remember to segment your emails to the most relevant audience group, unless you want to send a digital commerce email to a product engineering client only to lose them in the process.

Strategy #4: Socialize at the right platform

True that social media is more focused on B2C brands; you can still connect with your B2B clients on social media if you employ the right platform. Keep in mind that 75% of B2B buyers and 84% of C-Suite executives research your business on social media before finalizing a purchase.

Social platforms like LinkedIn can help you generate leads, connect with prospective clients, and pitch your services in the best light. But how can you use LinkedIn for lead generation or boost sales, revenue, or conversions of your B2B business?

Establish a prominent brand voice, highlight your employees and appreciate their hard work, maintain consistency, post about events, experiment with content and posting times, keep an eye on competitors, and post content that adds value to a reader’s life- all of this and more will help you ace B2B marketing strategies via social media.

Strategy #5: Ride the B2B mobile marketing wave

With over 5 billion mobile users contributing to more than half of the world’s web traffic, you throw away at least 50% of potential leads if you ignore mobile marketing. In addition, mobile is the primary channel for content consumption in the modern age, and businesses must take advantage of it to boost traffic rates and gather more customer data.

To ride the B2B mobile marketing wave, you need to make sure that your content is mobile-responsive. Make your website accessible via any device, platform, or channel and optimize it for big screens and small ones too. You can also enable voice search and mobile search for your B2B consumers.

Strategy #6: Give Account-based marketing a try

Account-based marketing involves scripting sales and marketing strategies for a particular account and not several at the same time, leading to a considerable ROI surge. ABM doesn’t care much for the followers or likes; it focuses more on closing the deal.

Account-based marketers work upon lead quality than quantity. They narrow down their focus and marketing efforts to target the best accounts with better conversion chances than the others.

As per a report, over 42% of marketers have employed the ABM model and reaped splendid benefits from it. It is why you should give ABM a try and see how it impacts your B2B marketing goals.

Strategy #7: Embrace Martech tools and automation

Several technologies and innovations have evolved and simplified the B2B marketing conduct, making it easier for marketers to reach prospects and personalize communications. One such boon for the B2B marketing world is the Martech (marketing automation) tools. These tools boost your B2B marketing strategies, taking care of the mundane tasks that cost more in the long run so that you can ideate more engaging and ROI-driven campaigns.

So, review all the marketing technologies you employ, especially for categories like marketing experiences, marketing operations, marketing middleware, marketing backbone platforms, infrastructure services, and internet services. Then, explore the Martech tools that can automate repetitive marketing tasks and add efficiency to the process.

Strategy #8: Script visually appealing content

Videos and images have a long-lasting impact on the human brain. We tend to remember only 10% of the audio information; however, with photos, the retaining capacity grows to 65%. So, add more images and videos to promote content intended for brand awareness.

Use compelling pictures consistent with your brand across all platforms. Design it in a way to make it easy on the eyes. Use the white space to your advantage. Don’t add too much content or too many pictures. Aim for visual quality over quantity. For statistical data, create graphs and charts for better illustration. Customize them for branding and relevance purposes.

For B2B video marketing, experiment with short and engaging videos with creative graphics and easy-to-understand background sounds.

Strategy #9: Use Big Data to your advantage

Big data algorithms combined with advanced data analytics have revolutionized B2B marketing strategies. Big data allows you to compile essential data, understand your visitors, target them effectively, and indulge in personalized communications. In the long run, it enhances lead quality, improves customer experiences at every touchpoint, and helps B2B companies make sound business decisions. When you have better information about your leads, you can optimize your marketing campaigns to receive maximum traction. And big data can help you do it.

Apart from campaign quality, big data forge successful customer relationships. With big data, you know where your customers are, how you can target them, and when you can connect with them. So, align your B2B marketing strategies with the extensive data framework. Analyze data at every possible point in your sales and lead generation process.

Strategy #10: Practice omnichannel marketing

B2B clients aren’t just limited to one channel. They explore their purchase options on the web as well as social media. The idea is- represent your brand where your clients are and practice omnichannel marketing.

However, to find out the most profitable business channel, you need to know your buyers and how they consume their content. And then, you need to ensure that your content is visible on these channels. Mix and match on all media simultaneously and explore more opportunities than web, social, and emails. Think of rendering an omnichannel experience to your B2B prospects and script content accordingly.

Tailor your approach to B2B marketing strategies

To be honest, there is no one perfect marketing strategy that’ll help serve your business goals.

As trends and technology change, so do marketing strategies. Therefore, to stay competitive, you need to constantly assess your B2B marketing strategies and see if it still delivers your desired business goals. True that online marketing is evolving quickly; however, firms that stay on top of these trends and adopt solutions that fulfill customer demands are situated to win.

Ready to transform your digital content strategy?

Discover what marketing automation can do for your business.

International Women’s Day is a momentous occasion that calls for celebration, reflection, and action towards gender equality and empowerment. This year, Ranosys had the profound privilege of honoring this day with the incredible women of Apna Ghar NGO. Our hearts were filled with joy and pride as we organized a special event on March 8th, dedicated to these resilient and inspiring women.

#1. A Day of Togetherness and Support

The event was marked by a series of thoughtful activities aimed at fostering a sense of community and support. Ranosys took the initiative to sponsor a delightful lunch for all 40 women residing at Apna Ghar. The meal was not just about nourishment but also about coming together, sharing stories, and creating cherished memories. It was heartwarming to see the smiles and hear the laughter that filled the room, a true testament to the power of collective goodwill.

#2. Supporting Daily Lives with Essential Supplies

Understanding the everyday challenges faced by the women at Apna Ghar, we went a step further by providing essential grocery items. These supplies are meant to aid them in their daily lives, offering some relief and making their routines a bit easier. The gratitude expressed by the women was incredibly touching and reminded us of the impact even small acts of kindness can have.

#3. A Collective Effort of Generosity and Compassion

This event would not have been possible without the generosity and compassion of the entire Ranosys team. Every contribution, no matter how big or small, played a crucial role in making this day special. The spirit of giving back to the community is deeply embedded in our values at Ranosys.

#4. Reflecting on Gender Equality and Empowerment

As we celebrate the success of this event, it’s essential to reflect on the broader message of International Women’s Day. Gender equality and empowerment are not just buzzwords; they are fundamental principles that require continuous effort and commitment. By supporting and uplifting women, we contribute to a more inclusive and equitable society.

#5. Looking Ahead

This experience with Apna Ghar has been enriching and inspiring for all of us at Ranosys. It reinforces our belief in the importance of community engagement and the positive change it can bring. As we move forward, we remain committed to initiatives that support gender equality and empower women.

A Heartfelt Thank You

To everyone at Ranosys who contributed to this event, thank you. Your actions embody the true spirit of International Women’s Day. Let us continue to uphold these values in our everyday lives, fostering a culture of respect, support, and empowerment for all.

Together, we can make a difference, one act of kindness at a time.

Valentine’s Day isn’t just about romantic love—it’s also a time to celebrate love for our community. At Ranosys, we hold our community close to our hearts, and our “Love for Community” CSR initiative reflects our deep commitment to making a positive impact where it matters most.

#1. A Celebration of Community and Compassion

Our “Love for Community” initiative was a heartwarming event that brought together our dedicated volunteers and talented children from our community. Through a series of joyful activities, we aimed to create a day filled with laughter, empowerment, and lasting memories.

From playful games that sparked laughter to heartfelt gift-giving that brought smiles to many faces, our volunteers poured their hearts into making the day truly special for everyone involved. The enthusiasm and happiness of the children were contagious, making it a memorable occasion for all.

#2. The Impact of Our Volunteers

We’re incredibly proud of our volunteers whose dedication and enthusiasm made this initiative a success. Their efforts have left a positive impact on the lives of these bright young individuals, embodying the essence of love and compassion that defines Ranosys.

Beyond just participating in activities, our volunteers have helped create an environment where these children feel valued and supported. This initiative has not only enriched the lives of the children but also strengthened the spirit of giving and community within our organization.

#3. Reaffirming Our Commitment

The “Love for Community” CSR initiative reaffirms Ranosys’ commitment to contributing to the growth and well-being of our community. As we celebrate Valentine’s Day—a day symbolizing love and togetherness—we renew our pledge to spread love and foster positive change in the world around us.

This initiative is just one of the many ways Ranosys aims to make a difference. By working together and supporting each other, we can build a stronger, more compassionate community.

#4. A Heartfelt Thank You

We extend our heartfelt thanks to everyone who contributed to this initiative. Your support and participation have made a significant difference in our community, and we are deeply grateful for your efforts.

As we look forward to future initiatives, we remain committed to our mission of fostering love, compassion, and positive change. Together, we can continue to make a meaningful impact and create a better world for all.

Let’s keep the spirit of love and community alive, today and tomorrow.

Ranosys, an multi-award-winning Adobe Gold Partner is proud to be a Showcase Sponsor for Adobe Summit 2024 – The Digital Experience Conference from 26 – 28 March at Booth No. 1296F. Join our leaders, Rameshwar Vyas, Anand Ramdeo, and Ashish Sharma in Las Vegas to learn about driving experience-led growth through enterprise-level technologies and opportunities surrounding Generative AI.

Join Us

Adobe Summit 2024 is a conference designed for the leaders and creators behind the world’s best experiences. Summit offers unparalleled opportunities for growth and development, including exclusive skill-building sessions and networking events with experts and leaders in digital experience. The digital experience conference provides an excellent chance to gain valuable insights from 200+ keynotes, sessions, and customer success stories into enhancing customer experience for fostering brand loyalty and growth. It also serves as a platform to connect with peers and leaders from the world’s foremost brands, gather ideas for crafting exceptional customer experiences, and explore the latest products and services from Adobe.

Talking about Adobe Summit 2024, Rameshwar Vyas, CEO – Ranosys said, “We’re excited to announce our participation in Adobe Summit 2024. This digital experience conference provides a unique opportunity to connect with industry leaders, exchange ideas and insights, and contribute to the collective pursuit of excellence in today’s ever-evolving landscape. At Ranosys, we’re committed to staying at the forefront of digital innovation and leverage Adobe Experience Cloud to empower our customers with cutting-edge solutions. And exhibiting at the much-awaited digital experience conference will further enable us to showcase our strategic expertise, foster collaborations, and amplify our commitment to shaping the future of transformative digital experiences for businesses worldwide.”

A 3X-award-winning Adobe Gold Partner, Ranosys has been assisting leading global enterprises with their digital commerce and transformation goals, leveraging the industry-driven capabilities, platforms, and technologies from Adobe. Its expanding portfolio of strategic specializations across Adobe include Adobe Commerce, Adobe Experience Manager, Adobe Marketo, Adobe Analytics, Adobe Target, and Adobe RT-CDP. The state-of-the-art Adobe DX Accelerator has been a prime interest for organizations worldwide looking to build a robust digital foundation by acing content management, data & analytics, personalization, and cloud-agility.

Drawing expertise from its 15+ years of experience, Ranosys has been awarded the Adobe Practice Growth Partner of the Year, Adobe Commerce Commercial Partner of the Year, and Delivery Quality Solution Partner of the Year recognitions for its industry-leading implementation and consulting solutions. It has also been published as a success story for corporate website migration to Adobe Experience Manager and solving marketing automation challenges with Adobe Marketo Engage.

Event Details

Date: Tue, Mar 26, 2024 to Thu, Mar 28, 2024

Venue: The Venetian, 3355 S Las Vegas Blvd, Las Vegas | Online

Booth Number: 1296F

About Ranosys

Ranosys is a 3X award-winning Adobe Gold Partner and global digital transformation agency empowering enterprises to craft engaging experiences through next-gen digital-first solutions. With 15+ years of experience in strategic digital innovation, we deliver unparalleled services across Adobe Commerce, Adobe Experience Manager, Marketo Engage, Adobe Campaign, Adobe Analytics and Target. Our agile approach involves integrating our technical proficiency with the cutting-edge capabilities of the Adobe ecosystem to achieve maximum ROI in minimum time-to-market. Our proven expertise has resulted in successful implementations for leading brands.

Know more: https://www.ranosys.com/platforms/adobe-services/

Learn more about Ranosys - Adobe alliance.

What are the use cases of GenAI CRM for my industry?

LET’S TALK

Maintaining fruitful customer relationships has always been the cornerstone of every enterprise’s success story, which is why over 91% of organizations today leverage a customer relationship management (CRM) platform to attain this goal. However, as the world keeps on spinning a web of new technological advancements, such as the much-lured Generative AI (GenAI), it is only usual for enterprises to expect such capabilities in their native CRM and to reap the productivity and efficiency-driven benefits of it. And this is where the trend of Generative AI in CRM emerges.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, generative AI is the successor of artificial intelligence and has been the talk of the town since ChatGPT. Although AI has been a part of CRM for some years, its next generation of GenAI is said to take over redundant tasks, giving you the creative freedom to indulge in some critical and thought-driven strategies or processes.

Here we discuss what generative AI CRM is, the opportunities surrounding CRM and artificial intelligence, and explore more about Salesforce generative AI CRM.

What is generative AI CRM?

To understand the phrase, ‘generative AI CRM’, let’s break it down into two most palpable terms, ‘generative AI’, and ‘CRM’.

Generative AI employs artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms to generate text, images, audio, etc. that might seem new; however, it is a summarized version of the existing data without repeating any unique artifact of the original data. Unlike the metaverse, generative AI gained tremendous popularity across industrial verticals owing to its prowess around accelerated content creation, problem-solving, and the ability to produce diverse outputs. The big leap came when early-2023 Microsoft and Salesforce announced the enabling of generative AI to their CRM technologies and other products and services.

Traditional CRMs, predating the GenAI-era, helped businesses in effortlessly managing customer interactions, tracking sales leads, and facilitating marketing campaigns. However, the modern Generative AI CRM integrates the power of GenAI with traditional CRM capabilities to result in a solution that can analyze large customer datasets in mere seconds, provide novel insights, which otherwise would have been overlooked, enable predictive forecasting, and use that information to hyper-personalize customer interactions and experiences.

What are the benefits of Generative AI in CRM?

Undeniably, Generative AI CRM reduces the friction of going from an idea to a first draft, as said by Salesforce. Instead of spending hours on mundane tasks, Generative AI in CRM sifts and scours through the data in seconds, thus boosting productivity, efficiency and driving customer relationships. Other benefits of this CRM artificial intelligence includes:

#1: Creative freedom to take up more high-value tasks

Generative AI CRM frees you from the redundant tasks to focus more on strategic undertakings. Whether it is scouring through the available private and public data to generate actionable insights to eliminate repetitive tasks and speeding up things, generative AI CRM enhances productivity and allows you to concentrate on nurturing client relationships and creating tailor-made solutions. Overall, such CRM artificial intelligence tells you exactly what your prospects desire and customers needs, so that your front-office battalion can create richer client experiences and engage pitches to close more deals faster.

#2: ‘AI you can trust’ as quoted by Salesforce

With the declining acceptance of third-party cookies, it is no wonder that customers are on their toes while sharing their personal information, especially the concerns around how this information will be used. Needless to say, security and privacy will be the key tenants for generative AI CRM and amongst the long-standing guidelines of trusted AI. Although there are some generative AI models that employ publicly available data to generate insights, generative AI CRM utilizes a mix of public and private data while ensuring that the customer data is securely stored in the cloud. This blend makes generative AI CRM a trusted AI solution with optimal data utilization and uncompromised data privacy.

In fact, GenAI in CRM digests and learns from all your customer interactions via emails, phone conversations, meeting transcripts, chat messages, etc., (information that is made available to you by your customers) to gain insights into your customers, summarize past conversations, and details tasks that you must act on.

#3: Deliver hyper-personalized customer experiences

The struggle to deliver hyper-personalized experiences is real for merchants. Even when you have a complete knowledge of your customers, where they are on their buying journey, brands find it challenging to deliver differentiated customer experiences. Generative AI in CRM will sift through opportunities, key exchanges, message feeds, and cases to provide you real-time and contextual insights about each customer. Your front-office staff can use this knowledge to formulate targeted pitches, prepare for meetings, nail down current bottlenecks to repurpose as key talking points, etc. Moreover, generative AI CRM will even recommend follow-up actions with detailed forecasts, further deepening customer trust and relationships.

#4: Practice modern automation

Unlike traditional automation models that focus only on repetitive tasks, modern systems in-built with automation capabilities push these boundaries further. Generative AI CRM systems like Salesforce turn static workflows into dynamic ones, learning along the way. Rather than executing pre-defined actions, this new CRM artificial intelligence identifies potential bottlenecks, suggests process enhancements, and even refines strategies in real-time. With such capabilities, enterprises can not only operate at peak efficiency but even stay agile and focussed towards changing market conditions.

#5: Accomplish the true business value of digital transformation

Achieving digital transformation is easier said than done, especially with ever-evolving technologies and changing market dynamics. Implementing generative AI CRM takes you one step forward towards achieving digital transformation. As it studies datasets, generative AI CRM also generates insights in real-time, forecasts trends, and even suggests tailored strategies and recommendations based on every customer’s behavior, needs, and preferences. This way, enterprises can stay ahead of market changes and customer needs and strengthen their market positioning dynamically.

Use cases of generative AI in CRM

Although the use cases surrounding generative AI in CRM are immense and bountiful, it is imperative for enterprises to explore the right use cases to invest in. Undoubtedly, generative AI when paired with traditional CRM (packed with AI capabilities) will take over the burden of daily mundane operations across departments, enterprises need to prepare a generative AI CRM roadmap that fulfills the guidelines of privacy, trust, security, and ethical usage of data.

That said, the following are some use cases that can be explored in a generative AI CRM platform.

#1: First-party data collection

One of the biggest selling points of a generative AI CRM system is that it marries private and public data to suggest actionable insights without charting across the heated territory of data security and privacy. As people say less and less yes to third-party cookies, it becomes challenging for merchants to obtain customer data from accurate sources and use it for hyper-personalized experiences.

As mentioned above, generative AI CRM employs both private and public data to provide actionable insights. Generative AI when integrated with your CRM helps in auto-populating fields without spending hours in extensive research. Once a company name is entered into a CRM field, generative AI CRM can scour the database to provide details like possible connections, latest company news, number of employees, locations served, primary focus, any challenges or bottlenecks they’re currently facing, draft first email, etc. Such data collection assists sales and service teams to boost operational efficiency by reducing time-to-value, enhancing the productivity of your teams, and recommending the right outreach strategies and next steps.

#2: Personalized customer support to close more queries and effectively answer requests

Generative AI CRM comes in real-handy for your service reps. Such powerful platforms consume data such as email transcripts with the customer, message exchanges, phone conversations, buying behavior, preferences, most-viewed content on the internet, and their entire customer journey to help you improve response times and close more queries. Tools like Salesforce Einstein AI reads the magnanimous datasets to suggest solutions that your customers desire. They can even craft the best reply for you to send to your customers, while making sure that it doesn’t sound bot-ty. Generative AI CRM can even function as knowledge bases for you to analyze customer feedback and improve your sales and service responses.

#3: Automating lead nurturing and qualification

Generative CRM artificial intelligence can be leveraged in lead generation and qualification. For sales, generative AI CRM can help analyze and respond to lead inquiries in a contextual manner, taking into consideration their current requirements, bottlenecks faced, and solutions expected. This way, sales people can engage in hyper-personalized lead interactions, conduct more fruitful conversations, and eventually close more leads. As for marketing, generative AI for CRM helps in strategizing highly personalized lead nurturing campaigns backed by data-driven content, thus boosting conversion rates. Moreover, the integration of such generative AI algorithms to your CRM result in real-time lead behavior analysis to result in more targeted engagement.

As for sales-marketing combined, generative artificial intelligence in CRM can even work for unstructured datasets, suggesting information to enhance lead quality, providing more insights into preferences and expectations to tailor messages and strategies (even generating full-fledged content) accordingly.

#4: Improved predictive intelligence and sales forecasting

Sales and marketing have always struggled with predictive lead generation or forecasting to improve an existing pipeline. The generative algorithms deeply analyze historical data sets and compile them with current market situation and consumer behavior to generate dynamic and predictive sales forecasts. Even small macroeconomic changes are studied by the CRM artificial intelligence tools to generate accurate estimates such as the lead generation numbers or the likelihood of a customer completing a purchase. Such predictive analytics can also be levered for strategic planning, hiring, resource allocation, etc. to maximize ROI and productivity levels.

#5: AI-powered marketing activities

For marketing, there are ample opportunities available with a generative AI CRM. From designing visually appealing and personalized ad campaigns to tailored messages and social media posts, artificial intelligence in the CRM system nails down where exactly the marketing team must direct their efforts and improves all associated strategies. For example, it can create a targeted social media campaign for your eCommerce stores, targeting specific audiences based on their interests, buying behavior, liked products, amount spent in a given timeframe, purchase history, wishlisted products, etc. It helps forecast sales, allocates the right budget to a marketing activity, and even recommends strategies to boost brand loyalty and overall revenue, all in real-time.

#6: Stay agile and adaptable to changing trends

To survive and thrive in today’s dynamic and competitive ecosystem, enterprises need to be watchful towards changing market conditions and evolving customer demands. Generative AI CRM is a great tool to ensure this agility and adaptability. Across departments, generative CRM artificial intelligence automates tasks, reads through detailed transcripts to suggest actionable points, creates engaging content, drafts effective marketing campaigns, provides customer support responses, and assists sales with everything they need to close a deal.

Its algorithms keep on digesting and learning through market trends and customer demands to tailor sales, marketing, service, and other action pathways accordingly, improving adaptability, scalability, and agility in the long run.

#7: Streamlining content creation

Lastly, let’s talk about the much popularized role of generative AI, content creation. Oftentimes, sales, marketing, and service find themselves spending abundant time to draft the perfect pitch, marketing message, or response. Generative AI when embedded in CRM systems helps you break free from it. From scripting an entire contextual email, spearheading marketing outreach ideation, to suggesting a desirable response to a customer query and identifying the patterns which would otherwise be overlooked, generative AI takes away the manual indulgence from your CRM, empowering enterprises with limitless automation, actionable insights, and the ability to accomplishing digital transformation the ‘smart’ way.

Salesforce generative AI CRM: Einstein leads the way

The talks around generative AI technology can’t be concluded without talking about the world’s first generative AI CRM, Salesforce Einstein AI. Across, sales, service, marketing, commerce, IT, and more; Salesforce generative AI CRM – Einstein delivers AI-driven powerful capabilities to transform every aspect of customer experiences.

While Salesforce talked about their plans for generative AI technology in-depth during Dreamforce 2023, Einstein AI unites Salesforce proprietary AI models with generative AI to allow the free flow of data once created in any app across other Salesforce applications and third-party systems. With Salesforce Data Cloud embedded to the Einstein AI platform (now called the Einstein 1 Data Cloud) across Salesforce’s metadata framework will result in automation with dynamic data from Data Cloud – real-time data, and data from various different systems to build AI applications, automate data flows, and analyze data at scale.

Here is how Salesforce generative AI CRM – Einstein will look like in action.

For Sales: Generative AI CRM in sales will enhance lead generation, analyze sales data to predict future trends, and craft personalized messaging. It will even explore the most updated information for a company to improve targeting, draft sales pitches to boost lead conversion rate, and provide you with the latest company news and stats to help prepare for a meeting.
For Marketing: Generative CRM artificial intelligence will design visually-appealing, personalized ads, and outreach campaigns to target audiences based on their purchase history, browsing, and preferences. It can even build predictive models to forecast buying behavior and create effective campaigns.
For Service: Salesforce generative AI CRM empowers service reps with details they require while attending to a customer query, even crafting the best reply. This results in improved customer satisfaction, higher number of closed support requests, and boosts brand loyalty.
For Commerce: From developing more effective pricing strategies and promotional offers to AI-driven product recommendations, higher upselling and cross-selling opportunities, generative AI Salesforce CRM helps you personalize experiences for every customer in real-time.

Going forward with Salesforce generative AI CRM

While there are several other use cases of generative AI in Salesforce, it is well-understood that generative AI CRM is the future. The only thing left for now is to understand how to leverage this technology to improve your enterprise’s KPIs. As world’s #1 CRM technology, Salesforce leads the generative AI tech race and is most preferred by global enterprises across verticals.

While the prospect of implementing Salesforce generative AI CRM is overwhelming, with trusted consultants and a Salesforce Partner by your side, you can soon turn it to reality. As an award-winning Salesforce Crest (Gold) Partner, Ranosys has been following every trend related to generative AI and has been assisting enterprises with adopting, optimizing, and scaling their Salesforce CRM systems. Reach out to us if you wish to discuss generative AI CRM in great detail.

Know more about Salesforce generative AI CRM.

Craft engaging eCommerce experiences.

The past year has been overwhelming for eCommerce, especially with the widespread adoption of AI and the talks around hyper-personalized experiences. That, combined with the continued dynamicity of the eCommerce landscape and technologies shaping the market requires merchants to stay on their toes. From increased adoption of GenAI in eCommerce to hybrid commerce and community engagement, B2C and B2B eCommerce trends 2024 cover both the consumer and technology side of the market.

Learn what 2024 eCommerce trends are being predicted by experts.

Trend #1: Generative AI in eCommerce

2023 was the year for Generative AI and the eCommerce industry did not shy away from reflecting and exploring on the benefits of GenAI for it. In fact, we have an entire resource based on the ways merchants can use generative AI in eCommerce here. It is also why this trend sits on the top of the list owing to its ever-growing use cases. From providing product recommendations exactly how your customers desire and running targeted marketing campaigns based on a user’s preferences, interests, and behavior to optimizing product prices to close more sales and improving inventory and supply chain management, generative AI in eCommerce boasts several ways in which it results in increased profits and sales.

The use of generative AI in eCommerce is a significant B2C and B2B eCommerce trend 2024 and will have a strong impact on shaping the eCommerce experiences today and beyond.

Trend #2: MACH (Microservices, API-led, Composable & Headless) commerce

Acing the list of the 2024 eCommerce trends is MACH commerce. MACH architecture supports building specific business functionalities that can be managed independently. The frontend and backend utilities are connected through various APIs, enabling them to run as decoupled units. Such a headless commerce architecture allows the freedom to modify the frontend store as per customer expectations, prevailing trends, and market dynamics for the ever-increasing number of touchpoints without being influenced by the backend system. This mutual exclusion between the frontend and the backend lets the customers access the eCommerce store via various channels like desktops, laptops, tablets, mobile phones, and other digital devices.

The advantages of MACH commerce are seamless frontend and backend development, flexibility to scale, easy customization for enriched customer experience, improved security and enhanced speed during peak traffic, all of which make a perfect fit for competitive brands.

Several eCommerce platforms like Adobe Commerce, commercetools and Salesforce Commerce Cloud have been revolutionizing the eCommerce ecosystem via their MACH commerce solutions.

Trend #3: Balancing personalization with privacy

Marketers need to strike a balance between personalizing customer experiences to the core while understanding the right to privacy of their customers as well. As eCommerce evolves, customers are quite concerned with how their personal data is being utilized and would continue to share less of it in the coming year. Therefore, when we talk of eCommerce trend 2024, it is imperative to understand the changing face of retail in the wake of increasing prominence of privacy concerns and regulations.

With the demise of third-party tracking cookies, merchants need to rely more on direct information provided by customers and leverage those to deliver hyper-personalized experiences across channels and devices.

Technologies that can be employed to achieve this goal include customer data platforms (CDPs) to obtain consent-driven first-party data. Adobe’s CDP and Salesforce Data Cloud are two platforms that can be utilized by retailers to collect customer’s permission on the data being collected, strategize segmented marketing campaigns based on it, and drive customer trust to guarantee long-term loyalty and high-value purchases.

Trend #4: Driving a unified and omnichannel commerce experience

Unified commerce has been an important consideration for retailers and will be a larger part of customer experiences and eCommerce trends in 2024. It involves integrating all sales channels – online, in-store, social store, mobile apps, marketplaces, etc.) to deliver seamless shopping experiences across channels. This use of diverse channels for buying products and services necessitates retailers to be omnipresent and deliver an omnichannel customer experience.

Unified commerce involves using CDPs to collect first-party data for personalized interactions, loyalty programs, and reward points, making them accessible across channels. Sometimes retailers provide additional discounts on the products if customers buy them from a mobile app instead of a website. In a different scenario, customers might add a few products to the shopping cart via a social store after being presented with a sponsored ad or an irresistible offer. Therefore, retailers must offer an omnichannel customer experience across the evolving number of intersection points and devices.

For a seamless shopping experience, it should be easy for customers to continue shopping on the new device, right from where they had left in a different channel. The shopping cart must be updated to reflect changes made in one device onto the other device. Also, the resolution, image clarity, quantity, color, size, payment options, and discounts offered on the products should be consistent across different breakpoints. And this is exactly what omnichannel commerce offers!

Oasis, a leading clothing brand, based out of the UK, offers its customers an exquisite way to shop from their websites, mobile app, social store, and more. On top of it, customers can view the same product at their convenience across several devices and platforms, thus offering them an omnichannel customer experience.

Trend #5: Augmented Reality (AR) commerce for real-time product visualization

Augmented Reality or AR has changed customer product interactions. Getting a virtual tour of the product gallery and interacting with the 3D product model is a novel experience. With AR, businesses can create interactive and life-size 3D models for different products and therefore, will be a significant eCommerce trends for 2024. With these realistic models, customers can visualize how the products will look and fit in their homes and offices. A shopping experience like this will certainly be engaging and endearing for customers.

Augmented Reality (AR) commerce is emerging as one of the major trends in eCommerce that can boost product sales, provide an enriching customer experience, increase repeat customer rates, reinforce customer satisfaction, and hike the average revenue per online shopper. The farfetched augmented reality is now an actual reality. It gives customers the pleasure of shopping for a product using a digital medium that is equally good as shopping in a retail outlet.

The above example displays a sofa as shown with the IKEA Place app via Augmented Reality. For a long time, IKEA has been employing bleeding-edge technologies like AR to help shoppers choose products with utmost accuracy like they would do while shopping at a physical store.

The IKEA Place App allows consumers to view their furniture preferences in their homes at different placements and color variations. The best part about this app: it scans the room to identify its dimensions and then shows options that would fit with 98% accuracy. Not only does this app increase online sales and conversions but it also reduces returns by a whopping margin.

Trend #6: Prompt and multi-channel customer support to boost customer satisfaction and retention

Positive customer service can make or break a brand. And with the growing number of channels, it becomes paramount to interact with your customers across each and every one of them. If shoppers interact with you on social media via DMs, then you have to entertain them across. In fact, a study by Intercom discovered that 60% of customers prefer communicating with business via texts or DMs. Moreover, HubSpot’s consumer trends report states that there is a 45% YoY increase in social media users sending DMs to avail customer service and WebEx states that 72% of customers are more likely to buy online if their questions are answered in real-time.

This is enough reason to understand the growing importance of direct customer service and how it will be in demand as one of the 2024 eCommerce trends. The importance of real-time communication with human agents cannot be overstated in today’s evolving digital commerce ecosystem. Customers want prompt and easy access to satisfactory customer service via a channel that’s most convenient for them. And to boost customer retention numbers, merchants will have to adopt technologies, tools, and processes that provide direct customer service in 2024 and beyond.

It stands to reason that this trend will only grow as social shopping becomes more accepted, so in 2024, customers will likely demand more of this real-time communication with brands — and they want it to happen wherever it’s most convenient for them.

Trend #7: Sustainable and safe eCommerce solutions

In eCommerce, sustainability is related to the justified use of resources while facilitating the customers with desired products and services. When it comes to shopping, whether in physical stores or on eCommerce websites, a lot of trash is produced in the form of unsold products, damaged goods, returned orders, actual physical space that runs on electricity, undelivered packages, and more. Not using the available resources fruitfully contributes to severe issues like global warming, piling up of non-degradable waste material, and climate change.

It is projected that by 2025, the global eCommerce plastic packaging waste might rise to 4533 million pounds. In fact, McKinsey states that sustainable and recyclable/reusable packaging is one of the four packaging eCommerce trends 2024 predicted to grow.

Sustainable and safe eCommerce solutions offer eco-friendly and reusable packaging, sell environment-friendly products, educate their customers about the benefits of a sustainable future, and follow the principle of 3Rs – reduce, reuse and recycle. Building a sustainable eCommerce platform for restoring the ecological balance will be one of the eCommerce trends for 2024.

For example, H&M has been giving out shopping boxes that can be turned into clothes hangers. Moreover, these shopping bags are made from paper that is 80% recycled, unlike the traditional bags available. Considering the audience group of the brand, it includes shoppers between 18-35 of age, concerned about the environment, and eager to indulge with brands offering sustainable packaging solutions.

Boox, aims to make shipping eco-friendly and sustainable with its reusable packaging solutions for brands. Single-use packaging has been a global concern for the eCommerce industry and such brands are working to make shipping green and reduce its environmental impact.

Across B2C and B2B eCommerce trends 2024, a sustainable approach will motivate customers to indulge in more of such solutions and cause a ripple effect throughout the industry. Brands can even incentivize customers that opt for such services, further driving this eco-friendly initiative forward.

Trend #8: Voice commerce and conversational commerce

A part of customization and personalization is offering customers to browse the products listed on an eCommerce website via voice commands. Another aspect of elevating customer experience is when customers can chat with bots or other automated messaging apps to easily resolve their queries. Voice commerce has also enabled customers to search for products in different languages and dialects also playing a pivotal role in serving differently-abled customers.

Amazon India now facilitates customers to search for a localized product in their local language by using voice commands on their website as well as their app. This type of technology is more than just innovation; it touches the heart of customers to the core and leaves a profound impact.

The above example is from Nestle that launched the GoodNes Alexa skill to offer a visual voice-led browsing experience to its customers. This feature helps coffee lovers in enhancing their coffee-making skills via voice and visual guidance. GoodNes Alexa functions as a visual guide for customers and can be easily accessed on Safari or Chrome (both web and mobile).

Trend #9: Prioritizing mobile commerce

Over 75% of customers prefer to shop with their mobile devices, then desktop and the last, via tablets. With the growing prominence around mobile commerce, it is imperative to build an eCommerce site that prioritizes responsive and optimized m-shopping experiences.

Packed with facial and/or fingerprint technology, one-click checkout, high image resolution, and easy payment options, investing in m-shopping will result in increased orders placed and revenue numbers.

For example, Starbucks created a Mobile Order and Pay app, and by 2021, 26% of its orders were paid via mobile.

Trend #10: BOPIS (Buy Online, Pick up In-Store) solutions

BOPIS retail is one of the best retail strategies in the digital commerce ecosystem. It is one of the latest ecommerce trends 2024 that focuses on building a customer-centric shopping experience. It gives customers the benefit of browsing and selecting a product from the comfort of their homes and getting the product as per their convenience without waiting for the traditional delivery system.

This eCommerce scheme is favorable for customers and retailers. Customers can shop anything from anywhere and anytime. They do not have to wait for the delivery person to receive their desired product. They also save on the shipping cost and get the option of paying for the product only after picking it up. Customers can check the product while picking it up and return it if the piece is damaged or unsuitable. Also, the risk of the product getting stolen after delivery becomes zero and cart abandonment rates become negligible.

With BOPIS, retailers have also seen incredible business growth, new upselling and cross-selling opportunities, increased sales, reduced shipping costs, and trouble-free inventory management.

The above example is from Petco, a pet food retailer, which, thanks to BOPIS solutions, saw an increase in their overall online sales by 48% in 2018. The best part about BOPIS: customers are more likely to purchase additional products when picking up their orders in-store.

Trend #11: Renewed focus towards subscription models

Reports suggest that the subscription eCommerce model is projected to grow beyond $450 billion by 2025, previously at $15 billion in 2019. When associated with a heavy value exchange, subscription models are a great way to keep your customers coming back again and make the most of their money. However, only having a monetary attribute attached to an eCommerce subscription model will not do; it has to offer more perks and offers to keep your customers hooked.

An example to consider here is Amazon Prime that provides benefits like free shipping, one-day delivery, video streaming, exclusive and early access to deals, etc. in exchange for a monthly/annual subscription.

Trend #12: BNPL (Buy Now, Pay Later) solutions

BNPL has changed the way B2B and B2C eCommerce functioned a couple of years ago. This payment option enables the customers to make a purchase and facilitate the payment via a third party that pays on their behalf. Of course, customers need to register their details with a third party that takes care of the payment. Once the payment is processed, the customers get their product, and they repay the amount to the third party within a fixed period. This way, customers don’t have to pay for the product immediately and can do so in fixed installments.

This secure payment solution prevents customers from sharing their confidential financial information on digital retail platforms or even saving their cards for future purchases. The BNPL-empowered one-tap payment option gives customers the liberty to pay the amount in EMIs, so the burden of making the full payment in one go is further minimized.

Retailers benefit from this scheme as they receive the complete payment on time, which boosts their sales, grows revenue, and promotes their business comprehensively. Realizing the promising future that BNPL can provide, Atome, hoolah, Rely, Openpay, and many other fintechs are successfully offering this feature to their customers. BNPL is thus one of the significant and global trends in eCommerce.

The above example is from Boohoo, a fast-fashion US giant offering four different BNPL solutions. When you click on the product page, you find all the three BNPL options displayed under the description section. Of course, each BNPL offering comes with a different set of terms and conditions, but still, all of them allow you to pay in installments comfortably.

Implementing 2024 eCommerce trends with an agile and robust strategy

Unsurprisingly, eCommerce is leading the fourth wave of the industrial revolution. These upcoming trends in eCommerce industry pave the way for the innovative future of online shopping and state how emerging and bleeding-edge techs can disrupt the digital platform and benefit the customers and the retailers. The integration of these major trends in the eCommerce industry also ensures cyber secure and safe data governance practices that can only be used to boost customer satisfaction.

By incorporating these latest eCommerce trends 2024, businesses can offer competitive solutions and improve customers’ shopping experiences. Talk to our experts to evaluate how to stay agile and relevant in today’s dynamic eCommerce ecosystem.

Ready. Set. Go.

A customer-centric eCommerce platform is just a consultation away.

What Adobe Commerce can do for your eCommerce business.

More than 200,000 sites run their stores using Adobe (Magento) Commerce. This number proves the mettle of Adobe Commerce in the eCommerce ecosystem and how it is the platform of choice for several global merchants and retailers. A leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant, Adobe Commerce is known for its flexibility, scalability, and cutting-edge functionalities that help deliver personalized shopping experiences to every customer across channels. However, ever since Adobe renamed Magento’s enterprise version to Adobe Commerce and launched Adobe Commerce on cloud infrastructure, merchants have only wondered about the difference between the two.

From April 2021, three distinct versions are available from Adobe: Magento Open Source, Adobe Commerce On-Premise, and Adobe Commerce Cloud. If you want to explore Magento Open Source vs Adobe Commerce On-Premise, check out our resource here.

In this blog, we will discuss Adobe Commerce On-Premise and Adobe Commerce Cloud, and when you should migrate from on-premise to the cloud version.

Breaking down the on-premise and cloud terminology

The practice of using ‘the cloud’ has become rampant across the SaaS and PaaS systems. To be honest, cloud has both technical advantages and a marketing appeal attached to it. However, many merchants do not completely understand how on-premise and cloud are different and when to invest in either of these.

On-premise eCommerce platform has always been a popular option for merchants, wherein, store owners had to rely on a dedicated IT team, a server, and a scalable storage capacity to ensure the smooth running of the eStores. Then came the cloud-based eCommerce platforms, where merchants could break free from this headache and instead rely on a cloud solution to do all the heavy lifting.

Here is a basic breakdown between an on-premise and a cloud-based eCommerce platform.

Attribute	On-premise	Cloud
Location of server	Necessitates server hardware within your business premises, preferably at your business HQ location.	Much like storing your data on the cloud, there is no physical presence (at least within your business premises) for a server.
Setup and configuration	Requires manual setup and configuration of hardware and software.	Cloud-based eCommerce platforms offer several off-the-shelf solutions where you can choose which solutions you need from the widely available pre-made products, empowering you to easily set up your eCommerce stores and the host takes care of the rest.
Maintenance and management	From maintenance and storage expansion to security issues & patching and platform updates, with an on-premise eCommerce platform, you have to take care of all these aspects to ensure the smooth running of your online stores.	With cloud-based eCommerce platforms, you can break free from worrying about maintenance, storage expansion, security, updates, etc. The only concerning factor is to stay current with your payment plan.
Costs	Involves costs for server hardware, software licenses, IT teams, and integration capabilities. Costs can quickly spiral up.	Typically involves a subscription-based model with predictable, often lower, costs.
Data security	Preferred for businesses in highly-regulated industries for greater control over data.	Data security is managed by the host, and it may be perceived as less controllable.
Scalability	Scalability may be limited by the capacity of your on-premise hardware.	Offers more flexibility for scaling resources up or down based on demand.
Accessibility and mobility	Access is typically limited to your business premises unless additional configurations are made.	Accessible from anywhere with an internet connection, promoting mobility and remote work.
Upgrades and new features	You need to plan and execute upgrades and feature additions manually.	Regular updates and new features are often provided seamlessly by the host.
Downtime	Downtime may occur during maintenance or hardware failures.	Hosts often guarantee high availability and minimal downtime.

To succeed in this competitive digital landscape, you must build solutions to meet scalable demand rises and pivot as customer needs change. In response, retailers and merchants are making informed decisions when choosing the right platform to build their stores. This usually means moving to the cloud because running free versions like Magneto open source can be time-consuming, and on-premises can be costly and difficult to scale, often requiring a significant investment in infrastructure as well as IT staff to deploy Open Source software with new releases, upgrades, and security patches. When merchants opt to initiate or transition their business to Adobe Commerce, the subsequent choice they face is whether to select Adobe Commerce On-Premise option or Adobe Commerce Cloud.

Here we will discuss the differences between Adobe Commerce On-Premise and Adobe Commerce Cloud when you should consider switching to Adobe Commerce Cloud, and the business value of upgrading to Adobe Commerce Cloud.

#1. Adobe Commerce On-Premise

Adobe Commerce On-Premise presents a robust platform designed to empower eCommerce businesses with exceptional flexibility and scalability. It equips retailers to effectively oversee, personalize, and optimize commerce experiences across various touchpoints and customer journeys. Tailored to meet the demands of mid-size and enterprise-level enterprises, this paid on-premises solution from Adobe offers comprehensive features like live search, product recommendations, customer segmentation, visual merchandising, B2B capabilities, cutting-edge marketing tools, intuitive dashboards, gift card management, content staging, customer loyalty tools, and more. Also, Adobe Commerce streamlines the management of essential aspects like checkout processes, payment methods, shopping experiences, and marketing endeavors, all within a unified interface.

When contemplating a transition from Magento open-source to Adobe Commerce On-Premise, you gain the advantage of choice and a wealth of features. However, it’s essential to keep in mind that on-premises solutions also entail challenges, including additional hosting platform costs and associated risks.

#2. Adobe Commerce Cloud

Adobe Commerce Cloud, formerly known as Magento Commerce Cloud, stands as an enterprise-grade, self-hosted eCommerce platform that boasts a wealth of powerful, ready-to-use features. What sets Adobe Commerce Cloud apart is its inclusion of AWS hosting and Azure, features that are not part of the standard Adobe Commerce license. This platform essentially combines the comprehensive functionalities of Adobe Commerce On-Premise with the advantages of cloud computing, underpinned by a cloud-native and highly extensible architecture.

Adobe Commerce Cloud streamlines the entire eCommerce setup, offering hosting infrastructure, servers, email services, SSL certificates, and more, all within a secure and reliable self-hosting environment. Furthermore, Adobe Commerce Cloud seamlessly integrates with Adobe Experience Cloud, including Adobe Target, Adobe Sensei, Adobe Analytics, and Adobe Experience Manager, to ensure top-tier customer experiences, efficient digital asset management, and dynamic content personalization. Businesses that opt for Adobe Commerce Cloud benefit from heightened agility, fully integrated systems, and advanced features like headless commerce through PWA Studio, making it a prime choice for a comprehensive eCommerce solution.

Now you have understood the basic difference between the on-premise and Adobe Commerce Cloud edition, let’s cover the key differences between the two eCommerce platforms:

Key differences between Adobe Commerce On-Premise and Adobe Commerce Cloud

Features	Adobe Commerce On-Premise	Adobe Commerce Cloud
License Costs	Adobe Commerce On-Premise license costs are tiered and based on Gross Merchandise Value and features. It ranges between $22,000 - $125,000	Adobe Commerce Cloud license cost is also tiered and based on GMV and features. It ranges between $40,000-$190,000.
Hosting	Adobe Commerce On-Premises allows you to choose hosting from a third-party while providing features of Adobe Commerce.	Adobe Commerce Cloud is a cloud-hosted and managed solution; the license software covers the costs. Adobe takes care of the infrastructure, server maintenance, security, and upgrades, allowing you to focus on your business.
Features	Adobe Commerce has several built-in advanced features, including reusable dynamic blocks, business intelligence dashboards, advanced marketing tools, content staging & preview, customer loyalty tools, visual merchandising, product recommendations, AI-driven live search, customer segmentation, BOPIS, gift cards, and more. Most of the extensions on Commerce Marketplace are free with Adobe Commerce On-Premise edition.	Adobe Commerce Cloud includes features of Adobe Commerce along with advanced features that enhance shopping experiences like performance monitoring tools, Cloud onboarding Magento support, Cloud availability SLA, DDoS services and Fastly WAF, streamlined updates, and testing worldwide availability.
Scalability	Adobe Commerce is designed to keep your scalability needs in mind. It easily supports mid-to-enterprise business needs with large & complex catalogs, high transaction volumes, multiple storefronts, and peak traffic.	Adobe Commerce Cloud offers a scalable solution that brings all the benefits of Adobe Commerce On-Premise as a platform. Its infrastructure monitors your applications and can adjust capacity to maintain steady, predictable performance, and converting to cloud architecture helps to mitigate problems such as latency or large spikes in traffic. On scaled architecture, horizontal auto-scaling on the web tier is available for Adobe Commerce Cloud customers.
Security	In Adobe Commerce, on-premises merchants are fully responsible for system security. Adobe Commerce has features like a Read-only file system, two-factor authentication, password managers, malware scans, a site-wide analysis tool for commerce, and enable and verify settings for admin actions logging. This reduces the common vulnerabilities of security breaches.	With Adobe Commerce Cloud, merchants are only responsible for application security, such as platform patches and extension upgrades. In Adobe Commerce Cloud, you can audit all admin user account access, enable advanced multi-factor authentication (MFA) controls, preserve critical logs, and review security upgrades. Adobe Commerce Cloud complies with regulations and provides Fastly services to secure and optimize content delivery operations, SSL/TLS certificates, image optimization, and Content Delivery Network(CDN).
Support	Adobe Commerce On-Premises comes with proactive support solutions, a dedicated account manager, and technical assistance 24*7 to troubleshoot all store-related issues. You can also access Adobe Commerce Rapid Deployment Packages, making it easy to set up and launch any feature.	With Adobe Commerce Cloud, you gain access to a skilled team of expert developers who are dedicated to assisting you in maintaining and improving your online stores. They can provide ongoing technical support, ensuring your website is always up-to-date with the latest security patches and performance optimizations.
New Relic	Adobe Commerce On-Premise does not include New Relic capabilities.	Adobe Commerce Cloud includes access to New Relic to help manage, monitor, and troubleshoot your applications and infrastructure by collecting, viewing, and analyzing data. The cloud edition has three categories: New Relic, New Relic APM, New Relic infrastructure, and New Relic logs. You can track applications and transactions encountering slow responses, customer comments about issues with your site, applications with high transaction time, and traffic to transaction time.
Time to Market	Adobe Commerce consists of several leading-edge functionalities, all of which help deliver robust experiences but take longer than Adobe Commerce Cloud. With on-premises, you are responsible for setting up the infrastructure, installing and configuring the software, performing customizations, and managing server maintenance. This process can involve more time and effort.	Adobe Commerce Cloud provides a faster time to market as the cloud version offers a managed environment where Adobe takes care of the infrastructure setup and maintenance. The cloud platform is installed and configured, which allows you to focus on customizing and configuring your eCommerce site, reducing the time required for infrastructure management and initial setup and deployment.
Monitoring	With Adobe Commerce On-Premise, you are responsible for setting up and managing the monitoring infrastructure. You can choose from various monitoring tools and solutions available in the market, such as server monitoring tools, Application performance monitoring tools, or log monitoring setups based on your specific requirements and preferences.	Adobe Commerce Cloud offers built-in monitoring capabilities as part of the cloud-based solutions. Adobe monitors the infrastructure, server health, and overall performance and identifies any potential issues.
Performance	With Adobe Commerce On-Premise, you have more control over the performance optimization of your storefront. You can customize the infrastructure and server configurations to meet your specific performance requirements. However, ensuring optimal performance in an on-premise environment requires technical expertise and ongoing monitoring and optimization.	Adobe Commerce Cloud provides a managed infrastructure and server configurations to meet your business requirements. The Cloud edition manages to provide the underlying infrastructure, including server resources, load balancing, and caching mechanisms, to provide a high-performance environment for your eCommerce website. The cloud infrastructure is designed to handle fluctuations in traffic and ensure scalability during peak periods. This relieves you from the responsibility of infrastructure management and allows you to focus more on your business and customizing the eCommerce platform.
Fastly Integration	Adobe Commerce On-Premise does not facilitate Fastly integration by default. But you implement it for image optimization, caching capabilities or a CDN for static assets.	Adobe Commerce Cloud seamlessly integrates Fastly to launch content updates instantly, managing site traffic effortlessly, and elevating loading speed. Fastly's standout feature lies in its ability to leverage cached information to serve website pages, even personalized ones like shopping carts and product recommendations. As a result, users enjoy a smooth and responsive browsing experience, regardless of any potential delays in loading times.

The business value of upgrading to Adobe Commerce Cloud

The powerful capabilities of Adobe Commerce Cloud play a pivotal role in elevating the digital commerce presence of organizations. Adobe Commerce Cloud has helped enterprises win new business opportunities in highly competitive markets, unlock latent demand, and increase customers’ interest in their products. Whether it’s streamlining merchandising tasks, driving lead generation, executing effective marketing campaigns, or swiftly generating compelling content, Adobe Commerce Cloud has proven to be a game-changer.

According to research conducted by IDC, Adobe Commerce Cloud has enhanced conversion rates by more than 50%, significantly boosting mobile conversion rates and elevating the average order value by 5-10%. Moreover, bounce rates have substantially decreased 10-15%. Adobe Commerce Cloud empowers enterprises to craft distinctive shopping experiences tailored to their brand, accommodating various business models from direct-to-consumer (D2C) to business-to-business (B2B), all within a single scalable platform.

Adobe Commerce On-Premise vs Adobe Commerce Cloud: Which to choose?

The preference for cloud-based eCommerce applications over on-premises solutions is evident due to their significant advantages in internal processes and enhancing the digital customer experience. The shift from on-premises and cloud software has been marked, with the proportion projected to evolve from 38.9% in 2021 to 18.8% by 2026 for on-premises, while cloud solutions are expected to rise from 6.11% to 81.2%. This transformation underscores the importance of delivering personalized and engaging content and ensuring a high-performing and reliable eCommerce site.

Choosing the right eCommerce platform that is secure, scalable, reliable, and agile is crucial for businesses. Adobe Commerce Cloud emerges as the right choice, harnessing the advantages of contemporary cloud computing underpinned by a cloud-native and highly extensible architecture. It provides enterprise-grade scalability and availability, facilitating exceptional commerce experiences across various brands, sites, currencies, and global regions.

Additionally, Adobe Commerce Cloud offers robust functionality with the capacity for customization and seamless integration within the Adobe ecosystem. When considering a transition from Magento Commerce on-premise to Adobe Commerce Cloud, several key benefits come into play:

Customization: Adobe Commerce Cloud empowers you to tailor your eCommerce sites to suit your unique needs.
Managed iInfrastructure: Hosting, security, updates, and maintenance tasks are expertly handled by Adobe, allowing you to concentrate on your core business operations.
Development support: The platform provides an environment that eases development efforts and resources.
Cost efficiency: You can significantly reduce capital expenditures and ongoing costs.
Scalability: Benefit from improved scalability and elasticity.
Time-to-market: Experience accelerated time-to-market for your offerings.
Security and compliance: Enhanced security and compliance measures.
Source control: Managed source control for streamlined operations.
Operational insights: Gain transparency in operational insights.
Continuous development: Avail continuous integration and continuous development and deployment services.

If your organization lacks strong development operations or is unfamiliar with their Platform as a service (PaaS), retailers should switch to Adobe Commerce Cloud from on-premises.

The way forward with an Adobe Commerce Specialized Partner

Whether you want to upgrade from on-premise to Adobe Commerce Cloud or want to build an Adobe Commerce Cloud storefront, Ranosys can be your growth partner throughout the process. As an award-winning Adobe Gold Partner with a specialized Adobe Commerce badge, we have assisted several leading global brands upgrade from on-premise to Adobe Commerce Cloud.

We help you choose the right eCommerce platform.

How to build a content supply chain with Adobe

WE NEED MORE CONTENT! As a marketer, you’ve heard this innumerable times, but usually our understanding of it ends at more and more content production. While quality content production has become a differentiating feature in today’s ecosystem, most organizations struggle to produce engaging content at an accelerated rate and in voluminous quantities. Combined with the need for ‘hyper-personalization communication’ based strategic approach across industries functions like fuel to fire for marketing and creative professionals. The experience organizations most expect and end users desire has become a challenge (and opportunity), painfully felt by marketers.

On that note, Adobe states that the expected demand for content to drive marketing activities and campaigns, especially considering the personalization factor, will further grow 5X by 2024.

Now, there are two sides to this statement. First, this will require marketers to be at their toes, generating this tsunami of content and competing against it online. Second, to further accelerate the demand, quantity and quality of content, organizations will have to establish processes and leverage associated technologies to keep feeding this tight content pipeline.

Enter, digital content supply chain.

Just like your regular supply chain with suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, and customers; a digital content supply chain follows a similar approach.

Here we discuss how the content supply chain works and is the need of the hour and delve into Adobe content supply chain solution package to champion it.

What is a digital content supply chain?

Adobe states, “A digital content supply chain is the process that brings together people, tools, and workstreams to effectively plan, create, manage, and deliver content.” In the wake of dynamic customer demands around better and more personalized experiences at an increasingly faster pace, organizations (across verticals) need to deliver content right and at this moment than later.

A digital content supply chain once established and enforced, streamlines content planning, production, distribution, analysis, and optimization. Let’s break down its associated phases:

Planning: Here we define what content to create, the goals we’re trying to achieve with it, and specific KPIs to track post-delivery. We also explore the digital assets required, deploy internal and external teams involved, and lay out the tasks and responsibilities for everyone associated.
Production: This is where the actual magic happens. Marketers generate content and associated assets, all stored at a central location so that, with permission, users can access content in a self-service manner.
Distribution: This step involves delivering content across channels. Modern organizations leverage an automated headless digital experience management platform to ensure flexibility in content distribution. Moreover, this headless nature also results in seamless integrations with other composable content service providers to ensure that content delivery across any channel can be managed directly.
Performance Analysis: While the first three steps are what most marketers are accustomed with, performance analysis is where you gain insights into your content and if it reaches the right audience, engages them, and delivers the value proposition it was produced with. Again, Adobe provides tools for content analytics and empower you to optimize your future creative strategies accordingly. The ultimate goal is to gain a deeper understanding of content engagement, user needs, and go back to the production phase (called as optimization) of the operational model.
Optimization & Testing: This is where you hyper-personalize your marketing content and campaigns as per the insights gained in the previous phase and put them to work. Marketers can also leverage cutting-edge tools to test experiences to improve performance and engagement.
Scale & Grow: This bonus phase is how you expand across geographies and audiences. Once you have your content blueprint ready, it’s time to repurpose it and leverage APIs to scale across brands, regions, product lines, channels, and audiences.

Why is a content supply chain strategy so important?

Now that you have an understanding of what a digital content supply chain strategy actually means, it’s time to answer the next pressing question, why is this so important for my business?

Well, sure you have been generating content and it’s providing you with acceptable results, but, in the long run, you would need a model that streamlines and simplifies content production and helps you fulfill the increasing demand. To understand why you need a digital content supply chain strategy, here is what Adobe suggests:

70% of time is spent on non-core work, managing manual tasks in disparate systems across roles.
21% of creatives identified bottlenecks throughout the content process as a challenge to creating effective experiences.
31% of creatives and marketers say their top challenge is the inability to share assets with multiple stakeholders.

When you’re investing in any new digital experience management platform, it is usual to evaluate its ROI and improvements it will result in post deployment. Leveraging the Adobe solution package for content supply chain management will result in the following:

Gain control of content production. The entire process, from planning to optimization becomes highly organized, with everyone in your marketing team fully aware of their roles and responsibilities.
Streamlined cross-functional collaboration. With a digital content supply chain in practice, the marketing team can prioritize activities and convey the same to your creative team. From there, the creative team, along with a digital asset management (DAM) platform, can create, find, employ, update, or repurpose assets.
The production, approval, and distribution of assets accelerates, resulting in faster delivery of experiences. With a centralized DAM, everyone can access content and assets, reducing the friction between teams.
Automation is another advantage of a digital content supply chain. Leveraging dedicated tools, you can automate the content production and distribution process.
Lower content production costs and seamless scalability. A digital content supply chain strategy results in fewer mistakes and expensed resources. With a connected digital foundation ecosystem, you can effortlessly scale content production, as and when you need it.

Adobe DX Accelerator: Faster innovation and stronger digital foundation

As discussed, the key requisites of a digital content supply chain are:

A modern digital customer experience management platform for creation, management and delivery of content experiences faster
Powerful data analytics to understand customer behavior & preferences
Robust targeting and experience optimization to help deliver personalized experiences at scale
A cloud-native architecture to minimize security vulnerabilities and reliability issues and result in exceptional performance and consistency

Adobe DX Accelerator: Faster innovation and stronger digital foundation

The Adobe DX Accelerator helps you scale content creation and content supply chain management to support growth, deliver personalized experiences to drive conversion, and launch your unique experiences faster into the market. Along with tools like Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) Sites, Adobe Analytics, Adobe Target build a robust digital foundation that accomplishes your today’s needs and ensures consistent scalability for the future.

With Adobe DX Accelerator, you accomplish your business objectives of improved business agility and customer conversion, drive revenue growth, and enhanced operational efficiency to support scale and reduce costs; and digital objectives of accelerated content velocity and time to market for experiences, deliver data-driven, personalized digital experiences, and streamline content management on a scalable platform.

The following are of the modern digital experience use cases accomplished by the Adobe DX Accelerator:

CHALLENGE	SOLUTION
Outdated systems require heavy dependence on developer support to make changes and delays time to market for experiences.	Speed time to market for experiences with Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) Sites. Empower all to create, update, and publish experiences with user-friendly tools Reduce development efforts with out-of-the-box tools Automate manual tasks across the content lifecycle to drive efficiency
Personalization is difficult due to limited time/resources, lack of personalization tools, and poor customer data.	Increase conversion with personalized experiences, delivered by data-driven insights analyzed via Adobe Analytics. Gather insights to understand customer behaviors and preferences Create content variations for different audiences leveraging modular tools Personalize experiences using powerful testing and targeting tools
Rigid, clunky legacy systems do not provide teams the flexibility and agility to build experiences at scale.	Scale effortlessly with a flexible digital experience management platform from Adobe. Build and deliver experiences faster with powerful, comprehensive APIs Extend your tech stack Streamline workflows to support agile creation and delivery at scale
Legacy infrastructure slows content development processes and requires costly maintenance and upgrades.	Modernize with a strong cloud foundation Focus on innovating and not on product maintenance or upgrades Ensure exceptional performance and continuity Minimize security vulnerabilities and reliability issues

Adobe DX Accelerator capabilities to master the digital content supply chain

Every successful digital content supply chain requires a blueprint of its key capabilities and how it will result in a scalable and agile foundation. With the Adobe DX Accelerator, you can leverage leading Adobe Experience Cloud platforms such as Adobe Experience Manager (AEM), Adobe Analytics, and Adobe Target across all stages (beginner to advanced) of your digital transformation journey. The following are the key attributes of the Ranosys Adobe DX Accelerator and an understanding of how it will impact on your current content supply chain strategy.

Low Code to No Code Tools: Accelerate speed-to-market of engaging digital experiences. Empower non-tech users to create, modify, and publish content faster with agile tools. Enable developers to leverage low-code site creation tools to build faster while reducing development efforts.
Headless Delivery: Build and deliver experiences faster with powerful and robust APIs. Deliver content fragments in JSON format with GraphQL APIs. Integrate seamlessly with third-party tools or easily build custom extensions and integrations with serverless third-party extensibility framework.
AI-Powered Personalization: Measure and understand customer behavior faster with one-click Adobe Analytics integration and custom dashboards. Personalize and optimize experiences with robust targeting and A/B testing via Adobe Target.
Connected Insights: Combine the power of Adobe’s best-of-the-breed integrated applications to improve experiences based on customer data using robust analytics. This lays a strong digital foundation with Sites, Assets, Analytics & Target for effective digital marketing.
Modular Content: Streamline and scale content creation with a centralized Adobe AEM platform. Reuse content across pages, sites, brands, regions & channels to scale across multiple experiences and improve efficiency. Automate manual and repetitive tasks to boost productivity.
Cloud-Native Agility: Innovate faster and reduce maintenance with secure, cloud architecture. Gain regular access to the latest capabilities, security updates and performance enhancements from Adobe. Lower TCO with no product upgrades, hosting or network costs.

The business value of the Adobe DX Accelerator

As customers navigate a tech-driven landscape, they desire hyper-contextual experiences from brands to meet them where they are, engage them in a way they want, and deliver satisfactory results in a manner that requires the least effort from their end. To accomplish this, enterprises must be able to deliver intelligent content via a digital customer experience management platform by thoroughly understanding customer intentions and needs via data and leverage the right components to deliver it across channels.

On the enterprise level, marketers will have to componentize content to make it easily adjusted for different audiences, media, formats, channels, and devices. They will also need to ensure that the content is up-to-date, compliant, personalized, and easier to translate, localize, and modify in aggressively short timelines. This is where Adobe DX Accelerator digital experience management platform delivers immense business value.

As per an IDC Report, AEM Sites alone enables organizations to realize on annual average business value of $3.92 million per organization over a span of three years and a 348% three-year ROI by:

Making the creation and delivery of digital experiences more consistent and streamlined while accelerating time to market for new experiences
Empowering and increasing the productivity of employees responsible for the delivery of these digital experiences
Improving the digital experiences and engagement that is delivered by these organizations

Moreover, with AEM Sites :

Deliver a new brand or country site faster by 66%
Reduce implementation costs by 80%
Decrease time to create new pages by 10X
Increase efficiency of digital experience teams by 23%

And more.

The truth is, marketing organizations are always under pressure to accelerate the delivery of new digital experiences. They need to improve content reusability and consistency. They need actionable insights to guide them as they optimize experiences. They also need to facilitate better and more effective and efficient collaboration across departments. A modern digital experience management platform such as Adobe DX Accelerator helps here, by enabling cross-functional teams to automate and streamline the many workflows involved in creating, managing, and delivering digital experiences.

Key capabilities of Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) Sites

Adobe Experience Manager Sites empowers marketers and other content contributors to quickly and easily publish web and mobile experiences without relying on IT or developers. Key capabilities of Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) Sites include:

Multi-site management: AEM Sites gives organizations control over all the web and mobile properties, including sites, microsites, landing pages, and emails with integrated translation management and localization capabilities. AEM Sites reduces the amount of time and effort required to tailor experiences for different brands, geographies, markets, and customer segments, improving consistency and building brand value.
Responsive design: AEM Sites delivers fully responsive experiences across devices and browsers on PCs, mobile devices, tablets, digital signs, and other screens.
Mobile content management: AEM Sites enables marketers to push content, app updates, offers, and notifications to installed app experiences without needing to involve IT or the development team. This ensures that in-app experiences are kept up to date across web and mobile web experiences.
Ease of authoring for marketers and other content contributors: AEM Sites has an intuitive user interface that makes it easy for non-technical users to create and publish new experiences or updates existing pages.
Robust workflow capabilities: AEM Sites lets teams automate and streamline their workflows, improving team productivity and accelerating time-to-market.
Marketing campaign management: Integration with Adobe Campaign improves consistency and content reuse across emails, launch sites, and other properties.
Personalization and optimization: Integration with Adobe Target enables marketers to discover and define customer segments, personalize content for different segments, and test new experiences prior to launch, ensuring maximum engagement.
Commerce integration: AEM Sites provides an eCommerce framework that lets merchandisers create compelling, dynamic shopping experiences. Integration with AEM Assets adds dynamic imaging and video publishing; integration with Adobe Target adds automated recommendations.
Actionable insights: Integration with Adobe Analytics gives marketers the insights they need to continuously improve customer engagement, conversion, and advocacy.

Build a robust digital content supply chain with Adobe DX Accelerator

Successful customer experiences rely immensely on an organization’s ability to deliver engaging and personalized digital experiences across many connected devices and channels leveraged by today’s customers and with which they wish to interact and transact. While it might seem easy, in reality, delivering an omni-channel experience that is localized, contextualized, and personalized is a big challenge. Enterprises today need a digital experience management platform that meets both today’s and future’s requirements.

Adobe DX Accelerator allows enterprises to enhance the speed, performance, and optimization of your connected and cloud-based customer experiences at scale. With the integrated capabilities of AEM Sites, Adobe Analytics, and Adobe Target, you leverage an intuitive user interface that enhances their their digital experience teams’ productivity significantly, meets growing and evolving demands of customers in a cost-effective and cost-efficient manner, and improve engagement levels by delivering data-driven, high-quality, and hyper-personalized digital experiences across channels. To know more about what you can achieve with Adobe DX Accelerator, talk to our experts.

Know more about Adobe DX Accelerator.

Download complete Christmas sale holiday calendar.

ACESS HERE

With the holiday weekend (Black Friday and Cyber Monday) over, it’s time to concentrate on the next big retail opportunity – CHRISTMAS. Carve a grand path for your fabulous Christmas offers, discounts, and sales. Here is a week-by-week Christmas sale holiday calendar with 15 christmas sales tips to make sure you don’t lose your adrenaline after BFCM sales and keep going the remaining year. Here are some Christmas marketing ideas for you!

WEEK 1 (1st to 4th Dec): Replace your BFCM sales decoration with Christmas

#1: Turn off BFCM-specific campaigns

Since BFCM is done and dusted now, it’s time to make sure all such campaigns aren’t showing outdated information and offers. So, anything you have related to the BFCM campaign, switch it off.

#2: Dress your website for amazing Christmas sale experiences

A little holiday cheer is what your stores need. You’ll attract more visitors with visuals like winter fairytales, snow, reindeers, Christmas lights, and trees. So, commence your Christmas marketing strategy with a Santa-themed homepage, landing pages, and blog posts. And if you want to optimize your eCommerce stores for the Christmas sale season, checkout our 85 steps to achieve peak holiday sales this year.

WEEK 2 (5th to 11th Dec): Tis’ the time for discounts and Christmas sale offers

#3: Create irresistible Christmas deals

Decide on the products you’re going to sell and the discounts you’ll be offering this Christmas. It is normal for customers to expect a Christmas sale, which is why you must make it worth their time to shop on your online store. You can even try 12 Days of Christmas marketing ideas where you can come up with new deals every day. Some deals you can include are:

Buy one get one free or buy two get one free offers
Run cross-selling campaigns to boost Christmas marketing results
Reward customers on every purchase with extra points that can be converted to currency
Offer subscription discounts or gift cards

#4: Display your Christmas season sales offers on homepage & all prominent product pages

This is where your copywriting skills would come in handy. All you need is clear, catchy and quirky headlines to describe your offers as banners on the homepage and fuel your Christmas season sales. And, designing these offers in Christmas themes would be like cherry on the cake. Additionally, you can even introduce real-time Christmas sales notifications, pop-ups, and push notifications.

#5: Create Christmas PPC ad campaign

You can always gain amazing traction from your Christmas shopping ads. Therefore, add PPC and ad campaigns to your Christmas preparation checklist. Choose the right keywords, how you want to place your ad, the pay-per-click, and let your online ads do their magic in attracting new customers and propelling online Christmas sales numbers. A few Christmas sales tips to elevate the functionality of your Google Ad campaigns:

Highlight your best offers and products
Add as many Christmas sale keywords as you can to your ads
Create a sense of urgency like 15 hours to free shipping, etc.

Explore more Christmas campaign ideas for this Holiday season

WEEK 3 (12th to 18th Dec) : Emails. Newsletters. Social Posts. Let out your inner content creativity

#6: Prepare your Christmas email campaign workflow

A very integral part of your Christmas marketing strategy is email marketing. Make it a part of your Christmas preparation checklist. Divide your Christmas sale email campaign into pre-Christmas, Christmas (one-day before & after) and post-Christmas. You can use the same email list from your BFCM and Thanksgiving sale. And don’t forget to include your newly acquired customers.

#7: Send pre-Christmas emails

From offers to discounts, free shipping and coupon codes to rewards, newsletters, and cashbacks- keep flooding your customer’s mailbox with your Christmas season sales emails. However, don’t spam them. The idea is to ensure your brand is in your customer’s mind. And don’t stop yourself from being as creative as you can be.

#8: Track Analytics and keep an eye on your shipping calendar

Since you’ve started running ads for your upcoming Christmas and year-end sales, you need to track the results and analyze your performances. In case you want to tweak a few keywords or run ads on a few trendy keywords, then this is time to execute all your Christmas sales tips. Logistics will also be crazy right now, thanks to the recently concluded BFCM sale. So, keep a track of all your ongoing orders and resolve any queries that arise due to wrong deliveries.

#9: Test your checkout flow

The last thing you want is for your shoppers to not complete a purchase at the very end. It is why you need to remove friction wherever you can. For example, you can check the shipping policy, test out payment options, check page optimization speed, see if your images are loading fast or not, review if all your offers are rightly applicable or not, and so on.

Simultaneously, check your site’s mobile responsiveness and its traffic capacity. To analyze your site’s mobile loading speed, you can use Google’s mobile-friendly test. To prevent website downtime during Christmas sales, checkout our resource.

WEEK 4 (19th to 25th Dec) : Your Super Christmas is here. It’s the Jingle All the Way Season

#10: Dress your social profiles for a ‘Happy Christmas’

Your Christmas marketing strategy is incomplete without social media. Explore all your channels as one of the Christmas marketing ideas for 2023, create a strategy for every channel, and promote your Christmas sale campaigns and sales directly to your customers. Track KPIs like likes, comments, tweets, share, mentions, user-generated content, etc. Remember, Christmas has something for every brand, all you have to do is explore the right social media marketing strategies. To give your profiles a Christmas-y feel, initiate the following steps :

Change your cover and display image to match the Christmas spirit
Add timers to your social posts for free shipping deadline reminders, sale about to go live, or sale about to end, etc.
Create a Christmas sale contest like giveaways, discounts, freebies, etc., with a unique brand-relevant hashtag for your brand (see below)
Post countdowns, reels, or stories to engage with your customers (see below)

#11: Put together a Happy Christmas email

The season of Santa Claus, reindeers and Christmas has finally arrived. After sending pre-Christmas emails, it’s usual for your customers to expect a great Christmas exclusive offer. With just a few days left, email your customers about your amazing Christmas marketing offers, discounts, exclusive deals, free shipping, coupons, and more. You can even personalize it by sending your customers details on the ongoing discounts and offers available of the products they’ve most browsed.

WEEK 5 (26th Dec to 1st Jan 2023) : Yaaayyy!! You Made it to the Finish Line!

#12: Thank your customers for an amazing Christmas sale season

Your customers were kind enough to shop with you during such a competitive and neck-breaking season, which is why you need to make them feel prized now that you’re done with Christmas marketing. A simple thank you note stating how they made it a successful Christmas sale season for you will go a long way in strengthening your relationship with them.

#13: Get Christmas sale season statistics

It’s time to put your team to work to analyze how this sale season has been for the brand. This will help you set a benchmark for your next sale season, understand your customers better, and frame Christmas marketing ideas for the next sale season accordingly. Identify the following KPIs:

#14: Send post-Christmas emails and newsletters

Although Christmas sale is over, it doesn’t mean your email campaign is. After Christmas, everyone is relaxing and your customers’ email inbox is not crowded either. So, take advantage of this opportunity and send post-Christmas emails with a killer subject line. Make sure to send the last chance email to remind everyone that it’s almost over.

#13: Get Christmas sale season statistics

#14: Send post-Christmas emails and newsletters

Bonus Tip: Switch off all your holiday-themed campaigns

Congratulations, you’ve done excellent this sale season. Now, on 31st December 2023, don’t forget to turn off all your holiday-themed campaigns. It doesn’t portray your brand in the spotlight if a new year rolls out and you’re still promoting your last year’s holiday offers. So, comb through your site to make sure you’re done for the year.

Make the most of this holiday season with Ranosys

Don’t forget downloading our complete Christmas sale holiday calendar to bring in sales, revenue and new customers, post-BFCM. And if you’re looking for further assistance in optimizing your eCommerce store for the Christmas sale season, connect with our certified platform experts across Adobe Commerce, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Shopify Plus, and commercetools platforms.

Looking for more holiday marketing tips?

Ranosys, a leading Digital Transformation Agency, will be attending the Singapore FinTech Festival 2023. The event is scheduled from November 15 to 17 at the Singapore EXPO. From our leadership team, Rameshwar Vyas, Sushma Vyas, Lalit Nama, and Arjun Sharma, are looking forward to attending the largest FinTech festival in the world.

The Singapore FinTech Festival is a global hub where policy, finance, and technology sectors seamlessly connect and interact. SFF provides a platform for delving into the confluence of cutting-edge financial solutions, ever-evolving regulatory landscapes, and the latest technological advancements in the FinTech industry.

With valuable insights from an esteemed Content Advisory Panel comprising industry experts offering strategic insights on market trends, emerging technologies, and regulatory changes, SFF consistently leads the way in innovation. It also acts as a catalyst for significant global dialogues between the public and private sectors. This event presents an opportunity to engage with 62,000+ attendees, 600+ speakers, 10,000+ organizations from 134+ countries and regions, with the participation of 70 central banks representing 51 jurisdictions.

Speaking about Ranosys’ attending the Singapore FinTech Festival 2023, CEO, Rameshwar Vyas said, “We’re excited to be part of this year’s Singapore FinTech Festival and look forward to engaging with the global FinTech community. This event is known for its insightful sessions, roundtables, workshops, exhibitions, and exceptional networking opportunities. With FinTech & Financial Services as a key industry we service, webelieve that by embracing the latest innovations, we empower ourselves to serve our customers better, anticipate their needs, and deliver transformative solutions for their businesses. SFF is an immersive journey into the future of financial services and the digital transformation reshaping global economies.”

As a leading FinTech software development company, Ranosys has been assisting global FinTech enterprises and brands with their digital innovation and transformation initiatives for 15+ years. Leveraging their technological expertise in OutSystems, Salesforce, Adobe AEM, Java, and Microsoft, their certified experts have consistently implemented FinTech solutions. With a team of 100+ certified experts, Ranosys has collaborated with several leading global brands and Fortune 500 companies across the Americas, APAC, and Europe regions, enabling them to deliver exceptional and superior customer experiences.

As Ranosys continues to take steps towards revolutionizing customer experiences through cutting-edge FinTech solutions, empowered by modern technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Generative AI, and advanced analytics in finance, the Singapore FinTech Festival 2023 stands out as a perfect platform to advance these shared objectives.

The Ranosys team looks forward to connecting with you at the Singapore FinTech Festival during the event. Schedule your meeting here: https://www.ranosys.com/us/contact-us/.

About Ranosys

Ranosys is a CMMI Level 3 global Digital Consulting and Transformation Company with 8 offices in the US, UK, Middle East, and APAC regions. With over 15+ years of cross-industry experience across industrial verticals, including FinTech, Financial Services, Healthcare & Life Sciences, Education, Retail & Consumer Goods, Logistics & Transportation, Ranosys has assisted clients from SMBs to large enterprises to implement, optimize, and scale their enterprise solutions. Combining the power of platform partnerships across OutSystems, Microsoft, Adobe & Salesforce with our experience design and agile approach, we create a unique advantage for our clients by iterating solutions that effectively tackle today’s challenges while future-proofing your business for tomorrow.

For more information, visit https://www.ranosys.com/.

Access eCommerce holiday season sale all 85 steps

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The holiday season is the most revenue-earning time for merchants. Reports say that the season accounts for half of all the annual sales. So, during this peak traffic season, with rampant running coupons, sales and promotions, and rife competition, your job is not just to attract customers to your site, but encourage them to close sales. Therefore, to excel, every stage of a consumer’s buying journey, from brand discovery, site search, and engagement to checkout, secure payments, fast shipping, active customer support, and easy returns & exchanges requires attention from merchants.

As it popularly said, preparation is the key to successful execution- we’ve prepared a eCommerce holiday season checklist of 85 steps to get your site up and ready for peak shopping hours.

So, without further ado, let’s begin.

Monitor previous years’ website traffic to calculate the coming season’s expectations

Measure your previous traffic to predict this season’s expectations,
Then invest in resources that prepare it for the population.

Make a list of all your traffic sources (website, webstore, mobile apps, social stores, etc).
Measure the traffic over the past six months (for each sales channel).
Measure the load traffic during the last holiday season (for each sales channel).
Analyze the year-over-year traffic growth, in percentage, between last year’s and this year’s demand (for each sales channel).
Percentage increase in last year’s holiday season traffic and site traffic over the past few months (for each sales channel).
To calculate this year’s peak traffic, identify your typical peak sales hour and review the load it places on your infrastructure (CPU, memory, and disk place). Multiply this metric by 3 for a reasonable 2023 approximation.
Look at your Google Analytics, cart abandonment, and privy statistics from last year to establish a realistic expectation around traffic received, carts converted, and sign ups received.

Once you know how much traffic you might receive this eCommerce holiday season, it’s time to invest in additional resources to meet the peak demand.

Improving eCommerce customer site experiences

Modern-day shoppers want to be able to get what they want easily and with little friction possible. It means you need eCommerce site optimization for better catered shopping experiences and a seamless checkout process. And, here are some of the best ways to optimize ecommerce site:

To Improve Website Speed: During the busy eCommerce Holiday Season, you’ll see increased site traffic. But the question is – are you certain your bandwidth can handle that? To achieve that, you must examine your web hosting infrastructure and analyze historical past usage trends because insufficient bandwidth can slow down operations, resulting in lost revenue. A recent study found that if a site takes longer than 4 seconds to load, one in four visitors abandon the website. Furthermore, a 1-second delay in page load time reduces pageviews by 11%, conversion rates by 7%, and customer satisfaction by 16%.

Invest in your site’s loading speed,
Coz a fast website is what your customers need.

Check your eCommerce site’s speed for each page- product search, category list, product details, home page, carts, checkout, content, payment & shipping
Check and improve the speed of your hosting provider
Optimize image size across various devices
Enable browser caching
Optimize server response time

To Optimize Homepage

Your site design should already have various search elements, such as a concise menu and a prominently displayed search box. Still, during the eCommerce Holiday Season, you should promote top-selling, high-converting products, and categories right at the top of the homepage. The sooner you can get customers in front of what they want to buy, and you’ll be able to create a frictionless shopping experience for holiday shoppers.

Give your homepage a new look for the holidays,
Mention everything from offers, discounts, coupons to flash sales.

Mention the promotional sale with time duration above the fold
Optimize your homepage title tag, meta description & images
Include primary call-to-actions (CTAs) to make them prominently visible
Add seasonal colors and images to spread the holiday cheer

Optimize Checkout & Payment Experience

By the time a shopper reaches the checkout page, they’ve already made up their mind to make a purchase. Making the checkout process simple will keep customers on your site long enough to finish their purchases. You can achieve this by giving them multiple secure payment options to make their checkouts more seamless.

Don’t distract your customers with complicated executions,
Help them with easy and safe payment processing solutions.

Allow customers to change carts on the checkout page
Allow addition and deletion of products to carts during checkout
Allow user access from different devices and save credentials across
Allow auto filling of shipping address
Integrate with popular and customer-preferred payment solutions (credit card, debit card, eWallets, cash-on-delivery, BOPIS (buy now pay later), Stripe, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, etc)

Optimize for Mobile Experience

Although it may sound obvious, it is important to have an optimized mobile website. And in 2021, over 54% of all eCommerce sales were made through mobile devices. So, you need to ensure that your website is ready for mobile users to window shop and make purchases during the hectic eCommerce holiday season.

Your holiday season eCommerce strategy will be completely futile,
If it isn’t optimized for customers shopping via mobiles.

Pick a responsive mobile-friendly template or theme
Match your mobile and desktop design theme
Optimize pop-ups for mobile

Enhance Product Page Experience

As the name suggests, product pages are designed to give key information about a particular product with descriptive content and relevant images or videos and to make it simple for your customers to make an instant purchase. So, product page optimization is crucial during the busy eCommerce holiday season as it helps create a seamless customer browsing experience across all platforms.

Amazing product pages are a good enough reason,
To grab your customers’ attention during the holiday season.

Allow users to filter search results as per price, popularity, new arrivals, relevance, color, size, style, etc.
Check zoom-in and zoom-out features
Add high-quality and resolution product images
Allow one-swipe product check features
Add reviews and testimonials to every product page
Add coming soon pages to promotions and flash sales

Effective Holiday Marketing & Promotions Tips

To sell your products most efficiently throughout the holiday season, you adapt your stores to various unexpected changes, whether related to new technologies or promotional strategies. That’s why it’s important to ensure your store is fully optimized and equipped with campaigns and promotional plans before the holiday shopping frenzies. And you can achieve this by using gift cards to upsell at checkout, giving seasonal services, like free gift-wrapping or shipping, or making limited-time deals to add urgency.

An omnichannel marketing strategy is what you need,
To serve your customers on all channels indeed.

Create festive sales calendar for holiday promotions
Build interactive landing pages for festive sales
Run automated email campaigns (welcome emails after sign up, seasonal greetings, confirmation messages, early-bird offers, Black Friday sale, holiday invitation emails, gift cards promotion, abandoned cart emails, last-minute offers, winter deals, Christmas sales, product reviews, Happy New Year)

To Offer Quick and Easy Shipping Solutions

You’ll need a well-thought-out holiday eCommerce strategy for where to sell your goods and how to ship and process orders if you want to execute a great customer experience strategy. And to deliver a seamless experience, you should offer a range of delivery options because some customers wait until the last minute to place their orders while others purchase gifts months in advance. And having that option available at the checkout can help them decide to purchase much more quickly and easily.

Improve your shipping experience & fill your customers with amaze,
Make sure that even last-minute gifts arrive in time for the holidays.

Allow tracing shipping address of the online product on the map
Offer free shipping on all products
Inform customers about the status of their orders via emails and messages (order placed, product packed, product shipped, product reached delivery warehouse, & out for delivery)

Better Returns & Exchange Experience

When it comes to returns, the holidays are when you should be a little more flexible for your customers. You can create a flawless return and exchanges process by choosing some automated tools or by including an in-page message that notes any particulars of your return policy or how simple it is. Building trust is the most important thing you can do, so make sure your return policy is fully transparent and fair.

A good return experience in a sales opportunity in disguise,
It forges with your customers’ long-term ties.

Write clear product descriptions
Choose an automated tool to ensure smooth refunds and exchanges

Cross-check all these holiday checklist 2023 points

During the holiday season, the more you prepare as a seller, the more buyers will truly trust you. And this will result only in happy customers, and you’ll hopefully get lots of repeat business!

And with this, you’re all done with setting holiday season checklist for your eCommerce site to get more conversions this holiday sales 2023. May you make the most of it. Happy Holidays!

Need help preparing your online store for maximum sales?

Download all 15 holiday eCommerce strategies for peak sales.

ACCESS HERE

The holiday eCommerce sale season is upon us. And the air is already palpable with excitement, fervor, and of course, promotional holiday eCommerce strategies. For e-retail websites, this is arguably the most important time of the year. The customers are willing to make purchases and have probably started to browse for their favorite products already. Needless to say, your retail website, too, needs prepping up to attract, manage, and convert excited shoppers. And this is where holiday eCommerce marketing tips come in handy.

At present, there are approximately 12 to 24 million online stores in the world. And, all of them have similar goals as yours – to get the most out of eCommerce peak times during holiday sales. The competition is tough but the battle can be simplified with proper assessment, ecommerce holiday planning, and mindful execution of the right holiday eCommerce marketing ideas.

In this blog, we will discuss ways to get your business ready for the upcoming eCommerce holiday season, suggest holiday eCommerce marketing tips to garner maximum revenue, and provide actionable insights to engage your customers. So, without wasting any more time, let the holiday marketing ideas 2023 begin.

What are the big eCommerce holidays?

The big eCommerce holidays include well-known events like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, and New Year’s. These holidays are typically associated with significant spikes in online shopping and offer opportunities for retailers to maximize their sales.

4 A’s of a fool-proof holiday ecommerce sale plan for the season

Analyze	Anticipate	Assemble	Attract
Assess market trends, eCommerce website traffic, and competitors’ holiday eCommerce strategies to understand what worked for you and what didn’t.	Keep a close watch on customers’ preferences, experts’ opinions, and forecasts predicting what will sell and what won’t.	Double-check your inventory, validate the UX of your online store, and align your teams to put their game face on for the eCommerce peak times.	Reinvent your holiday ecommerce marketing ideas, promotional strategies, design fresh eCommerce holiday marketing campaign ideas, and reach your customers where they are.

Want to improve your eCommerce site performance during peak times?

Are you ready for the holidays?

Holiday season is the busiest time of the year for all eCommerce brands. With customers looking for gifting options, one-day deliveries, customizations, etc., it’s imperative to follow a fool-proof plan that analyzes the demand, anticipates the traffic this holiday season, assembles their products and inventories based on the forecasted demands, and attracts customers with fresh holiday marketing ideas and campaigns. We have a few resources that can help you get ready for the holiday season.

If you’re looking for expert assistance, schedule your consultation with our eCommerce experts and get ready for this holiday season! Contact us today.

Holiday checklist for eCommerce site and UX optimization

We are sure that you’re already working on eCommerce site optimization to offer the best possible experience to the shoppers. As you already know, these metrics form an important part of your eCommerce infrastructure and their performance directly impacts conversion rate and customer engagement.

To give you a head start, here’s a quick holiday ecommerce website checklist of what you should be broadly looking at when optimizing your eCommerce site and CX for the upcoming holiday season:

Is your eCommerce site fast enough? Use tools like GTMetrix and PageSpeed Insights to check it.
Is your eCommerce site mobile-optimized?
If you’re a global retailer, do you have localized stores?
Is your return policy customer-friendly?
Is it easy to navigate through your eCommerce site?
Do you use authentic product pictures in different angles and lighting?
Does the product description include every essential detail?
Is your checkout process complex and cumbersome?
Do you allow reviews on your site?
Is the search bar visible on every page? Is it AI-powered to understand synonyms and auto-suggest products?

With these 10 questions answered honestly, you would have more clarity about where your CX needs tweaks. And, if you’re looking for a comprehensive holiday checklist to support your eCommerce optimization and UX reinvention process, we’ve got that covered too!

85 steps to optimizing your eCommerce sites for peak traffic!

eCommerce marketing tips for record-breaking sales this holiday season

During the eCommerce holiday season, it’s important for brands to stay updated with current trends and deliver relevant content that suits the target audience. If you’re thinking about ‘How to get more eCommerce sales during the holidays?’, here are someeCommerce marketing tips to help you get the most out of this eCommerce holiday sales and boost sales.

#1: Build an exclusive landing page

Early bird catches the worm – this proverb couldn’t have been more ideal than in this situation. In addition to catching customers’ fancy before anybody else, our first holiday eCommerce tip is to develop a holiday landing page that also aids your SEO efforts. Any marketer worth her salt would tell you that SEO is a gold mine that needs time to produce results. Then, why not start before the schedule?

#2: Deep dive into customer journey

Gone are the days when you formulated holiday eCommerce strategies to let customers find your eCommerce business. You need to trace their customer journey and reach them where they are. If there’s a landing page that is responsible for most of your visitors and conversion maybe you should reinvent it as a pillar page. Try internal linking, cross-selling, and pop-up ads.

#3: Personalize the experience for every segment

Your online store gets all kinds of footfall. All holiday eCommerce marketing ideas are about enticing infrequent visitors, offering your loyal customers a special discount and create a personalized experience for them. So, use first names sparingly, localized ads, offers based on spending behavior to create unique online experiences.

#4: Go big on videos

Today’s consumers do not believe anything one-dimensional or static; so, if you haven’t incorporated videos to your holiday eCommerce strategy yet, the time is right now. According to a report, videos attract 300% more organic traffic and leads. Moreover, making videos a part of your holiday eCommerce marketing strategy is fairly simple.

#5: Optimize your checkout page

Nobody likes complicated checkout processes, especially during the holiday season. All you need to do is keep what’s necessary, including secure payment mechanisms, have clear navigation, make the “back” button visible, enable order preview, and allow guest checkout. And, if you need to have a detailed look, we have a resource to help simplify the checkout process, reduce product returns, and boost eCommerce sales!

#6: Embrace unified commerce

With the increase in the number of shopping channels, the complexity of the customer journey also increases. And your customers expect a similar experience on every single channel. Our experts say that one of the eCommerce marketing tips includes ensuring that your eCommerce experience is seamlessly unified. If you are going to implement BOPIS, ensure that your physical store has the order ready before the customer arrives; no matter on which channel your customers enquire, you must provide them with a similar prompt response.

#7: Enable social selling

As many as 81% of the respondents in a survey admitted that they research products or services on social channels before making a final decision. Customers are looking for eCommerce holiday gift ideas on social media. Hence, having a great social media feed is a good place to start but did you know that modern eCommerce platforms like Adobe Commerce, Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Shopify Plus cover social commerce in their omnichannel proposition?

#8: Create exclusive offers for your social media family

Embrace minimalism – ask your social media team to become a part of your holiday eCommerce strategy and post DIYs, recipes, styling videos, and most importantly – offer discounts and prizes. Try announcing an offer before any brand begins, give an exclusive discount to your followers, start a giveaway for your new collection, create a special incentive for social media users posting personal pictures of your products on social media. In fact, you even get user-generated content, word-of-mouth, and better engagement.

#9: Build an abandoned cart recovery strategy

The average abandoned cart rate across industries is 69.61% already and with businesses offering major discounts, it tends to go up during the holiday season. Although checkout page optimization can reduce this rate by 35.62%, you can also plan for abandoned cart emails to introduce personalization to the entire campaign. You can even offer discount coupons to win them back. And if you’re looking for a resource to reduce cart abandonment rates and boost sales, check out our resource.

#10: Curate special discounts for your email subscribers

You can send highly targeted and personalized emails as a part of your holiday eCommerce strategy. What can be even more enticing is exclusive offers and discounts to let customers know that they’re special. In fact, you can even offer exclusive sneak peek into your upcoming sales to your subscribers.

A week-by-week calendar for holiday eCommerce sales.

Prep your online stores with these eCommerce marketing tips

As a business owner, if you can start the season with these holiday ecommerce marketing ideas to make it special for your target customers, you probably will never be in a dearth of marketing and conversion tips. Do not target your customers, target their sentiments and let your brand be the voice of their feelings with these eCommerce marketing tips- everything else will fall into place.

You can access all 15 of the holiday eCommerce tips here. And if you still need consultation and assistance formulating a holiday eCommerce strategy, our team can help you with your digital commerce or MarTech needs.

Optimize your e-store for peak sales with certified experts.

Want to optimize your eCommerce website?

There are several factors that determine a retailer’s success during the peak holiday season but none more than up-and-running eCommerce retail websites with no downtime, speedy loading time, and no lag of any kind. Be it the traditional peak retail holidays or any specific busy digital commerce period, you need to make sure that your digital infrastructure is ready to perform and handle peak traffic with no website downtime. So, the journey to this annual eCommerce opportunity and the upcoming season must start with your eCommerce site.

Remember, during traffic season, your eCommerce website performance standards have the power of making or breaking your profits margins and eCommerce sales. You must weaponize your digital storefront in such a way that it can easily and swiftly handle maximum possible traffic and sales load. Consumers have little to no patience during the peak holiday season for website downtime and slow load time.

As a digital commerce agency, we’ve helped several brands to prepare thoroughly for their eCommerce peak times performance and adapt their retail websites in such a way that they can handle incoming traffic and sales of magnanimous numbers and display exceptional website performance standards.

In this article, we’ve listed a few expert tested technical practices on factors affecting website performance, how to speed up website performance, prevent website downtime and ready your retail websites for anytime demand. Implementing these recommendations will obviously require a small investment of time, but it should be high on your list if you want to make the most out of the eCommerce holiday season and attain peak retail traffic.

Reasons why your eCommerce website is down?

In today’s highly competitive world, having a beautifully designed website with SEO-rich content is a critical component of your eCommerce marketing strategy to increase traffic to your sites and outperform your competitors. However, the lack of a speedy or high-performing website can adversely affect your online business’s reputation and diminish patronage, sales, and profits. While solving such issues is imperative, first you must be aware of some of the key factors affecting eCommerce website performance so that you can also know how to avert them.

Here are some of the main reasons for eCommerce website downtime you should be aware of:

1. Server overload

If your website is hosted on a shared server by your host, your host can suspend or take your site offline to protect other websites if there is a significant surge during the eCommerce holiday season or on a sale day. If the host is unable to handle this sudden surge in traffic, the website could crash or lose many of its functionalities.

2. Malicious cyber attack (DDoS)

DDoS, or distributed denial of service, attacks occur when hackers flood a website or online service with a lot of traffic to take it offline. And this increase in traffic volume eats up the server’s capacity and resources.

3. Hardware and software issues

Websites are hosted on servers, which are physical items, and the absence of periodic maintenance and service of these hardwares can cause an unexpected breakdown, causing downtime. In terms of software, if your site uses outdated or incompatible plugins and themes, it could cause trouble for the users accessing your site.

4. Miscellaneous causes

Apart from all the reasons listed above for website downtime, some other factors can be the major causes of website downtime, like – poor quality website hosting, DNS issues, Malicious hackers, mismanaged maintenance, careless or improper code review, rough handling of servers, and so on.

While some of the outages are normal, unexpected and common, and no hosting provider can guarantee 100% uptime. However, understanding the common reasons allows you to take preventative steps to avoid website downtime from happening. It also empowers you to troubleshoot measures to maintain the smooth operation of your site.

What to do if your website is down?

Website downtime can infuriate anyone, and sometimes it can do much worse. The downtime on an eCommerce website can affect customers’ confidence, loyalty and ultimately affect sales and ROI. But the question is, how can we dodge this failure?

So, here we’ve listed down a few practices to help your eCommerce website perform well during peak holiday season traffic:

Practice #1: Approximate and predict site traffic and order volume

Guesswork and gut instincts might work in some wild game but when it comes to your online store’s most significant eCommerce sales generating opportunity of the year, let a data-based approach take the driver’s seat. Peak retail traffic demands, like that during the holiday season, can push your retail websites to its limits. The only way your website can sustain that big influx is by monitoring regular website traffic, comparing it with last year’s peak holiday season traffic, including demand spikes and analyzing your eCommerce website performance standards.

The key benchmarks that’ll help you predict your traffic and order volume this peak holiday season are:

Your eCommerce website traffic over the past few months
Your eCommerce load traffic during the last holiday season
Year-over-year traffic growth (in percentage) between last year’s and this year’s site demand
Percentage increase in last year’s peak holiday season traffic and over the past few month’s site traffic

Another way to calculate whether your eCommerce site can handle the incoming seasonal traffic starts with identifying typical peak traffic hours and reviewing the load it places on your digital storefronts. Multiply this number by 3 to predict the resources you’ll need to handle a bulky eCommerce website traffic.

Such data approximations predict the peak traffic your retail websites can expect and then to find ways to meet the peak demand. And of course, don’t forget that 58% of consumers expect to do more online purchases after the pandemic. So, you might need to include such considerations into your list of factors affecting website performance.

Get Holiday Ready eBook

Ready your eCommerce site for the holiday sale season

Practice #2: Monitor website demand spikes

You don’t want your eCommerce infrastructure to perform the way it does while handling usual eCommerce website traffic. Peak holiday season asks for higher site traffic, better site load time, and faster site speeds. Prepare in advance, monitor your digital storefront’s demand, and solve for any issues that arise during the process. Some key metrics or factors affecting website performance to note over here include:

Check the site response time: Check your product, cart, checkout and payment pages for load speed. Ensure that the average response time must never exceed 500 ms. Some other pages like product search, category list, and product recommendations must never exceed 10 ms while the home page should load within 100 ms. Adjust the cache-hit ratio as recommended below:

Sweep out old data: Remove your old data, including that of campaigns, catalogs, promotions, content., coupons, wish lists, content assets, and more to improve website performance standards and load speed. You can keep inventory records, product prices and lists, and redeemed coupons data.
Caching rules: You can cache pages like home pages or search pages, but do not cache pages that have dynamic data or include customer-specific content.
Check for code error: Evaluate all code discrepancies in pipeline and script runtimes. Monitor all the external services that might hurt your site’s performance.

Practice #3: Put all your resources to the test

When projecting this year’s peak holiday season traffic, load test your digital retail websites to evaluate how your site might hold up against the expected incoming traffic. You surely don’t want to lose eCommerce sales and customers due to website downtime. Remember, regular testing of your site will be the unsung hero of your global peak retail site performance during this holiday season. So, test deficiencies, document failure points, and explore ways to address these points. Here are a few factors affecting your website performance and metrics that you need to test.

Loading speed: Test your site and that of your competitors to see how it holds under peak visits, product searches, orders placed, and checkout directed all the way to payment pages. Remember, every customer wants a speedy and seamless eCommerce site experience right from the time they land on your site till they place their orders and pay for it.
Incoming traffic: Check your site for incoming traffic management. Also consider how this traffic should flow through your site.
Test its performance: If you’ve partnered with a reputed eCommerce service provider, then it is their job to perform regular website speed testing to test for any issues. There are several options when it comes to monitoring site performance. So, pick a method that pairs well with your eCommerce site. Adobe Commerce’s New Relic Nerdlet allows a snapshot of overall site performances as well as added information about potential performance issues.

Practice #4: Work towards improving your eCommerce site experiences

Several things go into maintaining the website performance standards of your eCommerce site. All of these practices ensure peak-season performance with no website downtime and high loading speed. The following are some how to improve website performance tips to boost conversion numbers:

Optimize images for fast eCommerce experience:

Images play a pivotal role in a consumer’s buying decision, impacting eCommerce sales. But when not optimized and poorly managed, it negatively impacts website performance standards and page load time. So, resize and optimize product images.

Back up your eCommerce site data:

Anything can go wrong during the deployment process. Therefore, you must employ proper back-up processes to prevent a tedious rollout. So, backup data so that you can restore specific environments at any time, saving critical time and money.

Keep in touch with your eCommerce provider’s team:

As a solutions partner to several iconic brands, we tend to discuss the support plans for the eCommerce holiday season beforehand so that everyone can execute the plan on time and handle all throttles should anything unexpected happen.
We put together a team of leaders from IT, support, operations, customer and brand departments and plan the escalation procedure.
Our experts provide a step-by-step plan to alert the right people in case of issues, handle all technical and security issues as and when they occur, and ensure speedy performance at all times.
We plan a 24/7 support procedure for planned holiday periods and even the unplanned ones. We keep our clients in loop as well.

Don’t let deployment hamper your eCommerce sales:

It is important that your visitors browse and shop uninterrupted during the peak eCommerce website traffic season, which is why you might need to push immediate changes to the production environment to ensure speedy site performance. Adobe Commerce allows retailers to configure their project in a way so that their customers easily engage with a live site and experience zero website downtime during deployment routines.

Practice #5: Protect your site and customer data

In today’s data-driven economy, customer information is a goldmine for brands. Since this data is worth billions of dollars to brands, it is more likely to be stolen or hacked. It is why you need to protect your site’s information, including critical consumer data. Follow these steps to ensure a safe and secure browsing experience during this peak holiday season.

Upgrade to the latest versions of your eCommerce platforms:

As data stealing has become a more serious threat than ever, it is imperative that merchants update their retail websites software to the latest versions before heading into the peak holiday season. Hackers use flash sales as a way to pull up the biggest frauds and steal precious consumer data. So, if you haven’t upgraded your site yet, do so before the holiday season.

Use in-built security tools:

Modern eCommerce platforms tend to have a security system in place to prevent hackers from entering your software.

For example, Adobe Commerce merchants can employ the Security Scan tool to run over 21,000 tests on their sites, receive insights about security risks in real-time, and improve the digital security of the storefront. Moreover, retailers can even schedule security checks daily or weekly. The idea is to resolve all the issues mentioned in the security scan to ensure peak performance.
On the contrary, Salesforce Commerce Cloud requires a two-factor authentication to gain entry into the platform to prevent security attacks, phishing, form-jacking (hackers inserting malicious code to your site to steal customer data), card-skimming and other cyber attacks.

Perform security patches:

Security patches are a way to keep pace with the latest security trends. It is recommended to install security patches as and when they’re available before they stack up. It will help you optimize your regular eCommerce website performance standards as well.

Keep up with the privacy regulations:

Ensure that your eCommerce site is up-to-date on the privacy regulations required as mandated by a region or a country. As a part of our digital commerce maintenance and support services, we help our clients stay navigate all regulations and ensure they are compliant with all the relevant practices.

Ready to make the most of the holiday season eCommerce sales?

Readying your eCommerce site for the peak holiday season is a work in progress. You cannot expect peak performance and zero website downtime without moving a stone. However, with the right way to improve website performance tips and tactics, you can surely make a fortune out of this holiday season.

Regardless of which eCommerce platform you’re on, if you’ve partnered with a Solutions Partner like Ranosys, then you don’t have to worry about website performance standards and scalability. Our experts offer hands-on support during every phase of your eCommerce growth journey. We ensure that our clients receive all the support they need, from resources to expert advice, which is why we offer continuous 24/7 eCommerce support services. With us by your side, you can confidently handle all sudden surges in your retail website traffic.

Want to optimize your eCommerce store this holiday season?

Ranosys, a leading Salesforce Crest (Gold) Partner and Digital Consulting Company has been recognized as the recipient of two Salesforce Partner of the Year Awards, The Innovation & Impact Partner of the Year and The Growth Partner of the Year. These accolades stand as a testament to the unwavering dedication, tireless effort, and profound expertise of the Ranosys’ team in consistently delivering unparalleled Salesforce solutions. Moreover, it also makes Ranosys the only organization to have received two Partner of the Year Awards.

The Salesforce APAC Partner of the Year Awards celebrate exceptional partners who have shown dedication, innovation, and outstanding performance in delivering Salesforce solutions to their customers. Ransoys’ double win showcases their commitment to excellence and delivering outstanding value to its global clients.

“It is an absolute honor and privilege to be recognized by Salesforce with not just one but two prestigious awards,” said Rameshwar Vyas, CEO of Ranosys. “Winning the Innovation and Impact Partner of the Year award for our customer success story of Rituals Cosmetics, a Valiram Group franchisee underscores our commitment to driving positive change and delivering successful business outcomes. The Growth Partner of the Year Award is a testament to our relentless commitment to fostering exponential growth and success in our partnerships. As a Salesforce Crest (Gold) Partner, Ranosys is committed to pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with Salesforce and will continue to deliver innovative solutions that drive growth and impact for our customers.”

Ranosys leverages its cloud and industry expertise to deliver game-changing solutions to its clients. What sets them apart from the competition is their unparalleled technical proficiency, deep industry insights, and a steadfast commitment to putting clients at the center of every engagement. Over the years, Ransoys has rapidly evolved its Salesforce delivery capabilities, positioning itself among the elite few with a strategic command over the entire spectrum of Salesforce Clouds, including CRM, Customer 360, Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Data Cloud, Einstein AI, Commerce Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Salesforce Order Management, and a portfolio of industry solutions like MuleSoft, Tableau, and Slack.

Across diverse industry verticals, Ransoys has successfully implemented digital commerce and transformation solutions for renowned brands. With a 5/5 rating on Salesforce AppExchange, a global network of dedicated Salesforce delivery centers, and a team of over 120 Salesforce experts, Ransoys consistently delivers innovative, high-impact business solutions with an emphasis on rapid time-to-market.

As the recipient of the two Salesforce awards, Ransoys cements its status as the go-to partner for enterprises striving to unlock their digital capabilities. It remains committed to driving digital transformation by combining its extensive technical expertise with Salesforce’s industry-leading solutions, thereby empowering clients to thrive in an increasingly digital world.

About Ranosys

Ranosys is an award-winning Salesforce Gold (Crest) Partner with 8 offices in the US, UK, Middle East, and APAC regions. Ranosys’ expertise spans across multiple cloud and industry solutions, including Customer 360, Commerce Cloud, Sales Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Service Cloud, Revenue Cloud, Mulesoft, Financial Cloud and Lightning Experience. Along with their globally-located team of 120+ certified experts, Ranosys has assisted clients from SMBs to large enterprises to implement, optimize and scale their Salesforce solutions. Throughout, they’ve built a staunch reputation for their data-driven designs, innovative thinking, robust planning, seamless delivery, and client experience goals.

For more information, visit https://www.ranosys.com/.

Ranosys, an OutSystems Partner and a leading Digital Transformation Agency, will be exhibiting at OutSystems NextStep Exec – Singapore 2023 on 10 October 2023 at Conrad Centennial, Singapore. Our CEO, Rameshwar Vyas is excited to be attending this event.

OutSystems NextStep Exec – Singapore 2023 is an exclusive event for IT decision-makers who believe that software solutions should be as unique as the businesses they serve. This global event offers a remarkable opportunity for global IT leaders to explore the high-performance low-code capabilities of OutSystems, on business success, showcasing OutSystems customers’ achievements in team empowerment, customer satisfaction, and agile, scalable innovation. Packed with innovative keynotes, enlightening sessions, and valuable networking opportunities, NextStep Exec – Singapore 2023 delivers incredible insights to empower teams, delight customers, and innovate with agility and scale.

Talking about Ranosys attending and exhibiting as a Brand Sponsor at the NextStep Exec – Singapore 2023, Rameshwar Vyas, CEO, said, “We are proud to join NextStep Exec – Singapore as a brand sponsor. This event presents us with an excellent opportunity to engage with industry leaders, professionals, and customers and showcase our expertise in the OutSystems platform. We are committed to assisting global enterprises with their digital transformation initiatives, unleashing new business prospects, and enhancing customer value.”

Over the years, Ranosys has matured its global OutSystems delivery practice to assist several Fortune 500 enterprises with their customer experience transformation, application modernization, workplace innovation, and process automation goals. Recognized as one amongst the 10 Most Promising Low-Code Solutions Providers-2021 by CIOReviewIndia, Ranosys has implemented successful low-code business solutions for global enterprises across industrial verticals, including BFSI, healthcare, education, manufacturing, and more. Their extensive expertise in developing custom B2B and B2C apps, OS web apps, OS intranet systems, and OS mobile apps has resulted in innovative solutions around industrial verticals with rapid and successful business outcomes.

The upcoming NextStep Exec – Singapore 2023 event stands as a valuable opportunity for Ranosys to foster connections with IT leaders, customers, and agencies, further strengthening its foothold and relationships within the market.

About OutSystems

OutSystems, a Leader in the 2023 Gartner Magic Quadrant for enterprise Low-code application platforms, is known to accelerate digital transformation initiatives, enabling businesses to innovate, scale and respond to market demands quickly with agile software delivery strategies. OutSystems is designed to help enterprises build serious applications to solve the biggest business challenges.

About Ranosys

Ranosys is a CMMI Level 3 global digital consulting company headquartered in Singapore with 8 offices in the US, UK, Middle East, and APAC regions. As a leading OutSystems Partner and Systems Integrator, Ranosys has collaborated with global enterprises across the BFSI, healthcare, government, education, energy and utilities, and education sectors to help them build a solid low-code foundation for future evolution. Their low-code CoE is trusted by OutSystems and global clients for scalable, agile, and future-driven innovation. Combining the power of platform partnerships along with experience design, and cutting-edge technologies, Ranosys assists ambitious brands drive their digital transformation, digital commerce, and product engineering initiatives.

For more information, visit https://www.ranosys.com/

Modernize your legacy systems with OutSystems

In the perpetual innovative digital landscape, banking, finance, and insurance industries (BFSI) are in constant hustle to provide seamless customer experience and frictionless operations. Most of the financial service providers have started evaluating their legacy systems to deliver modern digital experiences. To stand out in today’s economy and accomplish digital transformation goals, BFSIs are adopting to modernize their existing systems. Either they are looking to rebuild the entire application from scratch or refactor and extend, choosing a low-code development platform to stay agile, flexible, and innovative, meeting customers’ evolving demands.

In this blog, we will talk about application modernization, BFSI industry problems, and application modernization methodologies. In addition, we will explore how OutSystems, a high-performance, low-code development platform, aids in modernizing legacy applications for BFSI.

What is application modernization?

Application modernization is like renovating applications built using older technology and methods, making them harder to maintain and adapt to new needs. It involves updating and improving the old software to make it more efficient, secure, and user-friendly. This means rewriting parts of the code, changing the underlying technology, or even completely rebuilding the application from scratch while maintaining its core functionality. The goal is to keep the application up to date so it can work better with the latest devices, be more reliable, and meet the business’s and its users’ current needs.

Challenges in application modernization for BFSI industry

Since the last few years, the BFSI industry has seen many changes that demand revamping legacy systems. Today’s customers expect banks to provide omnichannel experiences, which they receive from many digital-driven businesses. Unfortunately, many legacy systems have failed to optimize with new technologies and rising customer expectations. As they face many bottlenecks while leaving their legacy systems, some of them are as follows:

#1. Lack of omnichannel support

Customers want personalized experiences throughout their journey; therefore, banks must constantly analyze and predict client data to transact from anywhere and conveniently access information. The core of omnichannel banking is integration, and supporting these institutions necessitates channel switching without a fragmented client journey. Banks often struggle to provide omnichannel experiences due to a lack of resources, investment, data mining practices, integration, limited communication, and a segmented organizational structure, while traditional systems demand modernization.

#2. Lack of real-time data/data redundancy

With the shift towards using a centralized repository to hold sensitive data or information, several factors, such as the capacity to provide consumers with access to deposits and payments, impact bank redundancies. Legacy systems are unable to keep up with the increasing volume of data generated by transactions; therefore, modernization is required to optimize data and develop customer-centric strategies or to acquire insights and act in real-time. Furthermore, the open banking system has established itself as an API standard for sharing data and services, and banks are finding it challenging to recruit innovators while meeting client demands.

#3. Managing compliance and risk

Regulations and security compliances change often in the BFSI industry, and as a result of these changes, legacy systems frequently face challenges because they lack the capability to comply with the regulations. Such shortcomings create obstacles for banks to comply with these regulations. Banks having legacy systems are vulnerable to security breaches and cyber attacks, decreasing the reliability of banking applications. To summarize, banks often need constantly evolving systems to meet security requirements.

The approaches of application modernization in OutSystems

Over the past few years, FSPs have realized that legacy systems have reached their end-of-life(EOL) and do not support security, compliance, digital processes, and other issues. Therefore, OutSystems, a constantly evolving platform, has come up with three approaches to look out for application modernization through a low-code platform, OutSystems:

#1. Extending

Extending refers to building enterprise-level applications with new capabilities by extending the code. An organization considers extending the approach when the application needs to optimize and upgrade apps with new user interfaces and front ends that tap into your current systems. These can support new, customized processes and deliver updated user experiences via the web and mobile devices. You can seamlessly integrate data from multiple systems of record or facilitate the transfer of information between isolated systems, all without any impact on the base application. OutSystems is extensible with platform, environment, tools, and features to enable customers by:

With pre-built templates, components, and modules, OutSystems Forge can help you speed up development time.
Seamlessly integrate with legacy systems and existing databases.
Easily integrate with the authenticator provider of your choice.
Customize management consoles.
Utilize APIs to integrate the deployment with existing DevOps and business processes.
Businesses can deliver the experience on any platform (mobile device capabilities such as camera, GPS, or location and working offline)

#2. Refactoring

Refactoring means segregating/ decoupling the modern composable architecture of existing systems that allows you to innovate quickly and leverage cloud-native technologies. Microservices architecture helps in refactoring when monolithic systems’ functionality is broken into small fragments to make it more reliable and scalable. An organization seeks refactoring when they need to drive more value from legacy systems without replacing them. With OutSystems, you can:

Streamline processes in banking, such as tailored messages to customers, SMS alerts, email or push notifications, and OTP authentication.
Integrates with legacy banking systems to gain real-time insights.
Includes predictive maintenance applications and customer service portals to enhance the digital experience in the banking industry.
Increase agility in a highly competitive market by optimizing processes.
Accelerates steps of application lifecycle and deploys with a single click.

#3. Rebuilding

Rebuilding means building applications from scratch tailored to your unique business requirements. Through enterprise garde banking applications you can rebuild core systems through eliminating technical debt, avoiding risks, and complexity of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS). After the pandemic banking industry faced a significant instability and led to digitization of most of the processes like loans, ATM pin generation without leaving homes. Hence, a business rebuilds applications when the technical debt costs are more and the legacy systems have passed the end of usability. OutSystems helps in rebuilding banking systems and applications through:

Flexible tech stack that supports CI/CD approach.
Improved user experience and easier access to client information.
Powerful application with modernized customer experience, user experience and seamless integration.
Increase productivity with a visual, model-driven approach.
Reduces time to market and cost, enabling complex solutions to be delivered much faster.
Advanced pre-built capabilities to ensure security and scalability.

Why does the BFSI industry modernize their legacy systems?

Banking and financial services face some of the toughest challenges with the volatile markets, squeezed profits, outdated technologies, and complex and shifting regulations. And most profoundly, legacy modernization is on top of mind. The FSPs seek to modernize their legacy systems by moving to the cloud platforms that automate manual efforts, saving time and cost. Let’s dive into some of the key drivers that adversely affect the banking sector to modernize their applications:

#1. Customer Experience

Banks are often faced with the challenge of seamlessly integrating their branches, mobile applications, and customer service portals to delight their omnichannel experience. Along with this, banks often have stringent regulations and security checks, leaving them stuck to accelerate digital transformation. Hence, legacy modernization becomes the need of the hour.

#2. Security

Since banks deal with a lot of sensitive information and regulation changes, the legacy systems in the BFSI industry are not technically equipped. Therefore, modernizing these systems and applications leads to better integration of security measures across their ecosystem. Legacy modernization can increase protection against cyber attacks and the risk of data breaches.

#3. Digital competitiveness

Migrating to cloud platforms from on-premises legacy systems and harnessing technologies like AI, machine learning, and real-time analytics for enhanced customer experience, improved productivity, and better decision-making through legacy modernization in BFSI. Cloud-native applications also enable flexibility and scalability. Leveraging these technological advancements, you can enable core systems to support the features of banking platforms like GPS, camera access, offline capabilities, etc.

How OutSystems helps modernize applications for BFSI?

OutSystems, a leading high-performance low-code platform, has always been a top priority when considering application modernization. OutSystems provides tools, features, and pre-built integrations to deliver innovative banking applications. Here are some of the use cases that can be developed through OutSystems and modernize your applications:

#1. Offline capabilities/functionalities

In the mobile digital world, we take connectivity for granted. With the cellular coverage extension across the world, losing signal breaks the transactions, leading to unsatisfied customers. As BFSI industries are accelerating the development and digital experience, people are used to mobile banking on any device. Often, country-side areas or low network coverage areas in developing economies lead to declined or incomplete transactions, and that’s when offline authentication comes into play. Offline capabilities help financial institutions grant access to complete transactions, check balances, pay bills, and message customer service while securing sensitive information through OTP authentication.

How does OutSystems help in offline capabilities in their banking applications?

OutSystems provides offline capabilities with mobile apps, web apps, and PWAs.
The pre-built UI elements and client-side logic help applications to run with no connectivity to the server.
OutSystems defines the data model and manipulates data similarly on the server databases and the local storage.
OutSystem implements offline data synchronization.
REST APIs are automatically generated and exposed for the backend to enable the customer to send and receive data from the server.

#2. The digital evolution of insurance

Earlier, insurance agents were packed with a chunk of paperwork entailing a lot of calculations and generating quotations, but now they are backed by modern technologies. The employee and customer-facing portals can help get insurance processes done automatically and efficiently, saving time and effort. The modern system has replaced legacy applications with a more focused approach to automation, user experience, and personalized experiences. These innovative insurance applications help optimize workflows, improve service accessibility, and generate insights into customer behavior.

How does OutSystems help in digitizing insurance functions?

OutSystems delivers and evolves insurance applications rapidly with visual, model-driven development of workflows, business logic, UI, data access, and security.
OutSystems builds insurance portals and mobile applications for agent brokers by integrating core systems for seamless engagement, designing pixel-perfect interfaces, and configuring functionality for quote, bind, and collaboration with underwriters, portfolio views, and processes for digital signatures.
OutSystems builds an insurance portal that provides scalability, security, and always on-apps with an intuitive interface and automated business logic.

Why Ranosys for application modernization?

Application modernization is the road ahead for FSPs to offer innovative digital solutions that customers expect. OutSystems, a high-performance, low-code development platform, enables your digital transformation initiatives to build powerful applications that enhance productivity and user experience to meet evolving customer expectations. As a leading OutSystems partner, we have assisted several FSPs in modernizing their applications, and we can accomplish your use cases, too. Connect with our certified experts to know how OutSystems can help you in application modernization.

Suyash

Team Lead

Suyash is a Team Lead at Ranosys. Working on the OutSystems platform since 2019. He has 10 years of overall IT experience as a Software Developer and Tech lead with more focus on developing software systems.

Extend, Rebuild and Refactor your low-code apps with us.

Turn Dreamforce’23 insights into action with Ranosys.

Salesforce’s flagship conference, Dreamforce 2023 organized on 12-14 September 2023 at the Moscone Center, San Francisco recently concluded, and it was filled with impressive announcements and highlights around AI, Data, CRM and customer trust. Quoted as the biggest AI + Data event of the year, Salesforce Dreamforce 2023 lived up to its name, packed with 1500+ sessions, 40,000+ attendees and millions of online viewers. As Marc Benioff, Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Salesforce said, the event was focussed on three main aspects ‘Innovation with AI, Trust with AI, and Doing Good with AI’.

Quite honestly, Dreamforce ’23 was a deep dive into what Salesforce plans on doing with its ecosystem, how it plans on incorporating generative AI and related technologies, and improving customer experiences in the age of rapid and aggressive digital transformation. As an attendee to the event, Ranosys was privy to some impressive announcements and updates, all of which we plan to include to our suite of services.

We’ve rounded up some of the major highlights of the event, including the keynote presentations and sessions to help partners, customers, and trailblazers alike in navigating and structuring the journey ahead.

Salesforce Dreamforce 2023 Highlights

#1: Einstein 1 Platform

While talking about the enterprise AI revolution, Marc Benioff said, “There is no question that the AI opportunity is going to change everything.” However, he continued, that while AI is a #1 priority for CEOs, over 52% of customers don’t believe that AI is safe and secure. To change that notion and build a trusted platform around AI, Salesforce unveiled the Einstein AI platform, an integrated, automated, and low-code/no-code platform for safe data connectivity, demonstrating their trust factor in AI and how Salesforce plans on leveraging it.

Einstein 1 platform brings significant enhancements to the already functioning Einstein platform, all built upon its foundational metadata framework to unify data irrespective of how it is structured or where it is sourced from. Einstein AI platform integrates with all of Salesforce Clouds, Slack, Tableau, MuleSoft, Google Workspace, Canvas, Heroku, and Microsoft 365, solving challenges around disparate data across systems and data silos/fragmentation. As Marc stated, “The metadata framework is the key to data integration so that when users write these apps and its resulting metadata, it is all tied together in a smart way.”

The best part, Einstein AI platform comes with an Einstein CoPilot and its built-in side panel of user interface, which we will be discussing in the next sections.

#2: Marketing Cloud and Commerce Cloud integrated to the Einstein 1 platform

Another big reveal came for the apps that were acquired by Salesforce, namely Salesforce Commerce Cloud (previously known as Demandware) and Salesforce Marketing Cloud (previously known as ExactTarget). Earlier both these apps were connected to the core platform via connectors, however, now they will be a part of the core platform and leverage its metadata framework, integrated and shared (More Core).

Moreover, Salesforce announced 26 new generative AI capabilities for Commerce Cloud and Marketing Cloud with an additional 25+ set to arrive by the end of 2024.

#3: Einstein CoPilot and Einstein CoPilot Studio

As mentioned before, the Einstein AI platform comes with an Einstein CoPilot for every cloud, a generative AI conversational assistant. With Einstein CoPilot, internal users/customers can ask questions in a natural language to the trustworthy and reliable pre-configured conversational assistant without having to search or navigate through the software for answers.

Einstein CoPilot relies on the treasure trove of information stored in the Salesforce Data Cloud and goes beyond the usual actions, thanks to its seamless integration to the user interface of all Salesforce applications (including Commerce Cloud and Marketing Cloud). Overall, Einstein CoPilot will help users to enhance their productivity within the workflow.

Einstein CoPilot Studio was another breakthrough announcement by Salesforce during Dreamforce 2023 and comes with three powerful components Prompt Builder, Skills Builder, and Model Builder. Einstein CoPilot Studio empowers admins/Salesforce professionals to implement generative AI capabilities and enhance their productivity while establishing complete control on how and the extent to which AI is used.

Prompt Builder allows you to construct, test, and deploy generative AI prompts for your users. For example, with Prompt Builder, you can create automated suggestions or prompts for your sales team when they interact with customers. When a customer calls in, Prompt Builder can suggest questions or actions based on the customer’s previous interactions, helping your sales team provide better service and make more informed decisions. Its simplicity in usage comes from how easy it is to create a prompt template and quickly activate it for users.
Skills Builder lets you control who can use AI on the Salesforce platform for specific tasks. For example, you can decide that user X has access to AI for task A, but user Y doesn’t. It’s like an admin adding a special ability to a Salesforce process. This helps you customize AI access for different users based on their needs and responsibilities within your Salesforce processes.
Model Builder lets you choose the AI models you want to use. You can pick from Salesforce’s own well-trained models or those from their trusted partners like Anthropic, Cohere, Databricks, Google Cloud’s Vertex IX, or OpenAI. Overall, it empowers you with the flexibility to use AI that best suits your specific needs and preferences.

#4: Free Tableau and Data Cloud licenses

Salesforce also announced free Tableau and Data Cloud licenses for Enterprise, Unlimited, and Unlimited Plus Edition customers. This free package would include two free Tableau Creator licenses, and Data Cloud licenses for up to 10,000 profiles.

#5: Salesforce Data Cloud embedded to the Einstein AI platform

The idea behind the unification of AI + Data + CRM is to develop a well-integrated and polymorphic platform where the data created once in any app could flow freely across other other Salesforce applications and third-party systems. With Salesforce Data Cloud embedded to the Einstein AI platform (now called the Einstein 1 Data Cloud) across Salesforce’s metadata framework will result in automation with dynamic data from Data Cloud – real-time data, and data from various different systems to build AI applications, automate data flows, and analyze data at scale.

Formerly known as Salesforce Genie, the Einstein 1 Data Cloud is an underlying metadata management framework that connects data across sources, makes it usable for AI and analysis through its integrations with Einstein 1, Tableau and Salesforce’s CRM applications.

Moreover, Salesforce also announced the integration of Data Cloud with Databricks Lakehouse platform for seamless and efficient data sharing. Earlier, Salesforce also announced integration with Snowflake.

#6: Data Graphs in Einstein 1 Data Cloud

When you’re setting up prompts or assigning skills using Prompt Builder or Skills Builder, you may need to make sure that Einstein AI platform can access all the necessary data to answer a user’s question. This data might come from various integrated sources and involve multiple layers of data that go several objects deep.

To check if your data is set up correctly and is available for the Salesforce Einstein 1 platform, you can now use Data Graphs in Data Cloud. They help visualize the relationships between data model objects (DMOs), evaluate how different data pieces are connected, even if they go several layers deep. Just like Schema Builder, Data Graphs allow you to trace related fields, rearrange relationships of data points via drag-and-drop functionality, and ensure that correct data is being made available for Einstein AI.

#7: Data Cloud triggered flow

Think of Flows as automated sequences of actions in a system. They kick off when something specific occurs, like when data is updated. With Data Cloud integrated into the Einstein 1 platform, we can make these automated processes even more powerful.

Now, a Flow can start based on conditions related to Data Cloud, which is a source of real-time data and insights from various systems. For example, let’s say you have a Flow that updates customer information when a new order is placed. With Data Cloud, this Flow can start running when conditions related to specific data or insights in Data Cloud are met. This ensures that your automated processes are driven by the most up-to-date and relevant information.

#8: The power of generative AI in Slack

Salesforce Dreamforce 2023 also came bearing some powerful innovations with Slack and the announcement of Slack AI, to help with three use cases – summarize threads, planned channel recap, and to search for answers within messages.

As Ali Rayl, Senior Vice President – Product Management at Slack said, “People end up having these super long conversations in threads; hundreds of messages.” While they might not have the time to go through these, Slack AI will now empower them to have artificial intelligence summarize conversations for them.
The planned channel “recap” will provide users a quick summary of conversations within a particular team channel. For example, if you have been away for days, weeks or months and don’t want to be bombarded with tons of messages to read, the AI tool will provide you with a summary of it.
Slack will also use generative AI to provide better answers when users search for details in the app and provide an exact answer.

#9: Einstein GPT for developers

Salesforce Dreamforce 2023 also included major announcements for developers, including the launch of open beta for Einstein GPT. Developers can now download the VS Studio extension and explore the potential of this tool to take the next step of development evolution.

#10: The introduction of another industry cloud, Salesforce Life Sciences Cloud

Dreamforce 2023 also covered the introduction of Salesforce Life Sciences Cloud to transform patient care for pharmaceutical and medical device companies. This will come with a specific architecture to help get such enterprises up-and-running faster with the Salesforce platform.

Moving forward with insights from Salesforce Dreamforce 2023

Undeniably, Salesforce Dreamforce 2023 was a treasure trove of unbelievable insights and announcements all centered towards AI + Data + CRM + Customer Trust. There is a massive shift of focus and insights into how Salesforce plans on incorporating GenAI to its ecosystem to achieve more predictive, prescriptive and informative outcomes. As a Salesforce Crest (Gold) Partner, we’ve been assisting global enterprises in adopting Salesforce for innovation and making their most out of their investments. With expertise across all Salesforce Clouds, industry solutions, and other integrated systems such as MuleSoft, Slack, Tableau we can help streamline your business operations, refine digital experiences, and enhance intra-organizational collaboration. Connect with our Salesforce consultants to discuss how we can implement or transform your existing Salesforce solutions.

Explore the post-Dreamforce possibilities with us.

Ranosys, a 3X-award winning Adobe Gold Partner and leading digital consulting company is published yet again as a success story on Adobe’s official website for the migration of our corporate website to Adobe Experience Manager. This comes as a second feature for Ranosys who was earlier published as a success story for its Adobe Marketo Engage adoption and implementation.

Ranosys adopted the Adobe Experience Manager platform to migrate its corporate website to Adobe Experience Manager, create more personalized content that targets clients and improves lead generation, unify all their assets under one roof, and boost their search rankings and organic search traffic. Undoubtedly, Adobe Experience Manager has played an instrumental role in improving their website performance, supporting their aggressive growth plans, and paved the way forward to assist its growing clientele across geographies in launching engaging content-led experiences faster to the market.

“We’re extremely proud to have our corporate website migration to Adobe Experience Manager featured as a success story on Adobe’s official website,” says Rameshwar Vyas, CEO-Ranosys.

He continued, “Our primary objective for this undertaking was to transform our global website experiences with Adobe Experience Manager. Not only did we achieve this feat in two months but we’ve accelerated our web page creation process, increased our organic search traffic by 40% and conversion rate by 58%, and decreased bounce rate by 72%. Most important of all, the migration of our corporate websites to Adobe Experience Manager has boosted our confidence in associated offerings to drive significant value to our customers. Our long-standing partnership with Adobe has always assisted us in driving amazing outcomes for ourselves and our clients and we wish to continue it for many years to come.”

As more enterprises continue to adopt the Adobe Experience Cloud product suite to deliver agile and scalable digital experiences and secure their lead in the competitive ecosystem, Ranosys continues to support their goals with its strategic solutioning across Adobe Commerce, Adobe Experience Manager, Adobe Marketo Engage, Adobe Analytics, Adobe Real-time CDP, and Adobe Target. Ranosys’ continued ability to deliver enterprise-grade solutions on enterprise platforms and applications have been previously honored by the Adobe Practice Growth Partner of the Year, Adobe Commerce Commercial Partner of the Year, and Delivery Quality Solution Partner of the Year recognitions.

With a growing team of certified Adobe professionals and consultants, Ranosys continues to expand across geographies by tapping into growing opportunities globally.

With their competitive understanding of Adobe Experience Cloud platforms and solutions, Ranosys is better positioned to build experience-driven eCommerce stores, optimize their content and digital asset management, boost sales with marketing automation, and gain insights into web visitors behavior to create a holistic digital anatomy.

Read the entire success story here.

About Ranosys

Ranosys is a 3X award-winning Adobe Gold Partner and global digital transformation agency empowering enterprises to craft engaging experiences through next-gen digital-first solutions. With 15+ years of experience in strategic digital innovation, we deliver unparalleled services across Adobe Commerce, Adobe Experience Manager, Marketo Engage, Adobe Campaign, Adobe Analytics and Target. Their agile approach involves integrating its technical proficiency with the cutting-edge capabilities of the Adobe ecosystem to achieve maximum ROI in minimum time-to-market. Their proven expertise has resulted in successful implementations for leading brands.

For more information, visit https://www.ranosys.com/

Or, fill the form and shoot us an email at sales@ranosys.com.

About Adobe Experience Manager

Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) is a content management system that empowers extended teams to establish full control over web content and offer best tailored user experiences throughout. With Adobe Experience Manager CMS you can create, manage and distribute context-driven messages scalable across countries, products, services, and enterprises. Know more about Adobe Experience Manager here. For more information about our AEM services, visit here.

Ranosys, an award-winning digital commerce and transformation consulting agency has achieved the prestigious Crest (Gold) Partner status with Salesforce. It is a representation of Ranosys commitment towards customer success & proven expertise across Salesforce multi-cloud and industry solutions.

The Salesforce Partner Program has a very strict and stringent evaluation bar for quality. To achieve the Crest (Gold) partnership level, Salesforce consulting partners must showcase a proven understanding of the Salesforce ecosystem, in-depth knowledge of the Salesforce Clouds, a high customer satisfaction (CSAT) score average, consistently thriving team of certified Salesforce professionals, and leading a social impact within their practice or community.

“This is more than just a milestone for us; it’s a testament to our dedication to delivering customer success and our expertise in Salesforce’s diverse cloud and industry solutions,” said Rameshwar Vyas, CEO of Ranosys. He continued, “The road to this point couldn’t have been traveled without the invaluable support from the exceptional Salesforce partner team. A Salesforce Partner since 2019, Ranosys has delivered several trailblazing customer success stories leveraging the multi-cloud platforms and industry solutions from Salesforce. Further on, with our elevated Salesforce partner status, we look forward to continuing to expand our trusted partnership with Salesforce to unleash new business opportunities, bring more value to our customers, and accelerate their digital commerce and transformation objectives.”

Over the years, Ranosys has matured its Salesforce delivery quickly becoming one of the few select partners with strategic expertise across all Salesforce Clouds – CRM, Customer 360, Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Commerce Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Salesforce Order Management and industry solutions – MuleSoft, Tableau, and Slack. Across all industrial verticals, Ranosys has implemented successful digital commerce and transformation solutions for leading brands including Fortune 500 such as Victoria’s Secret, Charles & Keith, Berkshire Hathaway, Rituals, Smythson, NatSteel and more.

With 5/5 rating on Salesforce AppExchange, multiple dedicated Salesforce delivery centers across the globe, and 120+ Salesforce experts, Ranosys has been delivering innovative and impactful business solutions with rapid time-to-market.

With this elevated partnership status, Ranosys is well-positioned to continue its aggressive growth trajectory, expand its service portfolio across the Salesforce ecosystem, and deliver high-value and successful business outcomes to its global clients. Visit their Salesforce Partner Portal here.

About Ranosys

For more information, visit https://www.ranosys.com/.

Ranosys, a Salesforce Crest Partner and a leading digital transformation agency will be attending Salesforce Dreamforce 2023 from 12 – 14 September at the Moscone Center, San Francisco, CA. Our CEO, Rameshwar Vyas, is excitedly looking forward to attending the ultimate AI event of the year.

First launched in 2003, with the aim of bringing together visionaries, partners, community members and customers to discuss the latest developments in the Salesforce ecosystem, Salesforce Dreamforce 2023 will be the highlight AI event of the year. As Salesforce’s flagship conference, Dreamforce 2023 will witness the entire community of customers, partners, trailblazers, and experts coming together to learn more about the ground-breaking product announcements from Salesforce, attend sessions about innovating with AI and data, take inspiration from stories of customer success, network with the peers, and more. Just like all its other editions, Salesforce Dreamforce 2023 promises to be an event where innovation grabs the spotlight, and attendees explore the endless opportunities around AI, smart CRM, and data to reinvent customer experiences.

Talking about the Ranosys attending Salesforce Dreamforce 2023, Rameshwar Vyas, CEO said, “We’re excited to be attending Salesforce Dreamforce in-person this year and look forward to meeting and interacting with the community. Salesforce events are known for its endless insights, extravaganza, and amazing networking opportunities and we’re counting the days ahead of the AI Event of the Year. As a Salesforce Partner, we believe that by embracing the latest innovations, we empower ourselves to serve our customers better, anticipate their needs, and deliver solutions that truly transform their businesses. Dreamforce isn’t just a conference; it’s where the future takes shape, and we’re here to shape it with excellence.”

As one of the few Salesforce partners with strategic multi-cloud expertise across the Salesforce Cloud ecosystem and industry solutions- Salesforce CRM, Commerce Cloud, Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Salesforce Order Management, Marketing Cloud, and MuleSoft, Ranosys has been assisting global enterprises and brands with their digital commerce and transformation initiatives for 14+ years. Ranosys has been top-rated on Salesforce AppExchange and is globally recognized for driving complex implementations across industrial verticals with rapid market delivery. With their team of 120+ Salesforce consultants and experts, Ranosys has collaborated with several leading global brands and Fortune 500 companies across the Americas, APAC, and Europe regions and helped them deliver superior and engaging customer experiences. Ranosys has also been recognized with the Salesforce Talent Alliance Champion Award and has been published on the Salesforce website as a success story for their internal intranet system, Pulse.

As Ranosys continues to make substantial investments in revolutionizing customer experiences through cutting-edge Salesforce solutions, empowered by modern technologies such as AI and advanced analytics, Dreamforce 2023 stands out as an ideal stage to advance these shared objectives.

The Ranosys team is eagerly anticipating the opportunity to connect with you at the Moscone Center during the event. Schedule your meeting here: https://www.ranosys.com/us/contact-us/.

About Ranosys

For more information, visit https://www.ranosys.com/.

Develop enterprise-grade apps with OutSystems.

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With the dynamic shifts in customer expectations, maintaining pace with innovation while delivering seamless digital experiences across touchpoints is an accomplishment and challenge for enterprises. To achieve this much-talked about transformation in today’s competitive landscape, enterprises must break down data silos and adopt leading-edge technologies and platforms to build or restructure their operations. This is where DevOps principles play a vital role. DevOps breaks down traditional barriers between teams, thus streamlining the application development, testing, deployment, and maintenance processes, and reducing time-to-market. Along with the high-performance low-code platform like OutSystems, DevOps enables reliable and rapid low-code application development and deployment.

In this blog, we will dive into the common challenges enterprises face with their software development lifecycle (SDLC) and how a leading low-code platform like OutSystems implements DevOps to increase productivity and rapidly deliver robust software products that enhance customer satisfaction.

What is DevOps and how does it work?

The DevOps approach focuses on the primary aspects of collaboration, communication, and integration between the software development (Dev) and IT (Ops) processes. By implementing DevOps principles into the SDLC, enterprises streamline and accelerate their building, testing, deployment, integration, and maintenance of their software solutions, making dynamic innovation accessible and easily practicable. Overall, DevOps implementation accelerates delivery cycles, drives operational efficiency, and results in rapid bug resolutions.

That said, DevOps processes are built on the following core principles:

Seamless collaboration and communication between development and IT: DevOps foster a collaborative culture between software development and IT teams, breaking down silos, increasing transparency, and resulting in faster and efficient product releases.
Continuous integration (CI) approach: While developers push code changes multiple times during a day to a shared repository, the CI approach in SDLC automatically triggers a build that compiles it and runs automated tests to ensure that the code changes doesn’t hamper any existing functionalities.
Continuous deployment (CD) approach: An extension to the CI approach, continuous deployment (CD) protocols involve automatically deploying the code in the staging or production-like environment for further testing. The team performs user acceptance testing, load testing, integration testing, etc. to ensure that the code is always in a releasable stage. Once the code passes all tests, it is then ready for the production environment.
Automation: To minimize human-made errors during the software development process and make the entire process fast and cost-efficient, software automation plays a crucial role. Automation in DevOps implementation involves eliminating the manual and repetitive tasks, empowering teams to focus on more ROI-driven activities. You can choose the processes you wish to automate across the entire software development, testing, integrating, deployment, and maintenance processes.
Continuous monitoring & feedback: DevOps implementation results in continuous monitoring and improvement of software solutions to detect and fix performance issues and bugs. The DevOps team can continuously analyze system health, user behavior, and response times to deliver innovation at scale.
Infrastructure as Code (IaC): IaC is a practice that involves versioning your infrastructure configurations and storing them as code. This makes it easy for DevOps teams to manage, replicate, and scale environments while reducing configuration errors.

Why does DevOps matter?

Although DevOps adoption is on a rise by enterprises looking to deliver software products faster into the market and innovate at a pace their business demands, it becomes challenging to identify where to start while implementing the right DevOps tools for version control, CI/CD, test automation, code validation, etc. Coupled with the massive information and array of tools available in the market, organizations struggle to discern where they need to implement DevOps across their SDLC and what objectives they’re willing to achieve with it.

As per a research from Google’s DORA (DevOps Research and Assessment), organizations can be categorized as high, medium, low, and elite based on their software delivery performance metric benchmarks of deployment frequency, lead time for changes, time to restore service, and change failure rate. Here is what these benchmarks mean:

Deployment frequency: This defines the frequency at which your organization deploys code to production or releases it for the end-users. An elite performer deploys multiple times a day while a low performer does so once in six months.
Lead time for changes: This defines the duration an organization takes to go from code committed to code successfully running in production. An elite performer takes less than one hour while a low performer takes over six months to achieve it.
Time to restore service: This defines the time it takes to restore service when a service outage, defect, or incident occurs, severely impacting user experience. An elite performer takes less than one hour while a low performer takes more than six months to restore services.
Change failure rate: This defines the percentage of changes deployed to production or end users that results in degraded services thus requiring immediate remediation. An elite performer change failure rate is between 0-15% while a low performer’s is between 16-30%.

While the first two metrics determine your DevOps throughout, the remaining two benchmarks define the stability of your DevOps implementation.

While we discuss these metrics, a pressing question that arises is, why the need to know these and how does it align with my DevOps implementation or strategy?

Across industrial verticals ranging from BFSI to retail & eCommerce, logistics & transportation, and so on, DevOps implementation plays a crucial role to differentiate their operations from the competition and rapidly deliver agile and user-driven solutions with fewer errors. The matter of fact is that disruption and innovation is a constant in today’s landscape. There will always be competitors trying to best you, or consumers looking for more engaging and easy solutions, and technologies changing the game. The focus for enterprises should now be implementing the right tools and technologies to speed up application development and enhance business value at reduced costs and time-to-market.

And this is where DevOps implementation and best practices can help you master agile development with iterative design.

What challenges do enterprises face throughout SDLC & how does OutSystems DevOps implementation help?

In today’s competitive ecosystem, building an enterprise-grade software application is a complex undertaking. What’s more complex is developing a software solution that is of high-quality, delivers superior experiences, and allows innovation at scale.

As enterprises commence their DevOps implementation, they might face challenges such as loosely coupled architecture, a complex combination of several tools and products for effective DevOps implementation, and so on, which eventually impacts their software delivery performance metrics and maturity level. As businesses try to navigate through these dynamic requirements, OutSystems high-performance low-code platform presents opportunities and solutions to all the bottlenecks and challenges faced by organizations during DevOps implementation.

#1: Complex and monolithic applications solved by a loosely coupled architecture

Challenge: Most legacy architectures are formed by large and complex components tightly integrated with each other, making it challenging to test, deploy, or scale individual modules independently. This slows down the release of new features or updates, as the entire architecture needs to be deployed. Moreover, a failure in any one component results in a cascading ripple effect across all components, resulting in service outage or disruption. Overall, tightly coupled architectures result in higher friction between development and operation teams due to conflicting priorities and objectives.

Solution: With software architecture being an imperative predictor for achieving continuous delivery, loosely coupled architecture where components and modules are developed and deployed independently offer more room for innovation, scalability, and competitiveness. It allows organizations to build, test, deploy, and scale entire applications or parts of it fast, thus promoting software agility and resilience. With OutSystems DevOps practices, enterprises can focus on iterative development, launching different modules at different times, ensuring continuous software delivery.

#2: Long release cycles and integration challenges solved by trunk-based development

Challenge: When integrating systems, enterprises often face challenges in merging back the feature/component branch to the main codebase or trunk of the repository, especially for large or legacy modules. This also extends the release cycles as components first need to be accumulated at the branches before integrating with the version control repository.

Solution: Trunk-based development helps enterprises to counter challenges around complex integration, long release cycles, risky deployments, delayed feedback and inefficient release management. It empowers enterprises to run smaller and manageable code merges without impacting any ongoing development, reducing release cycles duration and time-to-market. OutSystems’ DevOps capabilities provides the same codebase for multiple touchpoints, pre-built APIs, UI’s versioning, and feature toggle library, making the implementation and deployment of modules easier and at scale. With OutSystems trunk-based development, organizations can successfully implement DevOps and build a culture of collaboration, agility, and rapid delivery of high-quality applications.

#3: Security, compliance and regulatory challenges solved by shift-left on security

Challenge: Security, undoubtedly, is an integral part of the software development process, however, traditional SDLC follows a reactive (than a proactive) approach to it. As vulnerabilities are detected after the application is deployed to production, it results in slower release cycles, costly bug fixes, and delayed time-to-market of new features. Enterprises need to adopt a security-first mindset and proactively address related issues and concerns in the early stages of development.

Solution: Shift-left on security in DevOps empowers organizations to follow a proactive approach to security, compliance and regulatory challenges. Right from architecture design to development, deployment, and maintenance, shift-left approach is implemented to the entire software development lifecycle. By detecting and identifying potential security issues early on during development, development and operations teams can accelerate release cycles, reduce the likelihood of security breaches, and build robust and compliant software products. Shift-left on security also allows enterprises to continuously assess and improve security protocols to fulfill required compliance and regulatory requirements. And with a high-performance low-code platform like OutSystems, you can automate the security and vulnerability testing procedures across the SDLC and even while integrating with external third-party systems.

#4: Traceability and auditing solved by built-in version control

Challenge: As several developers together work on the same codebase, it often results in conflicts during code merging or when deploying different versions to different environments. Without version control, rollback to a previous version is impossible in events of critical issues. It is why enterprises must maintain a clear history of code changes and configuration for effective code management and control throughout the SDLC.

Solution: Built-in version control empowers enterprises to consistently maintain code quality, traceability, reusability and stability. OutSystems-led version management empowers organizations to store code and modules automatically in a centralized repository with clear details around code changes, merging only approved changes to the main codebase, and maintaining libraries and frameworks for effective code reusability. Its modular architecture and team collaboration module allows developers to easily navigate through different versions, rollback to an earlier one when critical incidents occur, track publication dates and authors for each version, and ensure the reliability of software deployment.

#5: High deployment overheads solved by deployment automation

Challenge: Manual deployments are time-consuming, heavily relies on individual-specific knowledge, and error-prone, often resulting in increased downtime and time-to-market, inconsistencies between environments with varying configurations, and introduce security issues. This becomes a bigger hurdle when enterprises frequently scale their software applications up and down due to varying loads.

Solution: Deployment automation is a critical aspect of successful DevOps implementation as it solves challenges around scalability, high overheads, resource availability, and limited visibility into the process. With OutSystems DevOps approach, you can leverage the convenient one-click feature to deploy user interfaces, workflows, integration components, and databases. Even better, OutSystems simplifies and accelerates deployment and application lifecycle management with AI-powered automation, runtime configurations such as batch scheduling, web service endpoints, along with built in governance. The high-performance low-code platform is highly scalable, and adapts to all your business requirements. To boost the performance and scalability of your software application, OutSystems allows you to integrate with different systems via APIs, SOAP and REST web services, and Forge components.

#6: Development and operations streamlined by CI/CD processes

Challenge: As mentioned before, CI/CD processes are the cornerstone for a successful DevOps implementation. During traditional development, integrating code changes is a complex and time-consuming process. Combined with slow and inconsistent testing procedures, it leads to bottlenecks in the development process and long release cycles. As developers do not have visibility into the development and deployment pipeline, manual processes can result in costly bug fixes especially at the production stage.

Solution: Implementing CI/CD processes helps enterprises tackle all the challenges associated with traditional development and testing, resulting in reliable and higher-quality software delivery. DevOps teams can break down code changes for automated testing and near real-time feedback. Whether your enterprise is in the early stage of implementing DevOps or are already on their CI/CD journey and wish to explore more opportunities for automation, OutSystems and its built-in capabilities can help you solve all your use cases.

OutSystems eliminates the need for multiple tests as is the case with traditional software development. Service Studio visual development environment in OutSystems prevents the introduction of faulty logic and broken dependencies to code.
Lifetime, the infrastructure environment console in OutSystems checks code integrity and validates the overall quality of the software before releasing it to the next target environment, thus making deployment easy and error-free.
With OutSystems you can build platform-agnostic applications that can be integrated with any type of system irrespective of its underlying framework or architecture. This means you can integrate any testing framework, automation platform, from any vendor with your OutSystems’ CI/CD pipeline via APIs, SOAP and REST web services, Forge components, or accelerators.
With OutSystems, you can troubleshoot issues and bugs in your apps via its visually-driven and easy-to-use analytical dashboards and auditing tools, thus solving bottlenecks in real-time.

DevSecOps: The future of DevOps

Traditional software development often treats security as a separate concern, addressed only towards the end of the development cycle or during deployment. This approach can lead to vulnerabilities and security gaps, as security issues might go unnoticed until late stages of development. DevSecOps depicts development, security and operations to represent a collective approach of automating the integration of security at every stage of the application development. The framework works as a “Shift-left” approach where developers take responsibility for requirements gathering and analysis all the way to architecture design implementation, coding, management, deployment, testing and software development.

DevOps vs DevSecOps: A step forward for stringent security

While we talk about DevOps, DevSecOps also becomes an important point of discussion. So what is the difference between DevOps and DevSecOps? While both operate on the same methodology, here are some differences between the two.

Point of Difference	DevSecOps	OutSystems DevOps
Security	DevSecOps involves continuous security processes and stringent testing throughout application development.	Security forms a critical aspect of OutSystems DevOps and, therefore, complies with the procedures of DevSecOps.
Team collaboration	With a higher transparency between development teams and visibility into the processes, DevSecOps foster a collaborative culture that results in superior, reliable, and cost-effective software development.	OutSystems DevOps allows for modular development that support multi-developer teams and multi-team enterprises. If required, developers can even collaborate on the same module and deploy code to the front-end servers in a single click.
Agility	DevSecOps balances security and speed together to deliver secure applications with compliant codebase and seamless integrations at rapid time-to-market.	With version control, one-click deployment, build validation, impact analysis capabilities, and built-in comprehensive auditing and monitoring tools, OutSystems DevOps ensures agility, resilience, and continuous innovation.

DevOps implementation with OutSystems low-code: The steps

As enterprises look to build a faster and more efficient pipeline for software development, DevOps implementation, by translation, becomes imperative.

However, please note that there is no ideal model that can help you with DevOps implementation. As all enterprises adopt different procedures and steps, they can design a workflow that suits their business needs. These steps are based on the broad consensus of what teams mostly practice when looking to implement DevOps. And if enterprises employ a modern development platform that comes with built-in DevOps capabilities and support integration with major external systems, then the process becomes much easier and approachable.

With OutSystems, enterprises can leverage its strength, extensibility, and flexibility to reimagine their entire software development into a more streamlined and simpler approach.

Step #1: Plan

Planning involves the translating of business requirements and workflows into a model to create high-quality mockups that provide a clear overview of a software’s capabilities, visual design, and user experience. Once the prototype is approved, then DevOps can move ahead to develop them.

Step #2: Develop & Test

Traditional development involves time-consuming coding and building of a software application. Regardless of where you are in your DevOps implementation journey, with traditional development user expectations aren’t met and the market dynamics aren’t considered as they should. It is why enterprises prefer a more streamlined and easier approach to software development that involves adopting low-code rapid application development platforms like OutSystems. Its visual development environment, pre-built components, one-click deployment, drag-and-drop interface, reusable modules, and automation, AI, and analytics capabilities to successfully implement DevOps to your enterprise apps.

The visual development environment of OutSystems, Service Studio and its AI capabilities empowers developers with the predicted logic or workflow tailored to their application and suggestions on attributes that must be a part of the app. With such intelligence, citizen developers can easily develop simple modules to full-grade enterprise applications with minimal code writing. Its extensibility allows experienced and novice developers to build tailored features with coding or via its built-in capabilities and drag-and-drop functionalities.
The TrueChange engine comes built in with OutSystems platform and performs the quality analysis of your code and its impact on the underlying application. When implementing any changes to the architecture, the TrueChange engine checks those changes, assesses the overall feasibility of the model after implementing the changes, and also notes for performance issues. It provides developers with arguments and warnings to rectify before proceeding ahead with the development. The best part, developers can continue building the module until the issues have been resolved.
One-click deployment in OutSystems allows you to break free from the tedious cycle of compiling code, integrating systems, troubleshooting errors, bug fixes and resolution and instead deploy the entire user interface of databases, workflows, and integration components in a single click. OutSystems comes with a dependency analysis engine to ensure the smooth performance, speed, and overall health of the application.
Oftentimes, several developers simultaneously work on the same module, thus requiring to merge the code at the end of the process. Compare and Merge in OutSystems initially tries to merge the code via automatic integration. If not feasible, developers can review the merge status on the Compare and Merge window along with all the possible conflicts. Once reconciled, merge requests are approved and executed.
Workflow Builder in OutSystems allows you to design the step-by-step workflow of an application and even deploys it to the development environment. In case you outgrow your current workflow, you can convert it to Service Studio and continue your development efforts there.
Experience Builder in OutSystems allows you to create visually-appealing prototypes of your B2C mobile apps and even generates production-ready code in minutes.

Step #3: Test

No greater emphasis can be placed on the importance of testing in the software development lifecycle. However, testing is usually perceived as a time-driven task and even after proper testing, there is no guarantee that a user might not encounter a bug in the final version. It is why there is a pronounced need for fast, efficient, and automated testing procedures that make testing streamlined and simpler.

Owing to its visual development approach of designing and managing workflows and application logic and continuous integration validation protocols built into the platform, OutSystems-developed applications result in fewer bug fixes and testing cycles than other technologies. This significantly reduces application development time and accelerates time-to-market.
OutSystems self-healing capabilities checks for issues, automatically rectifies them, and even notifies developers on identified bugs that must be addressed.
The built-in continuous integration validation capabilities in OutSystems monitors interdependencies, vigilantly assesses software applications for bugs, redundant logic, or broken dependencies to ensure optimum performance, and automates database updates.
An OutSystems deployment plan allows you to move app changes, version tag details, deployment notes, and settings from one environment to the other. This checks for the overall health of the application, the integrity of its packages, functionalities, etc. to ensure consistent performance and speed.
OutSystems allows developers to undertake component, unit, API, integration, functional, end-to-end testing, and other best practices for enhanced security, stability, and performance.

Step #4: Deploy

Deployment refers to the process of deploying a tagged version of the application from one environment (for example, development) to another (for example production). Deployment occurs throughout the development lifecycle and OutSystems comes with a unified console called Lifetime to enable the seamless deployment of all application changes, database updates, and functions. It provides some of the following state-of-the-art deployment capabilities:

Developers can tag application deployment with a version number to identify all the changes made and even roll back to a previous version in case of critical bugs detection.
DevOps teams can move the tagged application version from its current environment to the target environment.
Release also forms an integral part of the deploy process, which involves deploying a release version to the pre-production environment, assessing the application’s feasibility with a small pool of target users, performing additional testing procedures, and then, after it passess all tests, releasing it to the final users.

Step #5: Secure

OutSystems’ secure runtime environment and built-in app lifecycle management capabilities, accelerates the development and deployment of secure applications throughout. By default, OutSystems applications come with an extra level of security.

As the leading low-code development platform leverages a visual development environment that has to be converted to standard .NET code, OutSystems employs secure code patterns to do so, which automatically protects the app from common web and mobile vulnerabilities. Therefore, all OutSystems apps are protected from top 10 most-critical security threats by OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project).
OutSystems Sentry, offers extra security, risk management and monitoring for cloud users.
OutSystems AppShield acts as an additional layer of security that automatically adds during DevOps processes to make apps more resistant to intrusion and tampering.
OutSystems comes with a built-in logic for identity management concerning end-user authentication methods such as the following:

OutSystems stores end user information in its database but not along with the credentials. Instead, it computes a cryptographic hash using the credentials, storing only the results.
It employs Active Directory, Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), SAML 2.0, Azure AD, Okta, IdP Connector, SSO and IdP Mobile for enhanced identity management.

OutSystems Forge provides third-party connectors to integrate applications with external authentication services.
Access controls ensure that only authorized personnel review the visual building blocks.
AI Mentor Studio analyzes application codebase, checks its runtime performance, and also implements stringent security scans.

Step #7: Monitor & Respond

Once the application is released to end users, the monitoring and responding stage commences that involves resolving all the errors arising during every user’s experience. DevOps teams can go through these access and error logs, resolve them all effortlessly without investing too much time in writing the code.

OutSystems Service Center collects and logs all details and user activities for several indicators.
Service Center Analytics allows developers to filter all the pre-aggregated reports by date and type.
With OutSystems Lifetime, developers can identify, troubleshoot, and resolve all performance issues encountered by end-users.
OutSystems Forge comes with several monitoring tools such as analytics APIs, business activity monitoring, MonitorProbe, and infrastructure monitoring to ensure the performance and stability of your applications.

Embrace the DevOps vision with trusted OutSystems Partner

Undoubtedly, to maintain pace with the current market needs and user expectations, DevOps will continue to play an instrumental role. However, successful DevOps implementation is more than just a checklist, it is about choosing the right toolscape that accomplishes all your goals. OutSystems DevOps comes with a built-in toolscape that can help you with DevOps implementation and developing enterprise-grade apps that are scalable, agile, and innovative.

As an OutSystems Partner, we have assisted several enterprises in building modern mobile, web and intranet applications while strictly following all DevOps best practices and we can fulfill your business cases too. Connect with our certified experts to know how OutSystems low-code capabilities helps you build a successful and growing DevOps culture.

Narendra Maheshwari

Solution Architect

Narendra is a Solution Architect at Ranosys. Working on the OutSystems platform since 2014. He has 11 years of IT experience as a Software Developer, Tech lead and Solution Architect with much enthusiasm and experience in developing software systems. He has been successful in bending abstract system requirements into real software solutions having high security and performance. Experience to set up cloud and on-premises OutSystems server.

Know more about OutSystems DevOps from our certified experts.

Implement Salesforce Order Management in 12 steps!

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The Salesforce Order Management System is the heart of Commerce Cloud, handling everything from processing orders, accepting payments online, communicating with suppliers, tracking orders, coordinating shipment schedules, and processing returns. When integrated with customer service, it can help retailers assist customers when they need it, preventing delays in the ordering process and enabling full order transparency, quick shipping, and timely delivery.

In times of digitization, customers want the entire buying process to work seamlessly from the moment of checking out till the time retailers receive the order. There is a stark change in customer expectations with an increasing demand for fast and easy shipping, hassle-free returns, and order tracking to know exactly where orders are and when it will be delivered. Apart from order processing, OMS also integrates customer-facing systems to positively impact the post-purchase experience, including ERP, CRM, sales, service, and commerce.

Salesforce Order Management System is central to the overall customer experience. It can make or break a brand’s relationship with the customer.

Why Salesforce Order Management System?

If you are in the digital retail business, OMS is really important. Below are few of the challenges that OMS can easily counter:

Automating manual order processing that can be tedious, time consuming, and expensive
Coordinate orders and inventory across multiple channels
Manage shipping schedules & complex orders
Streamlining order fulfillment process
Provide reports and analytics for better decision-making

How to decide on an OMS?

Every business is different and has different processes and needs. It is very critical to decide which OMS suits your organization. Here are some of the pointers which may help to decide:

Identify the pain points of the current Order Management System. Is it disparate? Are your systems not connected together, hampering gaining a holistic view of data? Are there any shipping delays, order cancellations issues or return process glitches due to which customer experience is getting hit and brand image is getting spoiled?
Define the objectives of what you want to achieve from the new OMS implementation which should be scalable and flexible.
OMS shall be capable and accept orders from multiple channels, route orders from fulfillment centers based on proximity, update on inventory levels, track orders online for the customers, provide a self-service option to customers for cancellations/return. Basically provide a unified experience for you and your customers.

Journey of an order

Typical order flow or journey looks like below and the questions that can be asked to understand order processing from the time it is placed for a better for an effective solution.

Order Capture

What are the most popular channels through which orders are placed by your customers?
Is an order placed from a storefront or any third-party channels as well?

Order Fulfillment

Do you have any warehouse management system/inventory system in place?
Does it integrate with other systems for order fulfillment?
How do you check the availability of products in the warehouse or the store or the nearest store to fulfill the order?

Order Deliver

For the product shipping, are there any systems in place for the integration? Or is it done via ERP?

Return/Cancellation

What is the return/cancellation process and policy?

Payment

What are the most-desired payment options by your customers?
How do you process product refunds or partial payment for half of the cancelled order?

Salesforce Order Management System (SOM)

Salesforce Order Management System (SOM) possesses all the typical OMS features and more. It acts as standalone OMS and can be easily deployed alongside any number of complementary cloud products from Salesforce. SOM is pre-connected to Commerce Cloud and natively supports Sales and Service Clouds as well because they are the offerings of the same platform, Salesforce.

Order vs Order Summary

Order represents the customer intent, order creation, and order changes and is immutable upon activation. Order Summary is what we deal with the most, it presents the current state of order, including fulfillment orders, change orders and returns. Order summary gets updated upon any change while order remains the same.

Order Lifecycle

How a typical order workflow will look like:

The storefront receives the order and sends it the Order Management System
The integration transforms the order data and inserts into Salesforce
B2C Commerce customer profile is matched with customer account in Salesforce
OMS creates summary records for order and its related records
For fraud check, a custom integration with a 3rd party provider is available
A custom flow based on different business needs to create fulfillment orders and then assigns to fulfillment locations based on order delivery group, inventory and other criteria
The system updates the quantities and exports the fulfillment order to a fulfillment provider
External provider returns an ASN( Advance Shipping Notice) to OMS
Based on the data received, OMS creates shipment records and fulfillment order status to fulfilled or cancelled
Trigger to create invoices and interface with payment provider to ensure funds
OMS updates quantities and statuses on associated summary records & exports invoices to an ERP

Where to learn and configure Salesforce Order Management System (SOM)

Partner Learning Camp( PLC) is the best place to learn and configure SOM.

Here are the some of the learning resources/sections for those who do not have access to the PLC:

Setting up the Environment

This section talks about setting up and configuring the OMS org
Activate order management system features, Configure Field level security, Configure Reason codes, and Configure Delivery Methods
Applying the sample flows available in the environment
Deploy Named Credentials, Create Payment Gateway Provider, Create Payment Gateway

Placing Test Orders

Create orders using Workbench with JSON example file and changing the identifiers in the org per your org- SalesChannelId, Pricebook2Id, OrderDeliveryMethodId, Product2Id, PricebookEntryId (these ids can be obtained via SOQL queries)

Troubleshooting Tips: SKU & Order Reference Number needs to be changed every time you run the JSON file and place the order.

Data Model and APIs

Schema builder is the best way to understand the data model, objects and their relationships
Creating Order Summary via Composite API
Query Order Summary by ID ( via SOQL query or via Composite API)
Query Order Summary by ID Enhanced
Cancel Item Preview

What does the Salesforce Order Management System comprises?

Here is the snapshot of objects involved in SOM.

Managing Process with Flows

This is one of the most important sections as every business and customer needs are different and configuring and customizing the flows can automate the processes and fulfill these needs. Below are the standard and installed flows given in the Salesforce Order Management System org which will be updated in each release:

Create Order Summary Flow

Creates the Order Summary and Order Payment Summary records once the order status is approved

Cancel Item Flow

Users can cancel the item from order pre-fulfillment
Reasons can be configured and order totals including promotions, tax and shipping costs can be recalculated
Creates a Change Order and updates Order Summary to reflect new order totals and reduced quantity

Return Item Flow

Users can return the item order post-fulfillment
Reasons can be configured and recalculates order totals including promotions, tax and shipping costs
Creates a Change Order and updates Order Summary to reflect new order totals and reduced quantity
Generates payment refund and credit memo

Below are the sample flows which have been given by the Salesforce order management system team so that implementation partners don’t need to start from scratch.

Create Fulfillment Orders for One Location

Retrieve a Location and the Order Delivery Group Summaries for the specified Order Summary
Retrieve all of the Order Product Summaries and create a Fulfillment Order for all Product Summaries
Update the status of the Order Summary to ‘Waiting to Fulfill’

Create Fulfillment Orders for Multiple Locations

Retrieve a default Location and the Order Delivery Group Summaries for the specified Order Summary
Retrieve all of its Order Product Summaries
Allocate each Order Product Summary to a Fulfillment Location
If fulfillment location does not exist it selects the default location
If fulfillment location exists it adds the Order Product Summary to it
If fulfillment location doesn’t exist, it creates one and add the Order Product Summary
Check for delivery charges and add it
Update the status of the Order Summary

Create Invoice and Ensure Funds flow

Calls the Create an Invoice from Fulfillment Order Flow then passes the created invoice to the Ensure Funds Async Flow core action.
Payment integration options (Mock payment gateway)

Configure Process Exceptions

Can create process exceptions for your business to raise a flag using flows

Modifying the User Experience

This section gives OMS the power of the Salesforce platform

Custom Lightning components can be built and deployed, mobile pages can be made, leveraging native Salesforce mobile apps, customizing the page experiences, creating order summary statuses for a path view
Approving the Order Summary, Allocating the order summary, Generating Invoice and Settle
Return and Cancel Order flow using “Actions and Recommendations” from the UI itself
Reports and Dashboards (the most powerful feature of Salesforce) for powerful analytics and data driven decisions

Salesforce provides a Sample Package Fulfillment in which there are sample processes, flows, and Apex Classes that can be implemented for an Order fulfillment workflow with SOM.

Single fulfillment Location, Low Order Volume
Single fulfillment Location, High Order Volume
Multiple fulfillment Location, Low Order Volume

Moving ahead with Salesforce Order Management System

OMS implementation guide provides more details on the overall OMS implementation steps, best practices, and a guide which well covers the PLC courses in detail and provides more insights as per B2C commerce.

The Salesforce Order Management System is a relatively new product (though not so new now) and possesses immense potential since the strength of the Salesforce platform so we can expect trust, scalability, flexibility, reports, and dashboards (all benefits of the Salesforce platform). This saves your integration cost and maintenance if you are using other clouds of Salesforce. Connector is also available with B2C Commerce which is easily enabled by the Salesforce team for a seamless integration.

Another power pack feature is FLOWS since it can be tailored per the specific needs of the businesses and already samples have been given by Salesforce so the implementation partners need not to start from the scratch and have a base ready for the top up configurations/customizations.

Talk to our expert for Salesforce OMS implementation.

Want to know more about eCommerce loyalty systems?

CONSULT NOW

The ultimate goal for businesses across verticals and ecosystems is to drive sales. However, in an era where customer expectations change in the wink of an eye and new technologies are rolled every minute, eCommerce businesses are trying to strike a balance in attracting attention across channels amidst the cut-throat competition and delivering personalized shopping experiences at scale. While brands vigilantly focus on attracting, engaging, and delighting customers, one of the critical stages of this customer journey, the repeat stage, is often overlooked. This becomes especially imperative when customer acquisition can cost five to seven times more than customer retention.

So, how can eCommerce brands foster deeper relationships with their customers and boost customer loyalty? The answer is intelligent eCommerce loyalty systems. These systems leverage leading-edge technologies like big data, artificial intelligence, and analytics to help you execute successful customer loyalty strategies and champion the retention stage of your customer’s journey.

In this resource, we discuss why intelligent loyalty platforms are the need of the hour and how to integrate a leading loyalty system, Capillary CRM Loyalty+, into your Salesforce Commerce Cloud stores.

What is an intelligent loyalty system and why do you need it?

Undeniably, technology is changing how businesses interact with customers and help them fulfill their needs. An intelligent eCommerce loyalty system is a solution catered in that direction.

Intelligent loyalty in eCommerce brings about a personalized and data-driven approach to building, maintaining, and scaling customer loyalty. It utilizes data analytics, AI, and customer insights to tailor targeted loyalty programs across online, in-store, and social channels, customized per individual customer preferences and behaviors. Integrating such loyalty systems aims to increase repeat purchases, turn brand loyalists into advocates, and build long-term brand-customer relationships.

Traditionally, loyalty programs relied on generic point systems or purchase frequency-based discounts to foster customer engagement and loyalty without taking into account unique interests and shopping habits. Intelligent eCommerce loyalty platforms tend to change this approach. Intelligent loyalty systems such as the Capillary CRM Loyalty+ utilizes leading technologies to gather and analyze individual shopper interactions and key attributes such as purchase history, browsing patterns, saved items, preferences, and most searched-for products to help eCommerce brands build an end-to-end customer loyalty marketing strategies and solutions based on the insights derived from the data. The direct impact of implementing such solutions to your eCommerce stores is that brands can then tailor their loyalty initiatives based on a shopper’s specific needs.

Why must eCommerce brands invest in an intelligent loyalty platform?

An intelligent eCommerce loyalty platform like Capillary Loyalty+ innovates and reimagines traditional loyalty programs to ensure that eCommerce brands champion the repeat stage of a customer’s journey. When eCommerce brands implement actionable insights from the wealth of customer data gathered, it results in higher retention rates, increases customer satisfaction, and promotes sustainable business growth.

That said, here is what an intelligent loyalty platform can do for you.

Deliver personalization at scale: Intelligent eCommerce loyalty platforms empower eCommerce brands to offer personalized rewards and vouchers based on individual customer behavior. By gathering insights into the products your customer is interested in, merchants can offer tailored rewards to foster higher engagement with the brand.
Anticipate customer needs and behaviors proactively: Leveraging the power of predictive analytics, businesses can proactively analyze customer needs and behaviors from their shopping patterns and browsing history and offer rewards and incentives that align with their interests.
Artificial intelligence for upselling opportunities: Implementing the power of AI, brands can derive intelligent product recommendations to customers within their loyalty programs, further enhancing their shopping experiences and increasing the chances of repeat purchases.
Real-time engagement: A leading intelligent loyalty platform engages with your shoppers in real-time across all channels, emails, mobile, web, in-store, and social media, facilitating meaningful and personalized interactions and further cementing their emotional connection with the brand.
Continuous learning: Data analytics and AI allow intelligent eCommerce loyalty programs to continuously learn and adapt based on customer behavior and feedback, enabling businesses to refine and optimize their strategies over time.

Introducing the next-gen intelligent eCommerce loyalty system: Capillary CRM Loyalty+ platform

Capillary’s CRM Loyalty+ is an AI-powered intelligent loyalty platform manager that leverages the power of AI, big data, and analytics to gather deep customer insights and deliver personalized engagement and experiential rewards.

Currently employed by 400+ enterprises across industrial verticals, including retail & eCommerce, fashion and apparel, food & beverages, and quick service restaurants such as Abbott, Domino’s, KFC, Bata, HP, PUMA, Pizza Hut, Asics, HP, and more, Capillary Loyalty+ powers 120K+ stores with its 100+ loyalty programs. With its advanced data collection, analytics, and efficient interpretation, the Capillary CRM Loyalty+ platform has built a staunch reputation across 30+ countries – the US, SEA, India, the Middle East, and China- delighting over 500 million customers with its intelligent capabilities.

As an enterprise-level intelligent eCommerce loyalty platform, Capillary Loyalty+ helps you reimagine your loyalty program with actionable and relevant rewards and discounts. Its engagement-focused framework facilitates limitless customizations, digital-first programs & reward models that are quite unique in the market. For eCommerce merchants and brands looking to enhance their overall customer experience and forge stronger emotional connections, Capillary Loyalty+ is a worthy choice to delight and re-delight your customers. Here is what it offers:

Adapts to your tailored marketing objectives: With Capillary CRM Loyalty+, you design loyalty programs that work best for your brand and customers. You can choose from tiers, points, and social or paid programs to tailor loyalty strategies and fulfill their expectations.

Seamless collaboration: Capillary Loyalty+ allows you to effortlessly manage single-brand, multi-brand, multi-country, and group loyalty programs. This empowers you to collaborate with brands and partners and co-create customer loyalty programs personalized for every shopper.

Configure real-time rule-based rewards with ease: With Capillary CRM Loyalty+, you can efficiently utilize customizable and easily configurable rules to upgrade or downgrade tiers within your loyalty programs. Also, you can allocate and redeem points and promotions and reward expiry to strengthen the overall effectiveness of your loyalty initiatives.

Turn brand loyalists into advocates: Unlock the power of word-of-mouth marketing by structuring special referral programs to attract more loyal customers with the Capillary Loyalty+ social loyalty platform. Configure multi-country or group loyalty programs to implement intelligent loyalty across channels.

Track campaign performance & success: Leverage the live dashboard from Capillary Loyalty+ to track campaigns on the go as they’re rolled out. This intelligent eCommerce loyalty system provides comprehensive visibility and in-depth reports on program performance and essential metrics like membership growth, demographics, revenue, promotions, liabilities, earn & burn, etc.

Loyalty fraud detection: Capillary CRM Loyalty+ comes equipped with a robust fraud detection module to ensure the utmost security of your loyalty programs. With this advanced feature, any unusual behavior deviating from the established, trained model is immediately identified and halted in real-time. It also proactively addresses new and previously unreported fraudulent activities, enhancing the integrity of your loyalty programs and safeguarding shoppers’ trust.

Optimize loyalty campaigns on the go: With Capillary Loyalty+, you can optimize your loyalty programs quickly based on the actionable insights gained from performance reports to maximize growth and customer engagement. With its AI-powered Nudge framework, eCommerce marketers can receive quick recommendations on strategic next steps to improve loyalty program performance and ROI.

While many more data-driven features are available with Capillary CRM Loyalty+, its integration with your eCommerce platform results in improved omnichannel customer loyalty, sales, and customer experience.

Enhancing customer loyalty with Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Capillary Loyalty+

As a leader in Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce, Salesforce Commerce Cloud helps enterprises worldwide to deliver personalized and secure shopping experiences across channels and empowers merchants to adapt to market shifts flexibly. Built to nurture, engage, and delight stages across a customer’s journey, Salesforce Commerce Cloud leverages the power of AI and ML to enable a 360-degree view of customers and drive sales.

That said, Salesforce Commerce Cloud integration with Capillary CRM Loyalty+ empowers eCommerce merchants to dramatically improve customer loyalty and master all the stages of attraction, engagement, delight, and retention.

Here we discuss how the integration of Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Capillary Loyalty+ empowers businesses to create meaningful and lasting connections with their customers.

#1: Data flow between Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Capillary CRM Loyalty+

The data flow between Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Capillary Loyalty+ must be such that there is a seamless exchange of customer information, loyalty program data, purchase history, rewards earned/redeemed, and other relevant insights. This enables a holistic view of customer interaction with the brand and their browsing/shopping behavior, resulting in hyper-personalized eCommerce experiences.

1.1 Salesforce Commerce Cloud data flow:

Customer Information: When a shopper interacts and engages with an SFCC-powered eCommerce store, the platform captures details such as contact information, shopping preferences, browsing history, saved products, etc. All this data together helps eCommerce brands to gain a 360-degree view of customer interactions and behaviors.
Reward Points: Salesforce Commerce Cloud also calculates and updates reward points earned by shoppers for their transactions and engagement with the brand. These reward points or vouchers can be awarded for purchases completed, referrals, or other predefined actions contributing to customer loyalty.

1.2 Capillary Loyalty+ data flow:

Customer Insights: Capillary CRM Loyalty+ helps you gather actionable insights across channels based on a customer’s preferences, previous interactions, shopping habits, etc. This experiential loyalty platform also provides a holistic view of each shopper.
Voucher Management: Capillary Loyalty+ also assists with voucher management that involves the creation, distribution, and tracking of vouchers based on specific parameters such as customer segments, purchase history, or loyalty programs. By personalizing voucher management, merchants can reward shoppers for being loyal to the brand and incentivize repeat purchases.

#2: Data Integration Strategy

A seamless integration between Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Capillary CRM Loyalty+ results in a bi-directional flow of data, statuses, reward points, and more between the two platforms.

2.1 Real-time data synchronization:

Real-time data synchronization means customer data, reward points, and voucher statuses are instantly updated across both platforms as soon as any changes occur. This bi-direction flow of data is facilitated by APIs, enabling immediate communication between the systems.

When a customer interacts with an SFCC-powered eCommerce store, actions such as making a purchase or earning reward points are instantaneously reflected in the Capillary Loyalty+ platform. Similarly, loyalty-related activities, like redeeming vouchers or reward points, are promptly communicated to the Salesforce Commerce Cloud platform.

2.2 Data mapping and translation:

As Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Capillary CRM Loyalty+ leverage different data structures or formats, data mapping defines how specific data attributes from one platform correspond to the attributes in the other and, if required, translate to maintain data consistency.

For example, customer IDs, purchase details, and loyalty-related data must be accurately mapped to their respective fields in Capillary Loyalty+. This ensures that reward points calculations are based on the correct transactional data and personalized loyalty campaigns target the right customer segments.

2.3 Purchase history and transactions:

Salesforce Commerce Cloud records customers’ transactions, including the products purchased, order details, and transaction amounts. This purchase history is shared with Capillary CRM Loyalty+, enabling the loyalty program to calculate and update reward points based on the customer’s spending and engagement.

2.4 Reward points and loyalty program data:

Capillary Loyalty+ manages the reward points system and loyalty program operations. It calculates and updates the reward points customers earn, taking into account their transactions, interactions, and engagement with the loyalty program. The reward points and loyalty program status data are shared with Salesforce Commerce Cloud to ensure consistency.

#3: Personalizing reward points and voucher campaigns

As an intelligent eCommerce loyalty system, Capillary CRM Loyalty+ provides actionable insights into customer behavior, preferences, and interactions. When this data is integrated with Salesforce Commerce Cloud, merchants can assign reward points based on specific customer actions or purchase behavior. For example, customers who frequently purchase products can receive more reward points, incentivizing their loyalty to the brand and resulting in repeat purchases. Also, merchants can tailor specific loyalty campaigns for new customers or those who last purchased a while ago, enticing them to engage more with the brand.

#4: Omnichannel redemption

When customers interact with a brand across different touchpoints, they should be able to earn reward points and vouchers redeemable across channels. A seamless integration between Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Capillary Loyalty+ ensures that customer data and loyalty program information is synchronized in real-time. This means that reward points earned by a purchase initiated in-store will be available for immediate redemption on a social store and vice-versa.

Such omnichannel availability of reward points and vouchers across channels and platforms enhances the overall customer experience and fosters trust.

Driving customer loyalty with Capillary CRM Loyalty+

In today’s competitive landscape, what’s essential is not just attracting more customers but providing a fulfilling experience to customers who choose to invest in your brand despite the competition. That’s why implementing an intelligent eCommerce loyalty platform such as Capillary CRM Loyalty+ becomes a crucial requisite. Driven by actionable customer insights, experiential rewards, and hyper-personalized engagement, Capillary Loyalty+ empowers merchants to go beyond the traditional loyalty management approach and cater to each and every shopper’s needs and demands. When integrated with your Salesforce Commerce Cloud store, it helps you unlock loyalty-delivered sales (LDS) and delight your repeat customers across channels and devices. To know more about Salesforce Commerce Cloud integration with the Capillary Loyalty+ platform, consult our seasoned consultants today.

Integrate your eCommerce store with Capillary CRM Loyalty+ platform.

Book your tickets for Meet Magneto Singapore 2023.

The most-awaited eCommerce conference in Singapore – Meet Magento Singapore 2023 (MM23SG) is returning to Marina Bay Sands, Singapore, on 17th August 2023, organized by Ranosys. This eCommerce event celebrates the powerful growth of eCommerce not only in Singapore but across the APAC region.

Date: Thursday, 17 August 2023

Time: 8:00 AM – 6:00 PM SGT

Venue: Level 3, Begonia Ballroom 3001AB-4 & 3101AB-4, Marina Bay Sands, Singapore

Ranosys have been organizing this event successfully for 6 years and you will be in a good company of eCommerce decision-makers, industry leaders, aspiring merchants, commerce experts, partners, and digital innovators traveling from all over the world for a day filled with insights, innovation, and interactions.

The remarkable growth of eCommerce in Singapore and across other APAC countries

Singapore is one of Asia’s most digitally-mature societies, showcasing high internet penetration rates and accessible high-speed connectivity, leading to a strong uptake of eCommerce services among its population. Singapore is the most affluent market for digital commerce, with the average eCommerce basket size more than twice that of its regional counterparts. The Singapore eCommerce market’s gross merchandise volume (GMV) reached 8.2 billion U.S. dollars in 2022 and is projected to surge to 11 billion dollars by 2025. This robust growth solidifies Singapore’s position as the best-equipped eCommerce market in the region, supported by cutting-edge digital infrastructure and the unwavering embrace of technology by its consumers and businesses, promising unmatched opportunities and experiences for the digital-savvy populace.

Meet Magento Singapore stands as a global event at the forefront of innovation and technology. This association empowers enterprises, practitioners, solution providers, and merchants within the community with valuable industry knowledge and insights, facilitating the creation of the next wave in the digital ecosystem.

Meet Magento Singapore – A global event where innovation and technology meet

At Meet Magento Singapore, the focus revolves around digital commerce and transformation, where leading-edge tools, applications, and platforms are explored to deliver the ultimate experience to customers, propelling businesses to excel. This global event brings together the entire Adobe Commerce and Magento open-source community, uniting merchants, customers, industry leaders, and Adobe stalwarts under one roof. The gathering serves as a platform to discuss recent developments, market trends, and endless possibilities in this rapidly evolving space.

With its impressive lineup of speakers, thought-provoking topics, and impeccable hospitality, Meet Magento Singapore is more than just a conference – it binds the Adobe Commerce and Magento Open Source ecosystem together and celebrates their milestones with unparalleled fervor and vigor.

In addition to Singapore’s remarkable eCommerce growth, the APAC region as a whole is experiencing a digital commerce revolution. According to recent data, the eCommerce market in APAC is projected to reach a staggering US$2.7 trillion by 2025, becoming the largest eCommerce market in the world. This remarkable growth is fueled by increased internet penetration, mobile adoption, and a tech-savvy population across the region.

Why should you join Meet Magento Singapore?

Now coming to the only question in your mind, ‘Why should I attend Meet Magento Singapore?’

Here are 7 reasons as to why you should attend the Meet Magento Singapore event this year.

#1. Explore the thriving hub of eCommerce in Singapore

Singapore’s eCommerce market has experienced radical growth, making it a hub of customer-driven innovation and cutting-edge technology. With strong support from the Singaporean government through initiatives like the eCommerce Booster Package and SMEs Go Digital Programs, the region has attracted both local and global brands seeking to boost online sales and productivity. At Meet Magento Singapore, you’ll explore the latest eCommerce innovations and opportunities in this dynamic ecosystem, sharing success stories, case studies, and the future of eCommerce.

#2. Gain insights into the booming SEA eCommerce market

The Southeast Asian (SEA) region is home to approximately 260 million internet users, making it the 4th largest eCommerce market globally, with an estimated value of US$770 billion. By attending Meet Magento Singapore, you’ll stay updated on the latest developments and trends in the SEA eCommerce space. These valuable data-driven insights will help you devise strategies for business growth and expansion in this rapidly evolving market, maximizing your online traction and traffic.

#3. Hear inspiring success stories from growing brands in APAC

Singapore’s strategic location in the heart of South Asia has makes it a popular hub for world trade and logistics. This advantageous position has enabled the expansion of local brands overseas and attracted global brands to establish a presence in the country. The conference will bring you face-to-face with the minds behind these successful ventures, offering the opportunity to learn from their experiences and gain inspiration for your own eCommerce journey.

#4. Network with key players in the SEA eCommerce industry

Meet Magento Singapore 2023 provides a unique opportunity to connect with leading enterprises, merchants, developers, and agencies in the SEA region. Expanding your network within the Magento community opens doors to new business prospects and collaboration opportunities. You’ll enhance your lead generation process by engaging with eCommerce pioneers, Magento experts, developers, and service providers and potentially receive invitations to future industry events.

#5. Discover the latest innovations shaping the future of digital retail

The conference showcases the brimming potential of leading-edge innovations in the eCommerce space, setting the stage for the “experience era” of digital retail. You’ll be exposed to cutting-edge tools, applications, and platforms that can help deliver exceptional customer experiences and drive business excellence. Staying informed about these trends will give you a competitive edge in the ever-evolving digital landscape. This year at Meet Magento Singapore 2023, we’ll explore the circle of commerce and delve into building an integrated store of tomorrow using cutting-edge platforms.

#6. Deep dive into the AI revolution in eCommerce

The AI revolution is reshaping the eCommerce landscape, and Meet Magento Singapore 2023 will undoubtedly delve into the latest trends surrounding AI in the industry. From AI-driven personalization and recommendation engines to chatbots and automated customer service, you’ll gain valuable insights into how AI is transforming the customer journey and revolutionizing eCommerce practices.

#7. Global gathering for cross-cultural insights and network expansion

Meet Magento Singapore brings together a diverse global audience, comprising professionals from various countries and industries. This cross-cultural gathering provides a unique opportunity to gain fresh insights into eCommerce practices worldwide, fostering innovation and inspiring new strategies. Networking with merchants, developers, and industry leaders expands your professional network beyond borders, creating potential collaborations and partnerships in untapped markets. This global exchange of ideas strengthens the Magento ecosystem, encourages knowledge-sharing, and enhances interpersonal skills, making Meet Magento Singapore an enriching experience that goes beyond learning about eCommerce trends.

With such promising prospects and the convergence of innovation and technology at Meet Magento Singapore, this event is undoubtedly a must-attend for anyone passionate about eCommerce, digital transformation, and the future of Adobe Commerce and Magento open source.

Mark your calendars and join us at Marina Bay Sands on 17th August 2023 for an unforgettable experience! Agenda for Meet Magento Singapore is now LIVE.

Know more about Meet Magento Singapore.

Want to digitize your loan origination process?

EXPLORE HOW

In today’s rapidly changing and highly competitive lending industry, financial institutions are continually seeking innovative solutions to streamline their processes, improve operational efficiency, and provide exceptional customer experiences. One solution that has gained significant popularity is the loan origination system (LOS). The term LOS can have different interpretations among bankers in the industry, but it generally refers to a set of software solutions that automate the workflows involved in originating commercial loans at a financial institution. The LOS emerges as an indispensable powerhouse, uniquely equipped to ensure utmost accuracy, enforce compliance with regulations, faster decision-making and masterfully navigate risk management complexities. In light of these paramount objectives, the LOS stands tall as an indispensable ally in propelling growth while enhancing the borrower experience.

In this article, we will discuss LOS, exploring its key features, benefits, and the transformative role it plays in the lending industry. Additionally, we will discuss how OutSystems, a leading low-code development platform, empowers organizations to harness the full potential of LOS and drive exceptional outcomes.

What is a loan origination system (LOS)?

A loan origination system (LOS) is a software platform that automates and manages the loan origination process for financial institutions such as banks, credit unions, and mortgage lenders. It serves as a central hub for all activities related to loan applications, approvals, and disbursements.

LOS also simplifies and accelerates the lending process by providing a digital framework for collecting and evaluating borrower information, assessing creditworthiness, determining loan terms, and facilitating document management. It replaces manual and paper-based processes with streamlined workflows and standardized procedures, increasing operational efficiency and reducing processing time.

The seven steps of a loan origination process

A typical loan origination process for any lending institution (banks, credit unions, micro-finance institutions, etc) consists of seven steps. This includes qualification, documentation, application processing, underwriting, credit decision, quality check, and loan approval & disbursement. Let’s discuss these steps in detail below:

#1: Borrower pre-qualification

As the first step of the loan origination process, it involves the borrower providing all his information to the lending institution. This includes identity information, address details, current employment details, income, payment history, tax returns & expenses, loan amount and purpose, etc.

#2: Documentation

In this second step, the borrower is asked to provide more comprehensive information and fill it up in an application form. They are also asked to submit relevant documents related to financial status, employment, income, and other credentials. They can either submit these information and documents offline or online by accessing the lender’s web portal or mobile application.

#3: Application Processing

Once all the comprehensive information is received, the lending institution’s credit department reviews the information, checking the accuracy, authenticity, and completeness of the borrower’s documentation. Other important action items of this step involve bringing in the credit analyst to validate the information and run algorithm-based analysis to assess if the borrower will be able to repay the loan.

#4: Underwriting

This is a critical step in the loan origination process and assesses the creditworthiness of a borrower and determines whether to approve or deny the loan or what loan amount can be disbursed. The borrower’s financial situation is evaluated along with other details like credit history, debt to income ratio, repayment capacity, and the overall risks associated with loan approval.

#5: Credit Decision

This is where credit analysts decide whether or approve or deny the loan request. In case there are any further details required, it is re-send to the originator to procure that information. Even when the loan is denied, it can be reconsidered with a reduced loan amount, increased loan tenure, or revised loan interest rates to lower the equated monthly installments (EMIs), etc. The final decision regarding the loan is announced in this stage.

#6: Quality Check

This is the stage where the accuracy and compliance of the loan application in regards to various related regulations and internal policies is assessed. Quality check of a loan application is a critical stage before the final approval and disbursement of the loan.

#7: Loan approval & disbursement

Once the borrower and the lender mutually agree on the loan terms and conditions as outlined in the loan document, the approved loan amount is then disbursed to the borrower. This disbursement can either take place in the form of a cheque or via direct bank transfer to the borrower’s account. If required, alternate channels like digital wallets, cards, etc. can be considered.

Typically, this entire process takes 40-60 days and more depending on various factors. As a lot of paperwork is required for the same, it takes a lot of manual effort and a significant amount of time, from origination to final processing.

Why do banks need to establish a loan application processing system?

Banks need to establish a loan origination system (LOS) to address the challenges associated with manual application processing operations. Tasks like verifying application information, determining loan terms, and preparing documentation can be time-consuming and resource-intensive. Banks can automate these processes by implementing a LOS, saving time and resources while increasing their application processing capacity. One of the key benefits of a LOS is its ability to ensure accuracy and consistency in handling loan applications. Manual processing is prone to errors and inconsistencies, resulting in financial losses and damaging the bank’s reputation. A LOS streamlines the application handling process, reducing the chance of mistakes and ensuring a smoother and more reliable experience for both the bank and its customers.

A streamlined and efficient loan origination process enhances customer satisfaction as clients experience a smoother and more streamlined application procedure. Additionally, a LOS facilitates better risk management practices, enabling banks to assess and mitigate risks associated with loan approvals.

What are the features of a loan origination platform?

A high-performing loan origination platform offers a range of features that streamline the loan application and approval process, enhance efficiency, and improve decision-making. Here are some key loan origination system features to look for:

#1. Automated application processing: The platform should automate various manual tasks involved in application processing, such as data entry, document verification, and application review. This reduces errors, saves time, and improves the overall efficiency of the lending process.

#2. Configurability and flexibility: A powerful loan origination platform allows lenders to configure the system to align with their specific business processes and requirements. It should offer customizable workflows, decision rules, and user interfaces, enabling lenders to adapt the platform to their unique needs.

#3. Integrated data and document management: The platform should provide seamless integration with data sources and external systems, allowing lenders to access and analyze relevant information during the loan origination system process. It should also offer robust document management capabilities, ensuring secure storage, retrieval, and sharing of loan-related documents.

#4. Compliance and risk management: An effective loan origination platform helps lenders comply with regulatory requirements and manage risk effectively. It should have built-in compliance checks, automated credit scoring, and risk assessment capabilities. The platform should also support regulatory reporting and audit trails to ensure transparency and accountability.

#5. Collaboration and communication tools: The platform should facilitate smooth collaboration and communication among various stakeholders involved in the loan origination system process, such as loan officers, underwriters, and customers. It should provide real-time updates, messaging features, and task assignment capabilities to streamline communication and enhance teamwork.

#6. Analytics and reporting: A high-performing loan origination platform offers robust analytics and reporting capabilities. It should provide comprehensive dashboards and reports that offer insights into loan performance, application metrics, approval rates, and other key performance indicators. These analytics help lenders make data-driven decisions and identify areas for process improvement.

#7. Scalability and integration: The platform should be scalable to accommodate the growing needs of the lender’s business. It should also offer easy integration with other systems and technologies, such as credit bureaus, fraud detection tools, and loan servicing platforms. This enables seamless data flow and enhances operational efficiency.

#8. Mobile accessibility: In today’s mobile-driven world, conducting business via mobile phones has reached unprecedented levels. For lenders, having a loan origination system software that provides real-time access to the loan approval status becomes crucial for optimizing all stages of the loan process. This holds particularly true for auto sales, where essential information such as the vehicle’s sale price, interest rate, terms, loan-to-value (LTV) ratio, and the probability of loan closure are critical. By incorporating this innovation, all relevant stakeholders can stay informed and up-to-date on the status of a loan, ensuring efficient and effective decision-making.

Leverage and LOS accelerator to start accepting loan applications quickly

The global loan origination and management market, which was valued at $1.9 billion in 2021 is expected to reach $3.3 billion by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 14.7%. Several reports also state that lending institutions wish to leverage digital loan origination systems to streamline the process. The usual demands of lending institutions are around tools that include capabilities for custom automated workflows, automated checks & underwriting, identity verification, secure storing of loan files and borrower details, and compliance management.

However, traditional LOS processes are limited by legacy systems, data silos, lack of data-driven decision-making, slow and cumbersome loan origination processes, divergent compliance and regulations, etc. While some lenders might have a digital LOS in place, it lacks the agility, scalability, and adaptability required and only serves as over-the-counter software. To maintain pace with today’s competitive ecosystem, lenders need to leverage a technology that is easy to scale, modify, and change, takes into consideration your custom workflows, and ensures compliance, data security, and integrity.

#1: Streamlined processing time

To address lengthy processing times, financial lending institutions can implement advanced digital tools and technologies that automate and expedite various stages of the loan origination process. This includes leveraging machine learning algorithms for faster credit assessments, digital document submission and verification, and real-time data analysis to reduce the overall time required for loan approval and disbursement.

#2: Efficient loan origination workflows

To improve efficiency, financial institutions can adopt centralized and well-integrated loan origination systems that provide a holistic view of borrower and stakeholder activities. These systems can automate communication, eliminate duplicated borrower records, and facilitate seamless collaboration among stakeholders. Implementing a well-structured workflow management system can ensure a smooth and error-free process from pre-qualification to loan funding.

#3: Adaptive compliance and regulatory solutions

To navigate compliance challenges, institutions can invest in flexible digital loan origination systems that allow easy configuration of compliance rules based on region-specific regulations and protocols. These systems should also offer automated compliance checks, documentation management, and underwriting criteria customization, ensuring that the institution remains compliant with evolving regulatory requirements.

#4: Comprehensive automation throughout the loan origination process

Automation is key to addressing manual inefficiencies in the loan origination process. Financial institutions can implement end-to-end automation solutions that cover tasks such as data entry, document processing, credit scoring, and reporting. By reducing manual intervention, these solutions enhance operational efficiency, reduce errors, and ensure that all regulatory checks are consistently met.

#5: Resource management and scalability

To overcome capacity constraints, lending institutions can consider outsourcing certain non-core functions or investing in scalable cloud-based loan origination platforms. This allows them to flexibly allocate resources and scale up or down based on market demands. Partnering with third-party service providers for routine maintenance and support can also free up internal resources for strategic initiatives.

#6: Enhancing borrower experience

Delivering a seamless borrower experience can be achieved by offering user-friendly, mobile-responsive loan application interfaces. Leveraging data analytics and AI-driven personalization, lending institutions can tailor loan offerings to individual borrower needs. Clear and transparent communication channels, including chatbots and digital support, can provide borrowers with timely assistance, making the overall experience fast, convenient, and customer-centric.

Building a robust loan origination system with OutSystems low-code

While we discuss the challenges faced by lending institutions, the question that now arises is, ‘how to build a robust loan origination system that helps fulfill the dual objectives of efficient lending operations and an exceptional borrower experience?’ The answer is to build a loan origination system (LOS) backed by the capabilities of OutSystems’ high-performance low-code.

Lending institutions need a loan origination system that expedites loan application and approval process, enhances borrower experiences, helps them ensure regulatory compliance, improves risk assessment, and enables customization. Building a loan origination system on OutSystems not only helps achieve all those objectives, but even lays the foundation of a secure, scalable, and agile loan application and approval process.

Here we discuss the six ways how OutSystems low-code helps you develop a robust lending platform fast and for the future.

#1: Develop, extend, and scale your loan origination system

OutSystems low-code platform, with the support of OutSystems.AI, accelerates app development by as much as 50%, thus reducing associated costs proportionally. This serves as a real deal for banks and financial institutions that wish to develop a custom loan origination system, optimize its capabilities, deploy new features fast, address bug fixes; all with minimal coding demands. Citizen developers can now install new upgrades and roll out new functionalities leveraging the visual development style and drag-and-drop capabilities of OutSystems, thus building interactive and powerful banking applications.

OutSystems.AI: OutSystems.AI is a suite of artificial intelligence (AI) tools that can be used to improve the efficiency and accuracy of loan origination systems. For example, OutSystems.AI can be used to automate tasks such as document classification and risk assessment.
OutSystems Forge: OutSystems Forge is a marketplace where developers can find and download third-party components that can be used to extend and customize OutSystems applications. Several components of OutSystems Forge can be used to improve the functionality of a loan origination system, such as credit scoring, fraud detection, and loan servicing.
OutSystems support: OutSystems offers a variety of support services that can help lenders develop and deploy loan origination systems. These services include training, consulting, and maintenance.
OutSystems Sentry: OutSystems already provides extensive security features tailored to the needs of lenders. With OutSystems Sentry, lenders can confidently build and manage applications while ensuring the protection of sensitive financial data. The platform offers robust security measures, risk management capabilities, and monitoring, making it suitable for banks and organizations dealing with critical customer information. OutSystems Sentry ensures a secure and compliant low-code cloud platform for lenders.

Moreover, lending institutions can facilitate easy and fast integration of LOS with CRMs, credit bureaus, and anti-money laundering (AML) checks, thanks to OutSystems TrueChange engine.

#2: Automate simple to complex workflows

LOS systems involve complex workflows, including application processing, credit checks, document verification, and approval processes. OutSystems offers tools for designing and automating these workflows, streamlining operations.

#3: Regulatory compliance

Compliance with financial regulations is critical. OutSystems provides features that help you maintain compliance with industry-specific regulations and standards, such as Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) requirements.

#4: Customization and flexibility

Loan Origination Systems often have unique business processes and requirements. OutSystems stands out with its flexibility, allowing organizations to customize the system to align with their specific needs. This adaptability enables quick responses to changing market conditions and evolving regulatory mandates, ensuring that the LOS remains tailored to the institution’s operations.

#5: User experience

OutSystems excels in empowering organizations to create modern and user-friendly interfaces, a capability that is absolutely pivotal for the efficient processing of loan applications and for delivering a positive user experience, whether for customers or internal users.

#6: Scalability & security

LOS systems must be able to handle varying workloads, especially during peak times. OutSystems provides scalability through horizontal scaling, allowing organizations to add more server instances as needed to accommodate increased demand. Additionally, it places a strong emphasis on security, offering authentication, authorization, encryption, and role-based access control features.

#7: Integration capabilities

LOS systems often require integration with various data sources, credit bureaus, third-party services, and financial systems. OutSystems provides pre-built connectors and an extensible integration framework, making it easier to connect and interact with external systems.

#8: Mobile access

In today’s mobile-centric world, providing mobile access is crucial. OutSystems allows organizations to concurrently develop mobile applications alongside web applications for their LOS. This ensures that the LOS is accessible to both customers and employees on various devices, enhancing convenience and accessibility, and catering to a broader user base.

Loan origination system use case with OutSystems

A leading financial institution was facing challenges with their traditional loan origination process, which was manual, time-consuming, and prone to errors. The cumbersome paper-based system resulted in inefficiencies, delayed processing times, and a poor customer experience. In their quest for a solution, they choose OutSystems, a powerful low-code platform, to streamline their loan origination process.

With OutSystems’ robust capabilities, they were able to build a customized Loan Origination System (LOS) tailored to their specific needs. The LOS automated various stages of the loan origination process, including application evaluation, approval, and document management. By leveraging OutSystems’ visual development environment, the company rapidly created intuitive user interfaces and seamlessly integrated data from multiple sources. They also successfully eliminated the reliance on manual paper-based processes.

The LOS now enables digital submission and processing of loan applications, significantly reducing processing times and improving operational efficiency. With real-time status updates and notifications, both customers and the internal team could track the progress of loan applications, enhancing transparency and providing a superior customer experience. By adopting OutSystems’ low-code platform, they achieved a modern, streamlined, and secure loan origination system, positioning them as a frontrunner in the competitive financial landscape.

Fasttrack loan origination with an OutSystems-based LOS accelerator

A Loan Origination System (LOS) is a valuable tool for banks and credit unions seeking to streamline and enhance their lending processes, from initial borrower interaction to loan closing and funding. By leveraging digital loan origination systems, financial institutions can deliver the level of customer service expected by borrowers, with even faster turnaround times.

As a leading OutSystems Partner, we have successfully assisted numerous banking and financial organizations in optimizing their loan origination process. Our certified experts are ready to help your institution achieve similar results and maximize the benefits of the OutSystems platform. Contact us to explore how OutSystems can optimize your loan origination system.

Automate your loan origination process with our certified OutSystems experts.

Ranosys, an Adobe Gold Partner and a leading digital transformation company, is proud to have been felicitated with the prestigious Adobe Practice Growth Partner of the Year 2023 award. This recognition highlights Ranosys’s exceptional expertise and outstanding contributions in the Adobe ecosystem, as well as its commitment to delivering innovative and impactful solutions to clients worldwide.

Ranosys has consistently demonstrated its ability to harness the power of Adobe’s suite of products to provide end-to-end digital transformation services. The company’s technical excellence, deep industry knowledge, and customer-centric approach have set it apart from competitors. The Adobe Practice Growth Partner of the Year award is a testament to Ranosys’s continuous efforts in leveraging Adobe’s cutting-edge technologies, such as Adobe Experience Manager, Adobe Commerce, Adobe Analytics, Adobe Marketo Engage, Adobe Campaign, and Adobe Target. These solutions have helped leading enterprises to enhance their digital experiences, drive growth, and achieve business success.

“We are truly honored to be named the Adobe Practice Growth Partner of the Year,” said Mr. Rameshwar Vyas, CEO of Ranosys. “This prestigious award from Adobe validates our commitment to delivering transformative digital solutions and services to our clients, leveraging the power of Adobe’s leading-edge technologies. I would like to express our gratitude to Adobe for their continuous support, as well as our clients who have entrusted us with their digital transformation journeys.” He further continued, “A massive shout out to the exceptional Ranosys team for their hard work, passion, and expertise. Your dedication and talent have made this recognition possible, and I’m immensely proud to lead such an incredible group of professionals.”

Ranosys’s success in the Adobe ecosystem is the result of its team’s tireless dedication to staying at the forefront of technological advancements and its ability to consistently deliver innovative solutions. Previously, Ranosys has also been the proud recipient of the Adobe Commercial Partner of the Year 2021 and Delivery Quality Solution Partner of the Year 2020 awards. Furthermore, Ranosys’ Adobe Marketo implementation for clients and internal marketing strategies has been published as a success story on the official Adobe website. The company’s expertise spans a wide range of industries, including eCommerce, healthcare, finance, manufacturing, and more.

As the recipient of the Adobe Practice Growth Partner of the Year 2023 award, Ranosys further solidifies its position as a trusted partner for businesses seeking to maximize their digital potential. It remains committed to driving digital transformation by combining its extensive technical expertise with Adobe’s industry-leading solutions, thereby empowering clients to thrive in an increasingly digital world.

About Ranosys

Ranosys is an award-winning Adobe Gold Partner, founded in 2008 in Singapore with offices in the USA, UK, Middle East, and APAC regions. It leverages the power of platform partnerships, experience design, and cutting-edge software technologies to drive digital transformation, eCommerce, and product engineering initiatives. Ranosys addresses the various milestones in a company’s digital transformation roadmap, identifying and designing. For more information, visit https://www.ranosys.com/.

Or, fill out the form and shoot us an email at sales@ranosys.com.

Develop next-gen banking apps with OutSystems.

EXPLORE HOW

As technology and service accessibility via digital solutions matures, so does the concern around customer data privacy and security, especially for the BFSI industry, where the lack of stringent measures result in significant financial losses for both the BFSI institution and consumers. To mitigate these risks, FSPs need to prioritize data security, privacy, and protection, especially while developing digital banking applications. And this is where a robust, agile, and secure low-code platform like OutSystems can be of tremendous assistance to the entire banking, financial services, and insurance ecosystem.

In this resource, our experts discuss the growing importance of secure applications in the BFSI industry and the leading OutSystems security capabilities that help in developing secure digital banking applications fast.

The growing importance of secure applications in the BFSI sector

Under the wake of aggressive digital transformation, BFSI enterprises are rapidly digitizing their banking operations which were previously managed by poorly integrated and disjointed legacy systems. Although the progress made while digitally transforming these processes is noteworthy, rapid and unplanned digitization exposes sensitive customer information such as banking details, social security numbers, and credit card information, thus providing better grounds to cybercriminals for using this data for malicious purposes. These constant threats and the rising concerns around user data privacy and security has compelled the BFSI industry to understand the importance of secure banking applications and invest in robust data governance frameworks and advanced cybersecurity technologies. Some of the primary reasons highlighting the importance of secure applications in the BFSI sector are:

#1. Rising cloud workloads

Banks deal with vast amounts of sensitive customer data, which includes financial records, personal information, and transaction details. As this data only grows with time, banks have been increasingly moving user data to the cloud. This data migration leads to a higher risk of exposure if proper security measures are imposed. Implementing secure procedures and workflows while storing user data on the cloud is essential to protect data from unauthorized access, breaches, and cyber-attacks.

#2. Poorly integrated third-party systems

While the entire idea of integrating third-party tools to banking applications is to bring additional functionalities and features to the end-users, often, improper integrated external tools can have a significant negative impact on security and privacy. Data leakage and privacy violations may occur if the third-party system does not handle customer data securely. Compliance challenges arise when the third-party system fails to meet regulatory requirements. It is essential to prioritize the accuracy and consistency of data during the integration process to facilitate the generation of dependable insights and enable well-informed business decisions.

#3. Legacy infrastructure

Legacy systems often lack the robust security measures required to protect against cyberattacks and data breaches. They might not have modern encryption and authentication protocols in place, which leaves sensitive customer data exposed to hackers. Moreover, the absence of granular access controls make it challenging to implement privacy restrictions or protect confidential customer details. Patching or updating legacy systems can be challenging and results in increased vulnerabilities and security issues.

#4. Difficulty meeting compliance requirements

The BFSI sector is contingent on strict regulatory requirements and compliance standards. Organizations must adhere to regulations such as the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Secure applications are vital in meeting these compliance requirements, avoiding penalties, and maintaining customer trust. However, due to improper integrated systems or legacy infrastructure, BFSI enterprises fail to accomplish compliance regulations and might face regulatory penalties and legal liabilities.

#5. Lack of real-time monitoring

Without real-time monitoring, digital banking applications are unable to actively detect or respond to security incidents or breaches. As most cyberattacks go unnoticed, it provides hackers with a free room to exploit security gaps and gain access to sensitive data.

OutSystems capabilities to build secure banking applications

OutSystems, a leader in high-performance low-code application development, takes security of banking apps very seriously and implements capabilities that help achieve this goal. It provides a secure runtime environment and the tools necessary to develop safe and protected applications. To achieve this, OutSystems addresses all the security concerns of the Financial Service Providers (FSP)with its following features: .

Follows OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project) top 10 vulnerabilities that can be found in any mobile or web application.
Provides enterprises with infrastructure security i.e., state-of-the-art-security which includes uploading of custom SSL (Secure Sockets Layer).
OutSystems has established a comprehensive information security program to safeguard the privacy, accuracy, and accessibility of customer systems and data.
OutSystems AppShield automatically adds additional layers of security during app deployment, making your apps resilient and resistant to intrusion, tampering, and reverse engineering.
OutSystems Sentry is an open-source error tracking and monitoring tool specifically designed for organizations working with sensitive, core, and customer data.

6 OutSystems capabilities to build safe and secure digital banking apps

Let’s detail the OutSystems capabilities that help in keeping your banking and financial applications secure and safe:

#1: Secure application code

OutSystems enhances the security of application code by adding an additional layer of protection with tools like OutSystems AppShield and Sentry. It utilizes secure code patterns to defend applications against potential vulnerabilities.

OutSystems provides you with in-built security features like defense against code injection attacks and automatic protection against Cross-Site Request Forgery. It also assists in handling untrusted HTTP request data, effectively preventing reflected and stored Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities. Furthermore, it ensures that the code adheres to the specifications of Android and iOS platforms compliances. The Sanitization API offers a range of functionalities that developers can employ in complex situations to prevent code injection in HTML, JavaScript, and SQL snippets.

#2: Secure session data and authentication mechanisms

OutSystems protects applications from session fixation attacks through session control and timeout, implemented automatically. OutSystems also considers setting a password rotation policy for banking applications. Additionally, OutSystems includes an inherent JSON deserialization mechanism that guards against tampering. It offers the significant advantage of single sign-on (SSO) functionality for modules that utilize cookies. This means that once users are authenticated in any one device, they can access other applications without needing further authentication.

#3: Role-based access control for applications and IT users

Role-based access control in OutSystems limits access to the pages of an application based on designated roles. After users are registered to utilize an application, the role-based access control guarantees that only authorized users carry out particular business functions. By utilizing visual building blocks, developers can establish permissions for roles. For example, the developer role may be restricted from deploying applications to production, whereas the operations role is allowed further.

#4: Protection against brute force attacks

Brute force attacks use trial and error methods to hack passwords and other sensitive information. OutSystems built-in Factory Configuration is a protection mechanism that safeguards both end users and IT users from brute force attacks. This mechanism has the flexibility to define the maximum threshold for unsuccessful login attempts, leading to the user blocking from the application. OutSystems uses Ciphered Local Storage Plugin to handle the storage of sensitive data in the device.

#5: Enforced HTTPS

OutSystems mobile apps establish secure communication with server endpoints using HTTPS, ensuring that all data transmission is encrypted. Any attempt to access these endpoints through HTTP results in a server-side error. OutSystems enables SSL to enforce HTTPS security for specific applications in a secure environment.

#6: Application and system auditing

OutSystems offers inherent monitoring tools that effectively gather and present data of active applications. Tools like Audit System Services can examine the logs and status of a designated environment, encompassing various elements such as application logs, error records, screen requests, integration calls, business processes, and security audits.

How to transact securely via OutSystems-built digital banking applications?

Although a digital banking application makes financial transactions easy,it raises a concern for user data security. So how can financial institutions perform secure transactions? Here are a few steps on how OutSystem helps secure financial transactions:

Step 1: Logging in

OutSystems allows you to securely login into applications without storing your sensitive information like passwords and personal details.

Step 2: Data sensitivity

After logging in, OutSystems checks for data sensitivity. Data sensitivity includes credit card details, passwords, bank account information, balances, etc. If the data is sensitive, it will not be stored in a cache, but non-sensitive data will be stored in a cache with the help of a security token if required in the future.

How security token works: Security tokens allow users to store sensitive information based on devices that generate random numbers, encrypt them, and send them to a server with user authentication data.

Step 3: Call APIs

After securely checking data sensitivity, you can call relevant APIs happening at the backend. Your device will act as a code generator, providing a one-time password (OTP) while transacting. These one-time passwords are generated through authenticator apps on the device or sent by SMS on your mobile phones.

Step 4: Transact

At the time of sending money, cash withdrawal, bill payments, etc., you can securely log in to the application and transact through API-generated OTP. And that is how OutSystems allows you to transact securely.

Explore how OCB built a secure mobile banking app with OutSystems

Read the success story here

Leverage OutSystems capabilities for digital banking app development with us

To succeed in the digital world, building secure applications is essential for the BFSI sector and protecting customer data. OutSystems is a low-code platform that enables rapid application development with robust security features, making it an ideal choice for building secure applications in the BFSI ecosystem. As a trusted OutSystems partner, Ranosys has assisted several FSPs with their specific use case-driven digital banking application and can help digitize your financial operations as well. Connect with our certified low-code experts to know how OutSystems can solve your digital banking challenges.

Explore how OutSystems provide banking solutions with our certified experts.

Ranosys, a leading Digital Commerce company and award-winning Adobe Gold Partner will be attending the Adobe Summit EMEA 2023, London UK to be held on 8-9 June at ExCeL London. Our members of the Leadership Team, Anand Ramdeo, and Sourabh Modi, are looking forward to attending this Digital Experience Conference.

Adobe Summit 2023 is an in-person and virtual event which gives you an unique opportunity to join a community of Experience Makers from around the world to learn, be inspired, and make connections – and ultimately, to empower you to make the digital economy personal. A two-day event, Adobe Summit EMEA 2023 will witness innovative keynotes, 70+ sessions and networking activities. This year Adobe Summit EMEA London will bring together professionals and like-minded digital leaders from across the globe to share insights, discuss the key to success in a personalized digital economy. It is the premier event for marketers and experience makers to hear about the latest industry trends, learn about latest Adobe Innovations and to be prepared for the future!

Talking about the Ranosys attending Adobe Summit EMEA, Anand Ramdeo, CRO said, “We are excited to join the event and hear from the brightest industry minds and gain valuable insights about the diverse digital landscape. We look forward to meeting professionals from leading global brands, exploring Adobe’s emerging technologies that can help deliver superior customer experiences, and capitalizing on emerging opportunities to boost our growth.”

As a premier Adobe Gold Partner, Ranosys comes bearing over 14+ years of experience in the industry with strategic specializations across Adobe Commerce, Adobe Experience Manager, Adobe Marketo, Adobe Analytics, Adobe Target, and Adobe Campaign. With a certified team of experts, developers, and consultants, Ranosys has assisted leading global brands and Fortune 500 companies in creating excellent customer experiences across the Americas, APAC, and Europe regions.

The upcoming Adobe Summit EMEA 2023 presents a valuable opportunity for Ranosys to connect with industry leaders, merchants, and agencies, thereby enhancing its existing relationships within the market. Through the gained insights, Ranosys can assist its growing clientele to implement the solutions to its fullest, expand its portfolio of service in the region, and strengthen its position in the competitive digital experience ecosystem of the UK.

About Ranosys

Ranosys is an award-winning Adobe Gold Partner, founded in 2008 in Singapore with offices in the USA, UK, Middle East, and APAC regions. It leverages the power of platform partnerships, experience design, and cutting-edge software technologies to drive digital transformation, eCommerce, and product engineering initiatives. Ranosys addresses the various milestones in a company’s digital transformation roadmap, identifying, designing. For more information, visit https://www.ranosys.com/.

Or, fill out the form and shoot us an email at sales@ranosys.com.

Build your B2B eCommerce store with Salesforce.

CONSULT NOW

B2B buyers, once accustomed to the traditional and often cumbersome purchasing process, are now demanding seamless and personalized shopping experiences similar to those enjoyed by B2C consumers. Gone are the days when B2B transactions were solely driven by lengthy negotiations, rigid contracts, and impersonal interactions. Today’s B2B buyers expect intuitive and frictionless online experiences, tailored product recommendations, efficient order management, and swift customer support. They desire the convenience and personalization that have become key attributes of B2C shopping.

As the expectations of these B2B buyers evolve, businesses are compelled to adapt and embrace innovative solutions that bridge the gap between the two worlds. And one such robust platform that is transforming the landscape of B2B transactions is Salesforce B2B Commerce Cloud. Its cutting-edge capabilities enable businesses to deliver unparalleled customer experiences, revolutionizing how B2B buyers interact with suppliers and vendors.

In this blog, we will delve into:

Understanding what is Salesforce B2B Commerce Cloud
What are the challenges marketers face when trying to deliver personalization to B2B organizations
Why should you transform B2B commerce experiences similar to B2C ones
The key attributes of Salesforce B2B Commerce that empowers personalization
The best practices for delivering personalized experiences for B2B eCommerce

What is Salesforce B2B Commerce Cloud?

The Salesforce B2B Commerce Cloud is a platform that builds eCommerce storefronts tailored to B2B organizations with larger transaction amounts than other B2C businesses. These online solutions cater to other buying businesses than a B2C storefront that looks after end-users. It includes:

A flexible and scalable architecture that can support various B2B business verticals.
A robust set of APIs that allow businesses to integrate B2B Commerce Cloud with their existing systems and the Salesforce ecosystem.
A wide range of out-of-the-box features, such as intuitive search functionality, easy-to-navigate and customize product catalogs, and quick order management tools, enabling businesses to scale their personalization efforts.

Top 6 challenges B2B organizations face when delivering personalization

As B2B buyers are becoming more familiar with conducting purchases online, they increasingly expect the same B2B experience attributes such as personalization, visual merchandising, and easy order management. Therefore B2B sellers now need to create their own unique online buying experience, akin to B2B eCommerce solutions, but tailored to consumers’ specific needs and preferences.

However, this prospect is easier said than achieved. While the end goal for B2B enterprises is clear, the roadmap to the same is hurdled with challenges surrounding marketing dynamic, legacy solutions, and disconnected systems. Some of the major challenges of B2B eCommerce are:

Challenge #1: Complex purchase process

B2B transactions often involve multiple decision-makers, long sales cycles, and complex buying processes. Delivering personalized experiences requires faster decision-making across the key stakeholders, understanding and catering to the needs and preferences of various users. And with the evolving customer needs, achieving personalization and offers that align across decision-makers becomes challenging.

Challenge #2: Limited data availability

B2B companies deal with large amounts of customer data across multiple systems and platforms. Integrating and consolidating this data can be complex and time-consuming. With a unified view of customer data, it becomes easier to personalize the shopping experiences across users and offer custom solutions, at par with their shopping behavior.

Challenge #3: Security and privacy concerns

Enterprises globally are liable to follow specific regulations, such as GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), to secure customer data. Gathering data has caught the attention of privacy supporters concerned about protecting the customers you are trying to reach. Since, balancing personalization with privacy and security concerns is vital, B2B has to ensure that data collection and usage comply with regulatory requirements and instill trust among their customers by being transparent with buyers about the data you collect and how you use it and providing options for preferences.

Challenge #4:Complex product catalogs

B2B companies possess extensive product catalogs with multiple variations, configurations and pricing structures based on the end B2B buyer. Personalizing recommendations and offerings based on such complexities can be challenging and require robust data management and product information systems.

Challenge #5: Relationship-based selling

B2B transactions are often driven by long-term relationships and personalized sales interactions. Balancing personalized digital experiences with traditional relationship-based selling models is crucial. Ensuring a seamless transition between online and offline touchpoints and aligning the sales team with personalized digital strategies can be challenging.

Challenge #6: Change management and other cultural barriers

Much to the agreement of all B2B enterprises’ workforce, personalization is not seen as a priority across all levels. While implementing personalization requires a transformation of mindset within a B2B enterprise, overcoming this resistance is critical to fostering a customer-centric culture. B2B enterprises and stakeholders need to see technologies and related processes and strategies as an ally to deliver B2C-like experiences to their B2B customers.

Salesforce B2B Commerce Cloud features that powers B2B personalization

B2B companies are increasingly under pressure to adapt and provide B2C-like shopping experiences. The rise of digital commerce married with technologies such as AI, ML NLP, and cloud have transformed how consumers interact with businesses, and these evolving expectations have also extended to the B2B realm.

B2B buyers demand personalized experiences and expect companies to send them personalized offers. Receiving personalized offers has a major to moderate influence on their loyalty, and they would likely switch brands if a company didn’t make an effort to personalize communications with them. Meeting these expectations in B2B will have major revenue impacts. And this is exactly what a revolutionary platform like Salesforce B2B Commerce Cloud offers:

#1. One-click orders

The one-click order feature allows B2B customers to quickly and easily reorder previously purchased products. It simplifies the purchasing process by manually eliminating the need to search for and add items to the shopping cart. Instead, customers can reorder products they need with just a single click, saving time and effort. It helps streamline the ordering process, reduces friction, and encourages repeat business by making it easier for customers to replenish their supplies.

#2. Smart search and product recommendations

Salesforce offers a highly responsive and efficient intelligent search feature, Einstein AI enables B2B buyers to obtain instant results. Moreover, with the assistance of Einstein GPT, customers can now input incomplete search phrases and still receive relevant product suggestions, even when their queries are ambiguous. The advantages of B2B search extend to generating actionable insights for your business and providing AI-powered recommendations to enhance the acquisition process for new visitors to your digital platforms, thereby accelerating growth.

#3. Endlessly configurable

The Salesforce B2B commerce solutions on the Salesforce Customer 360 Platform are also endlessly configured to seamlessly integrate CRM data to create a holistic view of the customer. This allows B2B to stay connected across multiple touchpoints by linking it to Marketing Cloud, Sales Cloud and Service Cloud. This ensures customer data is available to anyone in the company at any time or device without integration.

#4. Real-time CRM

Salesforce enables you to leverage real-time CRM and quickly turn insights into moments that impress B2B buyers and foster customer loyalty. You can implement a feature of real-time churn alerts, which help your sales team instantly prompt you to engage with customers. Additionally, gathering real-time data lets you offer personalized pricing for each customer, tailoring every transaction to their preferences and market conditions. With the right data-driven insights, you can deliver intuitive and proactive services.

#5. Automation

Salesforce B2B commerce solution automates the sales and marketing tasks that give customers self-service for routine interactions like ordering and product research. This relieves sales reps from the order catering burden and lets them solve bigger issues. It also automates the tasks like logging data, signing in, making customer notes, generating quotes and proposals for sales reps and making them focus more on prioritizing leads. Automation allows businesses to have time to research customers’ needs and come up with a solution that can lead to a sale, eliminating administrative tasks.

#6: Order on behalf

Order on behalf is a Salesforce Service Cloud feature that allows customer service reps to place orders with the correct price and product on behalf of a B2B buyer. Earlier, every B2B organization order trigger notification based on the status change was entered manually. But now, sales and service teams enter orders on behalf of customers in an assisted selling notion with customers. This makes the long sales process short, expediting final purchases. To implement order on behalf Salesforce has recommended some best practices and solutions:

Salesforce CRM provides an ordering component or triggers button, enabling order trigger notifications in just a click.
Salesforce B2B commerce Lightning Experience powered by data models enables you to set up stores, products, catalogs and entitlements, while enhancing the scalability of the business.
Salesforce B2B metrics and analytics provide tools to track KPIs, monitor metrics and use the data to improve and grow your storefront.

#7: Case Management approach

The case management functionality in B2B commerce enables businesses to efficiently track, manage and resolve customer cases. Earlier eCommerce setup cases were generated automatically through common basic channels such as CTI (Computer telephony integration) connectors, email-to-case and web-to-case. It worked primarily on silos and a first-come, first-serve basis. But now, with elevated customer expectations, B2B companies are practicing cases worked through one system or on-screen UI. Now the requests are routed to agents based on their relevant skills and availability. Some of the key recommendations from Salesforce are:

Salesforce B2B commerce solution ensures that the case layout is clear, concise and easy for agents to understand.
Salesforce provides collaboration spaces for agents like Chatter, Slack, or other social channels.
In Salesforce B2B commerce, the web chat consists of a Chat console, omnichannel, embedded service and Einstein Bots to create a seamless experience.
Salesforce optimizes chatbots to keep customers engaged and updated throughout the case lifecycle from their preferred channels.

#8: Contract pricing and entitlements

The traditional eCommerce platform offered pricing models based on full-price waterfall (global, regional segments, account) pricing methods. Now, B2B eCommerce opts for pricing strategies to promote new or underperforming products from campaign programs. Salesforce has suggested some of the key attributes that help in resolving complex pricing issues. It includes:

Salesforce B2B commerce lets you personalize the catalog and pricing for logged-in users.
Salesforce B2B allows customers to select between multiple channels for payments.
It makes non-contract products available for purchase which are customized according to their needs and preferences.
Salesforce Experience Cloud manages digital experience and workspaces to deliver a connected experience.
Salesforce synchronizes product and pricing data to form a single source of truth in CPQ and B2B commerce.
You can also integrate B2B commerce carts with CPQ to allow sales reps to finalize quotes and customers to complete orders.
Salesforce links B2B commerce with CPQ billing and order information to improve cash and revenue management processes.

#9: Tailored store experience

Currently, B2B organizations provide the buyer with the ability to find and purchase products. Still, they need a unified portal and commerce experience via a single sign-on and navigation for a customized experience. Salesforce provides us with solutions for customized store experiences they are:

According to the customers, Salesforce translates the site experience into the local language and currency upon the first visit.
Salesforce allows B2B companies to segment customers based on various attributes such as purchase history and demographics and then offer personalized content based on the logged-in user and present search results and content on a basis of the target audience.

Unlock the power of Salesforce B2B Commerce with Ranosys

As customers expectations shift, enterprises must be agile and resilient to evolve their operations accordingly. Personalization in B2B is a continuous journey and the right platform will not only resolve the complex needs but will future-proof the delivery of an exceptional experience that is more aligned with your customers. As a trusted Salesforce B2B Commerce Cloud partner with an extensive B2B portfolio globally, Ranosys can help you leverage the Salesforce B2B Commerce capabilities to its fullest and unlock the power of personalization. Connect with our Salesforce B2B Commerce consultants to take full advantage of the platform and set up your eCommerce store for assured success.

Know more about Salesforce B2B Commerce from experts.

How can Salesforce Einstein GPT help?

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When we say personalization is the key, it isn’t just for digital experiences, but is even imperative when scaling customer relationships. And this is one challenge faced by every executive on the customer front. With retaining customers 4X more financially fruitful than acquiring new customers, executives often struggle to find effective ways to address the complex nature of customer interactions and provide personalized experiences at scale. In the wake of generative AI, traditional CRM systems fall short in providing the level of automation and customization required to meet the evolving needs of modern businesses.

This is what Salesforce CRM has changed with the introduction of world’s #1 Generative AI CRM system, Einstein GPT. This advanced CRM solution combines the power of AI, ML, NLP algorithms to transform the way enterprises handle, monitor, and scale customer interactions. Einstein GPT goes beyond basic data management to intelligently analyze customer data, generate personalized responses, and recommendations, and automate various functions of customer management.

Here we talk about generative AI in CRM, Einstein GPT and its advanced capabilities and how enterprises can make the most of it to transform their customer-front operations.

The infusion of generative AI and CRM

A recent survey has shown that 67% of IT leaders are prioritizing generative AI for their businesses in the upcoming months. But what is the buzz all about, and why do you need generative AI for your CRM? Generative AI in CRM is how you can reimagine operations to drive higher business growth.

The very nature of CRMs today is riddled with security concerns, poorly integrated systems, and siloed data across departments, making it a challenge to gain a 360-degree view of your customers. Here, technologies like generative AI and tools like Einstein GPT become a game changer to analyze huge subsets of data, automate customer management processes, and empower sales, service, marketing, and commerce professionals to deliver personalized solutions and conduct one-on-one interactions.

Salesforce introduced Einstein GPT world’s first generative AI CRM

Recently, Salesforce announced Einstein GPT, the world’s first generative AI CRM to grow customer relations and go beyond the traditional competencies of a CRM software. Einstein GPT is a strong representative of the upcoming iteration of Salesforce’s AI technology, which can generate over 200 billion AI-driven daily predictions within Salesforce Customer 360 using machine learning, artificial intelligence and natural language processing algorithms. Salesforce Einstein GPT is open and extensible, future-proof, and supports general and private AI models created for CRM. By combining the two powerful technologies, Salesforce is coming up with a generative CRM that will save time through automation while delivering meaningful personalization to your customers.

Implementing Salesforce Einstein GPT across departments & operations

Let’s understand how to implement Salesforce generative AI CRM and unleash the powerful functionality:

#1. Better productivity of sales team

With dynamically shifting customer expectations, simply selling a product or service is not enough. Customers want personalized experiences that align with their needs and preferences. And this is what Salesforce Einstein GPT helps you deliver, leveraging capabilities like built-in automation, intelligence and real-time data.

Einstein GPT with Salesforce Sales Cloud enables your sales team to sell smarter, faster, and more efficiently, boosting overall rep productivity and driving significant business growth. Let’s explore how.

Interactive chatbot: Einstein GPT with Salesforce Sales Cloud acts as a chatbot that will help you auto-generate sales tasks like composing emails and scheduling meetings and preparing for the next interaction. Through ChatGPT, you can generate relevant, personalized and engaging content for potential customers, such as email templates, product descriptions, social media posts, business proposals etc.
Quality leads: By integrating with Salesforce Sales Cloud, Einstein GPT allows sales representatives to analyze CRM data and concentrate their efforts on promising leads. Einstein GPT enables enterprises to assess the potential prospects based on their behavior, interests, and budget, and then assign suitable sales reps and deliver personalized messages and offers to specific target audiences. The AI CRM lead generation then processes quality leads that are most likely to buy, allowing sales reps to outreach their efforts and strategy like increasing engagement and conversion.
Improvise sales forecasting: Enhance sales forecasting accuracy by effectively combining Einstein GPT with Einstein Analytics in your Salesforce CRM. Your sales team can utilize predictive analytics to anticipate customer needs and preferences, leveraging historical CRM data and identifying trends in the sales pipeline. This valuable insight enables sales representatives to optimize the sales process and adapt their strategies accordingly.
Sales funnel: Optimize the management of your sales pipelines by receiving real-time updates on deal progress, identifying potential obstacles, and receiving recommendations for the next steps. Salesforce Einstein GPT can identify patterns and assess the likelihood of a lead converting into a customer. Additionally, it assists sales representatives in recognizing potential bottlenecks, leading to better-informed decisions regarding resource allocation, budgeting, and other crucial aspects.
Improves Communication: Salesforce Einstein GPT delivers AI-powered customer insights in Slack. It also provides intelligent summaries of sales opportunities, conversations and actionable insights. This facilitates better communication between departments.

#2. Enhanced customer service

Customer service is one of the important aspects for your business to compete effectively. A great customer support across multiple touchpoints drives an amazing customer experience, leading to more sales and marketing opportunities.

Salesforce Service Cloud enables you to deliver smarter, faster, and more personalized experiences. By harnessing the advantages offered by Salesforce Service Cloud, you gain the ability to effectively handle case interactions, facilitate real-time chat with live agents, and establish a unified knowledge base all within a single platform. With the built-in AI from Salesforce Einstein GPT, you can scale your customer services process, unifying your data for real-time connected experiences. The recent trend of Einstein GPT has a more focused approach towards increasing customer satisfaction through customized and expedited service interactions by auto-generating chat replies. Let’s explore use cases on how to scale service with generative AI and Einstein GPT:

Automated responses: Einstein GPT and Salesforce Service Cloud together enable service reps to perform automated customer interactions, such as answering FAQs, scheduling appointments, providing product information, and processing simple requests. Einstein GPT empowers you to swiftly address customer inquiries by facilitating the creation of a conversational AI chatbot. It also enables you to send personalized emails containing pertinent messages to your customers, build trust and brand reputation.
Availability: Automated Einstein GPT is available 24/7 to respond to customer queries which can help reduce the workload of support teams, minimizing customer wait times by taking queries immediately, even outside regular business hours. The conversational chatbot is capable of handling customer inquiries with incredible speed and accuracy, resulting in reduced wait times and improved customer satisfaction.
Personalized recommendations: The Einstein GPT recommends products based on a customer buying history, helping Salesforce Commerce Cloud drive revenue. Salesforce Einstein Analytics can further help make informed decisions and enhance customer experience by analyzing customer interactions to identify trends in customer queries and issues and provide valuable insights into product and service improvements.
Removes language barriers: With the proper integration, Salesforce Einstein GPT can serve a diverse customer base across different regions and languages. Multilingual support allows businesses to expand their reach and provide better customer service.
Omnipresent support: With Einstein GPT, your business can be omnipresent, offering convenient and accessible support on various digital platforms such as web chat, social media, online portals and messaging apps. Furthermore, it has the capability to consistently observe and evaluate customer feedback, aiming to enhance the system and provide superior customer services.

#3. Improved marketing strategies

One trend that will have a huge impact improving conversion numbers is implementing Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Einstein GPT. Salesforce Marketing Cloud allows you to personalize customer engagement throughout a customer’s journey, gaining a holistic 360-degree view of your customers. Along with this, businesses can also leverage Salesforce Einstein AI to drive product searches, recommendations, and suggestions, boosting growth and customer loyalty. Salesforce Marketing Cloud along with Einstein GPT assists marketers to create customized content, keeping customers and prospects engaged on multiple channels. Let’s discuss the capabilities of Salesforce Einstein GPT for marketing:

Advanced segmentation: Einstein GPT analyzes customer data and segments based on preferences, requirements, and behaviors, empowering your team to run highly targeted and personalized campaigns that resonate with your audience.
Removes language barriers: With advanced machine learning algorithms, Einstein GPT breaks down language barriers, enabling you to easily reach a global audience. This enhances the customer experience and increases your brand’s reach and revenue potential.
Increases brand awareness: Einstein GPT improves your online presence by providing round-the-clock availability on your website and social media platforms, delivering quick and efficient solutions to customer’s FAQs. The integration of Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Einstein GPT analyzes customer sentiment and responds to their queries promptly and effectively, improving retention and engagement.
Data-driven decision-making: Einstein GPT is able to analyze industry trends and provide valuable insights to your marketing team to develop robust marketing strategies and make informed decisions.
Generates personalized content: Einstein GPT generates high-quality and relevant content. By incorporating this generative AI for CRM, your marketing team can streamline content creation, saving time and energy to focus on other operational tasks. Additionally, it can optimize content for search engines and improve SEO rankings, driving organic traffic and improving brand visibility.
Tailored marketing campaigns: Integrating Salesforce Marketing Cloud with Einstein GPT, can enhance your understanding of customers preferences and previous buying behavior. It tailors your marketing campaigns more effectively, improving open rates, click-through rates, and, ultimately, customer engagement.
Mapping customer journeys: Leveraging Salesforce’s Journey Builder and using Einstein Analytics, you can map the customer journey by assessing CRM data and identifying effective touchpoints. Einstein GPT makes this easier by analyzing industry trends and providing valuable insights. Your marketing team can develop a robust marketing plan, make informed decisions, rebuild better marketing strategies, and improve ROI.

How Ranosys can help you leverage generative AI for your Salesforce ecosystem

Generative AI is a game changer for organization across industries and implementing it in your Salesforce CRM empowers sales, marketing, service and commerce to grow customer relationships and drive revenue.

With the recent launch of Einstein GPT, your business can deliver exceptional experiences boosting your profits and growth. Our certified experts can help you understand the capabilities of Einstein GPT and leverage its implementation in the Salesforce ecosystem. Connect with our Salesforce consultants to discover more use cases of Salesforce Einstein GPT for your business.

Explore more about Salesforce Einstein GPT.

Book your Meet Magento Singapore 2023 tickets now.

As we are excited to announce the 6th edition of Meet Magento Singapore on 17 Aug 2023 at Marina Bay Sands, Singapore, it reminded us of the remarkable previous editions we’ve organized, the amazing insights we’ve discussed, and the collective knowledge we’ve taken inspiration from.

Meet Magento Singapore is an exclusive event for the Adobe Commerce and Magento community to get connected with like-minded industry enthusiasts, leaders, and digital innovators who are valuable contributors to the digital commerce and digital transformation space.

Join us in celebrating the unforgettable journey of MMSG.

Meet Magento Singapore 2018 – Ranosys kickstarts the first Magento event in Singapore

The first Meet Magento Singapore commences in 2018 with Ranosys stepping up and taking the mantle of organizing this prestigious eCommerce event in Singapore, a thriving market for digital commerce and transformation in the APAC.

Meet Magento Singapore 2018 was held at the Marina Bay Sands and, since then, has been the preferred venue for MMSG. From merchants to developers, and industry peers, everyone across the eCommerce space came together to exchange insights and valuable ideas to help businesses deliver innovative and scalable solutions. The stellar lineup of noteworthy 33+ speakers and 12+ sponsors across the globe empowered 200+ attendees with industry-leading insights into the latest trends and the future of Adobe Commerce & Magento. The event provided a platform for networking and fostering connections among professionals in the eCommerce and digital transformation industry. Merchants had the chance to interact with developers and solution providers, forging long-term partnerships and exploring innovative strategies to enhance their online businesses. Collaboration and knowledge-sharing were at the forefront of the event, creating a vibrant and dynamic environment.

Meet Magento Singapore 2019 – Replicating the triumph of the previous year’s event

The first edition iterated Meet Magento Singapore as a premier gathering of innovators from across the globe. Following the success of the inaugural event, Ranosys continued its dedication to organizing Meet Magento Singapore in 2019 as well. In 2019, the in-person event became the most awaited conference for eCommerce enthusiasts in Singapore and saw over 200+ attendees, 18+ sponsors, and 39+ speakers from reputed enterprises. While some expert talks enlightened attendees with actionable insights into the future of the industry, others presented use cases to derive knowledge from and replicate successful implementations.

With the iconic Marina Bay Sands as the backdrop and amidst the hustle of Singapore City, Meet Magento Singapore 2019 earned a strong reputation for its exciting opening acts, warm hospitality and fun-filled after-event party. The event explored a variety of engaging and relevant sessions targeting businesses and the community.

Meet Magento Singapore 2020- Adapted to the new normal and hosted its first virtual edition

The complete shutdown of live events due to the Covid-19 pandemic didn’t pause the spirit and popularity around Meet Magento Singapore, which saw its first virtual edition in 2020.

Our team felt the importance of bringing the community together and hosted a safe virtual event, attended by 700+ professionals and 41+ speakers from across the globe. The virtual event provided an opportunity for attendees to gain valuable insights into the world of digital commerce from the safety and comfort of their homes while understanding the role this new normal will play in shaping the dynamics of the eCommerce industry. The sessions were carefully curated to address the sudden rise in online shopping and how logistics and supply chain would adjust to this newfound demand. Expert sessions from industry leaders in the space provided attendees with actionable strategies for navigating the changing landscape. Meet Magento Singapore 2020 successfully fostered a sense of community and ensured that the spirit of learning and collaboration remained intact.

Meet Magento Singapore 2021- The first-ever hybrid (in-person & virtual) MMSG event

The 4th edition of MMSG was launched as the first-ever hybrid event with over 550+ virtual attendees, 28+ speakers, and 09+ sponsors from 32 countries; and 50 in-person attendees in obeyance to the laws and regulations of the Singaporean government.

The year was filled with eCommerce enthusiasts who joined us in offline and online capacities from all over the world and an amazing lineup of speakers talked on various business tracks. The blend of virtual and in-person experiences proved to be a winning formula. It allowed for a greater reach and inclusivity, as participants from around the world could join virtually without the limitations of travel and had an equally immersive and interactive experience. The in-person event was held for the attendees to unwind & socialize amidst breathtaking views of the Singapore Skyline. This year the focus was on effective eCommerce strategies and how the shopping journeys of buyers have changed after the pandemic. The MM21SG continues to be a beacon of innovation, fostering growth and success in the world of eCommerce. Due to Singapore government regulations the in-person event was limited to 50 attendees only and the rest of the participants joined us virtually.

Meet Magento Singapore 2022- The return to in-person events with #MM23SG trending #1 on Twitter

The fifth edition of Meet Magento Singapore returned to a complete in-person track, receiving amazing traction from attendees globally. Just like all the other editions, MM22SG was organized at our venue from the start, the architectural marvel of Marina Bay Sands, Singapore. The true positive reception of the day is attributed to our packed ballroom with over 200+ attendees, 34+ speakers, and 11+ sponsors.

The conference was filled with enlightening sessions, networking, and insightful discussions. The exceptional lineup for panel discussions, solution and business tracks discussed leading innovations and insights around customer experience, cryptocurrency, eCommerce, cybersecurity strategies with Adobe Commerce, the increasing interest and adoption of a MACH commerce architecture, the game-changing potential of conversational commerce and much more. The best part, however, was meeting and networking with industry professionals after 2 years of virtual and hybrid editions, reiterating our trust and sense of commitment to the entire community.

Meet Magento Singapore 2022 was a grand success as we saw inspiring and invigorating talks focussed towards the innovation and future of digital commerce and transformation, with the hashtag, ##MM23SG, trending top on Twitter on 25 Aug 2022.

Mark your calendars for 17th Aug 2023 as MMSG returns at Marina Bay Sands

Insights, Innovations and Interactions, this is our motto at Meet Magento Singapore, one we abide by and follow whole-hearetedly while organizing the event. Following the same zest and enthusiasm, Meet Magento Singapore is back with its 6th edition on 17 Aug 2023 at Marina Bay Sands, Singapore. Tickets are now available for sale here.

For attendees, an #MM23SG ticket includes access to an all-inclusive experience encompassing enlightening sessions, breakfast, lunch, networking drinks, invaluable insights, and a captivating panoramic view of the Singapore skyline. Interested attendees can buy tickets available during Flash Sale, Early Bird, and Standard ticket sale. The flash sale includes only a limited number of tickets available at the most discounted prices.

To learn more about the ticket sale, agenda, speaker lineup, and sponsors, visit the website: www.meetmagento.sg.

Know more about Meet Magento Singapore.

Know more about Adobe Marketo Engage.

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As marketers and MarTech experts, one thing we’re often asked is how do we fulfill the ‘email personalization at scale’ quotient through Adobe Marketo Engage. As investment in this tool is considerable and there is too much hullabaloo going on around personalization and experience-driven marketing strategies, marketers find themselves in a tough spot while implementing and driving personalized email solutions. With email personalization becoming more than imperative for both B2B and B2C enterprises, achieving the same via leading-edge MarTech tools such as Adobe Marketo Engage is a prospect that needs to be discussed.

As a marketing automation platform, Adobe Marketo Engage holds immense potential in boosting conversions, engagement, or lead overall ROIs; most marketers still find it hard to crack the code of scalable personalization when using the tool. Here, we discuss what’s changed in the definition of email personalization in the past decade, what personalized experiences mean in this modern world, and how you can personalize your emails to boost conversion, engagement and retention.

The run-of-the-mill understanding of email personalization

While the term personalization has been on a rampage since over a decade, its meaning has changed tremendously. Earlier, when we talked about personalized email communication, the old-school translation of it was adding the first name of the person to it, changing subject lines to include a person’s or his/her company’s name, repeatable use of personal attributes to give a touch of personalization to the email. While this strategy worked for a while, people started responding differently to such emails, over time and due to excessive usage of tokens, it eventually became redundant.

Even while you’re reading this, your inbox is full of such emails that greet you with your first name and include other such surface-level information, but you care not to open them. So, why would anyone else?

Moving ahead from personalization to individualization: The changed world

If we were to define personalization, it basically is a 1:MANY mass generic messaging approach with a tinge of segmentation based on demographic information. While the understanding of personalization has evolved tremendously for the majority of B2C players with the introduction of live search and AI-driven product recommendations, for B2B, it’s still the same old over-usage of tokens. What has changed for B2B customers is their desires and expectations around the experiences they receive. B2B users expect the same experience as the B2C customers, which becomes an unsolvable challenge for marketers aiming to satiate the former with a basic level of personalization.

B2B no longer wants to hold privy to 1:many experiences, rather 1:1 ones. And this expectation, we call it ‘individualization’. The term is very well the successor of personalization and involves dealing with consumers on a personal level, with uniquely curated messaging based on their past behavior, preferences, history, and likes. Individualization is how B2B marketers can initiate out-of-the-box email activities based on a consumers’ interests, wants, identity, and needs.

How to achieve the email personalization quotient with Adobe Marketo Engage

Although Adobe Marketo Engage comes with several email personalization tools and functionalities, we would discuss a few basic ones that you’re already familiar with and those that you might want to explore for your next email campaigns.

#1: Tokens

A bit hypocritical of me to mention tokens the first thing in my list despite talking about their surface-level personalization standards previously. Well, truth is, tokens are the most easily personalized and the most easily understood tools in Adobe Marketo. If you’re a marketer leveraging the platform, you already know the power of these shortcodes, which is why they land the first on this list. In Adobe Marketo, you can add tokens to emails, landing pages, and smart campaigns. Typically, there are 7 types of tokens in Adobe Marketo – person, company, campaign, system, trigger, program, and member tokens.

For emails, you can add tokens to your subject lines, email script, for referencing data from other fields in the lead database, but never the pre-header (now you can actually, with this hack).

A: You can add tokens to From, From Address, Reply-to and Subject Line of the email. For adding tokens to your subject lines (and all other fields), you can simply click on the red arrow indicated feature. You can then reference all the available tokens at the program level to the email.

B: You can also add a token to the email script as shown in the image above.

C: Then comes ‘My Tokens’ that are added at program level and can only be used by the assets within the program.

All in all, tokens are a great way to add personalized information to your emails and reference to recipient-specific data.

#2: Email Scripting via VTL

This is one feature that marketers are mostly afraid of using or don’t wish to use owing to its requirement of coding experience. Velocity Template Language is a coding framework built on top of Java to dynamically generate content in emails. With Velocity, you can go beyond tokens and implement powerful customization in your email assets. While the language is pretty easy for developers to grab, for marketers, it’s more of a scary indulgence. But still, why must you indulge with VTL?

When you need to reference multiple characteristics of a record. The basic example being when you want to combine a Gender Field + Last Name for personalized greetings (in the form of Hi Mr. Tan or Hi Ms. Wong).
Dynamically show email content based on user preferences, for example, hide content for people who belong to a particular geographical location.

Email Script is available at My Tokens under respective program-level. Tokens created at parent program level are available for children programs as well. Velocity Scripting follows an if-this-then-that approach, executed by a set of if, else-if, and else codes combined via the rule operators such as AND (&&), OR (||), equals, does not equal, contains, does not contain, ‘check if field is empty’, ‘check if field is not empty’, and so on. You can combine all these operators to form your query strings using parenthesis.

Once you drag the Email Script token, click on edit, and there you can write your velocity script.

You can check Standard Objects & Custom Objects and then drag the respective field to the editor. With your field name, you can now write your logic. Then, click on Save. To test your code, you can send a test email to a lead that meets your conditions or add leads to your static list and then preview your email by list or person.

#3: Segmentation

A segment is a logical group of leads united by interests, behavior or demographics. Segmentation is how you can add dynamic content to your emails, landing pages, or even snippets. As each segment is different from each other, it allows you to achieve a high level of personalization. From CTAs, to images, content, and sender details, you can customize every nook and cranny of your email as per the interests of your audience.

You can create new segmentation in the Database > Segmentation folder.
From there, name your segmentation.
Add segments (Default segment is already added). Then Create.

Once you have your segment ready, you can personalize your emails as per segmentation to display dynamic content for people based on their specific demographic and behavioral attributes.

1. Head over to your email and click on ‘Make Dynamic.’

2. Select the segmentation you wish to personalize content through.
3. Add different versions of image/content based on the segmentation.

4. In ‘Preview’, review your email via segmentation.

#4: Marketo Custom Objects

Custom Objects are yet another powerful way to personalize your emails and extend the platform’s functionality to track other types of data fields beyond the standard leads and contacts.

These are custom data tables within Adobe Marketo to define further fields to store data beyond the available parameters.
You can refer to specific business data points to suit your unique business model. For example, you can create custom objects to track product purchases, support tickets, event registrations, or other data specific to your marketing campaigns.
You can even sync these custom objects to your CRM, Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics to align data with other systems as well.
You can employ custom objects in Adobe Marketo filters or trigger steps, allowing for targeted and relevant interactions.
When generating reports, you can analyze and derive insights from these custom objects.
Adobe Marketo also allows API access to these custom objects that can be studied to integrate with other systems, import or export data, or to automate processes.
You can reference custom objects in email script for personalization.

You can create Marketo Custom Objects via Admin> Marketo Custom Objects> New Custom Object (as shown in the image above)

Leverage Adobe Marketo Engage for advanced email personalization strategies

While personalization is a deal-breaker for several marketing campaigns, achieving the same can be a tedious process. Along with our certified Adobe Marketo experts, we can help you streamline and simplify email personalization with the platform. Our technical competency and versatile experience in servicing several global clients, helps us in implementing email personalization best practices and help you make the most of your marketing spend. Connect with Ranosys, a trusted Adobe Marketo consulting firm, and deliver personalization at scale.

Himanshu Ganoliya

Technical Lead – MarTech

Himanshu Ganoliya is our Technical Lead in MarTech. He holds three certifications as an Adobe Marketo Solutions Architect. Previously, he worked as a Software Engineer at Ranosys. Himanshu is passionate about marketing automation and data analytics. He aims to advance his career in this field while contributing valuable insights to the community.

Implement effective email personalization with certified Marketo experts.

Know more about Adobe Experience Manager.

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In today’s highly competitive digital business landscape, user experience holds immense importance. A poorly optimized, buggy, or slow website can significantly impact conversion rates and search engine rankings. Therefore, achieving long-term success for any website requires optimizing the quality of user experience. Whether you’re a business owner, marketer, or developer, Web Vitals offers valuable analysis to quantify and measure your site’s performance. By leveraging Web Vitals, you gain the ability to evaluate user experience and identify areas that require improvement effectively. This, in turn, leads to enhanced overall performance and visitor satisfaction.

In this resource, we’ve discussed everything you need to know about Web Vitals and how Adobe Experience Manager Assets can help you in delivering the superior user experience.

What are core Web Vitals?

Web vitals are standardized metrics that quantify the user experience of a website based on factors that Google considers important. Introduced in 2020, Google’s Core Web Vitals consist of three specific measurements related to page quality, page speed and user interaction: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). These metrics focus on three aspects of web performance: loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability.

#1. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) is a critical metric that assesses the performance of a web page in terms of loading speed. It represents how quickly the main content of a web page becomes visible after it starts loading. LCP measures the duration it takes for the web page to display its largest piece of content, which could be a video, high-resolution image, or a block of text.

An LCP time below 2.5 seconds receives a “Good” rating, indicating that the content loads quickly and provides a smooth user experience. A time between 2.5 and 4 seconds is considered as “Needs Improvement,” indicating that there is room for optimization to enhance the loading speed. However, if the LCP exceeds 4 seconds, it is rated as “Bad,” indicating a significant delay in content visibility, which can lead to user frustration and higher bounce rates.

How to improve Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)?

To improve your Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), focus on optimizing your First Contentful Paint (FCP) as it directly affects the LCP score. Below are the additional steps to improve your LCP:

Preload fonts with “crossorigin” and use preconnect if the font is loaded externally.
Use the html image tag instead of background images whenever possible.
Optimize images for different screen widths and avoid lazy loading for LCP images.
Preload the image using media queries for the correct screen width.
Compress images and use modern formats like WebP.
Specify image dimensions to reserve space and improve rendering time.

#2. First Input Delay (FID)

First Input Delay (FID) is a metric that measures the responsiveness of a web page. It calculates the time it takes for the browser to respond to the first interaction made by the user. Measurable interactions include clicking on a navigation link, tapping a button, choosing from menu options, entering text into a field, or any other action that engages with the website.

To ensure a positive user experience, it is recommended that web pages maintain a First Input Delay (FID) of 100 milliseconds or lower.. This means that the website should respond quickly to user inputs, providing a smooth and interactive browsing experience. A high FID indicates a delay in response, which can frustrate users and negatively impact their overall experience.

How to improve First Input Delay (FID)?

To optimize Core Web Vitals metrics, especially First Input Delay (FID), focus on improving the initial load speed. Here are some key steps:

Use modern JavaScript, dropping support for legacy browsers and frameworks like Internet Explorer 11 and jQuery.
Minify scripts and prioritize critical above-the-fold content while deferring the rest.
Remove non-critical third-party scripts to reduce page weight.
Optimize scripts by eliminating unnecessary code specific to the current page.
For larger JavaScript applications, load scripts asynchronously and on-demand to minimize FID impact.

#3. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) measures the visual stability of a web page during loading. It evaluates the unexpected layout shifts or how much content elements move around as the page loads. A poor CLS web vital score indicates that the page layout is unstable, leading to a disruptive experience for users.

To obtain a good user experience rating, pages should have a Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) of 0.1 or lower. This means that the content should load in a stable manner without sudden shifts that can confuse or frustrate users. A high CLS score indicates a lack of visual stability, which can lead to accidental clicks, difficulty in reading or interacting with the content, and a poor overall user experience.

How to improve Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)?

To optimize Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), prioritize a fast initial screen draw and minimize content shifting. Consider the following steps:

Set height and width dimensions for all image tags to reserve space before the image loads.
If using display swap for font optimization, ensure the default font size is similar to the final result to minimize layout jumps.
Avoid using icon font libraries; instead, use inline SVGs to prevent layout shifts.
Optimize JavaScript message alerts by implementing them inline with modern JavaScript and no reliance on third-party libraries.
Avoid using pop-ups shortly after the user visits the site to prevent negative impact on CLS. If necessary, delay their triggering for at least 15-20 seconds.
When serving ads, reserve ad space to prevent content shifting after the ad loads, especially if the ad dimensions are unknown or subject to change.

Additional Web Vitals

In addition to the core web vitals we discussed earlier, there are other important metrics that provide valuable insights into the user experience of a website. These metrics, when measured and optimized, can further enhance the performance and usability of your website. Let’s take a closer look at some of these web vitals:

1. Time to First Byte (TTFB): Time to First Byte measures the responsiveness of the web server. It calculates the duration from the moment a user makes an HTTP request to the time when the first byte of the page is received by the client’s browser. A good TTFB speed is typically less than 200 milliseconds, indicating a fast and efficient server response.

2. First Contentful Paint (FCP): First Contentful Paint measures the time from when the page starts loading to when any content appears on the screen. It provides the first visual feedback to the user that the page is loading. A good FCP score is typically 1.8 seconds or less, ensuring that users perceive the website as fast and engaging.

3. Time to Interactive (TTI): Time to Interactive evaluates the load responsiveness of a web page, measuring how long it takes for the page to become fully interactive. A satisfactory TTI score is typically 3.8 seconds or less, indicating that users can quickly and seamlessly interact with the website without experiencing delays or unresponsiveness.

4. Total Blocking Time (TBT): Total Blocking Time quantifies a page’s load responsiveness to user input. It measures the time between First Contentful Paint (FCP) and Time to Interactive (TTI). A good TBT should be less than 300 milliseconds, indicating that the website is highly responsive to user interactions, providing a smooth and uninterrupted browsing experience.

These additional web vitals, when considered alongside the core web vitals, provide a comprehensive understanding of the user experience on your website. By measuring and optimizing these metrics, you can identify areas for improvement and make necessary adjustments to create a website that is fast, responsive, and visually stable.

The Importance of Web Vitals

Web vitals play a crucial role in delivering a better user experience and improving the overall performance of your website. Neglecting web vitals can result in a negative user experience, leading to higher bounce rates and lower conversions. Furthermore, search engines like Google consider web vitals as part of their ranking algorithms, meaning that poor web vitals can negatively impact your website’s visibility in search engine results.

By focusing on optimizing web vitals, you can achieve the following benefits:

Improved user experience: Web vitals directly contribute to a positive user experience. When your website loads quickly, responds promptly to user interactions, and maintains visual stability, visitors are more likely to stay engaged, explore your content, and convert into customers.

Better search engine rankings: Search engines consider web vitals as a factor in determining the quality and relevance of a website. By optimizing your web vitals, you increase your chances of ranking higher in search engine results, driving more organic traffic to your site.

Reduced bounce rates: A website with optimal web vitals provides a seamless browsing experience, reducing the likelihood of visitors bouncing off your site. By minimizing delays, improving responsiveness, and maintaining visual stability, you can keep users engaged and encourage them to explore more pages.

Increased conversions: A positive user experience resulting from optimized web vitals can lead to higher conversion rates. When users find your website fast, interactive, and visually appealing, they are more inclined to take desired actions, such as making a purchase, filling out a form, or subscribing to your newsletter.

To effectively optimize your web vitals, it’s important to follow a systematic approach and implement best practices. Here are some key steps to consider:

Measure and analyze: Start by measuring and analyzing your website’s current performance using tools such as Google Search Console, Chrome User Experience Report, or web-vitals JavaScript library. Identify areas where your web vitals can be improved.
Prioritize improvement areas: Focus on the web vitals that have the most significant impact on user experience and search engine rankings. Core web vitals, such as Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), should be your primary areas of concern.
Optimize page speed: Improve your website’s loading speed by optimizing server response times, reducing file sizes, and leveraging caching techniques. Compress images, minify CSS and JavaScript files, and enable browser caching to enhance overall page speed.
Enhance server performance: Ensure that your web server is capable of handling incoming requests efficiently. Consider using Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) to distribute your website’s content across multiple servers, reducing latency and improving response times.
Optimize content delivery: Use techniques like lazy loading to defer the loading of non-critical content until it’s needed. This helps prioritize the loading of important elements and reduces the overall page load time.
Minimize render-blocking resources: Identify and minimize render-blocking resources, such as CSS and JavaScript files that prevent the page from rendering quickly. Optimize their delivery by using asynchronous or deferred loading techniques.
Improve mobile responsiveness: With the increasing number of mobile users, it’s crucial to optimize your website for mobile devices. Ensure your pages are mobile-friendly, responsive, and provide a seamless user experience across different screen sizes.
Address layout shifts: Minimize unexpected layout shifts (CLS) by specifying dimensions for images and other media elements, avoiding dynamically injected content that pushes existing elements, and using CSS animations with proper placeholders.
Optimize user interactions: Reduce First Input Delay (FID) by optimizing JavaScript execution, breaking up long tasks, and deferring non-critical JavaScript. Prioritize critical tasks to ensure a smooth and responsive user experience.
Continuously monitor and test: Regularly monitor your web vitals using various tools and conduct user testing to gather feedback on the user experience. Identify any bottlenecks or issues that may arise and make necessary adjustments to improve performance.

By following these optimization strategies, you can enhance your website’s user experience, improve search engine rankings, and drive better conversions. Remember to regularly monitor and analyze your web vitals to ensure ongoing performance improvements.

How can Adobe Experience Manager Assets help?

Adobe Experience Manager Assets can help optimize your website’s content in alignment with web vitals by focusing on key areas that impact performance and user experience. Here’s how it can contribute:

1. Content Delivery Optimization: Experience Manager Assets allows you to efficiently manage and deliver optimized digital assets to your website. By leveraging dynamic media capabilities, you can automatically resize, compress, and format images and videos based on the device and viewport. This optimization reduces the file size and improves loading times, directly influencing metrics like Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).

2. Content Caching and CDNs: Experience Manager Assets integrates with content delivery networks (CDNs) to distribute your assets globally, reducing the latency and improving the Time to First Byte (TTFB). By leveraging caching mechanisms, commonly through CDNs, static assets can be cached closer to the user’s location, leading to faster subsequent visits and improved performance metrics.

3. Adaptive and Responsive Design: Experience Manager Assets enables you to create and manage responsive web experiences that adapt to different devices and screen sizes. By utilizing responsive design practices, you can ensure that your content is displayed appropriately across various devices, positively impacting metrics like LCP and CLS.

4. Performance Testing and Monitoring: Experience Manager Assets provides capabilities for performance testing and monitoring. You can evaluate the impact of asset delivery on web vitals by conducting performance tests and analyzing the results. This helps identify areas for improvement and allows you to optimize asset delivery strategies.

5. Content Personalization: Experience Manager Assets enables you to personalize website content based on user segmentation and targeting. By delivering personalized assets to specific audience segments, you can enhance user engagement and satisfaction, indirectly influencing metrics like Time to Interactive (TTI) and First Input Delay (FID).

By leveraging the features and capabilities of Adobe Experience Manager Assets, you can optimize your website’s content in line with web vitals. This ultimately leads to improved performance, better user experience, and increased business outcomes.

Conclusion

Optimizing your website’s content with Web Vitals is crucial for delivering an exceptional user experience and improving overall performance. Adobe Experience Manager Assets offers valuable capabilities to optimize your website’s content in alignment with Web Vitals. From content delivery optimization and responsive design to performance testing and monitoring, Experience Manager Assets empowers you to enhance user experience, improve search engine rankings, and drive better conversions. As an Adobe Gold Partner, Ranosys has the expertise and experience to assist global brands in achieving optimal performance for their website. With our comprehensive knowledge of Adobe Experience Manager Assets, we can help you achieve a competitive edge in the digital landscape.

Want to improve your website's performance with Experience Manager?

Ranosys, an award-winning Adobe Gold Partner and leading digital transformation company will be exhibiting at the Best of Adobe Summit: Singapore Edition 2023 on 25 May at the Raffles Hotel, Singapore as a silver sponsor. Our members of the Leadership Team, Rameshwar Vyas, Sushma Vyas, Bharat Mungarh, and Arjun Sharma, will be exhibiting at booth no S-06.

Best of Adobe Summit: Singapore edition 2023 is an in-person event that gives you a unique opportunity to join the Adobe community from around the world to learn, be inspired, and make connections – and ultimately, deliver personalized and experience-led experiences to your customers. The global conference will witness innovative keynotes, insightful sessions, and valuable networking activities.

Talking about the Ranosys exhibiting at Best of Adobe Summit: Singapore edition, Rameshwar Vyas, CEO, said, “We are proud to join Best of Adobe Summit: Singapore Edition as a sponsor. This event presents us with an excellent opportunity to engage with industry leaders, Adobe professionals and customers leveraging the platform and showcase our expertise in digital consulting and Adobe Experience Cloud implementations. We are committed to empowering businesses with the right technology solutions, backed by the robust Adobe suite of tools to drive exceptional customer experiences.”

As an Adobe Gold Partner, Ranosys comes bearing over 14+ years of experience in the industry with strategic specializations across Adobe Commerce, Adobe Experience Manager, Adobe Marketo, Adobe Analytics, Adobe Target, and Adobe Campaign. With a certified team of experts, developers, and consultants, Ranosys has assisted leading global brands and Fortune 500 companies in creating excellent customer experiences across the Americas, APAC, and Europe regions.

The upcoming Best of Adobe Summit: Singapore Edition 2023 represents a valuable opportunity for Ranosys to connect with industry leaders, merchants, and agencies, thereby enhancing its existing relationships within the market. Visit our booth to know how our strategic expertise across Adobe Experience Cloud can be beneficial for your business.

About Ranosys

Or, fill out the form and shoot us an email at sales@ranosys.com.

Know more on how Adobe API mesh works?

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In today’s fast-paced and ever-changing business landscape, extensibility has become increasingly crucial to meet the evolving needs of customers. Extensibility allows businesses to personalize shopping experiences to customers’ needs. And, when it comes to extensibility, Adobe Commerce’s extensibility platform empowers brands to efficiently customize processes, integrate systems, and deploy new capabilities while maintaining scalability and superior performance. When organizations opt for composable commerce and MACH architecture, Adobe’s API Mesh stands out as it allows quick access to the source data rather than duplicating customer data into backend systems.

But before getting to know how Adobe API Mesh enhances your Adobe Commerce capabilities, let’s understand the need for extensibility for your eCommerce business.

The need of extensibility in eCommerce

The eCommerce industry is constantly evolving, with new technologies, trends, and customer expectations emerging. Businesses want to effortlessly expand their operations, tailor their store to unique requirements, and seamlessly connect with third-party tools to stay ahead of evolving industry trends. In essence, extensibility empowers eCommerce stores to thrive in a dynamic and ever-changing digital marketplace. With custom functionalities, online merchants can deliver superior personalized experiences across touchpoints and channels. Let’s understand the need for extensibility for eCommerce:

#1. Continuous improvement

Customers expect their shopping experiences according to current trends in eCommerce. To keep up with the pace, your platform must be able to continuously implement new ideas and technologies with extensible designs. The new pages, product uploads or any content updates should be easy and seamless for your eCommerce developers.

#2. Adaptability

The expanding eCommerce ecosystem also presents concerns around security, requiring enterprises to stay up-to-date and monitor errors proactively. By incorporating extensible components and frameworks, you can easily adopt new functionalities integrated with emerging technologies like Generative AI and voice assistants, implementing the latest security measures. An extensible website continuously helps you make updates without risking your customers’ data.

#3. Easy integration

Extensibility enables you to extend the core capabilities of your eCommerce platform. It also requires less coding and can be done quickly with easy integrations through API. This includes integrating with third-party tools and payment gateways, implementing advanced search and enabling product recommendations. Extensibility empowers you to provide your customers a rich and seamless shopping experience.

#4. Composable commerce

As your business grows, your eCommerce store should be able to handle increased traffic, extensive product catalogs, and higher transaction volumes. Extensibility allows you to scale your store’s infrastructure and optimize performance by integrating with scalable solutions, implementing caching mechanisms, or leveraging cloud services. It ensures that your store can handle growing demands and maintain a smooth running online store. Composable commerce follows a modular architecture to support complex business models across channels.

#5. Customizations

Every eCommerce business has unique requirements, and extensibility allows you to customize your store’s functionality, design, and user experience to align with your specific needs. It enables you to tailor the store’s appearance, product catalog, checkout process, and other aspects to create a personalized shopping experience that resonates with your target audience. The extensible platform delivers lightning-fast experiences across multiple channels using microservices functionality. It streamlines unlimited catalog updates, offering flexibility to deliver products through personalization recommendations.

Hence businesses need a platform through which they can extend and customize APIs directly without making changes to the API source.

What is an API mesh?

In layman’s terms, API mesh refers to an architectural pattern that helps with the design and management of APIs. It is a scalable and flexible approach that allows for a seamless integration between third-party distributed systems, applications, and/or microservices, empowering the underlying solution with agility, autonomy, and interoperability while abstracting the complexity associated with API integrations. Typically, an API mesh is a network of interconnected APIs between several systems and services. You can imagine every API to be a building block of a node within the network, where different APIs are managed by different teams responsible for invoking a specific functionality or usability. As an API solution is already very lightweight, its mesh results in improved performance and scalability as per demands.

The different benefits of implementing an API mesh cover:

Agility and scalability: An API mesh allows you to modify and update individual APIs without impacting the frontend performance or backend systems. This makes it easier to adapt and scale your changing business requirements at a fast pace.
Improved interoperability: As there are multiple APIs making up the entire mesh, it enables different applications, systems, and microservices to share data with each other, communicate and collaborate seamlessly, and improve shared operations between distributed solutions.
Decentralization and autonomy: Each API within the mesh is developed and managed independently, allowing different teams to work autonomously, and embark changes without disrupting other functionalities.
Simplified integration: With an API mesh, you don’t have to worry or indulge with the complexity surrounding individual APIs, and yet provide a simplified and consistent interface to integrate tools and deliver superior shopping experiences.
Security & governance: It is easier to implement governance and security policies within the API mesh, ensuring consistent authentication, access controls, and data protection across all nodes.

How API mesh with Adobe Commerce can help your eCommerce store?

API Mesh is an advanced API orchestration layer designed to facilitate seamless integration between private and third-party applications and various software interfaces with Adobe Cloud tools like Adobe Commerce, Adobe Experience Manager, Adobe Marketo Engage, Adobe Analytics, Adobe Target, and Adobe Campaign. Leveraging API Mesh gains the ability to consolidate multiple data sources into a unified GraphQL interface, streamlining data access and retrieval processes.

For Adobe Commerce users, API Mesh is a valuable solution for integrating additional APIs into storefront management APIs, enabling efficient and robust communication across different departments within the organization. Overall, API Mesh provides a flexible and scalable integration framework that enhances collaboration, data management, and overall operational efficiency. Let’s discuss how API mesh crafts delightful experiences for your eCommerce store:

#1. Personalized shopping experiences

Adobe Commerce acts as the frontend for personalized experiences and provides opportunities to drive revenue through conversions to deliver next-gen shopping experiences.
To deliver engaging experiences, Adobe Commerce, with the implementation of AI, gain insights into customer interests, product recommendations, search behavior, emails, geo-locations, discount code, and personalized web pages.
Adobe Commerce can easily share storefront browser events with Adobe Experience Cloud solutions to build rich customer profiles and personalize marketing campaigns and commerce experiences.
Live Search, powered by Adobe Sensei, is one of the capabilities. It is an API functionality built for headless commerce sites.
Adobe Commerce has updated its catalog service connected with API Mesh with a multi-tenant SaaS service that gives you faster catalog data retrieval for exceptional storefront shopping experience.

#2. Cloud-native extensibility

Adobe Commerce enables brands to build single-page applications and customizations on the globally distributed, auto-scaled via Adobe Developer App Builder infrastructure.
The cloud-native extensibility architecture of API mesh provides scalability and availability to deliver exceptional commerce experiences while supporting multiple websites, currencies, and global regions.
The Adobe Commerce infrastructure is built to support high traffic, maintain steady performance and offer consistently responsive shopping experiences, which are designed for scale and performance. It streamlines ways for developers to interact with core Adobe Services and automate processes.
The Adobe Developer App Builder allows a react-based UI framework for creating experiences that feel native alongside Adobe Cloud.
Adobe Commerce allows a range of services for running, managing, triggering, and optimizing custom digital experiences.
The developer tools of Adobe Commerce User experience, IDE plugins and other tools aid in debugging, testing, and deploying custom experiences.
Adobe Cloud services have a serverless framework for running third-party custom code on Adobe’s infrastructure.

#3. Powerful framework

Using the set of events available directly in Adobe Developer App Builder, Adobe Commerce allows you to build real-time integrations with ERP, third-party applications, CRM etc.
The Adobe App Builder provides a framework built on Adobe’s infrastructure to extend Adobe capabilities and business logic wherever you need them. This allows us to build a specialized creative pipeline.
The Adobe Commerce extensibility allows you to extend middleware, core service as well as user experiences, providing secure, hosted infrastructure to enable your developers to build those essential extensions without provisioning infrastructure overhead.
With easy asset migration of large amounts of assets from an external DAM into Adobe Experience Manager Assets on AEM, allows brands to use event-based triggers when an asset is modified.

#4. Storefront management

API Mesh enables merchants to easily implement new functionalities like payments, shipping, order fulfillment, live search, catalog service, quick checkout, inventory management etc.
The Adobe Commerce marketplace enables extensions like curbside pickup or buys online, pickup in-store (BOPIS) customer experience. These store fulfillment features maximize the productivity of store employees.
With API Mesh, storefront developers connecting and authenticating with all the services needed for shopping experiences becomes easy as they simply send the query to API Mesh, and it takes care of retrieving data from the appropriate service. To deliver fast responses it cache APIs.
Adobe Commerce store users can consider the API Mesh a way to integrate other APIs to storefront management APIs for strong communication across departments.

#5. Rich extension marketplace

Adobe Commerce store has thousands of free and premium third-party extensions and themes to boost the capabilities of your store and enhance shopping experiences.
With API Mesh, you can implement custom-built extensions just a click away.
Adobe Marketplace connects to the API mesh and allows your data to unify at the frontend without making changes at the backend.

#6. Powerful middleware

Adobe Commerce allows you to connect all your systems using middleware and a suite of app connectors built on Adobe I/O.
Adobe I/O events enable enterprises to build reactive, event-driven applications based on events originating from various Adobe services, such as Creative Cloud, Adobe Experience Manager, and Adobe Analytics.
API mesh connects external systems with Adobe applications building custom connectors or leverages a suite of pre-built integrations.
You can enhance core application capabilities with API mesh by extending the default behavior with custom features and business logic by building serverless services that run on Adobe I/O runtime.
API mesh acts as a robust middleware and extends core experience support to business requirements to build specific digital properties, storefronts and back-office applications.

Leverage the power of Adobe API Mesh with Ranosys

Adobe API mesh offers significant functionality for personalization with agility and scalability. As an award winning Adobe Solution Partner, Ranosys can assist you in implementing Adobe API mesh and leverage its capabilities to the fullest. Also, we can help you uncover the right tools and configure them to your online store to deliver delightful experiences.

Implement next-gen commerce experiences for your store with us.

Achieve your business goals with Salesforce OutSystems integration.

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In today’s fast-paced business world, staying ahead of the competition requires efficient processes and streamlined operations. Salesforce and OutSystems are two powerful tools that can help businesses achieve these goals. Salesforce is a leading cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) platform, while OutSystems is a low-code development platform that helps businesses build, deploy, and manage custom applications quickly and efficiently. While they serve different purposes, integrating these two systems can benefit enterprises looking to streamline their processes and improve their overall efficiency. In this comprehensive guide, we will explore the benefits of Salesforce OutSystems integration, the technical steps involved, and its use case.

Why choose Salesforce integration with Outsystems?

Salesforce and Outsystems integration can significantly benefit businesses in various ways. Here are few advantages of integrating OutSystems with Salesforce:

#1. High-End customization for improved operations

By integrating Salesforce and OutSystems, businesses can achieve high-end customization to meet their specific operational needs. Salesforce offers robust features, but custom applications are often required to address unique requirements. OutSystems provides a low-code development platform that seamlessly integrates with Salesforce, enabling businesses to build custom applications efficiently. This integration empowers enterprises to streamline processes, workflows, and data management, ultimately improving operational efficiency.

#2. Creating a connected environment

OutSystems offers a wide range of pre-built connectors and APIs, making it easy to integrate Salesforce with other third-party systems. This integration helps businesses build a connected environment that streamlines their operations. By integrating Salesforce with other systems such as ERP platforms and MarTech solutions, businesses can create a unified view of their operations. This connected environment allows enterprises to centralize their data and streamline their workflows across various systems, resulting in improved efficiency and data management.

#3. Streamlining sales operations

Sales teams heavily rely on Salesforce to manage their operations effectively. However, businesses often require custom applications that provide sales teams with seamless access to user information and facilitate tracking of sales activities. With the integration of OutSystems and Salesforce, businesses can build custom apps that empower sales teams to access crucial information, track sales activities, and utilize custom fields and workflows directly within the Salesforce platform. This integration streamlines sales operations, making processes more efficient and effective.

#4. Easy deployment of integrated applications

Deploying applications can be a challenging process for businesses. However, by leveraging OutSystems integration with Salesforce, businesses can develop and deploy seamlessly integrated applications on the Salesforce platform. OutSystems provides a rapid application development environment, enabling businesses to streamline their development and deployment processes. This integration not only saves time but also reduces costs associated with traditional development approaches, making operations more efficient and cost-effective.

#5. Achieving a customized Salesforce instance

OutSystems Salesforce integration offers businesses the opportunity to customize their Salesforce instance by incorporating personalized applications developed with OutSystems. These custom applications align with specific business goals and requirements, providing businesses with a tailored Salesforce environment. This integration empowers enterprises to leverage the full potential of Salesforce while meeting their unique needs, ultimately driving operational excellence and success.

#6. Lightning-fast coding for enhanced development

OutSystems excels in accelerating model-based development, enabling developers to build applications up to four times faster compared to traditional coding methods. This speed and efficiency translate into lower development costs and faster time-to-market. With OutSystems low-code platform, businesses can create visually appealing, cross-platform experiences that meet their unique requirements. The integration of OutSystems with Salesforce further enhances development capabilities, enabling businesses to create innovative applications that drive growth and competitive advantage.

How to integrate Salesforce with OutSystems?

If you are using OutSystems to build your application, you may need to integrate it with Salesforce to share data between the two systems. To complete this process, you will need to perform some configuration steps in both Integration Builder and Salesforce. Here are the steps a Salesforce admin needs to take to create a connected app and the information that an OutSystems developer needs to complete the setup process in Integration Builder.

Prerequisites

Before proceeding with the steps, there are a few prerequisites to keep in mind

You must have Salesforce administrator rights to complete the following steps.
This article assumes that an OutSystems developer has sent a request to the Salesforce admin via Integration Builder. The email request includes a unique authorization certificate. Alternatively, the Salesforce admin can use a private certificate.

Now, let’s get started with the steps!

Creating a Connected App in Salesforce

To create a connected app in Salesforce, follow these steps:

Find the email request with the subject “[user_name] requests your help creating a Salesforce Connected App”. The email should contain a unique authorization certificate as an attachment. Alternatively, you can use a private certificate.
Go to the Salesforce Service Setup Home and select App Manager (User Interface > User Interface > App Manager).
Click on the “New Connected App” button located in the upper right corner.
Fill in the required fields in the Basic Information section.
In the API (Enable OAuth Settings) section, select “Enable OAuth Settings”.
Paste the following URLs in the Callback URL box:

https://integrationbuilder.outsystems.com/OSIntegrationManager/SF_Callback

https://integrationbuilder.outsystems.com/IM_Salesforce/SF_Callback

7. Select Use digital signatures and upload the certificate you received in the email request. Alternatively, upload a private certificate.

8. In Selected OAuth Scopes, add:

Access and manage your data (API)
Allow access to perform actions on your behalf at any time (refresh_token, offline_access)

9. Keep the default settings for other options and sections, and click Save. Then click Continue.

10. On the Manage Connected Apps summary page, copy the Consumer Key in API (Enable OAuth Settings).

11. Send the Consumer Key to the developer who requested the connected app. If you used a private certificate, rather than the one attached to the email request, send the certificate as well, as the developer needs to upload it to the Integration Manager.

Assigning Pre-Authorized Users

To assign pre-authorized users in Salesforce, follow these steps:

In Salesforce Service Setup, go to Administration > Users > Permissions Sets.
Click New.
Fill in the fields; note the following:

– After you type the Label, the API Name should autocomplete.
– Leave the License drop-down as None
Click Save.
After creating the Permission Set page, go to the Manage Assignments section and click on Add Assignments.
Choose a user to assign to the Permission Set, preferably someone who has the necessary privileges to read, write, and delete data from Salesforce business objects.
Navigate back to App Manager.
For the app you created, click the arrow on the right and select Manage.
Click Edit Policies.
In Permitted Users, select Admin approved users are pre-authorized, and click Save.
In Permissions Sets, click Manage Permission Sets.
Select the Permission set you created, and click Save.

OutSystems and Salesforce integrations use cases

How a leading fleet management company smoothens their user experience with Custom Fleet Management solutions using OutSystems in their Salesforce ecosystems-

Challenge

A company that manages a large number of vehicles across various industries, including healthcare and energy, needed a way to streamline their operations and focus on their core business. To achieve this, they decided to develop their own solutions customized to the unique needs of their clients.

Their main offering is a SaaS-based client portal, which is used by multiple clients. However, they faced a challenge in adding new capabilities to the portal as they needed a low-code platform that could seamlessly integrate with the existing solution.

Solution

To overcome the above challenges, the company partnered with OutSystems consultants to jumpstart their low-code development process, starting with a Vehicle Inventory Management (VIM) application. The VIM application manages the decision-making process for moving hundreds of vehicles during client upsizing, downsizing, or turnover events, replacing the previous manual process. This added new capabilities to the FleetView portal, such as SLA tracking, guided decision-making, and improved workflow efficiency, and was integrated with Salesforce case management and third-party vendors for a seamless user experience.

The development team delivered a FleetView Mobile app in record time, with a streamlined and optimized mobile experience for clients. The app was built with a single code base for both iOS and Android platforms using OutSystems, with capabilities such as biometric login, push notifications, and local storage. OutSystems was also used to deliver other applications, including a Telematics Order Processing System, Factory Acknowledgement application, and Employee Operations app.

Result

As a result of their collaboration with OutSystems low-code platform, the company is now able to quickly and flexibly add new capabilities to their core system. They have successfully integrated the end-to-end client experience, business operations, and supplier network, allowing clients to move seamlessly from one application to another in the FleetView ecosystem.

The projects have received positive feedback within the organization. Business stakeholders were impressed with the quick turnarounds during the development of the VIM application, with iterations being delivered ahead of schedule. FleetView Mobile achieved record-breaking speed-to-market, with the team delivering a working mobile app within six weeks and a full-featured multilingual app, including a completed beta cycle, in just 13 weeks.

Why Ranosys for Salesforce OutSystems integration?

The integration of Salesforce and OutSystems offers businesses a plethora of benefits, including strategic applications with pixel-perfect UI, enterprise-grade scalability, governance, etc. By leveraging the power of OutSystems Salesforce integration, businesses can achieve a customized Salesforce instance, lightning-fast coding, and seamless connectivity with other systems, driving their success in today’s competitive landscape. And as a leading partner with OutSystems and Salesforce, Ranosys can help you unlock the full potential of your Salesforce instance with OutSystems low-code platform to deliver scalable and futuristic solutions.

Know more about OutSystems Salesforce integration?

Ranosys – an award-winning Adobe Gold Partner is thrilled to announce the 6th edition of Meet Magento Singapore on 17 August 2023 at the iconic Marina Bay Sands, Singapore. As a premier eCommerce event in the APAC region, Meet Magento Singapore would bring eCommerce enthusiasts, industry leaders, and digital innovators together for a day to discuss the brimming possibilities in the digital commerce and transformation space, while exploring the latest trends, technologies, and strategies shaping the future of digital retail.

“We are excited to host Meet Magento Singapore for the 6th consecutive year and unite the eCommerce community”, said Rameshwar Vyas, CEO – Ranosys. “The event has become a cornerstone in the global eCommerce community and serves as a platform to exchange knowledge, network with industry experts, professionals, and merchants, and discuss the latest innovations in the space. This year’s Meet Magento Singapore would include an impressive lineup of global speakers, industry experts, and passionate professionals supported by renowned sponsors to inspire, educate, and empower the audience.”

Meet Magento Singapore 2023 has established itself as a premier gathering of innovators and leading in the eCommerce ecosystem and has quickly risen to the status of becoming the most-awaited industry gathering in the APAC region.

Its exceptional lineup of keynote presentations, panel discussions, and solution-based sessions focus on industry relevant topics such as digital transformation, omnichannel experiences, the possibilities of AI in eCommerce, customer engagement, and eCommerce strategies delivered with the powerful platform of Adobe Commerce and Magento Open Source. For attendees, #MM23SG provides the unique opportunity to network with peers, share ideas, and gain valuable insights that help them stay ahead of the competitive curve and secure their lead in the ever-evolving eCommerce landscape.

“Our focus throughout all the editions is to curate an agenda that reflects the current trends and demands of the eCommerce landscape,” said Sushma Vyas, CEO – Ranosys. “And our goal this year is to equip our attendees with actionable insights, innovative solutions, and practical strategies that help them achieve immediate and long-term success and drive their processes forward.”

Like all its editions, Meet Magento Singapore 2023 is being organized at Marina Bay Sands, Singapore, an architectural marvel that adds to the overall excitement and experience of the event. For attendees, a MM23SG ticket includes access to an all-inclusive experience, encompassing enlightening sessions, breakfast, lunch, networking drinks, invaluable insights, and a captivating panoramic view of the Singapore skyline.

Registration for Meet Magento Singapore is now open and interested attendees can buy tickets available during Flash Sale, Early Bird, and Standard ticket sale. The flash sale includes only a limited number of tickets available at the most discounted prices. To learn more about the ticket sale, agenda, speaker lineup, and sponsors, visit the website: www.meetmagento.sg

About Ranosys

Ranosys is an award-winning Adobe Gold Partner, founded in 2008 in Singapore with offices in the USA, UK, Middle East, and APAC regions. It leverages the power of platform partnerships, experience design, and cutting-edge software technologies to drive digital transformation, eCommerce, and product engineering initiatives. Ranosys addresses the various milestones in a company’s digital transformation roadmap, identifying, designing. For more information, visit https://www.ranosys.com/.

Or, fill out the form and shoot us an email at sales@ranosys.com.

About Adobe Commerce & Magento Open Source

Adobe, and the Adobe Commerce platform, is a leading provider of cloud commerce innovation to merchants and brands across B2C and B2B industries and was named a leader in the 2022 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce. Magento Open Source is a self-hosted eCommerce platform by Adobe, loaded with extensions and functionalities to launch an online store achieving scalability.

About Meet Magento Singapore

Meet Magento Singapore, a global eCommerce event, welcomes all companies, individuals, retailers, and merchants active in digital commerce, with a curious interest in how Adobe Commerce and Magento Open Source helps disrupt the eCommerce industry, achieve the inconceivable, and assist businesses in registering massive and surmounting growth. Join seasoned Adobe professionals, experienced developers, ambitious merchants, and other technology partners in an insightful and reimagine future of digital commerce.

Want to know more about OutSystems low-code?

The need for fulfilling dynamic customer expectations and delivering market-relevant and trend-centric solutions has led to a rise in demand for solutions that build innovative products fast, right, and for the future. Much to the consistent talks around digital transformation and the growing emphasis on speed and agility in software development, strict hand coding-based platforms often fall short in meeting these modern needs. And this is where OutSystems low-code development platform can help bridge the gap.

A revolutionary platform in the software development landscape, OutSystems empowers organizations to rapidly build, deploy, and manage robust and enterprise-grade applications with minimal hand-coding. By abstracting away the complexities of traditional programming languages, OutSystems enables a new generation of technologists across skillsets, called citizen developers, to build feature-rich, scalable, and secure applications via an intuitive visual interface.

Here we discuss everything you will ever want to know about low-code development and the leading low-code platform, OutSystems.

But first, what is low-code?

In traditional software development, developers are tasked with building innovative products and solutions while writing massive amounts of code. However, in the current needs of agility, scalability, and high-performance, it becomes increasingly tedious and challenging for developers to meet with the ever-evolving technological and market trends. Low-code helps change that.

Low-code is a software development approach that allows developers (aka citizen developers) to engineer solutions with minimal hand-coding. You can leverage the user-driven capabilities of visual interfaces, drag-and-drop components, and declarative programming to create innovative applications without writing extensive lines of code.

In a leading low-code platform, developers get to employ its pre-built modules, templates, and reusable components to assemble feature-driven applications through a visual development environment. That means, developers design user interfaces, define application logic, and integrate with databases and/or third-party systems, all without spending time in tedious coding from scratch. Moreover, low-code platforms come bearing competitive features like automatic code generation, built-in debugging tools, and deployment automation to streamline development cycles and reduce the time, effort, and costs spent for application delivery and maintenance.

What is low-code development?

Low-code is an application development approach that minimizes coding to deliver applications faster by elevating coding from textual to visual. A low-code platform offers intuitive visual interfaces, drag-and-drop functionalities, built-in connectors, ready-to-use snippets, reusable codes, pre-built templates, and much more to create modern applications with intuitive UI/UX, seamless integrations, databases, and business logic much faster than traditional development.

The primary goal of low-code development is to accelerate the application development process, enabling faster time-to-market for software solutions. By abstracting away the complexities of coding, low-code platforms empower developers of various skill levels, including citizen developers and business users, to participate in the software development process.

Features of low code

In today’s highly competitive ecosystem, businesses are looking for a development platform that reduces the time required to build, deploy, and innovate powerful, cutting-edge applications. Besides graphical user interfaces, low-code development platforms provide higher agility and increased productivity and is easy-to-maintain and economical. Let’s discuss some of the features a low-code platform has to offer that a business must keep in mind before choosing the right platform for their application development.

#1.Visual modeling

Low-code provides drag-and-drop functionality and an intuitive visual user interface, which reduces the time and energy spent during hand coding, thus increasing development productivity. As this is mostly a visual development environment, any line of professionals can learn the platform, get certified, and effortlessly build industry-relevant enterprise applications. Furthermore, this model-driven development allows for easy visualization and ability to launch applications with one-click deployment.

#2. Reusable components

Low-code platforms allow you to easily build cross-platform applications by employing reusable components to achieve greater consistency and scalability. Citizen developers can use pre-configured modules, logic, templates, connectors, and more while developing the applications, thus reducing the overall time and efforts spent during engineering avant-garde products.

#3. Collaboration tools

Low-code platform breakdown data silos and results in stronger business IT collaboration with the help of built-in tools. This streamlines development and promotes better communication. The user interface promotes a seamless collaboration and easier communication and iteration between different stakeholders involved during the development process, such as business analysts, designers, project manager, QA testers, and developers, thus ensuring that the developed solutions meet the desired business objectives and user expectations.

#4. Scalable and secure environments

Low-code platforms accelerate the development of enterprise-grade applications while keeping in mind the security protocols and scalability needs. The cloud-based architecture of the low-code platform provides flexibility for immediate changes and supports continuous delivery to end-users.

#5. Seamless/native data integration

Low-code development platforms provide reusable components and microservices that can seamlessly access enterprise data. Low-code lets you securely integrate data from any source or system, even legacy systems using pre-configured APIs and connectors.

#6. Application lifecycle management

In the context of low-code, application lifecycle management refers to the suite of processes, tools, and practices implemented and deployed to manage, maintain, and govern the entire low-code application lifecycle. From development to deployment to ongoing maintenance, application lifecycle management ensures that all products built on low-code platforms align with business objectives and can be effectively managed and optimized throughout their existence. Low-code accelerates all stages of application development for faster delivery by utilizing automation and incorporating agile and DevOps practices.

Benefits of a low-code platform

From improving productivity to accelerating application development and enhancing process agility, a low-code platform offers several benefits over traditional development platforms to help enterprises gain a competitive advantage. Let’s discuss a few benefits of a low-code development platform:

#1: Rapid application development

The biggest selling point for any low-code development platform is its accelerated application development capabilities. Low-code platforms empower developers to code fast,right, and for the future using its visual interfaces, drag-and-drop functionalities, and pre-built templates. This negates the need for extensive hand-coding, allowing enterprises to quickly create applications and launch them to the market in a far less time than traditional development approaches.

#2. Increased agility and flexibility in application development

In today’s cut-throat industrial ecosystem, it is increasingly imperative for enterprises to be able to change, adapt, and innovate at a rapid pace. You no longer can rely on a monolithic legacy system to do the deed for you. And this is where low-code technology can help enterprises quickly change their solutions as per their business models and market demands. Low-code platforms come bearing agility, thanks to its visual development environment that allows for rapid prototyping, iterative development, and quick modifications. This allows enterprises to adapt and scale their applications efficiently and easily.

#3. Maximized productivity

As low-code development platform abstracts the need for writing extensive code lines by automating repetitive tasks and removing technical complexities, it frees developers to focus on other high-value tasks, thus boosting productivity. By leveraging pre-built modules, templates, and reusable components, developers no longer have to write code from scratch, resulting in more application deliveries in less time. Low code technology platform facilitates development, maximizes productivity, and empowers businesses to focus more on mission-critical operations.

#4. Improved customer experience

Organizations create new and innovative products much faster that meet customer expectations and boost employees efficiency and motivation. They can also adapt and change their existing products more easily based on user feedback and data. This includes the capabilities necessary for delivering multi-experiences across channels and devices, allowing businesses to deliver integrated solutions.

#5. Reduced development costs

With the crunch of resources, a low-code platform allows your business to use existing resources and staff by training them as citizen developers rather than hiring new developers for all new projects. This saves up costs spent on infrastructure and training staff.

#6. Increased collaboration between business and IT teams

With easy development, a low code environment removes barriers between business and IT to support continual collaboration and improvements. The visual-model-driven approach empowers businesses to collaborate on cross-functional projects that deliver new applications maximizing diverse knowledge and skills.

#7. Easy maintenance

Implementing reusable components and modules, development teams don’t have to start each project from scratch or write long lines of codes. Hence, adapting to evolving customer expectations becomes easier in a low-code platform, and businesses can focus on innovative solutions to stay ahead of the competition.

#8: Integration capabilities

Seamlessly connected systems form the backbone of data management to enable a 360-degree view of processes, operations, systems, and information. Poorly connected systems or nor connected systems make it difficult to analyze data for actionable insights and further implement those to the operational processes. Low-code platforms offer seamless integration with existing systems, databases, and APIs. This allows organizations to leverage their current technology investments and easily connect their low-code applications with other third-party enterprise systems, enhancing interoperability and data exchange.

#9: Improved scalability

Your enterprise systems must also be ready to scale up and down as per business requirements. If you run a growing business, you will soon grow over your current systems and then look for scalable solutions. Low-code platforms understand the need for scalability and are designed to handle it efficiently. As your business grows and user demands increase, low-code platforms can easily accommodate these scaling needs without suffering any performance or speed lag issues. This scalability ensures that applications can handle excessive workloads and user demands.

What is OutSystems?

OutSystems is a low-code platform that empowers you to develop pixel-perfect mobile and web apps via drag-and-drop functionalities easily integrated with third-party systems and customized per your business requirements. OutSystems incorporates the power of AI, cloud technology, DevOps, and visual modeling; enabling citizen developers to participate in app development and create user-centric apps. While OutSystems provides pre-built templates for application development, you can still add custom codes for innovative features and functionalities. As you don’t need to code apps from scratch, it results in future-ready mobile and web applications fast and at scale.

Here are some noteworthy features of OutSystems low-code platform:

The OutSystems cloud-native architecture allows you to create unique customer experiences that transform your legacy architectures, simplify enterprise app development, and accelerate business processes.
The OutSystems low-code solutions result in enterprise-level apps with serious productivity, eliminating high maintenance costs and easing optimization and enhancements.
OutSystems empowers enterprise owners to expedite application development from months to weeks. Its drag-and-drop capabilities and graphic user interfaces streamline the application development process.
Not just the development of apps, OutSystems also eases and speeds up the integration of applications with on-premises and existing cloud databases.

History of OutSystems

Paulo Rosado founded OutSystems in 2001 with a vision to develop applications fast, robust, and inexpensive at any point in the app lifecycle. OutSystems is a modern development platform that simplifies building apps, reducing costs and risk by continuous development, providing rapid development, enterprise-grade scalability, and security. OutSystems addresses two major challenges of business:

Enabling and humanizing digital transformation for enterprises of all sizes
Faster app development, delivery and change cycles

With the recent version of OutSystems 11 addresses the biggest issue that businesses are facing today – legacy system modernization, delivering new advanced capabilities like embedded CI/CD tools, automation, integrated platform services, and security layer. In late 2022, OutSystems released the OutSystems Developer Cloud (ODC), formerly known as Project Neo or OutSystems Neo, a new high-performance low-code development platform with state-of-the-art architecture. ODC cloud-native architecture leverages low-code technology capabilities reducing the complexity of development.

Global enterprises using OutSystems high-performance low-code architecture

So far, across the globe, OutSystems has been chosen by companies from 22 industries, including banking, financial services, insurance, education, government, retail, healthcare, logistics, etc. OutSystems low-code solutions range from building simple mobile front ends to large enterprise migrations and ERP solutions.

Companies are now more focused on accelerating application development, deployment, and management. Hence, they opt for a platform that offers full-stack development for all the use cases and business requirements. Global enterprises that choose the OutSystems platform to develop their enterprise applications are Lapis, Charles River, Engie, PlayRight, Liberty, Van Ameyde, and TAP.

As an award-winning OutSystems partner, Ranosys has assisted several enterprises across industrial verticals in leveraging this powerful low-code platform and developing avant-garde internal and external applications and solutions. Some of these noteworthy clients are: OCB, ComfortDelGro, Scoot Airlines, Adani Ports, Ahli United Bank (Kuwait), Singapore Management University, C. Steinweg Group.

What does OutSystems low-code platform do?

While most businesses know the need for digital transformation, many are restricted by legacy systems, increasing technical debt, and the lack of seamless connectivity between several internal and third-party systems. OutSystems is a low-code application development platform that creates applications faster, minimizing risks, and costs and enhancing your digital footprint. Let’s discuss the many OutSystems capabilities that makes it the perfect solutions for established enterprises and startups alike:

#1. Full-stack development

OutSystems supports full-stack development that encompasses the designing and development of front-end interface, back-end server infrastructure, and database. OutSystems leverages multiple programming languages (such as Java, Python, or PHP), web development frameworks (such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript), database management (such as MySQL, MongoDB, or Oracle), server-side technologies, and cloud infrastructure. As a full-stack development framework, OutSystems empowers developers with a comprehensive set of tools and features to build flexible, mobile-friendly, smart applications that streamline application development process and accelerates time-to-market. Here is how OutSystems full-stack development platform accomplishes it:

OutSystems low-code approach simplifies front-end development via its visual development environment that allows developers to design and code responsive and engaging front-end user interfaces. It is loaded with several UI components, themes, and templates that streamline front-end development. Moreover, you can easily integrate OutSystems with tools like Figma to easen the development process. Then, its drag-and-drop functionality, custom styles, and client-side logic implementation with JavaScript further accelerates front-end development.
For backend development, OutSystems allows the creation of RESTful APIs, web services, and server-side logic. Developers can build and expose APIs to integrate external systems or create reusable custom modules to invoke specific functionalities. Moreover, OutSystems also allows data manipulation, validation, and security at the back-end server level.
You can also build and deploy custom business logics via visual modeling and traditional programming constructs. This automates and orchestrates your unique cross-functional workflows reducing repetitive tasks and inefficiency.
OutSystems can easily add additional features to your applications, like widgets, facial recognition plugins, pricing engine algorithms, and more, as built-in visual elements.

#2. Make development easier for developers

The ultimate goal of a low-code platform is to increase developer productivity. OutSystems provides an environment that is easier to adapt to building powerful applications without being limited by technology or losing control of code.

Through OutSystems low-code approach, developers can use a single, integrated development environment that covers the entire application formation: development, quality, assurance, deployment, monitoring, and management using low-code approach, including frontend, backend, database, and integrations.
OutSystems UI enables you to build interactive UI for mobile or web applications using pre-built templates and off-the-shelf components that work across devices. You can extend the UI to access any device capability like camera, calendar, and navigation, creating simpler plugins.
OutSystems helps you visually connect databases to any existing data source. Open-source connectors or integration wizards connect with software packages, current apps, or existing databases, making developmental changes easy.
OutSystems allows their applications to use reactive web AI, IoT, robotic process automation (RPA), and microservices. Also, the apps can integrate effortlessly with existing systems with custom code. The reusable components, modules, and connectors speed up application delivery.

#3. Easy integration with external systems

OutSystems low-code solutions have in-built capabilities and automation that eliminates time-consuming efforts to integrate databases, systems, and software.

OutSystems allows for seamless integration with SOAP web services, REST APIs, and SAP systems, Salesforce CRM, and more to allow for a 360-degree view of business functions.
OutSystems API integrations are managed centrally at runtime, and no code is required.
All OutSystems low-code platform integrations are instrumented, automatically generating error logs and performance metrics.
OutSystems manages the permissions for reusing, changing, and deploying applications and components. With the low-code approach of OutSystems, complex integrations are implemented with plug-and-play elements for existing systems.
OutSystems make it easy to build scalable backend services with certified SAP, OData, and ABAP connectivity to deliver the low delay needed to support the most demanding consumer applications, making all your data available on the web or mobile.

#4. Accelerated app development

OutSystems high-performing low-code development clubs automation and powerful visual Integrated Development Environment (IDE). Let’s look at some of the features of OutSystems that help accelerate app development.

With AI, OutSystems offers options for automatically completing logic and workflows, speeding development and ensuring quality code.
OutSystems has ready-to-use templates and patterns, making rapid application development easier. It allows the creation of responsive screens for mobile and web applications that deliver a smooth omnichannel experience.

#5. Highly secure and stable applications

OutSystems provides full control of secure hosting generating standards-based, non-proprietary code, high-quality digital solutions for businesses.

OutSystems allows you to perform quality analysis through the application development lifecycle using AI.
OutSystems enables you to check for bugs and architecture errors, analyze the impact of changes, and monitor performance in real-time.
OutSystems can reduce technical debt by increasing the development speed, and preventing the errors of critical merge and debugging.
The high-performance low-code platform of OutSystems does not compromise with quality and through visual debugging can pause execution at breakpoints and run logic step-by-step to find errors. Moreover, merging the differences caused by developers working on the same module is automated.
OutSystems has in-built quality testing tools and analytics to measure the user experience and identify bottlenecks.

#6. Artificial intelligence

The power of artificial intelligence in low-code OutSystems platform, enhances the applications by automating repetitive tasks and adding intelligence.

OutSystems embrace AI to reduce friction, long lead times, errors, and technical debt.
OutSystems guides, automates, and validates application portfolios delivering high-quality applications.
The AI-fusion automatically generates a pattern or pre-built components adapted.
The OutSystems platform analyzes code and detects debugging problems using AI.
OutSystems low-code platform, AI-driven architecture allows you to build applications with the structured architecture and seamless user experience to analyze the business value and impact for the organization.

#7. Performance and monitoring

Proper application monitoring allows you to visually track the performance, trends and growth of your business, and low-code platform OutSystems built-in functions helps in effective monitoring:

OutSystems low-code development platform offers monitoring of every application through dashboards that ensures there are no performance bottlenecks with design-time validation.
OutSystems optimizes code performance at all application layers, ensuring optimal functionality for the intended application.
OutSystems, with its built-in applications, makes monitoring performance easier.

#8. Cloud-native architecture

OutSystems architecture design empowers building mission-critical applications efficiently that run both on-premises or in multiple clouds. OutSystems includes tools in its architecture like:

Embedded CI/CD tool allows you to manage every app development phase, from deployment to monitoring.
OutSystems provides integrated services like security, reliability, scalability, and dependency checks. So when you change one component, our AI capabilities ensure those changes don’t break the backend implementation.
The integration layer of OutSystems allows you to integrate applications with any third-party database, a system of record, or even SaaS.

How does OutSystems help different industries?

OutSystems extends its capabilities of providing solutions to almost all industries and creating a frictionless experience for customers across all touchpoints. Some of the major industries are discussed below:

#1. Banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI)

The BFSI industry landscape is changing dramatically, driven by shifting consumer behavior, an increased focus on customer experience, and reliance on technological driven solutions. But the industry faces pressure on various terms like close regulations, speculative credit underwriting, operational liabilities, and disruptive technologies. The BFSI ecosystem needs to sustain and secure its business interests and make processes efficient. BFSI can leverage OutSystems for digital banking applications to gain a competitive advantage and streamline end-to-end development. Let’s see how OutSystems helps the BFSI industry:

Seamless customer onboarding process: OutSystems banking low-code solutions allow you to migrate from a paper-based process to a full digital enterprise-grade solution with proper controls and audit capabilities. It streamlines and automates third-party compliance and regulatory procedures.
Regulatory compliance automation: BFSI can respond to regulatory change by deploying new software much faster than traditional development methods, and hence low-code empowers to build customer-facing applications securely, ensuring safe transactions.
Personalized experiences: BFSI is expected to deliver personalized experiences for the end user, which requires legacy modernization. OutSystems cloud-native architecture, performance and monitoring capabilities, reusable components, and adaptable integration to analytics results in intuitive and responsive low-code applications.
Secure and scalable apps: OutSystems has automated processes that balance security and speed for compliances. With OutSystems in BFSI, firms can automatically address internal operational mandates, KYC (Know Your Customer) applications, fraud detections, due diligence checks, and loan disclosure management.
Accommodate loans and insurance: OutSystems insurance low-code solutions allows you to integrate complex systems for digital mortgage and lending platforms. With OutSystems, you can build core applications to facilitate loans and insurance by extending the system for broker support and creating leads with quoting applications. You can deliver uniquely branded, robust claims for web and mobile applications through strong portals or apps.

#2. Government

The disruption in the government sector is caused by gaps in workflows, with digital transformation becoming important to keep up with the pace of changing policies and regulations the public sector face and the reliance on commercial-off-the-shelf apps. Quick responses and effective new digital platforms will enable the public sector to accommodate changes going forward. To support public sector enterprises OutSystems low-code platform came forward with its capabilities to build modern applications and customer-facing systems.

Improves customer engagement: OutSystems deliver highly intuitive and efficient public sector experiences using best-in-class UI/UX frameworks, templates, and patterns. OutSystems easily deliver new capabilities on demand without relying on paperwork and automating these processes, preventing errors and avoiding bottlenecks.
Real-time processes made easy: OutSystems allows government sector mobile applications and self-service portals to minimize errors and delays in government transactions. They make citizens submit applications, papers, or documents online in real-time.
Quickly updates content: OutSystems quickly updates the content for updating policies and regulations, customizing and automating processes, tax collection, and administration.
Increase collaboration: OutSystems lets you easily share data across municipalities, improve quality, and reduce costs, ensuring consistently applied valuations.
Reduce transaction frictions: OutSystems, with its cloud-based ERP for state and local government, enables workflow personalization and reduces transaction frictions with modern infrastructure.

#3. Healthcare

In the past few years, the healthcare industry has evolved their services like never before and requires scalable and user-friendly software. So, instead of relying on monolithic systems, healthcare providers started opting for low-code development to improve their services. Regarding low-code development in the healthcare industry, OutSystems incorporates emerging technologies in healthcare and offers cost-effective, efficient, and profitable solutions.

Improves customer experience: OutSystems builds applications that allow patients to record their history, take video consultations, schedule appointments, know about healthcare providers, etc. The low-code solutions for healthcare with OutSystems use automation that consolidates information enabling patients to share their medical history easily and making processes more transparent. This improves the patient experience as well as the healthcare provider’s experience enhancing agility and powerful OutSystems API integration.
Efficient medication treatment: OutSystems allows for building a powerful integrated application that supports caregivers in managing medications for their patients. OutSystems features like easy integration, an open platform with no vendor lock-in, and agile development enable it to create future-proof applications saving cost and time.
Personalized experience even in case of emergency: OutSystems for the healthcare industry provides enterprise-grade scalability and security, keeps a strong track record, and speeds up development in the healthcare sector. The healthcare industry needs immediate attention in some cases and OutSystems helps prioritize cases and alerts staff, without burdening them with too much data.

#4. Transportation and logistics

With the rise of digital transformation, the way the transportation and logistics industry delivers services has changed. The industry’s primary focus is to streamline supply chain management, improve collaboration between teams, and timely delivery of products to consumers. But in 2023, the transportation and logistics industry faces many disruptions, such as siloed data, shipping delays, geo-political uncertainties, etc. With OutSystems low-code development for the transportation and logistics industry, you can replace legacy systems, develop order management systems and improve transparency end-to-end.

Legacy modernization: OutSystems low-code solutions allow you to develop modern applications that improve complex business processes like warehousing and distribution of products to consumers. OutSystems supply chain management systems, you can cut down the development time, ensuring responsiveness and resilience of apps.
Effective collaboration: OutSystems breakdown data silos by ensuring proper communication across the supply chain. Integrated tracking systems unified with ERPs make collaboration easier, also centralized information across warehouses facilitates better decision-making in organizations.
Improve operational efficiency: The supply chain is flexible, with real-time tracking of payments, products, raw materials, etc., all under one roof. OutSystems integrates systems seamlessly, improving customer satisfaction, backend performance, governance, and cyber security threats.

Why choose OutSystems for your organization?

OutSystems is a compelling choice for enterprises who wish to accomplish their digital transformation goals and develop powerful and efficient solutions for their software development needs. OutSystems’ low-code platform offers several benefits that outpaces it from traditional development approaches, a strong reason why several global leading enterprises leverage the platform to achieve innovation and success. Some major OutSystems benefits that organizations experience are:

#1. Develop mission-critical leveraging OutSystems’ agile methodology

OutSystems focuses on using a high-performance low-code approach that enables you to build business-critical applications with serious productivity, reducing and eliminating current technical debt. This approach lets enterprises focus on other requirements of design, customer engagement, customer support, and services.

#2. Develops enterprise-grade apps

OutSystems allows you to develop enterprise-grade applications to cater to your unique requirements. The pre-built components helps create differentiated customer experience, transform legacy applications, simplifies and accelerates business processes, and builds innovative applications fast and at scale.

#3. Simplified development for omnichannel experiences

OutSystems simplifies application development by infusing AI and unlocking the complexity of developing applications with its state of architecture. The changing and ever-evolving business requirements are faster to build with a low-code platform, and OutSystems lets you build applications within weeks through one-click deployment, while taking advantage of continuous and automatic updates to all applications.

#4. Need for secure applications

Enterprises has understood the importance of secure applications and protecting users data from external threats. OutSystems has built-in security features that support the complete development lifecycle of an application and help in DevOps processes, laying the foundation for a secure SDLC. OutSystems offers AppShield and Sentry to add a layer of potential security risks, avoiding regulatory fines, reducing manual coding work, and protecting against data leaks.

#5. Offers custom solutions

Applications developing with OutSystems have enough room to implement custom workflows and solutions for smooth, personalized, and omnichannel experiences. OutSystems allows you to innovate your business with multi-experience development ensuring consistency. The latest cloud technology provides unrivaled flexibility and a unique development experience to maximize productivity. With everything managed centrally, the entire application development lifecycle, deploying, managing, monitoring, and running, is at lightning speed.

Leverage low-code capabilities of OutSystems with Ranosys

As an award-winning OutSystems Partner, Ranosys and our team of low-code experts ensure that your business inculcates best practices while developing leading-edge web, mobile and intranet applications. Connect with our certified experts to know how OutSystems can turn your innovative ideas into delightful app experiences.

Connect with certified experts to leverage OutSystems strategically.

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Magento Open Source vs Adobe Commerce -which is a better eCommerce platform considering my goals? This is what every B2B, B2C, and D2C business owner contemplates when looking to choose a flexible and modern eCommerce platform from Adobe. However, much of which eCommerce platform is right for your business depends on your business goals and needs. To help you choose the right digital commerce system, we compare both these platforms on the basis of must-have enterprise-grade features of an eCommerce platform to help you assess:

Which solution offers surplus advantages over the other?
How does Adobe Commerce offer more business value than Magento Open Source despite both the systems being based on the same platform?
When should you upgrade from Magento Open-Source to Adobe Commerce?

This blog is a summary of our CRO, Anand Ramdeo’s LinkedIn Audio Event, Commerce Conversation on When Adobe Commerce makes sense, where he along with other experts, Mohamed Nofal from Adobe Commerce, Sourabh Modi and Sarvesh Singh from Ranosys discussed the key differences between Magento Open source and Adobe Commerce, when does it make sense to stay on the Magento Open Source, and What are the key use cases where Adobe Commerce makes a massive difference.

Magento Open Source vs Adobe Commerce vs Adobe Commerce Cloud

Once you’ve decided to launch an eCommerce store powered by Magento 2, the next question is which edition amongst Magento Open Source, Adobe Commerce, and Adobe Commerce Cloud. While the tech people know the minute and major differences between these editions, to the non-tech ears like retailers and business owners, they seem to fuddle between which edition is the best for their online stores. Not to say, Adobe renaming Magento Enterprise to Adobe Commerce didn’t make it easy for people to spot the differences.

Here we breakdown these platforms for you to help you decipher which eCommerce solution is the best-fit for your e-retail objectives.

A bit of history about the Magento technology (before being renamed to Adobe)

Magento lays the digital foundation of over 300,000 active eCommerce websites. Even before Adobe acquired it in 2018, the Magento platform has been known for its performance, usability, scalability, and security (all of these were improvements made in the Magento 2.0 version). Since its inception, Magento has been made available to enterprises in two versions:

Open Source edition (also known as Community Edition): This Magento version is free but loaded with several feature extensions and a relatively easy learning curve.
Commerce edition (available as Enterprise Edition and Magento Cloud edition): This version is paid and the best-fit for large businesses who wish to deliver custom experiences, limitless functionality, and scalability to all deployment sizes.

(Please note that since 2021 Magento has been renamed to Adobe)

As of now, there exists three versions: Magento Open Source, Adobe Commerce, and Adobe Commerce Cloud. Let’s explore these now.

#1: Magento Open Source

As per reports, a whooping 80% of websites exist on Magento Open Source, reason being its free of cost nature. Previously known as the Community Edition, Magento Open Source is a self-hosted eCommerce platform, meaning the owner is responsible for the network and server needs (which combines infrastructure costs, hosting costs, and recruiting costs to hire people able enough to manage it for you). Originally, when customers weren’t that demanding and expecting personalization in every click, this version was a perfect fit for small businesses who simply wanted to launch an online store with basic functionalities and some out-of-the-box features like site search, catalog management, global selling, mobile optimizing shopping, integrated checkout, payment, and shipping solutions, WYSIWYG builder, and access to Adobe Commerce Marketplace extensions.

The popularity of this platform is not hard to understand, supported by a robust community of developers. However, when it comes to implementing functionality and achieving scalability, this platform requires time, which delays your time-to-market and impacts your growth.

#2: Adobe Commerce

Now that you have a brief understanding of Magento Open Source, Adobe Commerce is everything that and so much more. As this is a paid on-premises offering from Adobe, it includes all the top-end features you can imagine having in an eCommerce platform. Live search, product recommendations, customer segmentation, visual merchandising, B2B functionalities, advanced marketing tools, business intelligence dashboards, gift cards, content staging & preview board, customer loyalty tools, and so on. The best part, Adobe Commerce centrally manages your checkout, payments, shopping, and marketing all through a single interface.

This makes it the perfect eCommerce platform for enterprises that have complex needs and wish to leverage leading-edge capabilities to deliver superior customer experiences across channels and devices.

#3: Adobe Commerce Cloud

Contrary to the Adobe Commerce which is an on-premises eCommerce platform, Adobe Commerce Cloud is a cloud edition. It includes all of Adobe Commerce’s features along with the enhanced Adobe Cloud infrastructure hosting that includes GIT integration and specific environments for developing, staging, and production/live. This means, developers using this platform can code, test, and deploy across integration, staging, and production environments to deliver smooth performances.

As with Adobe Commerce, Adobe Commerce Cloud is also suited for large enterprises with differentiated requirements as this edition can flexibly and scalably cover them all via their powerful admin features.

Key differences between Magento Open Source and Adobe Commerce

FEATURES	MAGENTO OPEN SOURCE	ADOBE COMMERCE
License Costs	You can download Magento open-source for free.	Adobe Commerce follows a turnover-based model, which means depending on your average gross sales revenue, your Adobe Commerce pricing will differ.
Hosting	You can host Magento Open-Source anywhere, on-premises or a managed cloud solution provider. You will have to pay separately for Magento Open-Source hosting, which can vary from $4-500/month depending on the support, security, scalability, and features you need. As the platform is quite heavy on capabilities, you would need a superior dedicated server for installing its files.	Adobe Commerce can either be hosted on-premises ( Adobe Commerce edition) or on the cloud (Adobe Commerce Cloud edition), both of which are included in the Adobe Commerce pricing. This means you do not have to pay separately for scalability, technical support, and scalability during peak traffic times.
Features	Magento Open-Source includes capabilities such as integrated checkout, payment, & shipping, mobile-optimized shopping, global selling, catalog management, instant purchase, site search, and WYSIWYG page builder. All these features are also present in Adobe Commerce. However, in case you wish to implement customized features, you can employ free extensions available on the Adobe Commerce Marketplace, but for improved functionalities, regular upgrades, and reliable support, you would need to spend additional costs.	Adobe Commerce comes loaded with several built-in features apart from all the already present Magento Open-Source capabilities. These advanced features include reusable dynamic blocks, business intelligence dashboards, advanced marketing tools, content staging & preview, customer loyalty tools, visual merchandising, product recommendations, AI-driven live search, customer segmentation, BOPIS, gift cards, and more. A majority of the extensions on Commerce Marketplace are available for free with Adobe Commerce edition.
Scalability	In case you run a fast-growing business, the scalability of Magento Open-Source would be a downside for you. It is because Magento Open-Source supports only a single database system, which means if you have multiple websites (for different locations) and storefronts, your users will experience a diminished performance.	Adobe Commerce is designed keeping your scalability needs in mind. It easily supports mid-to-enterprise business and their needs with large & complex catalogs, high transaction volumes, multiple storefronts, and peak traffic. Moreover, Adobe Commerce keeps on releasing new releases focussed on improved scalability and minimal latency.
Security	The biggest downside for Magento Open Source is that it does not meet the PCI DSS compliances required for ensuring a safe and secure payment experience. It also does not support WAF and DDoS security services, all of which warrants for outsourcing costs to achieve the necessary compliances.	Adobe Commerce is a secure bet when it comes to high-end security and user information safety. It comes with Fastly Web Application Firewall that protects against suspicious web attacks in real-time. It also includes DDoS protection, is a PCI-certified Level 1 Solution Provider, and comes with security scanning tools.
Support	Magento Open Source doesn’t come with 24*7 support or any team that can help you with issues. You will have to rely on developer communities, guide libraries, and community forums to troubleshoot issues.	Adobe Commerce comes with proactive support solutions- a dedicated account manager and technical assistance 24*7 to troubleshoot all store-related issues. You also gain access to Adobe Commerce Rapid Deployment Packages that makes it easy to set up and launch any feature.
B2B capabilities	Magento Open-Source doesn’t possess capabilities for B2B Commerce and can only be employed by B2C and D2C enterprises	Adobe Commerce includes native B2B tools such as custom price tags & catalogs, custom payment solutions, quote requests, purchase limits, credit limits. Customers can easily manage their accounts, set up multiple buyer tiers with different roles & permissions, track quotes & orders, upload personalized buyer-specific catalogs, request quotes, define purchase approval rules, and a lot more.
Marketing	Magento Open Source comes with basic functionalities such as tags and meta description creation, custom URLs, and SEO optimization.	Adobe Commerce provides advanced tools for product promotions. It comes with data analytics capabilities to optimize marketing strategies & campaigns. Other features include customer segmentation, loyalty system, wishlist search, discounts system, related product rules, and integration with Google tools such as Adwords, Tag Manager, Analytics, etc.
Catalog Management	Magento Open-Source comes with traditional catalog management capabilities like adding new products, creating product categories, and basic inventory upgrades.	Adobe Commerce comes with advanced functionalities around catalog management like AI-powered product recommendations, full catalog exports, gift cards, action logs, order archives, scheduled catalog import/export, and order management system.
Content Management	It comes with a WYSIWYG builder where you can drag and drop widgets to create your product pages.	Although Adobe Commerce also comes with a WYSIWYG builder, you can preview pages on staging and production, set up page hierarchies, and build dynamic blocks of content.
Live Search	Magento Open Source does not come with Live Search or any other AI-powered functionalities.	Adobe Commerce comes with Adobe Sensei-powered Live Search that uses AI and ML to analyze a user’s previous buying behavior and data to suggest relevant and personalized product recommendations in real-time.
Integration with Adobe ecosystem	No such seamless integration with the Adobe ecosystem exists	Adobe Commerce is a part of the Adobe Experience Cloud ecosystem that also includes tools such as Adobe Experience Manager, Adobe Analytics, and Adobe Target, all of which can be seamlessly integrated with Adobe Commerce. This allows you to bring content, commerce, data & audiences, customer journey, and marketing on a single dashboard.
SWAT	Magento Open Source does not include capabilities for site wide analysis tool	Adobe Commerce includes the capabilities SWAT to check for site performance, generate reports, and derive actionable recommendations on performance improvements
Time-to-market	Magento Open Source doesn’t offer the speed-to-market and agility you need to survive and thrive in today’s competitive eCommerce ecosystem.	Adobe Commerce consists of several leading-edge functionalities all of which help deliver robust experiences with accelerated time-to-market. This agility and speed-to-market becomes predominant when you’re expanding into new regions, introducing new products, or realigning your business structure.

The business value of upgrading to Adobe Commerce

IDC conducted research in 2022 on enterprises that upgraded from Magento Open Source and Adobe Commerce to assess the business value this upgrade brought forth. The enterprises belonged to the following industrial verticals – retail, automotive, financial services, and manufacturing. These enterprises reported an increase of average annual benefit of $45,000 per 10,000 transactions, improvements in customer satisfaction scores, average order values, customer conversion rates, and a remarkable improvement in ROI in three years.

They concluded the report by saying that the upgrade would help Adobe customers to achieve benefits worth $6.54 million annually per organization. These improvements are attributes to:

Offering products and services on an omnichannel, robust, and scalable eCommerce platform, resulting in higher revenue realization
Accelerated time-to-market of new products, brands, and services
Providing a holistic view of every order, shopper, marketing strategy to allow sellers and sales team to work more efficiently
Consolidating all operations, infrastructure, hosting, server to a single platform

While there is enough data on why enterprises must upgrade from Magento Open Source to Adobe Commerce, much of it depends on your business needs and revenue goals. The question that remains is if your business has room to grow with Magento Open Source or you wish to leverage a powerful platform like Adobe Commerce.

Adobe Commerce vs Magento Open Source: Which to choose?

If you’re looking for an enterprise-ready scalable ecommerce platform that grows with your business, then Adobe Commerce is the right direction. But when you’re just starting out and can outsource commerce implementation requirements to other businesses, then Magento Open Source can be the right tool for you. Most of it depends on your outlook for the 4S’s – security concerns, scalability, speed, and support.

Magento Open Source is more suited for small eCommerce startups and one-product eCommerce businesses. On the contrary, SMBs, large enterprises, and B2B eCommerce businesses must choose Adobe Commerce to support their scalable eCommerce goals.

How Ranosys can help with Adobe Commerce development

Whether you wish to upgrade from Magento Open Source to Adobe Commerce or want to build an Adobe Commerce storefront from scratch, Ranosys can be your growth partner throughout the process. As an award-winning Adobe Gold Partner with a specialized Adobe Commerce badge, we have assisted several leading global brands in upgrading from Magento Open Source to Adobe Commerce and/or launching user-driven omnichannel eCommerce stores. Get in touch with our certified Adobe Commerce experts to understand how we can help you supercharge your online store growth.

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When it comes to eCommerce platforms, Adobe Commerce is a top choice for its robust features and versatility. It’s designed to cater to the unique needs of online businesses and can handle a wide range of requirements. However, optimizing your online store’s performance is crucial to fully leverage its potential. Your business can generate more revenue and growth by enhancing user experience, increasing website visibility, and improving conversion rates. To remain competitive in the fast-paced world of eCommerce, optimizing your Adobe Commerce store is no longer optional but a necessity.

To help you achieve superior eCommerce store performance, we’ve compiled a list of top improvement tips for optimizing your Adobe Commerce store in this blog.

Recommendations to Improve Adobe Commerce Performance

Here are the top 8 recommendations to help you improve your Adobe Commerce store performance:

#1. Location of AEM and Adobe Commerce Infrastructure geographically

When developing pages, hosting both infrastructures within the same AWS (or Azure) Region is essential to minimize latency between the AEM publisher and Adobe Commerce GraphQL. This reduces the time it takes for your website to load and improves the overall user experience. Additionally, it’s crucial to ensure that the geographical location of both clouds is close to the majority of your customer base. This allows client-side GraphQL requests to be processed from a location close to your clients, further reducing latency and improving website performance.

#2. Caching of Adobe Commerce GraphQL

To improve the performance of your Adobe Commerce store, it’s essential to understand how caching works in Adobe Commerce Fastly. Fastly caches specific requests made by the user’s browser or AEM publisher to Adobe Commerce’s GraphQL. These requests usually involve non-personal data that is not expected to change frequently. These include categories, category lists, and products.

However, queries that change frequently and contain personal data, such as cart and customer payment token inquiries are explicitly not cached. This is because caching these types of queries can compromise site functionality and endanger personal data.

It’s worth noting that multiple inquiries can be made in a single GraphQL call. Therefore, developers must be mindful of this when merging numerous queries. If one query is specified that Adobe Commerce does not cache, along with several other non-cacheable queries, the cache will be skipped for all queries in the request. To avoid bypassing potentially cacheable queries accidentally, it’s crucial to keep this in mind and structure GraphQL calls accordingly.

#3. Catalog Flat Table

When it comes to optimizing the performance of your Adobe Commerce (Magento) store, it’s important to avoid using flat tables for items and categories. This outdated feature can cause significant performance degradations and indexing concerns that can negatively impact the user experience.

To prevent these issues, it’s recommended that you disable the flat catalog via the Adobe Commerce admin in the storefront area. This will help improve your website’s performance and ensure your customers can easily navigate your online store.

However, some third-party modules and customizations may require using flat tables to function properly. In these cases, it’s important to thoroughly evaluate the implications and potential dangers of using flat tables before implementing any extensions or customizations. By taking a cautious approach to use flat tables and carefully considering their impact on your store’s performance, you can ensure that your Adobe Commerce store delivers a seamless user experience and generates the revenue growth your business needs to succeed.

#4. Adobe Commerce Fastly origin shielding

One important feature that can significantly improve the performance of your Magento store is Fastly origin shielding. By default, this feature is disabled, but activating it can help reduce traffic to the Adobe Commerce origin and improve the overall customer experience.

When a request is received, a Fastly edge location, or point of presence (POP), will scan for and provide cached material. If the content is not cached, it will move on to the Shield POP to see if the content is cached there. If it has been previously requested from another global POP, it will be cached. If the content is not stored in the Shield POP cache, it will be directed solely to the origin server. To enable Fastly origin shielding, you can access the Fastly configuration backend settings from your Adobe Commerce admin account. When selecting a shield location, it’s important to choose one close to your Adobe Commerce origin data center for optimal performance.

By implementing Fastly origin shielding, you can significantly improve the speed and reliability of your online store, providing your customers with a seamless and impeccable user experience.

#5. Adobe Commerce Fastly image optimization

Enabling Fastly origin shielding can also allow you to take advantage of Fastly Image Optimizer, which offloads the resource-intensive task of product catalog image transformation from the Adobe Commerce origin to Fastly. This can significantly improve end-user response times for page load times, as images are transformed at the edge location, reducing latency by minimizing the number of requests made back to the Adobe Commerce origin.

To enable Fastly Image optimization, you must first activate the origin shield and then select “enable deep image optimization” in the Fastly setup within the Magento admin panel. This service can be particularly beneficial for Adobe Commerce SEO optimization, as it can improve your website’s load times and overall user experience.

#6. Disable unused modules

When utilizing Adobe Commerce headless, where only queries are delivered via the GraphQL endpoint, and no front-end shop pages are directly delivered from Adobe Commerce, many modules become redundant and go unused. To improve performance and reduce the complexity of your Adobe Commerce codebase, it is recommended to eliminate unnecessary modules. Since each customer’s implementation of Adobe Commerce is unique, there is no recommended list of modules to disable. You can disable Adobe Commerce modules using composer, and which modules to disable will depend on your site’s specific needs.

#7. MySQL and Redis connection activation

By default, MySQL and Redis Slave connections are not enabled in Adobe Commerce on cloud. This is because this configuration is only suitable for customers expecting heavy website traffic. Enabling slave connections distributes the load on the MySQL database or Redis across multiple nodes, which can significantly improve performance in high-traffic scenarios.

However, enabling slave connections can also increase the cross-Availability Zones (AZ) delay, which can negatively impact the performance of Adobe Commerce on a cloud instance that receives regular demand levels. Enabling slave connections may slow down performance by 10-15% in cases with a normal load but can improve performance by 10-15% in clusters with high traffic.

To determine whether enabling slave connections would be beneficial for your website’s performance under pressure, it is important to load-test your environment with projected traffic levels. The decision to enable slave connections should be made based on the needs of your specific website and the anticipated traffic levels, as enabling slave connections may not be necessary or beneficial for all Adobe Commerce implementations.

#8. Moving to an Adobe Commerce on cloud scaled (split) architecture

If your Adobe Commerce site is consistently maxing out CPU and other system resources, even after implementing all the previously mentioned Magento performance optimization tips, you may need to consider a shift to a scaled (split) architecture. This will help you achieve better performance and scalability.

The basic Pro architecture has three nodes, each with its own tech stack. However, in a split-tier design, the minimum number of nodes increases to six: three for ElasticSearch, MariaDB, Redis, and other core services and three for web traffic processing (PHPfpm and NGINX).

With a split-tier architecture, you will have more scaling options. For instance, the core nodes that contain databases can be scaled vertically, while web nodes can be scaled horizontally and vertically. This provides great flexibility to expand infrastructure on demand for set periods of high load activity and on nodes where extra resources are required.

Before switching to a split-tier design, it’s important to thoroughly analyze your infrastructure and conduct load tests to ensure it’s the right decision. Additionally, proper planning and execution are essential to avoid potential issues that could arise during the migration process.

Best practices for Adobe Commerce Site optimization

After optimizing your Adobe Commerce performance by following the previous steps, you may wonder what additional best practices can be implemented to improve site optimization further. In this section we will discuss best practices for optimizing Adobe Commerce sites.

1. Update to Adobe Commerce latest version

Keeping your Adobe Commerce site updated with the latest functional updates and security patches is essential to ensure that it performs well, remains secure, and meets accessibility and SEO standards. Adobe regularly releases new updates for Adobe Commerce (Magento), which you can find on their website, and schedule updates accordingly.

If you are unsure about which Adobe Commerce (Magento) version your site is currently running on, you can check the application version by logging in as a registered Admin user. The version is displayed at the bottom right of the page, above the Account Activity and Report an Issue links.

Or, you can type your website URL into any browser and add /magento_version at the end to see the version number.

However, updating your site can be complicated because many interdependencies within the Magento platform can cause issues. Therefore, planning and preparing for updates and considering using a development environment to test the update before implementing it on your live site is very important. You should also back up your site before updating to ensure that you can restore it in case of any issues.

2. Adjust your website’s JavaScript and CSS settings

To improve the performance of your Adobe Commerce website, it is essential to optimize JavaScript and CSS files in addition to images. Unoptimized files can significantly impact the speed of your website, which may lead to poor user experience and lower search engine rankings. One way to optimize these files is by merging, minifying, and bundling them.

Merging involves combining multiple files into a single file to reduce the number of HTTP requests made to the server.
Minification includes removing unnecessary characters and white spaces from code files, which reduces the file size and speeds up the loading process.
Bundling is another technique that groups different files, reducing the number of HTTP requests required to load a page.

Adobe Commerce doesn’t automatically apply these performance optimization techniques, so you must manually enable them. To do this, go to your admin panel and navigate to Stores → Settings → Configuration → Expand → Developer.

Here, you can find settings for minifying JavaScript files, enabling JS bundling, minifying CSS files, and more. By enabling these settings, you can significantly improve your website’s performance and speed up page loading times.

3. Analyze your theme, extensions, and modules

Another tip for optimizing your Magento site is to review your site’s theme, third-party extensions, and modules. This step is crucial but can be difficult since it requires a detailed analysis of your site’s code.

Your Adobe Commerce theme is the foundation of your entire store, so it has a massive impact on site performance. While great themes are available, some come with issues like non-compatibility with the latest Adobe Commerce releases. This code base relies on old technologies and/or isn’t maintained properly or theme bloat. Theme bloat refers to having too many unnecessary features that can slow down your store, negatively impacting performance. In addition to these backend issues, some themes may not be designed well regarding usability, accessibility, and conversion rate optimization, which can also affect the user experience.

Poorly-coded extensions and modules can also degrade your website’s performance. This can be due to incompatibility with the latest Adobe Commerce updates, deprecated technologies, poor coding practices, or a combination of all three. It’s important to ensure that all extensions and modules you use are up-to-date, maintained properly, and coded according to best practices. It’s also recommended to regularly review and remove any unused or unnecessary extensions and modules.

Achieve Adobe Commerce performance optimization with Ranosys

Optimizing the performance of an Adobe Commerce (Magento) website is important for providing a seamless user experience and achieving better search engine rankings. And eCommerce businesses can significantly improve their website’s performance by implementing the tips mentioned in this blog, such as optimizing images, GraphQL caching, Fastly origin shielding, and more. As an Adobe Gold Partner, Ranosys has the expertise and experience to assist global brands in achieving optimal performance for their Adobe Commerce website. With our comprehensive knowledge of Adobe Commerce, we can help you implement the best practices and techniques for optimizing website performance, ensuring that your online store always operates at peak efficiency.

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In today’s highly competitive and fast-paced eCommerce landscape, online store owners face numerous challenges. One of them is the growing demand for personalized shopping experiences. Modern consumers expect tailored recommendations, relevant search results, and seamless navigation that caters to their unique preferences and needs. Generally, search engines struggle to deliver such personalized experiences due to limitations in analyzing vast amounts of data and understanding customer behavior.

By harnessing the power of AI, online store owners can address pricing, inventory management, managing ads, campaigns, and marketing strategies and unlock valuable insights, efficiency gains, and customer-centric features that can drive growth and success in today’s competitive eCommerce landscape. Here comes the new AI-powered search engine: Bing. In this blog we will uncover Bing’s innovative features, how to set up your eCommerce store on AI-powered Bing and transform your customers’ shopping experiences.

AI-powered Bing: An overview

Microsoft recently launched AI-powered Bing search engine and Edge web browser for mobile devices. The new Bing AI is powered by ChatGPT, providing answers to simpler or complex questions in a conversational manner rather than featuring too many search links.

In the new Bing Chat, also known as Bing ChatGPT, you can perform multiple tasks and interact with them simultaneously. Bing is a conversational AI-powered search engine and can provide more up-to-date responses.

Since ChatGPT only has data till the year 2021, it cannot provide answers to recent information. Still, the amalgamation of Microsoft Bing with ChatGPT enhances you with current information available on the Bing search engine.

Bing is acknowledged as the AI-powered Co-pilot of the web and is set to unlock new features for eCommerce. But as of now, with the latest advanced search feature, enterprises are all set to make shopping easier for customers intelligently.

What Bing offers for eCommerce businesses?

Search marketing is an effective way to promote your online business; for most enterprises, it means advertising it on search engines. The new Microsoft AI-powered Bing offers a potential audience across unique demographics that you may need help to target on Google or other search engines. In the US, Microsoft has claimed that the new Bing network reached 117 million U.S. users monthly, performing more than 7 billion searches.

Before understanding the Bing shopping campaigns and advertising, let’s look at some of the inventing features of new Bing that are crucial for eCommerce organic search.

#1. Better search

The new Bing offers an AI-powered conversational search experience that provides your users with more relevant and personalized results. It also shows results for general information and shopping recommendations like sports scores, stock prices, weather, etc., on a sidebar with comprehensive answers. This will allow users to make shopping decisions quickly.

#2. Simplified answers

Microsoft AI-powered Bing analyzes the results from across the web to find and summarize the answers users seek. It offers you solutions for complex searches in an interactive manner. You can even get detailed information without scrolling through multiple results.

#3. Interactive chat

AI-powered Bing offers a conversational tone of search and answers complex questions thoroughly. It allows you to filter your search queries by asking for more information, clarity, and ideas with links to immediately act on your shopping decisions.

#4. Intelligent product search

Intelligent search scans through buyer persona of user, product, and brand via machine learning and AI capabilities. It naturally implements machine learning to deliver more relevant results and relevant shopping solutions. Also, the Bing Search APIs enable you to web search, image search, news search, and custom search from billions of sources, enriching your experiences, and citing all the sources for contextual references.

#5. Custom visual search

Bing Commerce helps customers find what they want, even when they cannot explain their queries. Bing customizes visual search and is trained on images for your product catalog so customers can use their devices to shop the look. This leads to an increase in overall sales volume and traffic on your website.

#6. Personalized product recommendations

Microsoft Bing intelligence provides personalized and contextual auto suggestions for relevant products making shopping easy by delighting your customers and increasing order values for your eCommerce store.

How to use Bing for your eCommerce store- Steps to setup your store on Bing

Microsoft Shopping Campaigns in Bing allows you to engage more customers with your products and deliver superior eCommerce experiences. Also known as Product Ads, it presents products through custom images and pricing by putting users closer to making a purchasing decision even before they click.

Setting up an eCommerce store is easy on Bing Commerce. If you are importing your Google shopping data directly into your Microsoft Merchant Center, here are the steps you need to follow to set up your eCommerce store.

Step 1. Create Account

Firstly, you need to create your Microsoft Merchant Center Account. To perform this:

Log in to your Microsoft Advertising Account.
Click the ‘Microsoft Merchant Center button’ and set up an account.
Verify your store with a destination URL; this may take up to 48 hours.

Step 2. Upload products

You can import your existing Google shopping data or create a new Bing Shopping feed. For the Bing shopping catalog, you need to:

Upload new products to Microsoft Merchant Center.
Set up all product attributes like price, gender, color, material, size, title, shipping charges, etc.

Step 3. Create an audience

Audience targeting helps you show advertisements for the correct search queries to the right people at the right time. After uploading your products on Bing Commerce, you must identify your target audience. Follow the steps below to create an audience:

On Microsoft Merchant Center, click on manage ads, and select Reach your audience.
In Reach your audience, select Create, then give your audience a unique name.
Select the type of audience from different categories: Custom audiences, Combined lists, In-market audiences, LinkedIn profile targeting, Customer match lists, Dynamic remarketing lists, Remarketing lists, and Similar audiences.

Step 4. Create a Bing Shopping campaign

From Microsoft Merchant Center, click on Create a Campaign and then select sell products.
You can create a keyword strategy and set the priority levels for your Bing shopping campaigns. You can decide if the campaign should be a top, middle, or low-level priority.

Step 5. Turn on automatic updates

You can keep an inventory check and not advertise the products that are out of stock or sold. Turning on the automatic updates button from manage ads will help you avoid wasting your ad budget.

Transform shopping experiences for your eCommerce store with Bing

Using Bing for your eCommerce storefront allows you to seamlessly implement advertising technology into your overall strategy. Bing helps you in crafting unique shopping experience for your visitors and the opportunities for your brand in meaningful ways such as:

#1. Builds a successful campaign

Bing can help you align unique audience segments with relevant promotions, enhancing customer experience. To build a successful shopping campaign, you can include extensions such as:

Microsoft Sitelink extensions: Sitelink extensions are additional links for your ads that take customers directly to specific landing pages on your website. These links then let you promote distinct products, services, or sections of your website and lead searchers to the correct information they need to learn more and take action.
Microsoft Image extensions: Image extensions can help you promote products through creative images, raise brand awareness and improve the quality score of your ads. It allows you to add powerful visuals and get more relevant traffic increasing brand recognition.
Microsoft Review extensions: Review extensions let you display a positive review or ranking by an independent third-party source directly in your ads. This builds trust and gives your ads a more significant footprint from quality customers.
Microsoft Price Extensions: A pay-per-click extension that displays prices to users. It will only show ads listed at the top of the results page, improving potential relevance. Price extensions enhance click-through rates(CTR), driving more conversions.
Microsoft Action Extensions: Action extensions let you add a call-to-action button to your ad, helping you achieve higher click-through and conversion rates.

#2. Reach your customers

Reach your target audience on Bing, who have higher purchasing power, spend more on online shopping, and are more likely to engage with advertisements to try new offers or products. Recently Microsoft has added a variety of innovative updates, such as:

Local inventory Ads: It promotes products that are available in-store, targeting nearby customers across devices.
Merchant promotions: It displays special offers on specific products or websites within products.
Import Google Shopping Ads: With the Google import tool, you can quickly implement Bing shopping ads saving time and effort.
Microsoft Prometheus Model: The new Bing has developed the Microsoft Prometheus Model, a new way of working with open APIs that allows a combination of more relevant, timely, and targeted results with improved information safety.

#3. Build smarter customer journeys

Through Bing, you can create personalized experiences using robust Bing Intelligence tools targeting audiences to improve campaign performance. Microsoft Azure Cognitive Search is a cloud service with in-built AI capabilities that enrich cognitive skills and custom models to gain data-driven insights from content.

It provides fully managed search as service capabilities to reduce complexity and scale easily.
Azure cognitive search capabilities allow users to auto-complete geographical-based searches, filtering for rich user experience.
Through semantic search capabilities powered by AI and machine learning models, it understands user intent to surface and rank the most relevant results.
With built-in AI capabilities like OCR, keyphrase extraction, location, and people detection, you can easily structure data and gain data-driven insights.

#4. Effective SEO

Since the new AI-powered Bing has innovated the search experience through personalization, it provides more accurate and relevant results by identifying search intent rather than simply matching keywords. eCommerce businesses must also update their SEO strategies and understand AI language to stay ahead of the competition. Here are some tips Microsoft has forecasted on search behavior and SEO:

Microsoft has applied the AI model to the core Bing search engine, allowing it to provide more accurate and relevant results. With advancements in search and content processing capabilities, businesses must create detailed and informative content, providing high value to users.
Through Bing AI, users can execute keyword phrases that are more detailed and specific. To rank higher on Bing, you can focus on long-tail conversational keywords, use natural language to demonstrate authority on topics, optimize websites for voice search, and build a mobile-friendly website.
Build your AI SEO strategies using search behavior of common questions visitors ask, and you can use it as blog subheadings or build FAQs section. Through Bing’s webmaster tool, you can make keyword research easier.

Ready to make the most of Microsoft Bing for your eCommerce store?

As technology evolves, enriching shopping experiences and delivering one-on-one digital experiences is vital. By setting up your store on AI-powered Microsoft Bing, you can leverage the capabilities of the new search engine and enhance your customer’s shopping experience. You can build a roadmap for eCommerce site development with a trusted digital commerce partner with experience across Adobe Commerce and Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Our experts understand your unique business requirements and provide a sustainable online store development roadmap.

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As customer expectations evolve, so have digital channels and platforms, resulting in the need for more flexible solutions. While customers expect to have a seamless experience across all devices or channels, enterprises are pressured to provide highly personalized content and solutions. As traditional CMS fail to keep up with the pace and fulfill those modern demands, headless CMS promises to deliver dynamicity, becoming the need of the hour. When it comes to headless CMS, nothing beats the potential and personalization aspects of Adobe Experience Manager, an industry-leading content management system.

Here we talk about headless CMS, how it is different from traditional CMS, the benefits of headless CMS, concerns while choosing CMS, and the key capabilities of AEM headless CMS in providing exceptional web content experiences.

What is a headless CMS?

A headless content management system (CMS) is a tool in which you decouple where content is stored (back-end) from where it is presented (frontend), communicating with each other via APIs. In simpler words, the headless CMS separates the content from the presentation layer and allows you to manage content using APIs.

Headless CMS allows you to create content once and reuse it everywhere, delivering the omnichannel experiences at scale quickly and easily to multiple touchpoints in one click.

A headless CMS eliminates repetitive tasks by unifying content in a single hub, making it easier to scale and display through virtually any application without losing quality and delivering a better personalized experience to users.

A headless CMS vs traditional CMS vs hybrid CMS

Through the right tech stack, like Adobe Experience Manager(AEM) for headless content, enterprises can personalize content without overburdening developers for coding and delivering on time. But before understanding AEM as headless CMS, let’s dive deeper into why enterprises choose headless CMS rather than traditional CMS.

Traditional CMS	Headless CMS	Hybrid CMS
Traditional CMS is a monolithic, predefined, structured CMS with inseparable frontend and backend where content and its presentation is managed from one place.	In headless CMS content is separated from the presentation layer, and a channel-neutral Content Delivery Network(CDN) delivers content to all channels and devices via APIs.	The frontend and back-end are separated as well but a hybrid CMS includes frontend at the presentation layer.
Traditional CMS is easy to use and provides easy onboarding of content for editors. It provides pre-built themes and templates.	Headless CMS is flexible and eliminates the vendor lock-in using APIs. It supports fast omnichannel content delivery by creating custom workflows and interfaces. A headless CMS can easily connect with SEO tools and CRM platforms.	Hybrid combines capabilities of both traditional and headless CMS and supports content reuse, CDN, omnichannel delivery, user-friendliness, and headless flexibility.
Traditional CMS requires coding and consumes more time.	With the use of well-defined APIs, you can consume content fastly, like a SPA (Single Page Application), IoT, or mobile applications.

Why does your organization need a headless CMS?

Today’s modern consumers have dynamic needs, most of which cannot be accomplished via tightly-bunded traditional CMS. Taking into note trends and market insights, a headless CMS is the right choice for most growing businesses. A headless CMS offers tailored editing and publishing access to content authors. A business that operates on multiple platforms and wants to deliver omnichannel experiences can adopt a headless CMS-efficient framework. Some of the primary concerns while choosing a headless CMS are:

Performance characteristics like load time, latency, and cache ability of the website.
Delivering personalized content across channels becomes a slow process.
If your current traditional CMS developers lack the ability to choose a frontend stack and your system demands intensive coding hours.
If traditional CMS is slowing you down and you want to adopt a more agile and streamlined approach.

What are the benefits of headless CMS?

Digital experiences are getting more advanced, and customer expectations are rising. To stick around in the competitive landscape, businesses must quickly build responsive, reliable, and interactive content. Headless CMS enables users, marketers, and developers to publish content more quickly. Let’s discuss some of the benefits of headless CMS:

#1. Excellent omnichannel experiences

Today’s consumer bumps into various interfaces throughout the day, including mobile devices, laptops, IoT smart devices, and voice controls. A headless CMS keeps aside the frontend and uses APIs to publish content everywhere, saving the time and effort of manually republishing it across multiple platforms. A marketer does not have to create new content for every platform; hence they can focus on creating memorable and personalized experiences and delivering them at the right time and place. Such successful omnichannel experiences can lead to higher customer satisfaction and retention rates, increasing overall ROI.

#2. Flexibility in content editing and delivery

With the use of APIs, the same content can be published or updated across different applications, such as SPAs, mobile apps, IoT, social channels, etc., without programming. In headless CMS, marketers have access to editing tools and templates to publish content and campaigns to relevant frontend presentation layers.

#3. Headless CMS is developer-friendly

A headless CMS provides flexibility and freedom with the ease of development. It is developer savvy, agile, easy to learn, and supports integrations with cutting-edge technologies building digital experiences.

#4. Agile content delivery with reusable content

Headless CMS uses low-code or no-code CDN via APIs allowing you to push the same piece of content to multiple platforms all at once. Since you create content in fragments, you reach wider audiences, ensuring brand consistency and seamless experiences.

#5. Higher scalability

A Headless CMS architecture is much more scalable and offers a pre-built frontend with highly optimized static pages and assets. This reduces costs, complexity, and risks to delivering web pages quickly, increasing the scalability of headless CMS.

What is the approach of headless CMS in AEM?

Enterprises looking to create omnichannel customer experiences can choose AEM headless CMS. AEM understands your unique business requirements for headless content management while building a foundation for future growth. AEM offers you a cloud-native, modern CMS, which is a combination of headless capabilities based on three main AEM headless CMS features that are:

Content Fragments: Content fragments are code-free structured content created by authors using AEM Content Fragment Model Editor. This content then, later on, allows you to create, design, curate, and publish content in multiple locations and over multiple platforms using JSON and GraphQL. Content fragments are stored as AEM assets.
Content Fragment Models: Content Fragment models are the data and content structure you create and manage in AEM. It serves as the basis of content fragments where an author can create content using AEM headless CMS architecture.
Content API for delivery: Content API delivery helps modify your content headlessly using two APIs, GraphQL, and REST API.

How AEM headless CMS capabilities provide exceptional experiences?

AEM is a headless CMS offering flexible and customizable architecture to provide developers and marketers with the tools to create seamless experiences throughout the customer journey. AEM understands every business’s need for headless content management while building a foundation for future growth. Whether you want to market faster, reach wider audiences, personalized content at scale, and more. AEM headless CMS capabilities cover it all. Let’s discuss some of the headless CMS capabilities AEM offers:

#1. Structured content fragments

To gain a competitive advantage, many businesses work efficiently to get their content quickly to consumers. AEM headless CMS improves the speed of building experiences and accelerates time to market by using content fragments across the entire customer journey.

#2. Content delivery through APIs

You can streamline content management and asset transformation using robust APIs like GraphQL and REST APIs for content delivery. AEM enables developers to launch faster and spend less time maintaining SPAs using ready-to-use, open-source components for SPA elements.

#3. Managing multiple content variations

AEM helps you manage and create personalized, consistent brand experiences across the web, mobile apps, social channels, voice, in-person, and more. You can manage multiple content variations by connecting a master content structure to connected live content copies, saving time.

#4. Seamless UI

The modern UI supports advanced search and filtering and out-of-process extensibility to customize these UIs according to your specific needs. A business can incorporate Adobe Live Search, powered by Adobe Sensei, to deliver search-as-you-type experiences, delivering personalized product recommendations at a lightning-fast speed.

#5. Efficient workflows

AEM enables developers to build easy workflows by integrating agile CMS with a modern DAM (Data asset management system) that provides a foundation for managing all your content. You can quickly find assets, build templates and designs, reuse existing content across all channels, and deliver a personalized experience at scale.

#6. Analyze your marketing performance

Implementing Adobe Analytics with AEM enables you to provide an ability to link data and content together. Adobe Analytics offers tools and insights to improve optimization, seamless experience, contextual personalization, and advanced segmentation. The integration promotes your content and data to analyze what is right for your marketing efforts. You can identify audience groups and push customized content to their preferred touchpoints, increasing sales.

#7. Dynamic personalization by exporting content

AEM headless CMS capabilities natively export experience fragments to Adobe Target for A/B testing or multivariate testing. Adobe Target then ensures consistent user experience on a single customer profile view across all platforms. It provides personalized content at scale by building a unified progressive profile of a customer, even when they use different information to log in from different channels.

#8. Third-party extensibility

AEM headless CMS allows you to customize websites according to your business needs through a third-party extensibility framework to easily build customized extensions. Adobe Developer App Builder extends AEM capabilities providing dynamic content without load time lag and on single-page apps. The integration allows you to migrate large amounts of assets from an external DAM into Adobe Experience Manager Assets. Developer App Builder allows you to use event-based triggers when an asset is modified, added, or removed.

#9. Easy integrations

AEM allows you to integrate with third-party tools for personalization, A/B testing, tracking insights, and more. You can implement Adobe Experience Clouds like Adobe Commerce, Adobe Analytics, Adobe Target, Adobe Campaign, Adobe Sensei, Adobe Journey, and Adobe Real-time Customer Data platform and boost your business’s productivity and flexibility capabilities.

#10. Greater security and availability

AEM runs a more secure headless CMS, and your content publishing tools cannot be accessed from your content database, nullifying the occurrences of cyber attacks. Moreover, AEM headless CMS is serverless, the content is provided to the website even when you’re offline.

#11. Faster editing experiences

The headless visual editor in AEM enables content authors to optimize and personalize the experience by making content edits through a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) interface. In AEM, headless CMS content authors can preview, define editable sections, and automatically generate changes for components and related experiences.

#12. Efficient content pipeline

With an AI-powered headless CMS of AEM, you can automate metadata tagging, search, and content creation renditions so marketers can quickly find, create and manage personalized content at scale. This allows brands to provide omnichannel experiences through an efficient content pipeline.

Implement AEM headless CMS by certified experts of Ranosys

Headless CMS is a great way to deliver seamless omnichannel experiences and gain a competitive advantage. With AEM headless CMS, you get the capabilities to build faster and deliver exceptional digital experiences. If you need assistance with implementing headless CMS effectively and boosting the flexibility, agility, and scalability to achieve organizational goals, you can connect with our certified Adobe Experience Manager experts to explore more of its business-driven features.

Deliver exceptional solutions with AEM headless CMS.

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Financial services companies always look for ways to simplify their complex workflows, gain a holistic view of their users, and implement stringent protocols around security, privacy, and regulatory compliances. With so many bottlenecks to tackle and continued reliance on legacy systems, which are equally difficult to integrate to other modern systems, it is common for financial enterprises to look for solutions that can lessen their load and accelerate their path towards digital transformation. And Salesforce, along with its suite of core clouds and industry solutions provides a futuristic way ahead.

Salesforce is a software solution that can help with this by providing various tools and features to help businesses make better decisions and achieve their goals. However, implementing Salesforce can be difficult for financial services companies, especially when dealing with its complex features.

In this blog, we will discuss the top challenges financial services companies and developers face when implementing Salesforce and suggest practical solutions to overcome them.

The pressing challenges for financial services companies

Here are top 5 challenges financial organizations face during Salesforce implementation:

#1. Security and privacy concerns

Security and privacy concerns in the finance industry are critical due to the nature of the data handled. Customer’s personal and financial data need to be protected to maintain their trust and ensure compliance with industry regulations. Implementing strict security measures such as multi-factor authentication (MFA), encryption, and access controls is crucial to prevent unauthorized access to sensitive data. Apart from security measures, data governance policies play a significant role in ensuring customer information privacy.

How does Salesforce helps:

Salesforce allows you to establish clear data governance policies and ensure adherence to them consistently across all applications and departments.
Salesforce includes guidelines on data classification, retention, access, and sharing to handle sensitive information properly.
Salesforce implementation complies with industry regulations such as GDPR and PCI DSS by providing stringent security measures such as multi-factor authentication, encryption, and access controls. The GDPR governs the handling of personal data within the European Union, while PCI DSS governs the security of payment card information.
Salesforce can help businesses establish clear data governance policies that consistently adhere to across all departments and applications.

Organizations must take necessary steps to ensure their Salesforce implementation adheres to these regulations to avoid legal consequences such as fines and reputational damage.

#2. Integrating legacy systems

Integrating legacy systems to third-party solutions is a major challenge for finance organizations looking to implement Salesforce. Legacy systems, often heavily relied upon in finance, can be difficult to integrate with modern cloud-based platforms like Salesforce due to their large, complex, and tightly coupled nature. Integrating legacy systems with Salesforce is further complicated because legacy systems may store information in different formats or structures than Salesforce, making data migration and integration a daunting task.

To address this challenge, financial institutions must assess which legacy systems need integration with Salesforce and their compatibility and readiness for integration. They must consider data migration strategies and the potential impact on existing workflows and processes.

How does Salesforce helps:

Salesforce can be integrated with legacy systems through the use of middleware, which can include APIs and integration platforms that help to facilitate seamless data exchange between the legacy systems and Salesforce. This approach involves creating APIs that connect to the legacy system and allows it to communicate with Salesforce.
Another approach is data warehousing, where legacy data is extracted, transformed into standard formats, and loaded into a central repository before integration with Salesforce occurs. This approach can help simplify the integration process and improve data accuracy but requires significant resources and expertise.

#3. Delivering personalization

One of the key advantages of Salesforce is its versatility and ability to be customized and personalized according to the unique needs of each business. However, with its complex processes and regulations, the finance industry may face challenges when it comes to customization and personalization.

To address this challenge, finance organizations must first define their business requirements and identify areas where customization or personalization can be necessary. This could involve examining the specific needs of their customers, the regulatory landscape, and the competitive environment. In addition, they must consider the impact of customization on system performance, maintenance costs, and future upgrades.

How Salesforce helps:

One approach to customizing and personalizing Salesforce for businesses is to use its native customization tools, such as custom objects, fields, and workflows, to meet their specific requirements. For instance, businesses can create custom fields that capture unique data points or set up automated workflows that streamline their business processes.
Salesforce provides a 360-degree view of customers, enabling businesses to engage with them personally and meaningfully. The finance industry deals with highly sensitive data, including customers’ personal and financial information. Salesforce implementation can help businesses in the finance industry better understand their customers’ needs and preferences, leading to improved customer engagement and stronger relationships.
One of the significant advantages of Salesforce is its versatility and ability to be tailored specifically for each business’s needs. Successful Salesforce implementation can help finance industry businesses customize and personalize Salesforce to meet their unique requirements. It can improve user experience, increase adoption rates, and improve overall business performance.

#4. Scalability

Financial institutions face the challenge of rapidly scaling their operations, which requires engaging and training new employees on Salesforce. Improper training can impact productivity, tech ROI, and organizational growth. Fortunately, Salesforce is a scalable tool that enables businesses to easily meet customer demands and add application servers to accommodate increased users.

However, while Salesforce is scalable, it may lack the personalization and guidance needed for optimal employee productivity and growth. This is where proper analytics come in, as they reveal users’ challenges and when they need assistance. Unfortunately, the standard CRM tool does not provide such features.

How Salesforce helps:

To enhance Salesforce’s scalability, financial services businesses must analyze usage and identify employee bottlenecks and areas for improvement. Supplementing Salesforce with additional tools can provide valuable insights and personalized guidance for employees, ensuring maximum effectiveness and growth within the organization.
Salesforce can transform finance industry business operations by automating tasks, reducing manual effort, and providing real-time insight into company performance. Successful Salesforce implementation can improve operational efficiency, reduce costs, and increase productivity, allowing businesses to focus on strategic initiatives that can drive growth.

#5. Digital experiences

In today’s digital age, customers expect seamless and uninterrupted experiences; the financial industry is no exception. To succeed in this competitive landscape, financial service organizations must prioritize providing world-class customer experiences that meet the needs and expectations of their customers. Salesforce is an invaluable tool for organizations looking to achieve this goal by providing comprehensive customer data and insights. However, it is up to the employees to ensure that the data is accurate and up-to-date.

How Salesforce helps:

Ensuring data accuracy and employee involvement can be especially challenging in the remote work culture that many organizations have adopted in recent years. However, it is essential to overcome these challenges and maintain high standards of process compliance and data accuracy among Salesforce users. To achieve this, financial businesses should develop a clear strategy and plan for Salesforce implementation that includes employee training and education, data validation measures, and supplementary tools and technologies to empower employees and enhance data accuracy. By prioritizing data accuracy and leveraging the power of Salesforce, financial organizations can provide their customers with world-class digital experiences that set them apart from their competitors.

Know more about Salesforce for financial industry

Best Practices for Salesforce implementation in the financial industry:

To overcome the challenges discussed earlier and ensure a successful Salesforce implementation in the finance industry, financial businesses must follow certain best practices such as:

Understanding business requirements: This step involves setting clear objectives, identifying key stakeholders, and creating an in-depth project plan that details its scope, timeline, and implementation budget.
Collaborating across cross-functional teams: Salesforce implementation requires collaboration among multiple departments and stakeholders, including IT, sales, marketing, customer service, and financial institutions must ensure all teams align together effectively for an effortless implementation.
Training and adoption: Technology and people must come together for successful Salesforce implementation. Financial companies must invest in training and adoption programs so that all users can use Salesforce to maximize its benefits.
Continuous improvement: Salesforce implementation is not a one-off, one-and-done endeavor; financial companies must regularly assess and optimize their Salesforce implementation to identify areas for enhancement and optimization.

Overcoming Salesforce financial services implementation challenges with us

Financial services organizations can leverage Salesforce to revolutionize their operations to keep up with the constantly changing financial market and stay ahead of the competition. However, the implementation of Salesforce in financial services is not without challenges that must be addressed to unleash its full potential.

To successfully overcome these challenges, companies require a strategic approach, and as a trusted Salesforce partner, Ranosys certified experts can assist your organization in overcoming these implementation challenges to maximize the overall return on investment (ROI). With our expertise, financial services organizations can navigate the challenges and take full advantage of its capabilities to drive growth and stay competitive in the ever-evolving financial market.

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Digital commerce has grown tremendously since its inception. It has outgrew every other industrial segment and was valued at $16.6 trillion in 2022 with over 2.14 billion and counting global online shoppers. Buying products online is not a norm, it has rather become a way of life, which has presented more challenges than opportunities for online retailers and merchants in the segment. Changing shopping habits, ever-evolving online shopping trends, maturing AI, ML, & NLP technologies, and the fever pitch around mobile commerce have presented eCommerce businesses with prospects, all of which require consistent support from renowned eCommerce partners. A majority of retail groups, when looking to scale their operations, look around for eCommerce vendors that can accomplish these new-established goals.

Often, internal teams or current partners reach a limit in their ability of providing the necessary agility, scalability, and support that a growing business requires. Due to the lack of an appropriate structure in place to support these demands, retail businesses consider switching their eCommerce vendors, not knowing where to start.

As eCommerce experts and an Adobe Partner with specialized Adobe Commerce solutions, we understand the cruciality of having the right eCommerce partner for your business. If you might find yourself in such a situation, here are the few steps that will ensure your smooth transition from your current Adobe Commerce vendor to the new one.

The 5 steps to switching your Adobe Commerce vendor

The decision to switch vendors should be based on a careful evaluation of your current Adobe Commerce vendor’s performance and its alignment with your future business objectives and goals. It’s important to weigh the costs and benefits of switching your eCommerce vendor, which is no easy feat to achieve. You might want to consider all the potential risks and challenges associated to ensure build confidence in your decision to switch vendors.

Of course, no successful result can be achieved without careful planning and execution to ensure that your customers don’t feel the change, especially in their shopping experiences. If you’re using Adobe Commerce as your eCommerce platform, switching vendors can be an easy process if you follow the right steps. Here are some general steps we follow to ensure a smooth transition:

Step #1: Preparation Phase

This is where you prepare your team and your operations for the switch ahead. To kickstart things, it’s important that you analyze and gather all relevant details about your current systems, integrations, processes, workflows, issue logs, and backlogs. This might also involve conducting meetings with primary stakeholders to review the current state of the system and reports, analyze data to identify gaps that suggest areas of improvement.

Once you have a precise understanding of your current eCommerce system, you can now identify goals and objectives from the switch (as in replacing eCommerce vendors), and brainstorm around challenges that might need to be addressed at the earliest. It might also involve working with your team to develop a roadmap that outlines scope, timeline, and resources (if any) required during the switch.

Step #2: Planning Phase

When moving from one Adobe Commerce to the other, the planning phase plays a critical role in ensuring a smooth switch. The planning phase involves analyzing the ideal state of the new Adobe Commerce vendor, structuring a transition plan with timelines, outlining the roles and responsibilities of each team member. In most cases, you would be asked to prepare checklists for the same via key stakeholders. Here are some points to consider when planning a switch in Adobe Commerce vendors.

Identify the ideal state of the new vendor: The first step is to determine your ideal functioning state with the new Adobe Commerce vendor. This would include identifying some services, feature and functionality implementations, and specific eCommerce solutions you would require from the new vendor. Also consider the time duration of this switch, the budgetary changes involved, and any potential challenges or risks associated with the transition.
Prepare a transition plan: Once you have identified your ideal state with the new vendor, now you need to outline the steps required to achieve it. This step would cover details around timelines, outcomes, roles, and responsibilities for each stage of this vendor switch.
Set timelines: Set specific timelines for each stage of this transition, starting from Day 1 of your Adobe Commerce vendor switch, when do you plan on completing this transition, and any key milestones you wish to accomplish along the way (like new third-party integrations, feature implementation, and so on. This will ensure that everyone in your team and your new vendor is on the same page and that the switch is always on track.
Detail the specific outcomes: Now is when you define what outcomes you wish to accomplish from this transition, for example, invoking some of the Adobe Commerce platform’s capabilities or reducing operational costs, or integrating new third-party tools for enhanced storefront performance, and achieving high-level of personalization in customer experiences. This will help you assess the success of the vendor switch process and identify areas for further improvement.
Decipher your team’s roles and responsibilities: You need to define the roles and responsibilities of all your team members involved during this transition. You will need to identify who will be responsible for specific tasks during the transition and teammates who will be accountable for the overall successful transition.
Preparing a checklist for Adobe Commerce vendor switch: This is where you must create a checklist for each stage of the transition to not miss anything. This checklist would include pointers around data migration, site testing, team training, and so on.

When you take time to plan your Adobe Commerce vendor switch, you are bound to minimize the risk involved during the process and ensure no business process is disrupted and no change is perceived by your customers. Moreover, you must also communicate this plan to all key stakeholders.

Step #3: Execution Phase

The third phase of your switching process involves implementing the transition plan that you prepared during the planning phase. The key steps involved in this phase include:

Knowledge sharing sessions: You would need to schedule sessions with the new vendor’s team to ensure they are on the right track and possess a clear understanding of your current business processes and systems. All these knowledge sharing sessions should cover topics around current system architectures, integration points, and any customizations implemented. These sessions will help the new vendor to develop a precise understanding of your needs, forecasted goals, and how best their team can support your goals.
Stakeholder meetings: It’s important that you hold stakeholder meetings within the organization to keep them at pace with whatever’s the progress happening with the switch. The key stakeholders would include representatives from IT, finance, operations, marketing, and other departments that might be impacted by the Adobe Commerce vendor switch. These meetings will serve as a platform to provide updates to key stakeholders, address any concerns, and gather feedback.
Take ownership of current systems and backlog: Document all your outstanding issues and backlogs to address them all before the switch. This will provide you a clear picture of improvements needed and minimize business operations’ disruption.
Seek support from your new vendor: No is the time you ask your new vendor to support you with data migration, testing, and training.

Step #4: Validation Phase

This is an important step in switching Adobe Commerce vendors and involves everything in place as you go all-in with your new Adobe Commerce vendor. Moreover, this phase plays a critical role in ensuring a successful transition and that the new vendor and their team meets your business requirements. Here are some key steps to consider during the validation phase:

Reviewing the checklist you made in the planning phase: Now is when you review the checklist you prepared during the planning phase to ensure that all pointers have been taken into account, all your data has been migrated successfully, agreed-upon customizations have been implemented, all integrated tools are working together seamlessly, and so on.
Testing to check for functional or performance issues: Your new vendor’s team needs to ensure that even with the switch your online storefront is working as before (or even better). Implementing functional and performance testing procedures along with user acceptance testing will ensure that even with the vendor switch, your digital system is still meeting the needs of your customers and all key stakeholders.
Training to all users on new implementations: The new vendor must also provide training to all users on any new features they’ve implemented to improve store performance as well as any changes made to existing workflows or processes.

By this phase, your new vendor should be able to take ownership and support your existing systems and communications independently. Their team must have established roles and responsibilities for each team member and should be working on a scaling strategy and commence executing action plans on further business objectives and opportunities.

Step #5: Monitoring Phase

The monitoring phase of the switch is rather an ongoing process that involves tracking and measuring the performance of your digital system and ensuring that it delivers desired business value. By now, your new ecommerce software vendor should be able to support you completely and also establish cadence and monitoring. Here are some key steps to take during the monitoring phase:

Monitor performance indicators: First and foremost, you and your new vendor must start monitoring performance indicators, KPIs, and SLAs that are relevant to your business. This can include metrics such as system uptime, response times, conversion rates, and customer satisfaction. It is imperative that your new eCommerce software vendor establishes these metrics early on in the process and tracks them regularly.
Create cadence at project and executive level: Along with the new vendor, you must create cadence for monitoring progress and addressing any issues that arise at project and executive level. This can include regular project team meetings to review progress, identify roadblocks, and develop action plans for issues encountered. At the executive level, you need to ensure that senior leaders are informed of progress and any issues that require their attention.
Establish an escalation process: During your tenure with the new Adobe Commerce partner, it is only usual for escalations to arise, therefore, you must agree on a process that escalates all the unresolved issues at the project level to the appropriate level of management. The escalation process must be well-documented and communicated to all the stakeholders.
Work towards continuously improving the system: Your new vendor’s team must continuously review and improve your digital system to ensure that it delivers maximum value to your business and superior shopping experiences to your customers. Moreover, their team must cover regular system upgrades, enhancements, and optimization processes. They must be able to solicit feedback from users and stakeholders alike to to pinpoint areas for improvement and result in a maximum overall business value.

Switching over Adobe Commerce vendors? We can help you

Remember, switching over Adobe Commerce vendors is a significant business decision and should not be taken lightly. Therefore, take the time to carefully evaluate your options and develop a comprehensive plan to ensure a successful transition. As an award-winning Adobe Gold Partner, Ranosys holds unrivaled specializations across Adobe Commerce, Adobe Experience Manager, Adobe Marketo Engage, Adobe Analytics, Adobe Target, and Adobe Sensei solutions. Our certified Adobe Commerce experts offer customized eCommerce solutions as your industrial vertical- B2B, B2C & D2C and help you with your commerce needs to deliver superior customer experiences. If you’re in the process of switching over vendors, you can connect with our seasoned consultants and discover how we can help positively impact your bottom line.

Ranosys: Your right specialized Adobe Commerce partner.

Sarvesh Kumar

AVP - Enterprise Sales

Sarvesh Kumar is a digital commerce professional evolved from engineering application development to designing e-Strategies. Having an experience of above 17 years in product development, digital marketing, growth operations and business consulting across industries like Retail & Supply chain, Oil & Gas, Real Estate, Telecom, Media & Entertainment, CPG and government sector. With a combination of technical and commercial acumen, he has the ability to structure technology business operations and sales propositions. He is responsible for managing strong relationships with customers and internal stakeholders, including the cross functional teams in product development, application & hardware, marketing, and third party service providers. His core competencies lie in Sales planning, key account management, business alliances and project execution. Connect with him on LinkedIn.

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The financial industry landscape is changing drastically, and customer technology expectations are dynamically shifting. Digital acceleration and advancements in the FinTech industry have opened a new era of banking. Banks are now more focused on providing customer experiences and digital-driven solutions. But thriving in this financial environment can be challenging as banks are facing competition from big tech and retailers for financial services and payments space. Hence, banks need to differentiate themselves, and open banking helps banks innovate, create new revenue streams, and offer new opportunities to serve their customers.

Here we will talk about what open banking is and how it will enhance customer experience, thoughts around embedded finance and Banking as a Service in the context of banking services, and the key capabilities of OutSystems low-code platform to build open banking applications.

What is open banking and how does it help in enhancing customer experiences?

Open banking is the practice in the banking industry which allows third-party applications to access customer data like transactions, bank balances, statements etc. Open banking features allows the banks to enhance the data and add new non-banking services through the use of API. Customers grant permissions to access their data usually via terms and conditions agreement. The third-party providers then access the relevant information through APIs.

Open banking is a major source of innovation that is poised to reshape the banking and FinTech industry by enhancing customer experience.

In today’s competitive landscape with increasing customer expectations, the FinTech industry must be flexible and adaptable and open banking offers them adaptability, convenience, cost reduction, centralized information and much more. Let’s see why open banking matters:

#1. Incorporate new technologies

BFSI industries connect with technology providers for plugins without developing new applications. The platform enables banks or FinTech organizations to add modern features like video chat, digital account opening, and real-time money transfer much faster.

#2. Consolidate data

APIs create a standard language to share data seamlessly across banking systems and processes in real-time. With centralized behavioral and transactional data accessible in CRM and analytics dashboards of banking institutes to make customer needs better. Consolidating data can be used in journey mapping to determine where potential customers are lost allowing organizations to gain insight into financial conditions of customers and provide them with support to convert them into opportunities.

#3. Automate backend processes

Open banking allows to unify data from disparate systems so that financial institutions eliminate dual data entry and gain time to focus on customers. It offers pre-built workflows and task automation for account opening, customer service, and transactions. The system connected to an open platform can automate data entry for returning customers and use auto-decisioning to review credit and fraud risks. These steps improve the employee experience and allow frontline employees to focus on customer needs.

Open banking enables you to have better payment solutions for businesses improving cash flow, reducing costs, increasing visibility, and reducing fraudulent occurrences. Also the bank history can help users to get credit by analyzing creditworthiness.

The ecosystem: Open Banking, Embedded finance, and Banking as a Service(BaaS)

Open banking leads to embedded finance, which is a step ahead. Embedded finance integrates banking capabilities into non-financial services such as cashless payments, in-game purchases, integration of e-wallets, etc. It also includes credit, insurance, and investments from external companies.

Banking as a Service (BaaS) makes financial organizations’ digital services available on a third party’s platform, offering customers things like payment services and loans without acquiring a banking license.

How open banking and embedded finance is extending banking services?

With the changing dynamics of customers’ expectations, banks are now preparing themselves with a layer of microservices that other applications can easily call. Programmatic APIs allow banks to embed, extend, and distribute services seamlessly with internal or verified external applications.
It also enables the banking community access to their data, such as spending and earning patterns, and the use of other non-banking apps.

With the OutSystems low-code platform, a bank can quickly build a diverse suite of applications that allows customers to manage their money in an intelligent way that is personalized to their needs.

How OutSystems leverage low-code to develop open banking applications?

To win in today’s competitive financial landscape, banks need to differentiate themselves with superior digital solutions, omnichannel experiences, and custom applications. They need to integrate with the help of robust APIs and OutSystems high performance low-code is the ideal solution for designing and building innovative open banking applications for the FinTech industry. Let’s discuss key capabilities of OutSystems low-code platform to develop open banking applications:

#1. Legacy system modernisation

As the finance industry evolves, institutions need to keep up with ongoing technological trends to compete. Legacy systems can hinder progress with slow and manual systems and technologies that simply cannot keep up with the demands of today’s customers.

How OutSystems helps:

OutSystems amplifies open banking applications to build new front-ends for current systems to support new customized processes and improved user experiences.
The BFSI industry can decouple and refactor open banking benefits to create a modular composable architecture that can change easily and take better advantage of cloud models.
For legacy modernization OutSystems can build open banking applications that fits systems tailored to users needs for competing effectively without the risk, cost and complexity of traditional development and without limitation of COTS solution.
Low-code cloud native OutSystems platform provides a visual, model-driven approach, drag and drop data connections and AI-powered tools that improve the application lifecycle and facilitate app modernization.

#2. Handling and reducing technical debt

Technical debt is costing banks innovation and agility which makes them unable to provide seamless customer experiences to users. With technical debt, banks become more vulnerable to cybersecurity. The main challenge is that banks don’t want to develop hundreds of applications, hence a low-code platform like OutSystems enables institutions to overcome technical debt by its modernization approach.

How OutSystems helps:

OutSystems approach is based on building open APIs, microservices, containerization, pre-built templates like OutSystems Forge making development faster and easy to code for developers.
OutSystems helps reduce technical debt during development with its best practices of modular architecture.
The open banking apps built with OutSystems uses automation, AI, ML, and analytics to identify architecture errors, faulty logic, and broken dependencies during development in real-time.

#3. Visual-based development

Customers want a digital banking platform to be simple and user-friendly. They want processes like account opening, loan application, finding nearby ATMs and branches, transaction confirmations, easy checkout etc. OutSystems employs a visual programming language that enables to reduce the complexity of modern application development.

How OutSystems helps:

OutSystems allows banking and financial institutions to create intuitive experiences with its Experience Builder and offers clean UX interfaces, leverage innovative technologies to simplify data entry and utilize customized pre-filled forms to avoid reputation of data. It can also build dedicated workflows, for automation of sign-up approvals without the need for human intervention.
OutSystems low-code develops its own API platforms, enabling banking organizations to design and deliver embedded finance services backed by banking infra and compliance capabilities.
You can utilize the drag and drop UIs, business intelligence, and data models to build mobile applications, automate workflows, and custom-fit business process applications.
OutSystems pre-built code modules available in centralized repositories offers high value and innovative features and capabilities like camera access, GPS maps, paper from scans, loan calculation, signature pads, etc.

#4. Enterprise grade security

In the BFSI industry privacy and the security of consumer finance are the main concerns for anyone involved in the open banking environment. Malicious third-party applications could access a customers account, breach and hack data streams, result in insider threats etc. OutSystems can help open banking and financial applications to build safe, transparent, and trustworthy relationships between banks, consumers, and businesses.

How OutSystems helps:

OutSystems works inside a secure runtime environment and the tools necessary for secure development.
OutSystems provides a dedicated Computer Security Incident Response Team (CSIRT) for managing security threats 24/7 and proactively monitoring industry sources for newly discovered security vulnerabilities.
OutSystems enables real-time service responses with automated controls and compliance processes that balance security and speed.
With OutSystems, you can automatically address internal operational mandates as well as KYC, fraud detection, due diligence checks, and disclosure management.
The OutSystems App Shield and Sentry features allow you to build secure applications reducing risk and regulatory compliance.

#5. Integrating Open APIs

Open banking APIs development makes information about its customers personal or commercial accounts more accessible externally through the interfaces. Ofcourse, there are risks caused by using open banking APIs like inauthentic applications, security, API testing and validation. OutSystems high-performance low-code capabilities have built-in capabilities and automation that significantly reduce the time-consuming effort it takes to integrate databases, systems and software.

How OutSystems helps:

OutSystems makes integrations with SOAP web services, REST APIs and SAP systems are built-in generating all the methods and data structures increasing collaboration between teams.
OutSystems can manage integration centrally at runtime and no-code is required.
OutSystems connects central management consoles built into OutSystems developers can integrate faster, transfer knowledge quickly.

Make banking easy, frictionless, and automated with a trusted OutSystems partner.

Open banking APIs are the road ahead for banks to offer the services needed to compete and remain relevant in today’s digital world. OutSystems high-performance, low-code development platform enables banks to create custom digital solutions that can differentiate and meet customers’ evolving demands. As an OutSystems Partner, we have assisted several banking and financial organizations in building open banking applications, and we can accomplish your business cases too. Connect with our certified experts to know how OutSystems banking can digitally transform your firm.

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In the dynamic and rapidly evolving world of eCommerce, there comes, every now and then, a buzzword that gains tremendous traction, becomes the topic of discussion around all online retail forums and podcasts, and compels brands and solution providers to take note of it and implement it to the core foundation of their eCommerce business and offerings. For the eCommerce industry, that buzzword currently is Generative AI. Although this technology is not new or even recent, it has somehow managed to creep to the table since OpenAI’s ChatGPT hullabaloo. And since then, online retailers have been wondering whether Generative AI for eCommerce is a boon for them and how they can leverage it to the best.

Here, we talk about the profit-generating impact of Generative AI in the digital commerce ecosystem, the top use cases for generative AI across customer experience, and how online retailers can boost their eCommerce sales with this technology.

This blog is a summary of our CRO, Anand Ramdeo’s LinkedIn Audio Event, Commerce Conversation on Generative AI in Commerce, where he along with other experts, Sourabh Modi and Sarvesh Singh discussed how Generative AI can potentially make an impact on the ever-evolving world of digital commerce and the ethical considerations around it.

What is generative artificial intelligence (AI)?

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is a technology that helps you produce all sorts of content- text, images, audio, simulations, videos, or synthetic data. These algorithms are based on AI-led machine learning models that predict the next word sequence based on previous word entries or the next image/ video based on previous images/videos. This prediction capabilities in real-time combined with simple and easy-to-use interfaces has lured enterprises to create almost life-like images, videos, and content. As human input is next to negligible with generative AI, it unfolds opportunities (and challenges too) across industries, especially retail and eCommerce where delivering personalized experiences is a must-have.

The timeline of artificial intelligence maturity until generative AI

Initially, AI was the solution to automating manual processes and performing routine tasks faster and with higher accuracy than any human. Then, AI matured, commenced studying past datasets to perform actions in real-time, all while self-learning from current interactions to forecast interactions in the future. The current capabilities of Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri are a result of billions of past calculations that continually improve due to its self-learning prowess.

Then, and the most-talked about currently is generative AI. To be able to achieve the hyperscale level of personalization in real-time, artificial intelligence had to mature on several levels. Its subsets like machine learning empowered softwares to train on human-provided datasets and self-learn in the present, whereas natural language processing allowed machines to generate content and images based on textual inputs. Combined together, it resulted in generative AI, an invincible and intelligent technology that changes everything we know about human creativity and decision-making.

Let’s have a look at the trends that generative AI is shaping for the eCommerce industry.

Generative artificial intelligence is predicted to reach $2.1 billion in revenue by 2032 at a CAGR of 14.9%.
America is said to lead the market, including generative AI for the eCommerce market. The key North American players are said to transform customer experience with generative artificial intelligence.
The need for generative AI for eCommerce stems from the needs around customized experience, product recommendations, customer engagement, and more.
There are several concerns around data quality and security when employing generative AI in eCommerce.

What generative artificial intelligence is not

According to Gartner, by 2025, the percentage of data generated by generative AI will amount to 10% of all generated data. The very basic foundation of these technologies is the real human creativity which builds up intelligence over time.

Yet, enterprises today have a half-baked understanding of generative AI. For starters, the entire basis of generative AI’s capabilities like on the data set it is fed, which can often result in wrong, illogical, erroneous, and unethical outputs. Such a prospect potentially impacts a brand’s reputation and exposes them to legal risks. It is why the implementation of generative AI in online retail needs to be calculative and under vigilant check. Moreover, we need to understand that whatever generative AI does is based on probability and logical reasoning. Generative AI tools provide responses based on the available data sets and matching it with the context specified by a user, i.e., the next logical step in the sequence. While generative AI is continuously improving, it has a long way to go before it can run marketing departments completely.

What sense does generative AI make in online retail?

Retailers and consumer goods brands live and run businesses in a highly competitive reality:

Consumer expectations are changing rapidly
Market trends keep shifting
The cost of goods and services is at an all-time high and so is inflation

In such tedious times, it is no wonder that OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard have gained tremendous reception in such a short period of time across industrial verticals, especially the effective use cases of generative AI in eCommerce. All these technologies are a form of generative artificial intelligence.

The growing number of online shoppers don’t just enjoy the convenience and comfort, but also the personalized experiences delivered across channels, based on their specific piques and interests. Across industries, marketers evaluate at attributes that matter the most to customers. For the online retail and eCommerce industry, the attributes that drive growth and user loyalty is personalization across products, recommendations, search results, marketing emails, and shipping options. With this knowledge, online merchants know the processes where embedding generative AI technology can result in ROI-driven outputs. For example, generative AI for eCommerce would result in personalized shopping experiences to fit every customer.

What are the benefits of generative AI in eCommerce?

Generative AI in eCommerce has reshaped the understanding we had of the market and how we delivered solutions to the shoppers. Further on, it has showcased how technology and its revolutionary impact can help nullify our redundant and manual efforts for the better. While some might perceive generative artificial intelligence in eCommerce to be an almighty solution to all their hassles, it still demands human intelligence and indulgence for successful, timely, and effective execution. And that is where the beauty of marrying technology and human ingenuity lies. And brands who leverage that combined potential to optimize their eCommerce operations and strategies who will not only survive but thrive in the competitive market as well.

That said, the following are benefits of generative AI in eCommerce:

#1: Analyzing large datasets in less time

Gone are those days when brands simply considered all their consumers to be one entity without any choices, needs, and interests. Today’s shoppers demand personalization and that too across channels, platforms, and at an accelerated pace. Generative AI in eCommerce empowers marketers and data analysts to analyze and study large amounts of data in a minimal amount of time to generate insights around customer preferences, needs, and interests, and more. When marketers know exactly what each shopper wants, where, and how, they can tailor these conversations to strategize hyper-personalized marketing campaigns, product recommendations, and one-on-one interactions.

So, generative AI in eCommerce exhaustively reviews and studies datasets to generate actionable insights that results in highly targeted and relevant marketing efforts. The overall impact is that you spend less on marketing, connect with your customers on a deeper level, boost conversions, reduce cart abandonment rates, and improve customer loyalty.

#2: Optimizing and automating processes

An absolute benefit of generative AI in eCommerce lies in the fact that it significantly decreases operational costs and increases process efficiency. What us, humans, take hours and even days to accomplish, artificial intelligence can achieve in mere seconds. Without skipping a beat, generative AI in eCommerce effortlessly handles tasks related to data analysis, content creation, and campaign optimization while your core team brainstorms strategies, new campaigns, decision-making and roadmaps.

This alone is one of the most compelling benefits of generative AI in eCommerce that sways enterprises into its direction. With your valuable team free from all the mundane activities, you can now focus their energies into tasks that actually result in high-value and ROI-driven results.

#3: Staying ahead of the competition (and in the game)

When we say customer experience can make or break a brand, it is more about retaining your old customers and inviting new ones to your products. However, the customer experience that a brand delivers depends on how well you know your shoppers. And this is where generative AI in eCommerce technology stands out. For starters, generative artificial intelligence algorithms analyze previous patterns and activities to forecast predictions for the future. It also suggests available opportunities or facts that might be otherwise missed. This empowers companies to adapt their strategies to that of current market dynamics and trends, and stay ahead of the competition and in the game.

How online retailers can take advantage of generative AI for eCommerce

As the craze around generative AI achieves fever pitch, online merchants need to devise ways to implement generative AI to their eCommerce operations. Since your competitors are already doing so, here are some use cases you can accomplish by integrating generative AI to your online store.

#1: Deliver product recommendations the way your shoppers desire

Shoppers today have tasted personalization and are delighted with how it makes them feel. From personalized product recommendations to tailored content, discounts and deals, generative AI presents several opportunities for online merchants to recommend products/services to shoppers based on their purchase history, historical data, most searched products, browsing behavior, wishlisted items, and other data points. Adobe Sensei and Salesforce Einstein AI are two powerful personalization tools from Adobe and Salesforce that help brands in curating highly personalized shopping experiences, thus driving sales and customer retention.

Such AI-driven tools analyze user data, previous purchase reports, and other data streams to tailor recommendations that appeal to shoppers and align with their interests. For example, you can tailor personalized discount strategies based on total cart values or deliver content that your shoppers most frequently search for.

#2: Run targeted marketing campaigns, tailored for each shopper

There was a time when a one-size-fits-all marketing campaign could drive shoppers to your stores or even websites. However, now times and even user demands have evolved. They no longer want to be on the receiving end of generic marketing strategies for products/services that they don’t need or never search for. Modern (might we add tech-savvy) shoppers know their real value and won’t hesitate to check out your competitors if you fail to deliver the custom experiences they desire. Enter targeted marketing campaigns. You can segment your audiences based on behavioral and demographic details and tailor marketing campaigns to their specific interests. This way, you can ensure the positive ROIs of your marketing campaigns and assured sales.

#3: Consistent product descriptions that improve SEO rankings

An online store is a digital aisle of unending products that requires infinite browsing sessions only to find a few-select items that appeal to a shopper. This is where concise but equally informative product descriptions can help. The traditional practice was to get writers to research descriptions, write appealing new drafts and add necessary SEO keywords to it. While this practice served well, often vendors ended up uploading inconsistent product descriptions that cost them sales and a precious customer.

It is why retailers, long before generative AI for eCommerce, adopted the practice of A/B testing product descriptions to find the most engaging variations. And with recent advancements in generative AI technology, they can standardize descriptions across sellers and retail marketplaces. Writers can now direct generative AI tools with specific instructions on creating product descriptions, those are tailored with your brand tone and grammatically correct.

#4: Optimized product images for high-end purchases

Product images form an integral part of PDP pages, with each image requiring an entire arcade of models, photographers, designers, editors, and creative staff for the photoshoot. This is one place where generative AI can empower online merchants to generate personalized product pages via textual inputs and historical image data. Adobe Firefly, the latest innovation of creative generative AI models from Adobe empowers creators to express their ideas with higher efficiency and no constraints. All you have to do is describe the image you want and bring your creative vision to life. Now, you can generate realistic images based on a subject, style, or location, or color that you specify. You could use these materials for commercial purposes that makes it a useful element in media, design, advertisement, marketing, education, etc.

The advent of generative AI for eCommerce images will empower brands to generate images in real-time. For example, an apparel brand can generate images of different age group people wearing their clothes to appeal to similar shoppers. As customers provide more personal data to generative AI models, it will refine its searches to fit their context of searches.

#5: Monitor and optimize product prices to close more sales

It is an established fact that shoppers track and compare prices of similar products online or in-store before they finally close a purchase. In fact, they don’t mind the hunt if they get their favorite products at an amazing price. Online retailers need to take note of this price sensitivity and always stay agile with their pricing game. With generative AI algorithms, you can track competitor price movements, analyze pricing trends, and demand patterns to further optimize product prices to prevent losing shoppers to your competitors.

#6: Improve inventory and supply chain management

There have been ongoing talks on transforming inventory and supply chain management and for a good reason. Post the pandemic, supply chains have been riddled with issues pertaining to geographical restrictions while the warehouse racks are flooded with dead inventory. Combined with delayed deliveries, most brands find it challenging to strike the right balance between supply and demand. There are several scenarios where generative AI for eCommerce can add to the current supply chain tech stacks for enhanced visibility and tracking.

Generative AI with conversational capabilities (like a chatbot) can help answer the pressing question, ‘Where is my order?’ Generative AI for eCommerce can quickly and easily resolve order queries.
Generative AI can analyze your current sales data to make accurate recommendations for efficient inventory management. AI studies your historical data, market trends, and user sentiment data to help brands optimize their inventories and make informed manufacturing and production decisions.
With generative AI for eCommerce forecasting product demands, you can optimize and scale your supply chain networks to be ready for peak traffic and stagnant days.

#7: Leverage AI’s conversational capabilities to answer user queries

While the chatbot capabilities of AI might seem yesteryear-like, generative + conversational AI can improve your current level of customer support and service. Other than the perks of reducing staffing needs and having a support representative active 24/7/365, chatbots have undergone significant evolution since 15-20 decision trees to infinite ones. With advanced generative models, online retailers can play around different conversational styles to match the shopper, personalize every message for further engagement, and answer queries with human-like empathy and emotions to be perceived as a human-to-human conversation. All these factors combined result in better chat experiences for your shoppers, which further translates to higher cart completions and better sales.

#8: Create more cross-selling and upselling opportunities

By now, you’re aware of generative AI’s capabilities around product recommendations, conversational search, and how it delivers personalized content to shoppers based on their personal interests, history, and preferences. Now, this content could be in the form of texts, images, or other media, all while resulting in intelligent shopping journeys. Further on, generative AI in online retail can analyze all these current data sets to suggest the next logical purchase step in a user’s purchase journey. This results in higher cross-selling and upselling opportunities, all in efforts to accelerate sales and ROIs.

#9: Generating auto-fill transaction flows for each customer

Currently, web pages follow a generic and fixed structure, meaning they showcase the same content, images, and banners to each user despite their varying preferences and choices. Generative AI for eCommerce allows retailers to deliver condensed site experiences to each customer depending on their interests. This means, every shopper would see a custom site where products are filled in automatically depending on the customer data stored on the backend. This further would result in a hyperscale-level of personalization as per a shopper’s behavioral and demographic data.

#10: Prevent fraudulent and phishing activities

As hackers and spammers find their way to your online store, it can often result in fraudulent purchases or returns, decreasing profit margins and resulting in loss of customer trust. Generative AI algorithms in online retail can detect and prevent such illicit and fraudulent activities by identifying unauthorized users with or those with suspicious histories and block them from accessing your online stores. In the long run, this saves brands money and margins.

Going forward with generative AI for eCommerce

There is no second guessing the rapid and accelerated evolution of the retail world that too in the face of challenges such as evolving shopper expectations, price sensitivity, growing online competition, dynamic market trends and so on. Truth be told, retailers are experiencing a hot box moment, where they are ready to experiment with everything that promises them more sales in less time and budget.

While generative AI does hold a promising potential, especially in the retail and eCommerce industry, it needs to be studied and monitored excessively before implementing it to core operations. Remember, every technology comes forth with its own set of challenges and uncertainties, and until they are fully understood, one should not take the plunge. As experts in the eCommerce space, we hold immense capabilities in helping you understand the role of generative AI for your business and can help implement leading tools for the same. Connect with our seasoned consultants and let’s take that plunge into generative AI, together.

Explore more use cases of generative AI in eCommerce.

Ranosys, a leading Digital Commerce company, will be attending The Retail Technology Show 2023, London, UK, to be held on 26-27 April at Olympia London. Our CRO, Anand Ramdeo, will be attending the event and looks forward to meeting industry professionals, partners, and leading retailers.

The Retail Technology Show, the flagship event for retail tech in the UK, brings together Europe’s most forward-thinking retailers and leading tech innovators to share insights and discuss the evolving retail landscape and tech solutions to enhance customer experiences. A two-day event, The Retail Technology Show 2023, will witness over 8400+ retailers and brand professionals facilitating the latest tech and digital solutions for in-store, online, and omnichannel retail, helping to increase operational efficiency and driving sales. Also, the agenda covers 100+ insightful sessions from leading retail tech specialists, sharing the latest trends and developments around the retail and digital commerce ecosystem.

Talking about attending the event, Anand Ramdeo, CRO-Ranosys, said, “I am excited to attend The Retail Technology Show and network with industry peers. This show will be an excellent opportunity for Ranosys to meet retailers in-person, and attend insightful sessions around influencing purchasing decisions, eCommerce, payments, marketing, and all the other leading innovations in this space. As Ranosys continues to scale its operations in the UK and Europe, it’s important that we leverage market knowledge and relationships to optimize our digital commerce strategies and offer superior digital solutions to our clientele.”

Ranosys possesses a decorated 14+ years of experience in the digital commerce space with award-winning partnerships across leading eCommerce tech stacks such as, Adobe Commerce, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Shopify Plus, commercetools. Their certified team of consultants, specialists, and developers have scripted superior customer experiences for global enterprises across the APAC, US, UK, and Europe regions. From collaborating with successful brands such as Victoria’s Secret, Charles & Keith, The Body Shop, Rutland Cycling, Nespresso, and Mothercare, amongst a few, Ranosys has developed scalable, agile, and omnichannel digital solutions, integrated with leading third-party tools and systems. Their exceptional capabilities have earned them accolades from Adobe and Salesforce.

In their current aggressive growth and expansion phase, The Retail Technology Show 2023 will serve as an ideal platform to uncover opportunities around customer experience transformation and function as an accelerant to their goals in the region. If you wish to meet with their representative, kindly schedule a meeting here: https://www.ranosys.com/contact-us/.

About Ranosys

Ranosys is a CMMI Level 3 global digital consulting company founded in 2008 in Singapore with offices in the USA, UK, Middle East, and APAC regions. It leverages the power of platform partnerships, experience design, and cutting-edge software technologies to drive digital transformation, eCommerce, and product engineering initiatives. Ranosys addresses the various milestones in a company’s digital transformation roadmap, identifying, designing, developing, deploying, and measuring their digital skills. Their experienced and expert workforce renders solutions that secure their client’s lead in the digital community.

For more information, visit https://www.ranosys.com/. Or, fill the form and shoot us an email at sales@ranosys.com.

Ranosys’ Chief Revenue Officer (CRO), Anand Ramdeo is launching a new initiative in the form of a LinkedIn Audio Event called COMMERCE CONVERSATION where he along with other industry experts and specialists would facilitate discussions on topics related to digital commerce and learn from each other’s experiences, knowledge, and viewpoints. This recurring audio event will feature expert discussions on specific topics related to digital commerce, aimed at providing valuable insights to eCommerce professionals and engage in a meaningful discussion about the latest trends, innovations, and strategies to drive success.

Commerce Conversation will be held as a live audio event on LinkedIn, allowing attendees to listen in and participate in real-time. In the first talk of the series on 11 Apr 2023 at 2:00 PM (UK time), Ranosys experts, Anand Ramdeo – CRO, Sourabh Modi – Director of Technologies, and Sarvesh Kumar – AVP Enterprise Sales will would be discussing how Generative AI can potentially make an impact on the ever-evolving world of digital commerce and the ethical considerations around it. The discussion would further cover all potential use cases of Generative AI in eCommerce and even include some leading mainstream platforms that already leverage this futuristic technology.

Talking about this new initiative, Anand Ramdeo, CRO-Ranosys said, “As the eCommerce landscape continues to evolve and grow, it becomes necessary for professionals of this industry to stay relevant and at pace with the latest innovations happening in eCommerce and around the online retail world. This weekly event will present an excellent opportunity to all eCommerce enthusiasts to stay up-to-date with dynamic industry trends, innovative strategies, and ROI-driven implementation, crucial to keep up with the competitive eCommerce vertical. Subsequently, it will empower professionals to exchange knowledge and experiences and further continue driving innovation and growth in the eCommerce space. And with that thought, I am thrilled to launch this audio event and look forward to having meaningful commerce conversations with my industry peers.”

With digital commerce partnerships across leading tech stacks of Salesforce, Adobe Commerce, commercetools, and ShopifyPlus, Ranosys, a leading Global Digital Commerce Implementation Partner, holds deep expertise and technical acumen in delivering superior customer experiences for its clients. As for the attendees, they will gain deep insights into how people, process, and innovative technologies help shape a successful and futuristic eCommerce ecosystem. Interested people can join the audio event here: https://www.linkedin.com/events/7048964846276501504/about/.

About Ranosys

For more information, visit https://www.ranosys.com/. Or, fill the form and shoot us an email at sales@ranosys.com.

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The power of data cannot be denied. From personalizing information to suit a user’s specific interests to cross-selling products/services based on their recent purchases, data has completely revolutionized industries across genres. However, collecting appropriate data seems like a tough nut to crack. And even if you manage to do so, streamlining all your data sources to one for a single view of a customer is utmost essential. But what if we tell you there is a tool that can store real-time data across channels, systems and streams at a massive scale and extend it right into your internal and external product portfolio? Well, this is what Salesforce Genie (formerly known as Marketing Cloud Customer Data Platform or Salesforce CDP) does.

Said to be the biggest innovation amongst all Salesforce products, Salesforce Genie unifies user information across applications into one, marries it right into its array of Salesforce Customer 360 platform products, and helps organizations deliver seamless customer experiences across channels.

Here we explore the brimming potential of Salesforce CDP (aka Genie) and why organizations must leverage it to achieve hyperscale personalization. We also discuss the nested potential of tools like Salesforce Einstein for AI, Flow for Automation, Mulesoft for seamless third-party integrations, and Tableau for deeper customer insights.

What is Salesforce Customer Data Platform (CDP)?

While Salesforce Genie has achieved massive likes by Salesforce implementation partners and enterprises alike, it is important to note that this platform evolved from the very famous Salesforce product, Salesforce Customer Data Platform. So before you dive into Genie, it is important to understand the foundation on which its predecessor, Salesforce CDP was built.

Please Note: Salesforce Marketing Cloud Customer Data Platform (aka Salesforce CDP) has not retired. It is still alive and kicking. And so is Salesforce Genie. Also, both these platforms are very different from each other and we will be covering that in our further segments.

Formerly known as Salesforce Marketing Cloud Customer Data Platform (CDP), this tool was one of the fastest organically-grown Salesforce products. Akin to other CDPs, Salesforce Customer Data Platform builds a single source of truth for a user’s profile across touchpoints. This one attribute is shared between Salesforce Genie and CDP. The following are the key attributes of Salesforce CDP data model:

Creating unified profiles of a person via fuzzy matching and advanced data linking across channels.
Bring together data across channels, tools, and streams to one dashboard via data ingestion and Salesforce Mulesoft APIs
Leverage this 360-degree data about a customer to develop targeted interactions and personalized experiences
Bring together your marketing, sales, service, and commerce teams to act on real-time customer data

A brief insight into Salesforce Customer Data Platform features

Much of what Salesforce Genie does is built on top of the profitable features of Salesforce CDP. So, it only makes sense to understand these Salesforce CDP (and now Salesforce Genie) features, which are:

Data Ingestion: Salesforce CDP matches a data record to a person to create a single entry. It gathers information from multiple sources, compares it to an already existing person record and that simply makes up its data library. This can include data across Salesforce CRM, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Salesforce Sales Cloud, Salesforce Service Cloud, and other BI tools, lead scoring tools and data platforms.
Identity Resolution: This feature is how organizations prevent creating duplicate entries or many versions of a customer. Instead, identity resolution allows you to stitch these disparate identities together to create a single customer profile. For example, in one system you might have a user’s name and email address while in another you might store their financial information. Salesforce CDP’s identity resolution merges them into one.
Data Processing: Salesforce CDP improves data existing across multiple systems via code to create one person entry in one information. While this might seem like a simple task, for brands that have multiple apps or solutions and store different amounts of data into each one, it becomes a complicated task to manage user interests. Data processing aims to solve that for you.
Audience Segmentation: Typical to what this phrase means, Salesforce CDP allows you to segment audiences based on various attributes to create personalized cross-selling and upselling opportunities.
Data Syndication & Synchronization: When you create a single customer view, you want to use this data across relevant platforms for nurturing or conversion. This process of sending out data from the Salesforce CDP data model to other platforms for further steps is called data activation. When an audience whose data has been sent out is activated, they can further be nurtured to boost sales.

Introducing Salesforce Genie: The data-first platform

Salesforce introduced its new data platform solution, Genie in Dreamforce 2022. But what was the need for it? As it is widely known that much of the Salesforce Customer 360 is constructed through acquisitions of different platforms, which has resulted in a profound siloed environment across many of its own suite of applications. Genie serves as a common layer between all these tools, especially CRM, marketing, and services and delivers a unified customer view at great speed and scale.

Consider this example. A customer has been looking for a clothing item (let’s say jeans) and have added the same to their cart. However, they have also visited your available coupons page. And now, you’re getting an inbound call from a number that matches with this customer’s record. Now, stitching all this information to one in a jiffy is imperative for a customer agent to begin the conversation with, “We see jeans in your cart and you’re exploring how to use your coupons for the same. Would you like some assistance with that?” Such a unified customer information view opens up immense opportunities for personalization and a precise use case for Salesforce Genie.

That said, Salesforce Genie does take a lot of Salesforce CDP data model capabilities such as data activation, data unification, and identity resolution, but this platform is way beyond a simple customer data platform.

It spans across the whole of the Salesforce Customer 360 platforms and can be used to drive insights across Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud, Mulesoft, Slack, Tableau, and more.
It spans across no-code (Lightning controls for Service Cloud, integration with Marketing Cloud), low-code ( Mulesoft webhooks, APIs) and pro-code (SQL access for Tableau, zero copy file access for Snowflake).
It is built like a data lake to allow for real-time structured and unstructured data (a major upgrade from Salesforce CDP that allowed data access via transactional databases).

Salesforce Genie vs Salesforce CDP: Key differences

By now, you’re fairly aware of how Salesforce CDP and Salesforce Genie differ from each other. However, from the business point of view, the following are some differences between these two platforms.

Attribute	Salesforce Genie	Salesforce Customer Data Platform
Target Use Cases	The entire Salesforce Customer 360 product suite can implement Salesforce Genie to get data in real-time, implement actions across sales, service, Mulesoft, commerce, marketing, Tableau, Slack and so on. This is where there is Commerce Cloud Genie, Sales Cloud Genie, Service Cloud Genie, Slack Genie, and others.	Available only to marketing automation platforms such as Salesforce Marketing Cloud to perform audience segmentation, run campaigns across channels, or implement Einstein tools for personalized experiences. Salesforce CDP follows the audience segmentation + data activation protocols.
Key Features	Salesforce Genie allows for data unification and identity resolution. It allows for a varied set of capabilities like for Salesforce users to receive user information, trigger Flow automaton, identify the best next steps via Einstein AI, perform deep analytics with Tableau, and so on.	Salesforce CDP provides for data unification, identity resolution, data activation, enhanced segmentation and segment activation. It allows you to build complex audience segments easily, inject them to Journey Builder, and activate personalized engagement.
Underlying Architecture	Salesforce Genie works well with all Salesforce Customer 360 products and can send data to multiple cloud products simultaneously	Salesforce CDP data model directly links to the Salesforce Marketing Cloud product suite. For seamless connectivity with other clouds, custom integrations are required
Flow Automation	Provides real-time flow automation	Does not provide real-time flow automation
Einstein AI	Provides real-time Einstein AI for data analytics	Does not provide real-time Einstein AI for data analytics
Hyperforce	Salesforce Genie is supported by the Hyperforce platform, a public cloud infrastructure that allows you to protect and secure user data and ensure that it fulfills all regulatory compliances and ethical standards	Salesforce Customer 360 audiences (or Salesforce CDP) although is live on Hyperforce in US and Germany, it doesn’t fully support Hyperforce
Zero copy architecture	Provides zero copy file-based open data access for AWS SageMaker or Snowflake, meaning users can access Salesforce data on-demand securely in these tools and vice-overa without copying or duplicating data into Salesforce	Does not support zero-copy architecture, meaning Salesforce CDP, when syncing data to records, duplicates it into Salesforce
Bring Your Own AI	Salesforce Genie’s partnership with Amazon SageMaker empowers users to bring Salesforce data to SageMaker, use it to create data-based machine learning models, and once done, move it back to Salesforce where Einstein AI can leverage it to harness actionable insights and custom strategies.	Salesforce Customer Data Platform does not support the bring your own AI capabilities.
Integrations with Mulesoft and Tableau	Although much information is not provided on how Salesforce Genie will allow for integration with Mulesoft and Tableau, but it for sure with happen with either same or improved functionality level and faster speed	Salesforce CDP offers integrations with both Salesforce Mulesoft (facilitating a secure connection between external apps and data sources) and Tableau (for deep data analytics and enriched insights)

The science behind Salesforce Genie: How it functions

When Salesforce Genie is integrated to your Salesforce Customer 360 platform, it allows you to store data across internal and external Salesforce tools in real-time and process it milliseconds across all connected systems. Plus, Salesforce Genie comes forth with inbuilt connectors that can easily gather data from channels, tools, and streams whether it is a mobile app, web portal, or APIs. With Mulesoft integrated to your Salesforce CRM, you can also bring legacy and historical data from data lakes to Salesforce. Currently, the platform also offers the following capabilities:

Salesforce Flow: Salesforce Genie is developed using Salesforce metadata, to allow data across tools and channels to be accessed by Salesforce Customer 360. As Salesforce Genie processes data in real-time, Salesforce Flow will use the data to trigger actions and responses automatically across the Salesforce Customer 360 platform.
Salesforce Einstein AI: By leveraging a real-time complete view of a user’s data via Genie, Salesforce Einstein AI can help deliver personalized experiences based on a user’s evolving buying behavior, and enhance the overall sales and conversions.
Genie Hyperscale Data Platform: The powerful Hyperscale Data Platform empowers Salesforce Genie to access data across data sources and data lakes via in-built connectors, match it with Salesforce, and hence offer superior customer experiences across channels.
Hyperforce: This is a public cloud infrastructure from Salesforce that provides data storage, security, privacy, and maintains regulatory compliances. With in-built data ethics features, Salesforce Hyperforce safeguards data and related threats.

Getting started with Salesforce Genie or Salesforce CDP data model

While Salesforce Genie offers futuristic data capabilities that no other tool in the market promises yet, organizations still leverage Salesforce Customer Data Platform depending on their business needs. As a certified Salesforce Partner, we can help you evaluate whether your needs are more suited to Salesforce Genie or Salesforce CDP and ultimately help you implement any of the two platforms. We have been following all the advancements in Salesforce Genie very closely and can help you leverage the tool to its fullest. Connect with our Salesforce Genie trailblazers to know more about the tool and its implementation.

Know more about Salesforce Genie from certified trailblazers.

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With all the innovations in the technology industry, the challenge of building secure and scalable applications continues to grow. The shift from a traditional approach to modern cloud-native applications has helped businesses cope with rising customer expectations. While other platforms leave companies writing thousands of code, OutSystems low-code platform has always strived forward with its exciting updates and laying a solid foundation to turn disruptive technologies into a strategic alliance.

Following that vision, OutSystems introduced the OutSystems Developer Cloud (ODC) in late 2022, dramatically reducing the complexity of developing cloud-native applications and thus increasing productivity.

In this blog, we will discuss the challenges of building cloud-native applications and how ODC is leveraging low-code capabilities to help enterprises build effective applications that run on-premises and on multiple clouds.

The pressing challenges to building cloud-native applications

There is an urgency for companies to digitize their products and services. This means changing the experience you provide to users and improving your internal operational efficiency. Applications are reaching more users as their market grows. At the same time, companies are moving to the cloud to meet user expectations which are higher than ever, and also to be able to have a global distribution of their applications. Therefore, the last resort for enterprises seems to be investing in the cloud-native technology. Yet, even as a solution, enterprises today struggle with the many challenges of developing cloud-native applications, such as speed of development, security, performance, scalability, agility, and the availability of a talent pool for the same.

Let’s discuss some of the major challenges organizations face while building a cloud-native application:

#1. Non-functional requirements (NFRs)

NFRs show how applications work well regarding security, scalability, localization, maintainability, and drive complexity. Meeting NFRs is important to meet user expectations and compliance as it tells how applications would function in real-time. Moreover, they are essential in deciding the architecture of applications.

#2. Tool proliferation

NFRs drive tool proliferation as several tools and systems are needed to develop cloud-native applications thus adding to high development costs, especially in cases of multi-cloud implementation. Developers are managing more code architectures, and companies are struggling to invest in new products and innovations as they have to maintain huge application and system portfolios. Depending on the cloud provider you would like to use, the complexity gets three times higher, and the costs that come with it could be tripled due to tool proliferation.

#3. Talent shortage

To cope with the complexity of tool proliferation and NFRs, you need different skills for different areas in end-to-end app development. This naturally results in new roles emerging for which companies need to hire more people. This further adds huge costs in onboarding and training developers to build cloud-native applications.

So, how are companies adopting cloud-native application development? Large enterprises hire top talent that handles complexity because they can absorb talent costs and handle proliferation costs. Also, the license and infrastructure costs come along with these. But still, a lot of companies struggle to find a platform. This is where OutSystems introduced OutSystems Developer Cloud, formerly known as OutSystems Project Neo. ODC helps you overcome the challenges of NFRs, tool proliferation, and talent shortage, abstracting the complexity of adopting cloud-native applications. Let us first understand what ODC is and why you should adopt it for cloud-native app development.

What is ODC?

OutSystems Developer Cloud (ODC) is a new high-performance, low-code platform providing a modular, scalable environment for developing cloud-native applications. ODC state-of-art architecture rapidly decreases the complexity of developing cloud-native applications with containers, Kubernetes clusters, serverless functions, and various other modern technologies. ODC pre-packages architecture, configures your cloud runtime, and integrates the cloud services into the platform so developers can focus on implementing application logic. ODC is built on three parameters:

Serious productivity: ODC enables you to adopt cloud-native applications development, abstracting the complexity, decreasing the talent requirements, exceptionally streamlining the automated application development process, and increasing productivity. ODC embraces modern CI/CD practices to provide unified experiences.
Serious applications: ODC allows you to build mission-critical applications with the state-of-the-art architecture. You can build serious web and mobile applications regardless of the use case and how complex business requirements could be.
Evergreen platform: ODC is always updated as the technology evolves without impacting any application. You will never have to go through strenuous platform or app updates or downtime. All the NFRs that users and enterprises expect are handled within the ODC platform without causing downtimes.

The OutSystems Developer Cloud (ODC) architecture

ODC is developed under the cutting-edge cloud native platform in which you are able to scale the entire platform and applications independently via platform development without any downtime. Platform and Runtime segregation separately ensures the scaling to any number of applications.

ODC enables you to scale your apps to millions of users when needed, allowing you to create serious apps with ODC answering the most important NFRs like high availability, and reliability providing assurance for applications.
As we discussed earlier, security is one of the most important aspects for NFRs. More services within cloud-native applications means harder to secure applications because you have a larger arcade of services. ODC provides security by design to implement authorization and authentication by default. It has CDNs (Content Delivery Network) for DDoS (Distributed Denial of service) attacks with features like intrusion detection and intelligent threat detection.
ODC encrypts data when communicating between microservices so it protects your applications’ security and compliance.
ODC will allow generated code, app data, container configurations and pre-built templates that allows you to build an app in a matter of seconds just by exporting.
ODC ensures no code lock-in to run and operate app-specific PaaS capabilities replacing customer owned services.

OutSystems 11 and ODC: How do they coexist and what should you adopt?

OutSystems 11 is a flagship platform, and OutSystems Developer Cloud (ODC) is a new high-performance, low-code platform from OutSystems. OutSystems 11, which works on-premises, continues to be an industry-leading platform, and whatever you build can run on ODC. OutSystems 11 includes embedded CI/CD tools, integrated platform services, and an integration layer.

With ODC, OutSystems has new solutions despite similarities to OutSystems 11 regarding development experience, sharing the same community and ecosystem. But you can expect a different journey while adopting ODC. For instance, if you have OS11 and ODC, your IT users and end-users must be managed separately. The same happens with Application Lifecycle management. So both solutions can coexist together.

ODC benefits us while analyzing the pipeline of new applications, keeping in mind one of the most important features: scalability. ODC can develop applications robust and scalable while reducing unpredictable loads, maintaining performance and response time better even in unexpected loads.

ODC allows you to scale your development independently with segregated computing capacity. So what are the major differences between OutSystems 11 and ODC:

Architecture: As a customer, if you already use OS11, you should expect some effort while adopting ODC. The major differences happen in architecture and application lifecycle management. From an architectural perspective, there is a different mindset to simplify development. OutSystems is shifting to an application development module where it ensures deployment and real-time scalability. Each application is isolated in its components, in its container, and communicates through services.
Application Lifecycle Management: For application lifecycle management, OutSystems has now simplified the application promotion workflow in ODC. You will have a clear view of new application version delivery over a pipeline of various stages. You can also feed your CI/CD automation tools through an API.
Training: Zero training is required to start building apps with the modern, future, and agile architecture of ODC. You will have access to training materials and guided paths to walk you through the ODC.

Adopting OutSystems Developer Cloud (ODC)

User applications have evolved through many disruptive technology shifts from client-server to the web, web to mobile, and self-managed to the cloud, and OutSystems has always strived to bring customers forward.

In the long term, OutSystems will enable OS11 cloud customers to run their applications without additional development effort on ODC by moving your application portfolio so you can maintain and evolve your applications. In the case of scalability, ODC will provide you with a seamless experience regardless of the technology stack of your apps.
OS11 customers will have the option to upgrade to ODC running in their private cloud within their data, intellectual property controlled by self-managed solutions based on modular architecture inside your domain.
OS11 will continue to be there for the long term, and OutSystems will bring updates for the same. To adopt ODC, you can decide as per your convenience to use ODC in a coexistence strategy for short-term. Or, you can wait until all its capabilities are available so that you can migrate your applications. ODC will support both multiple cloud and hybrid cloud strategies to develop your applications.

How building applications with ODC will benefit your business?

With ODC, organizations can have applications with unified experiences across the whole platform where users can manage, evolve, and monitor their apps in a single place, all only a click away. Hence, ODC increases developer productivity by utilizing microservices and modern architecture, reducing dependency between elements. It promotes the use of libraries like OutSystems Forge and services, increasing agility and flexibility dramatically. Ultimately, ODC has many benefits that an enterprise can utilize, let’s discuss some of them:

#1. Builds strategic applications faster

ODC low-code development enables the visual development of applications through modeling and graphical interface, delivering applications much faster, abstracting coding complexity while maintaining collaboration between the departments. ODC automates DevOps processes, manages an advanced cloud runtime, auto documents code, resolves code dependencies, performs regression testing, and continuously updates new features.

#2. Integrating data with ODC

Large enterprises need to integrate data with backend systems, which is crucial to centralize data distributed across the different systems and extend the capabilities of these systems further. This could be an SAP system, Salesforce, or any other CRM. ODC automates business processes making integration with other systems easier and quick.

#3. Develops mission-critical applications

ODC eliminates the cost by implementing Kubernetes that auto-scales cloud-native application development elements. With the help of the Outsystems Developer Cloud Portal , users can consolidate functionality that previously existed across Lifetime, Service Center, and the Users application. ODC, with its modular architecture, reusable components, and pre-packaged capabilities, enables large organizations to save time, cost, and effort to build composable applications.

#4. High-performance applications

ODC builds high-performing applications with a single cloud-native platform using visual modeling, AI, automation, and more to unify development. ODC accelerates the entire app development lifecycle offering pixel-perfect, robust, and responsive AI-driven consumer applications.

#5. Custom coding with ODC

ODC provides a no-limits experience through accessibility at all levels. Professional developers can extend visual models at every level of the development stack rather than traditional coding standards. While most of the use cases can still be achieved through accessibility and custom coding integration that ODC provides.

#6. Elite-level DevOps

ODC enables developers to make critical application changes by updating automatically without impacting apps. ODC uses CI/CD pipeline processes, giving you high-quality codes and increasing overall productivity, allowing shorter development cycles.

#7. Advanced security

ODC is embedded with enterprise-grade security and ensures that applications built are secure in design. ODC also fixes DDOS, newly identified code vulnerabilities, mobile threats, and other protections. ODC provides edge security which has CDN for DDOS attacks and gateway WAF scanning for IP reputation for malicious requests. ODC with Sentry capabilities has anti-virus scanning, intrusion detection, and data-loss prevention making you build secure applications.

Leverage the power of ODC with trusted OutSystems partner

ODC is the technology stack that not only leverages low-code capabilities but goes beyond and incorporates cloud-native functionalities and automates DevOps practice. OutSystems has always provided businesses with advanced solutions to build applications combining the power of low-code platforms. At Ranosys, we have assisted several enterprises to build their cloud-native low-code applications and we can solve your business use cases too. Connect with our certified experts to know how OutSystems ODC can revolutionize your business.

Build applications on ODC with our certified OutSystems experts.

Want to schedule a demo of Adobe Marketo?

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Users today want everything to be fast, whether it’s getting their queries answered or diving straight into product/service specifics to understand if it solves their pain points. Traditionally, they had to rely on automated voice instructions to experience the luxury of talking to a human agent about their issues or queries. But not anymore, thanks to the evolving technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning. Now, customers can simply head over to the chat section of a digital product, preferably on their smartphones and get all the desired information they expect.

While the experience might seem seamless and almost human-like, the backend is governed by robust and powerful conversational AI tools like Adobe Marketo Dynamic Chat that serves dual purpose for brands:

Help brands to always have an agent round-the-clock to ensure no human question goes unanswered, thus boosting conversions
Provide customers the solutions they need, the satisfaction they deserve, and the experience they desire

A powerful inclusion to a brand’s cross-channel strategy, Dynamic Chat Marketo engages with your website visitors based on their preferences and content browsed, and results in a king-size engagement. In this blog, we’ll educate you on this powerful AI chatbot from Adobe, how one can implement it, and conclude all the insights you must know before going ahead with it.

Conversations that result in conversions: Introducing Dynamic Chat Marketo Engage

Dynamic chat is a chatbot solution from Adobe that allows brands to create unique contextual experiences for every web visitor. It natively integrates with Adobe Marketo Engage, a next-gen marketing automation platform, and thus allows brands to easily run cross-channel communications with users. A superbly handy tool for marketing and sales people, Adobe Marketo Dynamic Chat lets you engage web visitors quickly and design conversations based on every user’s interest, search histories, and preferred products/services.

Some points to note are:

The tile Dynamic Chat is already added to your Adobe Marketo Engage homepage.
In case you wish not to show the tile to everyone, Adobe has added another role called, ‘Access Dynamic Chat’, for admins to enable or disable it for their team members.
All users acquired by Dynamic Chat will have their Person Source as dynamicChat.
Adobe has also introduced new activities to define the interaction a visitor has with the chatbot. These include Dialogue Engaged, Dialogue Goal Reached, and Dialogue Appointment Scheduled, visible in the activity log of a lead.
There are new filters and triggers introduced for designing smart campaigns to decide the further actions or lead score of a visitor.
The inferred attributes are collected by the Dynamic Chat Munchkin cookie which is the same as the Adobe Marketo Munchkin cookie ( as both leverage a native integration). Therefore, when a new lead is created via Dynamic Chat dialogue, the inferred attribute collected by the cookie is simply passed to the lead record in the Marketo database.

“Check out our blog on how Adobe Marketo accomplishes the marketing automation trends for 2023 here.”

The six modules of Adobe Marketo Dynamic Chat

The following are some modules present in Dynamic Chat Marketo chatbot. Let’s go through them:

#1: Dialogues

Just like its usual meaning, these are conversations that the chatbot has with a visitor. It serves these important Ws, which are:

WHERE: This specifies the different web pages where you want the dynamic chatbot to appear. You can add multiple target URLs to denote the ‘where’.
WHO: This is where you build a persona of visitors you would like to have this conversation with. You can add as many available inferred, person and company attributes as you want to build your user persona for this dialogue.
WHAT: This is where you dive into the actual conversation you would like the chatbot you have with a specific visitor. You can design the entire conversation via Stream Designer via simple drag-and-drop actions without writing a single line of code. You can add tokens (to personalize messages) and add emojis to make the conversation fun.

Available cards in the dialogue module

There are various cards available in the Dialogue > Stream Designer section of the Dynamic Chat, namely, Messages, Questions, Information Capture. Appointment Scheduler, and Goal. You can even map user responses to an existing attribute in the Marketo database. While the other cards are self-explanatory, Goal here specifies an important marketing touchpoint and used further for lead qualification. You can even create new goals or use the existing goals.

Dialogue Reports: What can you track?

Another important functionality of the Dialogue section is Reports, where you can see

Number of times the chatbot is triggered
How many visitors were engaged
Total completed conversations
People acquired
Meetings booked
Goals achieved

The available dialogue templates

When creating a dialogue, you can either choose from the available templates for blog reader conversion, lead qualification, lead generation or event registration. Or, you can go with a blank custom dialogue as per your needs.

Implementing real-time changes to your dialogue content

When previewing your dialogue via the Preview Toggle in the Stream Designer card of Dialogue module, if you find something is entered incorrectly or to you wish to change the dialogue content, you can simply click on the magnifying glass against the response under Preview and it will take you to the dialogue in the tree.

#2: Meetings

This module details the total meetings that were booked by visitors with your sales/marketing representatives. Information like the Agent name the meeting is scheduled with, the current status of the meeting, the tentative meeting date, the dialogue that resulted in the meeting, and the date and time the meeting was created on is available.

#3: Calendar

This module allows all Dynamic Chat users from sales and marketing teams to integrate their Microsoft Outlook and Google calendars. So, when a visitor opts for meeting booking, Marketo fetches the agent’s available time slot and displays it.

#4: Routing

A noteworthy aspect of Dynamic Chat Marketo Engage is multi-user availability. You can ask as many sales and marketing people to integrate their calendars to the Adobe chatbot, which will then be employed by the Routing module.

Routing is where you set up the order in which your sales representatives’ calendar will be shown to a visitor, and also create custom routing rules. Adobe Marketo Dynamic Chat then displays these calendars in a round robin fashion when a user asks for the meeting widget.

#5: Configuration

It is only natural for you to customize the look and feel of the AI chatbot to your brand’s identity. And the configuration module is where you can achieve that. From colors, fonts and font sizes to your chatbot’s name and its avatar (or upload a custom avatar) along with the privacy policy settings, all of this can be adapted to your brand’s image.

The configuration module also governs Dynamic Chat’s installation. Here is a JavaScript snippet available that you have to copy and paste on the webpage where you want the chatbot to pop-up.

#5: Integration

Adobe Marketo natively integrates with Dynamic Chat; however, the first time you visit this module, it’ll ask you to enable the sync. Once completed, all the leads that will be captured via Dynamic Chat will be pushed to Marketo in near real-time and vice-versa. The sync takes around 24 hours to complete, post which you can publish the dialogues and empower your visitors to have personalized conversations with your chatbot.

Setting up and installing Adobe Marketo Dynamic Chat

Here are the steps to set up and install Dynamic Chat:

As mentioned above, to setup and install the chatbot to your Adobe Marketo instance, you need to initiate sync from the Integrations module. Once you do so, you can select up to 50 native and custom fields from your Marketo instance to sync with Dynamic Chat.
Now, you need to style your chatbot to make it brand-relevant. You can do so from the Configuration > Style section.
Install the JS script snippet from the Configuration > Installation section to the HTML of all those webpages where you want to display the chatbot.
You can install the chatbot to any Marketo-hosted landing page by simply adding the JS script to Landing Page Actions > Edit Page Meta Tags > Custom Head HTML.
All that’s left now is the designing of your Dialogue.

Managing users on Adobe Marketo Dynamic Chat

Before you can start using Dynamic Chat Marketo, you need to first provide access to your marketing and sales users. To do so, follow these steps:

Visit https://adminconsole.adobe.com/.
Click on ‘Add Users’, enter the email of the user you wish to add, select the product you wish to provide access to, and click on save.
The user would receive the invitation for Adobe Marketo Dynamic Chat account creation.
Next, head over the Admin section of your Marketo instance, to create a new role for the access to Dynamic Chat.

5. Now, assign all users to the role whom you previously invited in the Adobe Admin Console.

6. Once, users have logged in, they will be able to see the Dynamic Chat tile in the Marketo homepage

PS: If you wish to remove a user, head over to User, select the user you wish to remove, and delete the user.

Powerful 2022-2023 releases of Adobe Marketo Dynamic Chat

Adobe Marketo releases several updates and additions to the tool regularly. Here are some important ones:

Picklist support for Information Capture card in Dialogue module: Dynamic Chat now offers picklist where a visitor can choose from up to 250 choices. For example, you can now add a picklist for a dialogue that asks for the job title of a visitor.
Date and DateTime fields for Information Capture card in Dialogue module: For dialogues that show a calendar and require a visitor to select a date and time, Adobe Marketo Dynamic Chat now offers select and sync of date and datetime attributes.
A separate email notification for booked meetings: The latest Jan 2023 update also includes a separate email notification for the meeting booked along with all the necessary details, such as, invitee name, invitee email, event date/time, dialogue URL, and all the attributes captured.
Personalize your booking emails with tokens: During instances where a visitor requests for a meeting with your sales rep, you will send a confirmation email. In the recent release, you can now personalize the email with lead and company tokens.
Support for boolean field types: It now syncs and captures boolean data field types into Dynamic Chat from Marketo. In the Map To Response section of Information Module > Dialogue, you can add data types with field names where it auto-populates responses like Yes and No to the visitor.
Submit button for Information Capture card: For visitors who couldn’t figure out whether to press enter or submit for a Information Capture card dialogue, Adobe Marketo has now added a submit button to make it easy.
Prevent accidental deletion of dialogues: In cases where a user mistakenly deleted a dialogue, thus removing all the set up campaign triggers and filters, Adobe Marketo will now show all Programs, Smart Lists or Static Lists using the dialogue, so as to update the campaigns before deleting the dialogue.
Meeting buffer extended to 30 minutes: The default buffer time between two meetings for a sales rep has been changed from 60 to 30 minutes to allow for more bookings.
Skip or overwrite value already provided by a visitor: Several times, a visitor was asked the same information even if they have provided the same previously. However, now in Stream Designer > Information Capture card, you can now choose to either skip if the value is already in the database or overwrite existing value. This way, the chatbot will skip to the next dialogue if the database already has a lead’s information.
Disconnected dialogues notification: For dialogues that appear disconnected in the stream designer, they will now be highlighted so that you can update their hierarchy in the chat.
Poke messages only on desktop: As poke messages take a lot of screen space, Adobe Marketo has now disabled them for smaller screens and will only be visible on desktop screens.

Make cross-channel marketing seamless with Adobe Marketo Dynamic Chat

Undeniably, Dynamic Chat Marketo Engage is one of the best available tools for conversational marketing. But that’s not this chatbot’s only beneficial attribute. Once you have all the information you need about a lead, you can use it to run cross-channel strategies across paid, web, social, and email channels based on lead and account targeting. You can even update lead scores, route leads based on their interactions, and also set up trigger campaigns to implement next steps based on chat history.

Apart from this powerful AI chatbot capabilities, Adobe Marketo comes bearing several other ROI-driven functionalities to help you automate, accelerate, and transform the delivery of personalized and relevant experiences. As an Adobe Partner who works extensively with the MarTech platform and has gained several certifications and accomplishments with the tool, we can help you explore more around it. Book a consultation with our MarTech experts to understand how you can reap maximum benefits and ROI with Adobe Marketo Engage.

Himanshu Ganoliya

Technical Lead – MarTech

Explore more about Adobe Marketo for your business

Want to explore the capabilities of Salesforce CRM?

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If you’re in the industrial ecosystem, you’re probably aware of Salesforce and how it has become #1 CRM platform in the world. Across its multiple clouds, acquired tools, and seamless integration with leading tech stacks, Salesforce has built a network that has become a gamechanger for leveraging enterprises. Here, in this resource, we detail everything you’ll ever need to know about Salesforce, its solutions, and how your organization can benefit from it or make the most out of your Salesforce investment.

What is Salesforce?

Salesforce is a cloud-based platform that offers software and services to better manage interactions between prospects, customers, and partners. As the most popular Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool in the world, Salesforce helps small and large enterprises to break down organizational activities and gives employees a unified customer view across all departments. Salesforce also offers a platform for artificial intelligence (AI), marketing automation, finance, human resource management, etc.

Salesforce also offers pay-as-you-go subscriptions, delivers affordable CRM software as an online service, and stores all the data in the cloud, allowing businesses to sell, service, and market in a whole new way with software-as-a-service (SaaS) based solutions for sales, customer service, marketing, analytics, app development and the Internet of Things (IoT).

History of Salesforce

Established in March 1999 by former Oracle executive Marc Benioff, Parker Harris, Dave Moellenhoff, and Frank Dominguez, Salesforce is a CRM platform vendor headquartered in San Francisco, California. Over time, Salesforce has transformed into a SaaS powerhouse, providing a variety of cloud platforms for specialized purposes. Salesforce became the first cloud computing business to disclose revenue of $10 billion in August 2017. With 40,447 employees and $26.5B in revenue, Salesforce ranks third on Forbes’ ranking of the most creative businesses in the world. Moreover, Salesforce is listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and also in the S&P 500 index.

What does Salesforce do?

Salesforce, the world’s #1 CRM, offers a wide range of software solutions to assist teams from various industries, including marketing, sales, IT, commerce, and customer service. For instance, teams across an organization can connect and share a single view of customer data on an integrated platform by accessing the Salesforce Customer 360 platform. Moreover, it offers valuable insights into customer behavior and demands through customer data analysis. Salesforce provides a comprehensive view of every customer interaction from any device, anywhere in the world, by bridging the gaps between technology silos from various departments.

Why is Salesforce used?

The Salesforce ecosystem consists of a number of different cloud platforms that let you engage with various types of data and provide your customers with a variety of services. By offering a 360-degree view of your customer’s lifecycle, better and more centralized data management, streamlined workflows, and linked systems in a zip, it aids in your understanding of your consumers.

Despite having several products, CRM is the backbone of the overall Salesforce model and is tailored for various business niches in Salesforce Clouds.

#1: Salesforce CRM (SFDC)

Salesforce CRM helps you manage your company’s customer relationships and interactions. Throughout your interaction with each individual, whether they are customers, service users, colleagues, or suppliers, Salesforce CRM lets you focus on your organization’s relationships with them. You can boost profitability, streamline the process, maintain contact with your customers, and so on with Salesforce CRM.

With Salesforce CRM, you can manage marketing campaigns, track service issues, track sales prospects, and keep track of customer interactions all in one place. You can also make information about every customer interaction available to anybody at your organization who might need it. Additionally, Salesforce CRM offers a better approach to managing the external contacts and relationships that are important to success in any area of the organization, including sales, customer support, business development, recruiting, and marketing.

#2: Salesforce Sales Cloud

The Sales Cloud platform is a part of the Salesforce CRM system. The Sales Cloud platform is developed especially for salespeople. In short, Salesforce Sales Cloud is a cloud-based CRM platform that unifies all customer data into an integrated platform that combines lead generation, sales, marketing, and customer service.

Sales Cloud allows you to store your data in the cloud, so you can access it from anywhere, at any time, and using any device. It also automates the sales process and customizes workflows using point-and-click tools. Sales managers can tailor the stages and steps reps will take when creating and maintaining records using the Sales Path tool. With just a few clicks, your salespeople can instantly and easily update Salesforce records with email data using the Sales Cloud’s connections to Gmail, Exchange, and Office 365 email clients. Here are some of the Salesforce Sales Cloud features:

Campaign Management
Leads Management
Accounts Management
Contacts Management
Opportunities Management
Cases Management
Reports and Dashboards

To get a complete understanding of Sales Cloud capabilities, watch demo. Or, check out our blog on Salesforce Sales Cloud here.

#3: Salesforce Service Cloud

One of the world’s most popular and highly-rated software solutions for customer service and support is Salesforce Service Cloud. With the help of the Salesforce Service Cloud, users can automate service procedures, streamline workflows, and find essential content to assist customer service representatives.

This customer care software helps agents and clients to interact quickly and address client issues by phone, online, chat, or email. The solution also delivers pre-prepared communication via automatic responses for specific outcomes and lets users build self-service customer service portals. Some of the Salesforce Service cloud features include:

Lightning Service Console
Case Management
Workflow and Approvals
Omni-channel Routing
Telephony Integration
Social Customer Service
Automation with Macros
Account and Contact Management
Custom Reports and Dashboards
Asset and Order Management

Watch this demo video to learn how Salesforce Service Cloud is a complete solution. Or, check out our blog on how Salesforce Service Cloud drives customer success here.

#4: Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Marketing Cloud is a Salesforce platform in the marketing automation and customer engagement domain that enables marketers to build and manage relationships with customers as well as marketing campaigns. The Marketing Cloud offers integrated solutions for data analysis, web personalization, email, mobile, social media, advertising, content creation and content management. Additionally, the Marketing Cloud enables you to create highly customized, deeply relevant journeys across all digital channels by enabling you to take a single-customer view of your customers. Some of the capabilities of Marketing Cloud includes:

Email and marketing automation
Customer engagement in real-time
Social media engagement, listening and advertising
Mobile (SMS) messaging and push notifications
Customer marketing analytics

Watch this video to learn more about Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Or, check out our blog on Salesforce Marketing Cloud segmentation here. If you wish to integrate Salesforce Marketing Cloud with Commerce Cloud, this resource might come in handy.

#5: Salesforce Commerce Cloud

Salesforce Commerce Cloud, formerly known as Demandware, is an eCommerce platform that aims to help businesses grow by enhancing their brand value, expanding their customer base, and increasing sales. This cloud-based platform is designed to simplify the eCommerce process for businesses by providing an intuitive interface and powerful features. If you want to know more about Salesforce Commerce Cloud, check out our blog here.

Salesforce Commerce Cloud provides a feature-rich eCommerce platform that encourages businesses to create engaging and intelligent customer shopping experiences. With Salesforce Commerce Cloud, businesses can connect with customers at every stage of their customer journey, seamlessly transitioning from one channel to another. This platform supports businesses across all mobile, web, store, and social media channels. Be it B2B, B2C, D2C, or marketplace development, Salesforce Commerce Cloud is a perfect solution for your eCommerce business. Some other capabilities of Commerce Cloud includes:

Salesforce Order Management is pre-connected with Salesforce Commerce Cloud and handles all operations from order processing, accepting payments online, and communicating with suppliers to tracking orders, coordinating shipment schedules, and processing returns. SOM is one of the most employed OMS solutions by Salesforce Commerce cloud vendors. Check out our blog here to evaluate if Salesforce Order Management is the right extension for your online store.
Einstein AI for Commerce, as a part of Salesforce Commerce Cloud has empowered many eCommerce retailers with intelligent insights and hyper-personalization.

#6: Salesforce Experience Cloud

The Salesforce Experience Cloud, formerly Community Cloud, is a platform for building connected digital experiences for customers, partners, and workers designed to help businesses build these experiences fast and at scale. Companies could easily create and deliver tailored content, websites, portals, mobile apps, and stores with barely any clicks or codes if capabilities like Salesforce CRM, CMS, and even Experience Builder were combined with a suite of prepackaged applications. The main features of the Experience Cloud include the following:

Integrate data from any source
Build personalized experiences
Design for every device
Increase onsite engagement
Track and optimize your site

Salesforce Experience Cloud can be easily customized to meet your business’s needs and integrated with Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and App Cloud. You can significantly reduce the time spent on content management by using Experience Cloud to get data and photos from your Salesforce account automatically.

#7: Salesforce Customer 360

Salesforce Customer 360 is a platform that provides a complete and integrated view of the customer across all Salesforce applications and third-party systems. It enables businesses to create a unified customer profile by collecting and consolidating data from various sources, including sales, marketing, service, and commerce. Know more about Salesforce Customer 360 and if it is relevant to your business here:

With Salesforce Customer 360, businesses can gain insights into customer behavior, preferences, and interactions, allowing them to provide personalized and relevant customer experiences.
This platform enables businesses to manage their customer data in a privacy-compliant manner while ensuring data accuracy and consistency across all systems.
Salesforce Customer 360 provides a single source of truth for customer data, enabling businesses to understand their customers better, anticipate their needs, and deliver exceptional experiences across all touchpoints.

The following image details how Salesforce Customer 360 platform its entire suite of cloud solutions help businesses:

As Salesforce Customer 360 is customizable, it can be modified to meet the requirements of different departments and industries. At each journey step, all teams can access comprehensive client profiles and contextual data, empowering them to provide unmatched customer experiences.

#8: Salesforce Analytics Cloud

Salesforce Analytics Cloud, also known as Einstein Analytics, is a cloud-based business intelligence platform offered by Salesforce. It is designed to help organizations of all sizes and industries easily access and analyze their data to gain insights and make data-driven decisions. Users can import and analyze data from a variety of sources with Salesforce Analytics Cloud, including Salesforce CRM data, other cloud-based applications, and external data sources. It provides a range of data visualization tools, including dashboards and reports, that make it simple for customers to comprehend and analyze their data. Some noteworthy benefits of Salesforce Analytics Cloud are as follows:

One of Salesforce Analytics Cloud’s key features is its capacity to employ machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) to automatically identify patterns and trends in data and offer users insights and recommendations. This enables users to take the necessary measures after quickly and simply identifying opportunities and potential risks in their data.

Its prominent features are:

Mobile First: Salesforce Analytics Cloud is a highly mobile-friendly platform that allows users to view, filter, group, measure, and share data from their mobile devices.
Easy Synchronization: Cloud Analytics is built on the Salesforce-1 platform, allowing easy data synchronization and data exchange between various systems and applications.
Self-Service Access: Salesforce Analytics Cloud is a very easy-to-use tool that allows users with minimal or no analytics background to handle it proficiently. Additionally, it enables users to find desired solutions without having them send ticket requests to the IT department.
Visualization Engine: Business users and data builders are given the tools they need by the Dynamic Visualization Engine to complete their tasks with ease. The visualization, interactive visual streamlining, and deep insights assist the users in making better decisions.
Different Dashboards: Cloud Analytics allows users to create multiple dashboards that consolidate multiple data visualizations into a single view to handle massive data streams from various sources at a unified interface.

#9: Salesforce Einstein

Salesforce Einstein is an artificial intelligence (AI) platform that is built into the Salesforce Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. It is designed to help businesses of all sizes to leverage the power of AI to automate tasks, gain insights, and make smarter decisions.

Salesforce Einstein uses machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) to analyze data from various sources, including the Salesforce CRM, and to provide insights and recommendations to users. It can help businesses to better understand their customers, identify patterns in their data, and automate tasks such as lead scoring, forecasting, and customer service.

One of the key features of Salesforce Einstein is its ability to learn from user behavior and data inputs, and to continuously improve its recommendations over time. This helps businesses to stay ahead of changing customer needs and market trends, and to make data-driven decisions that can improve their bottom line. With Salesforce Einstein, businesses can unlock the power of AI and drive growth and success in today’s competitive business landscape.

Salesforce Einstein can also be viewed as a CRM Intelligence Assistant that is divided into two categories: the Einstein Out-of-the-Box Applications and the Einstein Platform. Salesforce Einstein provides businesses with a suite of AI technologies that can help them optimize their sales and marketing processes, improve customer service, and identify new revenue opportunities.

Here’s how Einstein can help in the following areas:

Machine Learning: Salesforce Einstein provides a set of machine learning algorithms that can be used to analyze customer data, predict outcomes, and recommend actions. With Einstein’s machine learning capabilities, businesses can automate and optimize their sales and marketing processes, identify new revenue opportunities, and improve customer service.
Natural Language Processing (NLP): Salesforce Einstein uses natural language processing to help businesses analyze and understand unstructured data such as customer feedback, social media posts, and chat transcripts. With NLP, businesses can automate tasks such as lead scoring, sentiment analysis, and customer service, leading to more efficient and effective customer communication.
Computer Vision: Salesforce Einstein offers computer vision capabilities that enable businesses to analyze images and videos to identify objects, people, and scenes. This can help businesses in several ways, such as analyzing social media posts and product reviews to understand customer sentiment, automating quality control processes, and improving supply chain management.
Automatic Speech Recognition: Salesforce Einstein offers automatic speech recognition capabilities that enable businesses to transcribe and analyze audio recordings, such as customer service calls and voicemails. This can help businesses automate call routing, sentiment analysis, and customer service tasks.

Salesforce has launched the world’s first generative AI for CRM – Einstein GPT to create better experiences across the Customer 360.

Why Salesforce for your business?

Salesforce is widely recognized as the leading customer relationship management (CRM) software available. Despite this, many people are unaware of the myriad benefits it offers. Businesses can boost their revenue, build affinities among their clientele, and give their company a greater sense of purpose by using Salesforce. Here are some points that make Salesforce a perfect choice for your business:

#1: Powerful analytics tools

Salesforce has continuously expanded its analytics tools and capabilities to enable customers to understand their business data efficiently. One of its most powerful tools, Salesforce Einstein Analytics, empowers sales, marketing, and data analytics teams to establish smart customer relationships by leveraging data. With Salesforce CRM and Einstein Analytics, businesses can easily collect data from various internal and external sources, process it effectively, and make informed decisions based on accurate forecasts. By utilizing Salesforce’s advanced analytics capabilities, businesses can better understand their customers, enhance their operations, and ultimately drive success.

#2: Optimal customer visibility

Salesforce offers a comprehensive CRM solution that allows you to access every aspect of your customer information. This feature provides a holistic view of every contact, account, task, event, and personal information, allowing you to gain a better understanding of potential customers. In addition, Salesforce integrates with various other applications, making it easier to collect customer information and improve engagement, ultimately driving sales.

#3: Cloud of trust

Salesforce employs a multi-layered security approach that includes physical, network, application, and data security measures to protect customer data. This includes providing customers with clear information on data handling, storage, and sharing policies and allowing them to manage their own data preferences. Additionally, Salesforce complies with all applicable worldwide safety and regulatory requirements, including TRUSTe, TUV Certificate, PCI DSS Compliance, ISO 27001 Certification, etc. Salesforce also strongly emphasizes customer privacy and transparency, enabling customers to control their data and understand how it is being used.

#4: Easy to use

To ensure that a CRM can be used to its fullest potential, it’s essential that even novice users can navigate the platform with ease. Salesforce CRM caters to a wide range of companies, including those without a background in software or technology. As a result, the user interface is designed to be simple and intuitive, eliminating the need for coding or extensive training. The information and product updates are presented in a clear, easy-to-understand format to minimize inconvenience or difficulty. Additionally, Salesforce offers seamless integration with other business applications, streamlining various processes.

#5: Flexibility & customization

Salesforce is a flexible and highly customizable platform allowing broader applicability to various companies and businesses. Due to the reports and analytics it offers, which are tailored to the individual needs of the users, it can work effectively with a wide range of different business models. Salesforce enables businesses to continuously adjust their marketing initiatives and assess and track their success. This leads to the development of a fully optimized system that can be automated to become autonomous.

#6: AppExchange

Salesforce AppExchange is the world’s largest marketplace for business applications, offering a vast array of resources, options, and functionalities to help businesses sell, service, and market more effectively. With its user-friendly accessibility, downloading, and installation processes, users can effortlessly extend their capabilities and drive business growth. More than 3100 applications and above 2 million developers are available on the AppExchange marketplace. There are apps related to many big companies, such as LinkedIn and Microsoft Outlook, which can be fully integrated with Salesforce. Furthermore, AppExchange is a thriving center of innovation, continually advancing with cutting-edge concepts and tools. Users can thus connect and forge deeper relationships using technologies they never imagined.

Salesforce Industry Clouds

Salesforce offers several industry-specific clouds, all of which are based on Customer 360. They enable a platform that consolidates trust, innovation, and agility to speed up the digital transformation of various industrial sectors. Here are some of the cloud solutions for various industries below-

#1: Salesforce Financial Services Cloud

Salesforce Financial Cloud is a specialized customer relationship management (CRM) platform designed specifically for financial services organizations, including banking, financial institutions, wealth management firms, insurance agencies, and mortgage & loan companies. Financial Services Cloud enables businesses to offer tailored wealth management services and ensure optimal operation in conditions of high market volatility.

How does Salesforce for financial services help the BFSI industry?

With the help of the Salesforce financial cloud, BFSI institutions can offer sales and marketing, customer support, collaboration and communities, analytics, and business intelligence services in an automated and user-friendly way. Here are some benefits that the financial cloud offers for BFSI enterprises:

Enhanced Client Engagement: Salesforce Financial Cloud enables financial institutions to better engage with their clients by providing a 360-degree view of their financial data, which can help advisors understand their client’s financial needs and goals and offer tailored financial advice.
Streamlined Operations: Salesforce Financial Cloud enables financial institutions to streamline their operations, automating administrative tasks such as onboarding, documentation, and reporting and simplifying complex workflows using custom-built applications.
Increased Efficiency: The platform enables financial institutions to create a centralized hub of client data that can be accessed from anywhere, reducing the need for manual data entry and thus enabling the teams to focus on delivering better value-added services to their clients.
Improved Compliance: Salesforce Financial Cloud helps financial institutions to stay compliant with regulations, including KYC/AML, GDPR, and data privacy, as the platform offers several compliance features that can be customized to meet specific regulatory requirements.
Advanced Analytics: Salesforce Financial Cloud enables financial institutions to analyze their financial data and create customized reports, dashboards, and gain insights into market trends, enabling faster, more informed decisions.
Seamless Integration: The platform allows financial institutions to integrate with other key systems, such as accounting software, payment processing systems, and marketing automation platforms, to streamline processes and workflows.

Access our resource for the ultimate guide for Salesforce Financial cloud.

#2. Salesforce Health Cloud

Salesforce Health Cloud is a specialized solution designed to manage medical-patient relationships and records, offering powerful collaboration tools that connect healthcare professionals at all levels of care and institutions within the health system. This allows for a more seamless and personalized care experience, leading to better patient outcomes. With advanced analytics and machine learning capabilities, Health Cloud can help healthcare providers identify patterns and trends in patient data, allowing them to develop customized treatment plans that improve patient outcomes, reduce costs, and enhance the overall quality of care provided. Overall, Salesforce Health Cloud is a comprehensive and powerful solution that offers a wide range of benefits for patients, doctors, health care providers, and financiers in the healthcare industry.

Salesforce Health Cloud offers a wide range of benefits for healthcare organizations and professionals, including:

Improved patient engagement: Health Cloud provides healthcare professionals with a 360-degree view of the patient, enabling them to deliver personalized care and engage with patients in a more meaningful way.
Enhanced collaboration: Health Cloud allows for seamless collaboration between healthcare providers across all levels of care and with institutions and specialties within the health system. This enables more efficient and effective care delivery.
Advanced analytics and machine learning: Health Cloud leverages advanced analytics and machine learning capabilities to help healthcare providers identify patterns and trends in patient data, allowing for more accurate diagnoses and personalized treatment plans.
Increased efficiency: Health Cloud automates administrative tasks and streamlines workflows, allowing healthcare professionals to focus on patient care and improve operational efficiency.
Better patient outcomes: By providing healthcare providers access to more comprehensive and accurate patient data, Health Cloud helps improve patient outcomes and reduce the likelihood of medical errors.
Compliance with healthcare regulations: Health Cloud is designed to comply with healthcare regulations, ensuring that patient data is secure and protected in accordance with HIPAA and other regulatory requirements.

#3. Salesforce Education Cloud

Salesforce Education Cloud, also known as Salesforce for Higher Education, is a comprehensive set of tools and solutions that simplify processes for both students and teachers. It combines various elements on the Salesforce platform to allow users to manage all their data in a centralized location. The Education Cloud offers a complete 360-degree view of student and institutional data. It provides staff with a complete overview of a student’s academic journey, including their course of study, interactions with faculty, and other relevant information. This results in a more personalized student experience regarding learning paths and future opportunities, enabling teachers to provide increased support.

The benefits of Salesforce Education Cloud are:

Improved student engagement: Education Cloud helps institutions stay connected with students by providing personalized communication channels that keep students engaged and informed.
Enhanced student success: With Education Cloud, institutions can easily track student progress and identify areas where additional support may be needed, leading to improved student success rates.
Better communication and collaboration: Education Cloud enables communication and collaboration among students, faculty, staff, and alumni, improving overall institutional communication and making it easier to stay connected.
Streamlined admissions and enrollment: Education Cloud simplifies the admissions and enrollment process, making it easier for institutions to manage applications, track enrollment numbers, and communicate with prospective students.
Data-driven decision making: Education Cloud provides detailed analytics and reporting, allowing institutions to make data-driven decisions that improve operations and enhance student success.

#4. Salesforce Manufacturing Cloud

Salesforce Manufacturing Cloud is a digital transformation solution driving transparency and connectivity among manufacturing companies globally. This cloud promotes digital transformation, enabling manufacturers to deliver more powerful and connected experiences to their customers and partners. Its cloud-based solution streamlines collaboration between companies with shared interests, providing field agents with a holistic view of customer data and personalizing the buyer experience throughout the buying process.

With Salesforce Manufacturing Cloud, manufacturers can achieve greater visibility into their operations, gain real-time insights, and make data-driven decisions that drive business growth. By leveraging the power of AI and automation, manufacturers can improve operational efficiency, optimize the supply chain, and deliver better customer experiences. Additionally, the Manufacturing Cloud can be implemented for sales, services, or both sales and services.

The benefits of using Salesforce Manufacturing Cloud are:

Modernize your commercial operations: Manufacturing Cloud helps streamline sales processes, improve forecasting accuracy, and monitor customer performance against commitments.
Manage top-line revenue: With Manufacturing Cloud, manufacturers can manage, grow, and forecast their entire top-line revenue with account-based forecasting and sales agreement management.
Transform service experiences: It helps deliver personalized service experiences, optimize field operations, and improve collaboration with partners.
Consolidate customer interactions: Manufacturing Cloud gives manufacturers a 360-degree view of their customers and enables them to deliver more personalized experiences.
Simplify partner engagements: It simplifies and enhances partner engagements by providing a centralized platform for sharing data and insights and improving collaboration with suppliers, distributors, and resellers.
Actionable analytics: With Manufacturing Cloud, manufacturers can make faster, more informed decisions by leveraging actionable analytics and real-time insights into their business operations and supply chain.

Why use Salesforce over any other platform?

Salesforce’s wide range of services, customization and scalability, better management, support, marketing, data security and safety, and integration capabilities make it a powerful and flexible platform for managing customer relationships and driving growth. These capabilities also differentiate Salesforce from other available CRM platforms, enabling organizations to create a more personalized and engaging customer experience while improving operational efficiency and reducing costs. Here are some reasons why you might consider using Salesforce over other CRM platforms:

Wide range of services: Salesforce offers a broad range of cloud-based services that cover various aspects of customer relationship management, including sales automation, customer service, marketing automation, eCommerce, analytics, and more. This enables organizations to choose the services that best fit their business needs and goals and integrate them seamlessly to create a unified customer experience.
Customization and scalability: Salesforce offers a high degree of customization and scalability, allowing organizations to tailor the platform to their specific needs, workflows, and processes. The platform offers various personalization options, including drag-and-drop tools, visual workflow builders, and code-based customization. Moreover, Salesforce’s cloud-based architecture enables organizations to scale their usage up or down without worrying about infrastructure maintenance or capacity limitations.
Better management, support, and marketing: Salesforce offers a suite of tools that help organizations manage customer relationships more effectively, including Sales Cloud for sales automation, Service Cloud for customer service and support, and Marketing Cloud for marketing automation. These tools provide a 360-degree view of customer interactions, enabling organizations to deliver more personalized and engaging experiences. Moreover, it offers different support services, including training, certification, and customer success programs, to help organizations get the most out of the platform.
Data security and safety: Salesforce takes data security and safety seriously, employing robust security measures to protect customer data and ensure compliance with regulatory requirements. These measures include data encryption, two-factor authentication, access controls, and regular security audits. Additionally, Salesforce offers various tools and resources to help organizations comply with data protection laws, such as GDPR and CCPA.
Integration capabilities: Salesforce offers a wide range of integration capabilities that enable organizations to connect with other systems and platforms, including third-party applications, databases, and e-commerce platforms. This enables organizations to create a unified customer experience across multiple touchpoints and channels and automate business processes that span multiple systems. Moreover, Salesforce provides pre-built connectors and APIs and a range of integration tools and services to help organizations build and deploy integrations more quickly and easily.

Salesforce offers a powerful and flexible CRM platform that can help organizations of all sizes and industries to manage customer relationships better, drive growth, and improve business outcomes.

Use Case: Automating customer segmentation based on last purchase for Rutland

Explore more on how Rutland Cycling built on the agile Salesforce ecosystem.
Read the complete success story

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Salesforce CRM brings immense value to businesses of all sizes and industries. With its cutting-edge technology and out-of-the-box solutions, Salesforce CRM can help businesses make faster and more informed decisions, increase profits, and deliver exceptional customer satisfaction. With a team of certified Salesforce experts and over a decade of experience in the industry, Ranosys has the expertise to help businesses leverage Salesforce to its full potential and customize it to meet their unique business needs.

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Implement Adobe Commerce Fastly to your online store.

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Expectations for websites and applications are at an all time high. If your online stores aren’t fast, secure and highly personalized users can shift to other sites reducing your overall sales and ROIs. An agile, secure, and flexible platform holds the power to deliver exceptional shopping experiences. Therefore, companies are choosing Fastly for their Adobe Commerce online store. Adobe Commerce Fastly enables you to leverage the right infrastructure at scale, improving security, and growing your business.

In this blog will take a closer look at Adobe Commerce Fastly CDN and how it benefits your eCommerce business.

Adobe Commerce Fastly CDN: An overview

Fastly is an edge cloud platform that allows you to deliver secure and scalable digital content delivery services, including websites, applications, and media for Adobe Commerce to deliver superior performance and boost conversion rates. As an online merchant, you know the plethora of competitors in the market and how imperative it is to differentiate your brand. A content delivery network (CDN), therefore, plays an integral role in ensuring your online store stays relevant and trend-centric. And this is where Adobe Commerce Fastly assists can simplify things for you.

Fastly and Adobe Commerce have a well-established partnership resulting in a robust set of features to optimize your online storefront at no additional cost. Unlike other legacy CDNs, Fastly helps Adobe Commerce store owners to launch content updates instantly, effortlessly manage site traffic, and overall improve loading speed and time. Fastly is known for its powerful content-from-cache feature, where if your page takes time to load, it employs cache info to serve website pages, even personalized ones like shopping cart and product recommendations pages.

Fastly works on critical bottlenecks of online eCommerce websites to enhance shopping experiences. Let’s look at some of the factors through which Adobe Commerce Fastly can provide security and deliver services for better performance:

Its fast caching capabilities and a robust Content Delivery Network(CDN) for static assets, ensuring the fast delivery of content on your website.
Fastly delivers its CDN service from key access points to the internet called points of presence (POPs). When end users request your control objects, Fastly delivers them from whichever cache locations closest to each end user.
Fastly optimize and secure the content delivery operation for Adobe Commerce on the cloud without additional cost.

How can Adobe Commerce Fastly CDN benefit your online store?

As customer expectations evolve rapidly, online retailers struggle to ensure high-level performance and seamless user experiences across multiple touchpoints. Content that loads too slowly or interfaces that take time to respond to user actions impact user experience tremendously. With a vision to make businesses deliver fast, secure, and scalable online content experiences, Adobe Commerce Fastly delivers personalized, real-time solutions, all from the comfort of your Adobe Commerce admin panel. Let’s delve into the benefits of Adobe Commerce Fastly:

#1. Enhance web and mobile performance

Business owners worldwide are giving more time and resources to user experience improvements. Users are not concerned with how web pages work or what web hosting provider a company uses, but they are concerned about fast loading speed, quality content and intuitive navigation, especially for eCommerce sites. Adobe Commerce Fastly offers comprehensive features from cutting-edge caching technology to improve website performance and speed and provide content fast. Let’s look at the features that enhance user experience:

Fastly’s CDN can benefit large eCommerce platforms by handling heavy traffic, regulating seasonal and unexpected traffic spikes, and increasing security around transactions. These platforms span a range of industries like retail, hospitality, and financial services.
Adobe Commerce Fastly powerful caching features even accelerates the loading of pages pertaining to personalized content such as shopping cart, login messages, product recommendations, or most recently viewed products.
Distribute your eCommerce site in real-time across a global network of strategically placed POPs to reduce latency and increase website and application speed and reliability.
Fastly cache entire webpages with Edge Side Include (ESI), a web standard that replaces dynamic elements with ESI blocks and allows websites to inject visitor-specific HTML before delivering the full webpage to the user.

#2. Deliver better inventory and pricing management

Businesses face many inventory management issues that can impact all aspects of your business, from customer satisfaction to gross margin and ROI. Whether it is a lack of real-time visibility across locations or manual processes that result in lost time and increased errors; most businesses, unfortunately, deal with the pains of managing inventory at some point. Adobe Commerce Fastly’s Instant purge helps to manage inventories better. If there’s any modification on your website, you can update content within 150 milliseconds globally.

#3. Optimize images for higher conversion rates

The webpage load of eCommerce sites is higher than ever mainly due to images. This increases page load time and can negatively impact engagement. As images are the most influential factor when considering an online purchase, with Adobe Commerce Fastly you can reduce page load time, increase scalability and security, and reduce latency. Let’s dive into Fastly CDN features for better image optimization:

Fastly Image Optimizer (IO) can decrease page load time by reducing the size, quality or change formats according to devices or channels. This enables images faster and cost-effectively.
Fastly’s CDN helps push data quickly around the internet on behalf of some of the most popular companies. This is popular with large, high-traffic websites and those offering big media to download.
Along with speed and the greater ease of serving more customers simultaneously, Fastly CDNs Magento are better placed to deliver high-resolution video without disruption.

#4. Simpler storefront management while adding more functionality

A business needs proper store management to have effective control on productivity. Store owners need to manage multiple layers of Magento deployments, including WAFs, load balances, Varnish Cache servers, admin servers and more. With a two-tier cache, Adobe Commerce (Magento) Fastly can help you simplify your Magento Management stack.

Adobe Commerce Fastly’s network of strategically placed POPs serves content closer to your users, while Fastly’s Origin Shield simplifies requests to your origin.
Adobe Commerce Fastly’s UI offers even more flexibility to optimize your storefront, like end-user blocking, CORS headers management and integration with other content management systems like AEM or WordPress.

#5. Ensure an always-on online storefront

Customers expect that they can always have a seamless experience while accessing your website or online store. When they can’t, they get frustrated and move to other sites. These abrupt dips in site traffic are caused by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks or even a flood of legitimate flash traffic, which can also result in downtime.

Fastly’s robust, high-performance network ensures that your website can handle traffic seamlessly during peak flash sales times, holiday season, or so.
Adobe Commerce Fastly places one POP as a shield to absorb multiple requests for the same content, and then distribute it to all other POPs.
Adobe Commerce Fastly can also fetch stale content for a page if your original server takes time to fetch the update or goes down abruptly, to ensure that you don’t have to display an error message while your server fetches the right content in the backend, using Fastly Soft Purge feature.

#6. Cache management

Enterprises need effective cache management to retrieve data without slowing down websites. Content delivery to users depends majorly on storage locations called caches. The rules for web caching behaviors and storage are called cache controls. Adobe Commerce Fastly’s cache management features improve performance:

With Fastly, your web pages, content, CSS and more in backend data centers are set up to reduce load time and costs.
Fastly customizes Varnish Configuration Language (VCL) for configuration according to your requirements.
Fastly calculates TTL (the maximum time to answer requests for content without consulting the origin server). After TTL expires, you can keep the content in storage, but Fastly won’t use it to answer requests.

#7. Update content globally

To stay competitive, brands must regularly update their websites regarding design, functionality, and content. With Adobe Commerce Fastly, you can implement POPs on your eCommerce site in real time across multiple channels globally. The features that help in updating content globally fast are:

From the Adobe Commerce backend, you can instantly and automatically purge updated content, so your visitors always see the most up-to-date information across a multi-channel strategy.
Fastly’s network of strategically placed POPs brings content closer to your users and Fastly’s Origin Shield requests to your origin, making it easier to update content globally.

#8. User-friendly

In this tech-friendly environment, enterprises want their systems to be easy to use. Adobe Commerce Fastly have easy to install extensions and open source plugins available on the Fastly Adobe Commerce marketplace. Some of the features of how Adobe Commerce Fastly can support your business processes:

Once Adobe Commerce Fastly is installed, you can configure Fastly for your store directly with your Adobe Commerce admin panel.
You can set custom TTLs for some pages, disable caching for personalized content like product recommendations, and identify issues in less than 30 minutes.
Fastly’s Purge requests can be triggered via an API call and requires no login.
On the grounds of being a self-service tool, there is ample documentation available and so is the developer support needed in some scenarios.

Improve your eCommerce store with Adobe Commerce Fastly

Adobe Commerce Fastly can help optimize your website performance and enhance users online experience, enhancing brand reputation and loyalty. As an award winning Adobe Solution Partner, Ranosys can assist you in implementing Adobe Commerce Fastly and leverage its capabilities to the fullest. Also, we can help you uncover the right tools, configure them to your online store, all to enhance website performance and speed.

Sakshi Bissa

Software Engineer

Sakshi Bissa is a Software Engineer at Ranosys. She has 4+ years of IT experience as a Magento Developer. She has been a technical speaker at global conferences like Meet Magento UK 22 and Meet Magento India 23. She contributes to the community by sharing her ideas through her blogs, spreading awareness, and igniting insightful discussions across the Magento community. Connect with her on LinkedIn.

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Discover the power of Headless Salesforce Composable Storefront!

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We live in an economy where experiences matter more than attributes. Traditionally, businesses sold their product features to customers. Fast forward today, there are over hundreds of businesses selling almost-same products and services, providing modern users with more choices than they can handle. It is here that businesses encounter the challenge of how to sell a unique experience to their customers. Your usual digital storefront doesn’t consider the diverse needs of shoppers and hence fails to curate a personalized experience. But not anymore. Headless Salesforce Composable Storefront is here to change all that for you.

What is Headless Salesforce Composable Storefront?

Released by Salesforce in 2022, Headless Salesforce Composable Storefront is a frontend solution that replaces the SFCC SiteGenesis and Salesforce Storefront Reference Architecture platforms. It was originally released as PWA (Progressive Web Application) Kit with pre-built packages and accelerators for headless implementations. Headless Salesforce Composable Storefront leverages modern technologies to deliver native app-like and mobile-optimized experiences to shoppers. The toolkit also contains subscriptions to other Salesforce Cloud tools and APIs required during implementation.

The best part, it expands on the current trend and opportunities around modular, API-led enterprise solutions, most importantly being composable and headless commerce.

Headless Commerce: The frontend architecture banks on the headless commerce concept with disconnected frontend and backend architectures communicating only via APIs, leaving more room for speedy customizations and high scalability. When eCommerce brands can change their customer-facing layer as per trends and evolving user demands as fast and as much as they want without touching their backend layer, it results in high-scale personalization, superior digital storefront performance, and high-level flexibility that shoppers desire and love.

Composable Commerce: Another important feature of this architecture is its composability. In layman’s terms, composable frameworks allow you to pick-and-assemble tools from search to content management, thus accelerating time-to-market and reducing the overall cost of ownership and implementation. Whenever you feel like adding/removing implementation tools, that can be easily accomplished by a developer without any overhead costs.

Headless Salesforce Composable Storefront features and tools

Salesforce currently provides various approaches for enterprise eCommerce merchants, from SiteGenesis and Storefront Reference Architecture (SFRA) approach to a complete Headless Salesforce Composable Storefront one.

For retailers thinking of going headless, this PWA toolkit helps build a unique frontend experience seamlessly integrated with a secure backend, thus improving performance and reliability. Its composable nature results in separate deployment for all components and its pre-built packages and APIs can be leveraged by vendors to build custom frontends. All of this is achieved by Headless Salesforce Commerce Cloud via two elements – PWA Toolkit and Managed Runtime.

#1: PWA Toolkit

Designed to cover both development and business aspects of an eCommerce store, Progressive Web Apps (PWA) toolkit empowers online merchants to deliver native app-like experiences across all devices with less to no friction. PWA Toolkit comes loaded with pre-built packages and ready-made components that makes a move to the headless architecture a seamless one, while promising native app-like experiences across devices. All developers have to do is move around components, add the desired packages/components to their online stores and build a customized architecture. This makes the Salesforce PWA toolkit a flexible solution for organizations who don’t want to rush through composable and headless eCommerce architectures but still stay relevant, scalable, and agile.

#2: Managed Runtime

Managed Runtime is how you host your headless digital storefront. Although a complimentary feature with Headless Salesforce Composable Storefront, Managed Runtime provides the infrastructure/environment to deploy, host, and manage your PWA Toolkit frontend. You might want to keep in mind that Managed Runtime only supports apps that are created via the Salesforce PWA toolkit. Some important segments of managed runtime include:

Environment: All of the cloud infrastructure and configuration attributes for the frontend of your store hosted by Managed Runtime is defined as an environment. You can have different environments for production, deployment, and testing. Usually, developers build different environments as it separates different stages of development, and can be easily deleted when not needed, or doesn’t result in additional costs.
Bundles: The immutable code framework that runs in a Managed Runtime environment is called a bundle. Developers are already provided with tools in the PWA toolkit to generate a bundle and push it to Managed Runtime. Once deployed, you can mark it the same via Runtime Admin or Managed Runtime API.
User & Roles: A Managed Runtime user possesses the capabilities to browse, manage redirects, deploy, manage team, and access logs. Each user is assigned to a project in the organization, deciphering their abilities.
App Server: The combination of React, Node, and Express for rendering and routing requests is called App Server.
Edge Services: An App Server is supported by edge services such as application firewall (WAF), content delivery network (CDN), and edge functions.
Admin tools: These consist of Managed Runtime Admin (for code deployment) and Managed Runtime API (for program-specific controls) to manage the settings of projects, environments, bundles, and organization.

Headless Salesforce Composable Storefront benefits

For B2C and D2C businesses, the benefits of Headless Salesforce Commerce Cloud are the same as any headless architecture. This framework has been designed keeping the evolving needs of merchants in mind.

Its modular architecture makes every component independently deployable.
Its open architecture allows expansive customization possibilities via open integration patterns.
It consists of an customizable API architecture that allows for API-led integrations to develop a tailored storefront and deliver responsive experiences.

Let’s talk about the benefits of Headless Salesforce Composable Storefront and Ranosys.

#1: Improved overall online store performance

The thing about composable architecture is it accelerates your website speed and performance. As the only form of communication between your frontend and backend is via APIs and the former consumes the latter’s data via JSON, it results in efficient and highly responsive page load times. A point to note over here is that SiteGenesis and Salesforce Reference Architecture Storefront (SFRA) employs server-side rendering, which involves loading entire page blocks, hence increasing the page loading time.

The significance of such performance improvements translates into higher conversion rates and top search rankings, which is why Headless Salesforce Composable Storefront has become a platform of choice for online retail and eCommerce brands.

#2: Better tools lead to higher productivity

When you leverage a competitive API-based architecture such as Salesforce Commerce Cloud headless, it allows you to employ the same headless APIs to create multiple features and capabilities, thus saving time and money spent in creating such experiences from scratch. This accelerates your time-to-market, allowing online retailers to deliver seamless, personalized multi-channel experiences without having to write code from zero.

#3: Leverage a future-driven architecture

With so much talk around composable and headless architectures, it makes sense for retailers to consider modern eCommerce architectures such as the Headless Salesforce Composable Storefront. As requirements expand and trends change, retailers would find it freeing and easy to invoke new features and customizations by taking the API-first approach. The best part about this architecture is that it allows you to deliver engaging experiences across native mobile apps, in-store, web store, VR/AR, and other IoT devices. Salesforce Commerce Cloud headless is how you can future-proof your online selling business and evolve with time.

#4: Establish a higher control over your online store

Most critics believe that when you take a headless or composable approach, you lose control of your team, online store, and key goals. A majority of online stores run on common templates of Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Adobe Commerce, Shopify Plus, or commercetools. Over time, it results in a homogenous experience across brands. Headless commerce is how you can diversify your brand, move out of the clutter, and develop an online store that speaks about your brand.

Of course, you have to involve a lot of custom coding and developer indulgence, but leveraging our expertise in SFCC headless PWA toolkit, you can reduce the overall time and cost-to-market. As a trusted SFCC partner, we help you manage content, assets, and experiences across channels and platforms too.

Who is Headless Salesforce Composable Storefront for?

Headless Salesforce Composable Storefront is a compelling option for B2B, B2C, D2C brands who wish to leverage the UI/UX flexibility and stay immune to the ever-evolving number of devices, channels, and operating systems. However, remember that headless is not a low-code approach, and therefore involves a considerable investment in a good team of developers well versed in React, Node.js, and Jamstack amongst a few. Our team of headless Salesforce Commerce Cloud certified experts can help you leverage the architecture from scratch or migrate your existing Salesforce framework to it.

Migrating to the Headless Salesforce Composable Storefront

Once you’ve decided to migrate to the Headless Salesforce Composable Storefront, all that’s left is to select the approach you wish to take.

Complete replatforming involves moving your entire architecture to the headless composable stack. As a trusted partner of choice, we help you move to the fast and mobile-first frontend solution of headless Salesforce Commerce Cloud.
Partner with tech vendors like Ranosys to construct your own composable architecture from ground up via APIs. As it is a complete custom solution, you get to choose the tools, platforms and modules as per your business needs. As each module is deployed independently, it requires extra maintenance and support.
Leverage our frontend-as-a-platform services to build a cloud-native API-first architecture for superior performance and scalability.

Whatever be the approach you wish to take, our SFCC experts ensure successful implementation and ROI-driven outcomes.

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When building composable applications with agile methodology, OutSystems low-code platform can turn your innovative ideas into enterprise-grade applications.

In this blog, we will learn about low-code composable applications, why you should invest in business composability, how to transform your business into a composable enterprise, and the key capabilities of the OutSystems platform supporting composable applications.

What are low-code composable applications?

A composable enterprise focuses on creating an application architecture wherein enterprises can deliver various functions via microservices modules instead of a monolithic system. As most organizations are moving towards digital transformation to improve their business outcomes, keeping up with the pace of app development is important.

OutSystems low-code composable applications are a set of independent, reusable code blocks independent from each other that come together to create new applications. In other words, it is a group of off-the-shelf products linked with APIs for communications.

Why should you invest in an enterprise low-code composable platform?

From a business perspective, low-code composability gives organizations the agility to react, respond to market changes, and adapt faster to external and internal factors like changing customer requirements overnight. When each organization owns and manages individual PBCs (Packaged Business Capabilities), productivity increases immensely as they don’t have to start developing from scratch. Each PBC, module, or service a developer creates, be it a function call, logic flow, or database, will be reused in other applications boosting their productivity and the quality they achieve.

The four principles of business composability

Gartner has introduced four principles that guide business composability:

Orchestration: Provides you with better leadership in prescribing and negotiating interactions between components and enables recomposition and forming processes.
Modularity: Enables greater agility partitioning a domain into managed components to scale and control change.
Discovery: You can get more speed to discover and understand design opportunities and components to guide, track and, secure change.
Resilience: Autonomy can minimize dependencies of components from each other to maintain the integrity of change.

The three pillars of business composability pillars

Business composability also impacts people and processes. Therefore organizations need to consider three pillars of a composable enterprise.

Composable thinking: It involves people who conceptualize what to compose and when, encouraging continuous exploration of business capabilities.
Composable business architecture: It involves processes involving capabilities, products, services, teams, etc.
Composable technologies: It involves choosing the right technology that promotes modular components, reusability, and automation.

How to transform your business into a composable enterprise?

When it comes to choosing the right technology, low-code platforms like OutSystems support composable applications with the appropriate architecture, components, agility, advanced UI/UX, and security. Here we will talk about the Packaged Business Capabilities OutSystems offers that transform your business into a composable enterprise:

End-user services: Provides screens, UI blocks, and capabilities to deliver end-user interfaces.
Core services: Summarizes the business logic to complete the processes.
Foundation services: Contains reusable UI patterns, APIs, plugins capabilities to handle integrations.
Integration services: Handles external events that need to trigger with some PBC functions.

Key capabilities of OutSystems that support composable apps

Composable business architecture intends to delegate the authority and ownership of the PBCs to smaller teams and gain agility. The OutSystems platform provides composability, reusability, communication, and collaboration. Let’s discuss the key capabilities of OutSystems supporting composable applications:

#1. Rapid Application Development

With the fundamental shift in customer expectations, business agility is referred to as one of the leading digital transformation attributes. Therefore, rapid application development is the idea that benefits building composable applications. OutSystems enables rapid app development via dynamic scaling, automation, performance monitoring, user management, version control, and more. Let’s discuss the following features that help in delivering applications with speed:

OutSystems allows businesses to create applications using a visual drag-and-drop approach and has many pre-built components that cover unique business requirements. It allows you to easily make customer-facing applications with rapid development.
OutSystems automates connections to back-end services such as data structures and storage, allowing developers to do more productive work building enterprise-grade applications.
With OutSystems, you can create core experience components like payment gateways, bookings, add to cart, etc., using a single platform and technology and deploy them across multiple channels.

#2. Increased collaboration between business and IT

Visual-model-driven development is at the core of the OutSystems platform to provide fast, right, and future applications reducing costs and risks by enabling continuous development across all platforms. Visual solutions simplify business process complexities of traditional app development, increasing collaboration across departments.

OutSystems Workflow Builder can visually map complex business processes and automatically build high-performance, workflow-based apps.
OutSystems Experience Builder allows rapid prototyping of user-friendly mobile applications that leverage common patterns and flows.
OutSystems lets you develop with a visual module while retaining complete flexibility to integrate custom code, enabling extensibility, efficiency, and accelerated development.
The visual-driven approach requires no runtime interpreters or engines are required to enable OutSystems applications. The platform generates applications with a standard architecture.
The visual application models designed with OutSystems are compiled into standard, well- architectured, and optimized code like JavaScript, HTML, CSS, C#, and Standard SQL.

#3. Innovative architecture

OutSystems modular architecture, you can create applications that enable organizations with pre-built modules that can be deployed, combined, and reused as needed in order to quickly build new solutions. These multi-module solutions eliminate developer or development lifecycle conflicts. Some of the key features that innovate app development are:

With the modular architecture of OutSystems, multiple developers can work in separate modules with the confidence that their work will not affect others.
All the versions of applications and modules are stored and can be reused like pre-built modules composed for business users.
The OutSystems Forge is the largest marketplace of reusable, open-code modules, connectors, UI components, and business solutions. More than 5000+ pre-built templates have helped speed up application delivery time.
OutSystems architect a modern, automated, and interconnected internal application ecosystem all to overcome legacy application shortcomings and drive greater efficiency.

#4. Reusable components

Reusable components make app development easier and faster with a modular approach. You can deploy core experiences in minutes using pre-built themes, plugins, templates, and components. Let’s look at some capabilities of OutSystems that ensure building reliable applications at scale:

OutSystems provides you with reusable components in the development environment to enhance the application-building process and deliver scalable and smooth-functioning apps.
With the OutSystems code reusability feature, you can create applications with lightning speed by reusing code blocks previously developed. It is a cost-effective solution for businesses.
Multiexpereince development of OutSystems, you can develop an application that can run on any device or platform, reducing risks, development time, and costs with error-free and automated deployments.
Open platforms in OutSystems protect your investment in large backend systems by integrating with existing systems of record or data sources saving time and money on QA efforts providing error-free applications.
With automated dependency management and holistic Application Lifecycle Management(ALM), OutSystems low-code capabilities reduce the cost of application maintenance.

#5. Microservices architecture

Earlier organizations were bound to use monoliths and legacy systems and complete task-to-task, which was not meaningful. OutSystems empowers businesses to deliver excellent products with the help of Microservices. Microservices is a software architecture where the application’s functionality is broken into smaller fragments to make it more resilient and scalable. Some of the Microservices capabilities that helped in building composable apps are:

OutSystems provides built-in capabilities that handle security, debugging, troubleshooting, monitoring, and logging.
With Microservices, you can combine multilingual and develop frameworks and data storage technologies.
Microservices reinforce the modular structure, which is particularly important for large organizations as it mirrors the communication structure of the organizations that built it.

#6. Enhanced security

The demand for the security of applications is rising as cyberattacks are increasing. OutSystems helps you innovate and accelerate app development, providing a secure runtime environment and tools necessary for fast development. Let’s understand the features of the low-code OutSystems platform:

Composable applications built using OutSystems are protected by default from the top security threats identified by OWASP.
OutSystems AppShield provides you with pre-built components that simplify security-related activities such as encrypting data at rest or integrating with Identity Management Systems.
The state-of-the-art security encompasses a dedicated virtual private cloud (VPC), secure access to on-premises systems with VPN, and easy uploading of SSL/TLS.
OutSystems maintain a powerful set of operating procedures, including formal hiring procedures for employees, access management, patching management, change management, event management, and incident handling.

Leverage OutSystems capabilities for composable applications with Ranosys

OutSystems low-code platform is perfect for enterprises that want to become composable. It can help you build robust, easy-to-integrate applications without disrupting business processes. But more importantly, OutSystems enhances the UI/UX, compliance, and security. As an OutSystems partner, we have assisted several enterprises in building composable applications, and we can accomplish your business cases too. Connect with our certified experts to know how OutSystems can transform your business composability.

Narendra Maheshwari

Solution Architect

Build composable apps with our certified OutSystems experts.

There is a fundamental shift in how customers connect with brands. Empathy, personalization, convenience, and digital transformation are the modern attributes to long-term brand-customer relationships. So how are organizations coping with these and delivering seamless experiences to users? Well, the answer is to plan digital transformation strategically and systematically on the right platform. The only solution is to develop applications quickly, and when it comes to CRM software Salesforce Lightning System comes in handy.

Salesforce Lightning experience helps enterprises to be faster and more efficient while maintaining design, simplicity, and innovation.

This blog will enlighten you about the Salesforce Lightning platform, its capabilities, how different users can utilize Salesforce Lightning benefits, and ultimately why your business should migrate from Salesforce Classic to Salesforce Lightning.

What is Salesforce Lightning?

Salesforce Lightning is an advanced platform that simplifies various business processes as the next generation of the CRM solution and user experience. Introduced in 2015 and currently the default interface for all Salesforce using organization, Lightning allows you to streamline business processes with unique designs, more productive tools, and AI functionality. Using the Lightning Component-based framework, you can build personalized, responsive applications without coding and still deliver relevant and desired user experiences.

The Salesforce Lightning platform provides you with tools for building compelling UI/UX and creating a modern productivity-boosting user experience for any device. It includes mainly these technologies:

#1. Lightning Components: Lightning components help accelerate development and application performance. It provides you with features such as custom components that admins and developers can use as reusable building blocks to customize the Lightning experience and the mobile applications.

#2. Lightning Experience Builder: Salesforce Lightning Experience Builder empowers admins or developers to build communities visually without coding using lightning templates and components. The most intuitive and powerful tool allows you to create websites and applications faster with drag-and-drop, clicks-based features for customers, partners, and employees.

#3. Lightning design system: Lightning Design System is an impressive CSS framework that provides best practices in user experience and style guides for app development. It provides various patterns and components that constitute an excellent Salesforce Lightning experience. The designs are user-friendly and delightful in the Salesforce ecosystem. An amazing experience is provided with specialized animation and motion effects of the Salesforce Lightning Design System.

#4. Lightning Connect: Lightning connect allows data from other external platforms to be accessed in real-time, integrated with your default Salesforce interface. It, therefore, helps in connecting the external applications to consume data from any source that complies with the data specification.

#5. Lightning App Builder: Lightning App Builder empowers developers to build Lightning pages visually, without code, using off-the-shelf and custom-built Lightning components. It allows you to develop creative applications with drag-and-drop tools in one place, enabling users to customize and control lightning components for building mission-critical applications.

#6: Lightning Bolt: These include industry-standard templates, industry process flows, apps, lightning components, etc., contributed by global Salesforce partners and integrated seamlessly with all clouds of the Salesforce Customer 360 platform. These readymade components can be leveraged by developers to develop enterprise-level digital solutions and accelerate time-to-market.

Who is Salesforce Lightning designed for?

Salesforce Lightning has been designed to make the development of responsive applications easier and faster across devices and channels. Anyone with access to the Salesforce interface can use it regardless of their skill level or role. Let’s look at some of the reasons why Salesforce Lightning is designed for everyone:

Salesforce admins can more quickly and efficiently set up new sales reps by assigning them an App via App Launcher.
Designers can create custom layouts without writing any code with Lightning Components.
Developers will have improved visibility into deployment settings and configuration changes with updated tools.
With Lightning’s new built-in search and filtering functionality, technical support staff may provide faster resolution times to customer incidents.

Salesforce Lightning features helpful for your business

Salesforce Lightning offers powerful features like intelligent defaults that will make running your business more accessible than ever. Using these, you can seamlessly customize and quickly deploy applications. Let’s explore some of the Salesforce Lightning features for your business:

#1. Opportunity Workspace: A one-stop dashboard for sales managers that allows them to track deals, visualize progress, and close deals faster. It includes data about customers and related information such as contacts and products.

#2. Kanban View: Kanban view presents a visual summary of all your records and views a big picture of all your business processes. You can sort, reorganize, filter, and move business opportunities along the workflow.

#3. Path and Guidance: Path and Guidance are simple and helpful tools for business users to form a sales workflow with links and tips at each stage, track opportunity records in the sales process, and visualize the goals.

#4. Lightning Page Templates: Lightning Page Templates allows you to quickly build applications according to unique business needs with custom templates for desktop and mobile.

#5. Salesforce Einstein: Salesforce Einstein is an excellent Lightning feature and a powerful artificial intelligence tool allowing organizations to predict purchasing patterns and future trends increasing sales and marketing productivity.

#6. Lightning Web Components: Salesforce Lightning Web Components is a programming model to create Lightning Components easily. It is a UI framework that is built using HTML and modern JavaScript providing enterprises with better performance, faster loading sites, better security and browser compatibility.

Benefits of Salesforce Lightning for your business

Salesforce Lightning offers several benefits that can help businesses to increase their productivity, streamline operations, and work on modern interfaces. Some of the key Salesforce Lightning benefits include:

#1. Increase efficiency and productivity: Salesforce Lightning helps you to increase efficiency for your sales and service teams by making workflow easier and more personalized.

#2. Streamline operations: With the help of Salesforce Lightning you can get more accurate and comprehensive data about business performance. It increases user engagement and generates better insight in areas such as sales pipelines or service operations.

#3. Build custom applications faster: Salesforce Lightning enables IT and business to create applications together using no-code builders and low-code tools. With Lightning, you can save time and create customized applications.

#4. Work smarter: Your business can make data-driven decisions based on insights by implementing analytics, predictions, and AI with Einstein. You can easily spot trends, visualize KPIs, and use data analytics to create a smarter, more scalable business.

Salesforce Classic vs Salesforce Lightning

With Salesforce Lightning becoming easier to access your data and work with that data in many unique ways. But before the Salesforce Lightning launch, businesses used Salesforce Classic as their interface for the CRM platform. Salesforce Classic was the interface for the Salesforce CRM platform using former UI functionality, whereas Salesforce Lightning offers a modern, customizable user interface with easy-to-read text and high-resolution graphics and icons. Some of the significant differences which make Salesforce Lightning a more productive tool for businesses are shown in the table:

Point of difference	Salesforce Classic	Salesforce Lightning
Enhanced UX	Salesforce Classic provides an outdated interface with small graphics and icons.	Lightning features a better and more modern UI and provides more information on its dashboards with its advanced functionalities.
Future Readiness	Classic remains a legacy maintained for difficult clients.	Lightning is more progressive, flexible, and fully featured, giving you tools to manage customer relationships.
Security	In Salesforce Classic, security is centralized and presents only one line of defense against security threats, and it may expose business data.	Salesforce Lightning improves security with its locker service feature, which adds an authentication layer between components, and departments can communicate easily.
Reporting and Forecasting	Salesforce Classic allows you to create reports based on different report types and templates that focus on products, opportunities, and campaigns, but you cannot easily customize it to the data and insights your team needs.	Salesforce Lightning extends the capabilities significantly with enhanced charts that provide more interaction, making reporting easier, giving deeper insights and superior forecasting capabilities, and incorporating Einstein Analytics.

Benefits of migrating to Salesforce Lightning

Customers using Salesforce Lightning Experience are likely to be more productive than those working in Salesforce Classic. The Salesforce Lightning offers you to close deals faster with enhanced collaboration and conversion rates. Reasons why you need Salesforce Lightning migration will be beneficial for you:

Lightning offers robust functionality for better end-user experience.
Lightning provides high-assurance security to users.
It is a user-friendly software and allows you to create responsive and mission critical applications.
With Lightning Customer Community businesses can offer better customer services, enhanced personalization and increase conversion rates.
With the help of Einstein Analytics the databases are updated automatically and give you enhanced insights.

Increase your business productivity with a trusted Salesforce partner.

Salesforce Lightning is one of the best CRM solutions for building customized applications for your mobile or desktop. With Lightning, your business can enhance the efficiency of sales and marketing teams, increasing overall ROI. You can connect with us if you want to implement Salesforce Lightning or migrate from Salesforce Classic to Salesforce Lightning. Our certified experts will guide you according to your unique business requirements and fully leverage Salesforce Lightning.

Leverage the power of Salesforce Lightning with certified experts.

Adobe Commerce (formerly Magento Commerce) is the world’s leading digital commerce solution for merchants and brands. It helps to build engaging shopping experiences for every type of customer — from B2B and B2C to B2B2C. It’s built for enterprise on a scalable, open-source platform with unparalleled security, premium performance, and a low total cost of ownership. Adobe Commerce can be used by businesses of all sizes to reach customers wherever they are, across devices and marketplaces.

And being one of the leading eCommerce development platforms, Adobe Commerce keeps adding new features with timely updates in its tech stack to ensure the site remains up-to-date and secure.

Adobe recently released the newest version 2.4.6 of its Commerce platform, which includes over 300 several important security fixes and performance improvements. Core Composer dependencies and third-party libraries have been upgraded to the latest versions that are compatible with PHP 8.2. Adobe strongly recommends that all Adobe Commerce customers upgrade to this version as soon as possible to take advantage of these enhancements and ensure the security and stability of their online stores.

Adobe Commerce 2.4.6 highlights

The latest Adobe Commerce (Magento) 2.4.6 release update is a major performance update for store owners. Let’s have a look at some of the key platforms enhancements included in Adobe Commerce 2.4.6 include:

#1. Security enhancements

Adobe Commerce 2.4.6 includes 8 security fixes and platform security improvements to help protect the platform from vulnerabilities and attacks. In addition, detailed auditing of each action and activity from the admin will help close any gaps in the action logs.

Security fixes and platform security improvements.
reCAPTCHA validation will no longer fail during checkout when unexpected errors occur during payment processing.
New system configuration for requiring email confirmation when an admin user changes their email.

#2. Performance & scalability improvements

The platform now has optimized performance for faster load times and improved user experience. With the most recent version, Magento 2.4.6, it is simple to expand and able to satisfy demand with rising orders.

Processing time is reduced when performing operations involving greater than 100 customers segments
Product grid performance is improved by limiting the number of products displayed
Import performance is improved, allowing for imports of up to 100,000 records per minute
Order processing performance is improved through load balancing

#3. Platform Improvements

There are several improvements in the platform, including updates to the storefront, product search, and content management system. Improved data import performance to allow customers to onboard larger catalogs. Some of the major updates being:

PHP 8.2 is supported and PHP 8.1 will continue to work. Support for PHP 7.4 is removed—Magento 2.4.6 will not run on PHP 7.4
Composer 2.2.x and ElasticSearch 8.x are supported
Redis 7.0.x is supported—Redis 6.2 remains compatible but will reach end of service by April 2024
OpenSearch becomes the default search engine for Adobe Commerce on-premise and cloud installations; it is supported as an independent search engine for Magento Open Source
Support for MariaDB (LTS version) remains, but upgrading to MariaDB 10.6 is recommended
The DHL scheme is migrated from v6.2 to v10.0
Outdated JavaScript libraries are updated to the latest versions and outdated dependencies are removed—they remain backward compatible

#4. Enhancements to GraphQL APIs

There are improvements to the GraphQL APIs that enable easier integration with third-party applications. GraphQL API quality and coverage enhancements include support for B2B purchase orders and improved response times in areas of Bulk cart operations and category queries, improving frontend performance in headless deployments;

Response time is improved for queries involving categories with category permissions enabled
Category tree rendering in GraphQL is optimized—customers with large number of categories will benefit the most
Query response time for bulk cart operations is reduced (when adding up to 500 simple and configurable products)

#5. Improved admin experience

The new Adobe Commerce version has an improved admin experience with several new features, such as order management, customer service, and improved checkout process. Admin performance improvements for large catalogs over 1M SKUs.

Page Builder compatibility: Page Builder v.1.7.3 is supported
PWA Studio compatibility: PWA Studio v.13.0.x is supported, and It includes multiple enhancements to improve accessibility
Upgraded dependencies: The platform now supports upgraded dependencies for PHP, Elasticsearch, and MySQL.
Merchants can support over 1K+ customer segments without any performance issues

#6: Other improvements

In addition to these features, Adobe Commerce 2.4.6 also includes fixes for many issues, such as static content deployment timeout error, failure of screen readers to read the correct image description, and JavaScript console errors during multi-shipping checkout.

Today merchants are heavily investing in Customer Data Platform (CDP) to activate their data with the global CDP market expected to grow to $6.94 Bn by 2029 from $1.44 Bn in 2022 at a CAGR of 25.4%. Adobe real-time CDP and Adobe Commerce form a powerful duo together, helping build real-time customer profiles and actionable audiences to activate personalized customer experiences. Some of the upcoming intelligent merchandising capabilities include using AI ranking algorithms to personalize and optimize live search results in-session and to personalize and optimize product rank order on category pages.

Overall, upgrading to Adobe Commerce 2.4.6 is essential for any Adobe Commerce customer who wants to ensure the security, stability, and performance of their online store. Some of the upcoming intelligent merchandising capabilities:

March 2023 – Using AI ranking algorithms in Adobe Sensei such as “recommended for you”, “trending” and “most viewed”, to personalize and optimize live search results in-session
Q3 2023 – Using AI ranking algorithms in Adobe Sensei such as “recommended for you”, “trending” and “most viewed”, to personalize and optimize product rank order on category pages
Later in 2023:

Multi product search in live search
Multi product rules in browse attributes
Refer here for detailed release notes from Adobe.

Update your Adobe Commerce stores with a trusted partner

Upgrading to Adobe Commerce’s latest version is the best option to ensure your Magento store is always performing at its best and staying ahead of the competition. The improved performance and security features facilitate smooth transactions, order management, and shopping cart processing. It is recommended to upgrade while keeping a backup of the previous version in case of any issues.

As an award-winning Adobe Gold Partner, Ranosys has specializations across Adobe Commerce, Adobe Experience Manager, Adobe Marketo, Adobe Analytics, Adobe Target, and Adobe Campaign. Along with our certified Adobe developers and consultants, we help you bring together the best of Adobe’s capabilities in terms of commerce, content management system, marketing automation, analytics, testing, and personalization.

Need assistance with Adobe Commerce 2.4.6 upgrade?

Sarvesh Kumar

AVP - Enterprise Sales

In the age of digitization, eCommerce has become the primary medium for conducting business, and the number of online stores has grown significantly in the past few years. With the growth of eCommerce comes a range of risks that can threaten the growth of your online store. These risks include lack of omnichannel experiences resulting in customer loss, unexpected website downtime, data security and safety, and more. Fortunately, Adobe Commerce (formerly known as Magento Commerce) offers a range of products to help your eCommerce business to overcome these challenges.

Also, Adobe Commerce, which is currently recognized as the face of eCommerce success, powers up to 25% of businesses that operate online. More than two million websites, including those for Nike, Lenovo, Samsung, Ford, and Nestle, use Adobe Commerce.

5 eCommerce business challenges and solutions

In recent years, the eCommerce sector has grown significantly, and nearly all businesses are now online. With this expansion came an increase in the dangers associated with operating an online business, some of which are inevitable without careful planning.

So, here are few eCommerce business challenges and how Adobe Commerce help you overcome them-

#1. Absence of data analytics

Challenge: Data is becoming increasingly crucial for every industry, and eCommerce businesses can better assess their successes and failures and base their decisions on factual data. Your company needs to choose an eCommerce platform that offers capabilities for data analytics and in-depth information.

How Adobe Commerce helps: One of the advantages of Adobe Commerce Cloud is that it seamlessly integrates with Adobe Analytics, allowing your business to better visualize and understand the data. With Adobe Commerce and Adobe Analytics integration, you can analyze data across channels and devices, prepare visualizations to gain insights, and optimize your strategies to deliver better CX.

“Check our resource here to learn more around Adobe Analytics implementation practices for online retail.”

#2. Headless Commerce

Challenge: There is an entire array of devices with varied screen sizes and resolutions. To offer effortless buying experiences, your online store must be optimized for all devices and channels- web, social media, app, web portal. This is where headless commerce is an interesting proposition. With disjointed frontend and backend systems, your developers can create native app-like shopping experiences across devices without the need for extra optimization or tailoring. As your backend remains untouched, you can change frontend as per trends and market dynamics.

How Adobe Commerce helps: As a leader in the eCommerce industry, Adobe has state-of-the-art features and capabilities in place to allow online merchants in building headless storefronts.

Adobe Commerce provides online retailers with complete flexibility around building custom frontends, leveraging leading-edge technologies.
Regardless of channels and devices, Adobe Commerce architecture employs the same APIs and services to deliver consistent online solutions.
As it goes with a headless architecture, you can deploy n-number of changes to the front ends independent of the backend, thus imparting agility to your online store.
Adobe Commerce PWA Studio provides integrated content tools like Page Builder to deliver responsive app-like shopping experiences across mobile, desktop, and web.
Adobe Commerce + Adobe Experience Manager integrated together form a powerful duo for content management and build complex yet personalized solutions based on user journeys.
For additional capabilities, you can seamlessly integrate with other external frontend platforms.

#3. eCommerce SEO and getting online stored ranked top on SERPs

Challenge: You can increase your online store’s visibility and searchability with the help of eCommerce SEO, making it easier for potential customers to find your products and services. You can improve organic internet traffic and consequently sales and revenue by optimizing your website for search engines. A solid SEO strategy can also help in building client trust in your business.

How Adobe Commerce helps: Adobe Commerce SEO is a more functional and easy-to-use dashboard with competitive meta-data capabilities. It provides you with canonical tags to prevent content duplicity. With minimized JavaScript and security improvements, you improve your site’s performance, positively impacting your eCommerce store’s rank on search engines like Google, Safari, and Bing. And the best part, it is perfectly optimized for mobile devices and screens, improving your overall traffic and on-the-go experiences.

“Read more about Adobe Commerce SEO here.”

#4. Data security and safety

Challenge: For an eCommerce business, its customer data is like a gold mine. Also, hackers are constantly searching for such sensitive data online. They either steal and sell data for millions or utilize your clients’ payment information to make money. Regardless of their intentions, a data breach can cost your company billions of dollars. Customers will experience a violation of confidence, and you will suffer reputational harm that is hard to measure.

How Adobe Commerce helps: For starters, Adobe Commerce eCommerce platform is a PCI-certified Level 1 Solution, thus providing PCI Compliance. Other than this, there are several other security assurances that merchants can enjoy with Adobe Commerce:

Tools like security scanning allows online retailers to assess all their sites and get real-time updates about security risks, unauthorized access, and malware attacks.
Adobe Commerce Fastly provides DDoS (to point attackers to the network instead of server) and CDN (to prevent any direct access to the parent server) protection from Layer 3-7. For magnanimous Layer 7 attacks, Adobe Commerce developers can prepare custom rules for headers, cookies, client IP addresses, or request path.
Additional security is provided by the Fastly web application firewall (WAF) to discourage injection attacks, malicious inputs, data loss, HTTP violations and other threats.
Adobe itself conducts periodic regular penetration testing to run security vulnerability assessment and monitor sites for risks.
Adobe Commerce employs Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS), encrypted via AES-265 algorithm for data storage, thus adding an additional layer of security.
In Adobe Commerce, all code is deployed as read-only, reducing the chances of PHP injections. Moreover, as developers control who gets access to the deployment target, they can easily reject any insecure requests.
All data from application server and logs is stored on production servers and in backups, history is stored on its user interface, and source code changes are stored in Git.

#5. eCommerce Website Downtime

Imagine that your online store is having a big sale. You’ve spent a lot of money and effort revamping your website to increase sales. Also, you’ve made investments in things like customer service and advertising. Then, on the big day, abruptly, your online store goes down.

You are unable to appear and serve your clients on one of the busiest shopping days of the year. This kind of scenario would be a complete disaster for any eCommerce company and can cost them a significant amount of earnings. Your website can go down for various reasons, and it can be a technical issue with your hosting service, or the server you’re using might not be able to handle the volume of traffic, etc.

How Adobe Commerce helps: Proactive monitoring, scalability, cloud deployment, automated backup and restore, maintenance mode, and expert support are just a few of the features that Adobe Commerce offers to assist in minimizing and managing eCommerce store downtime.

Adobe Commerce Fastly fixes your cache issue that results in loading delays on your website. It provides your users with a stale copy when new content is taking longer to fetch so as to provide an uninterrupted experience to your users. This process gives enough time to your CDN for fetching the requested webpage from the origin server.
When delivering personalization, developers need to cache private content for faster retrieval to improve site performance and speed. With Adobe Commerce, you can handle private content in a client’s web browser instead of the server, for example, the checkout or payment information.
Adobe Commerce Site-Wide Analysis Tool allows you to generate reports around insights, system warnings, and recommendations to improve your online store’s overall health.

What else does Adobe Commerce offer?

Needless to say, Adobe Commerce is a powerful and customizable eCommerce platform that offers numerous features and advantages to help you create a successful online store. It gives you the flexibility, scalability, and security you need to thrive in the cutthroat world of eCommerce, whether you’re just starting out or an established enterprise.

Here are some of the main reasons why you should consider Adobe Commerce as your eCommerce platform:

Flexibility and customization: Adobe Commerce is a platform that allows for customization and flexibility in design, features, and functionality. Moreover, it lets you personalize your eCommerce store to fit your business needs and goals.
Scalability: When your business expands, Adobe Commerce can handle high traffic and transactions as it is highly scalable. This makes it an ideal choice for businesses that expect to expand their operations in the future.
User-friendly interface: Because of its user-friendly interface Adobe Commerce is easy to manage and update your eCommerce store, even if you don’t have a technical background.
Security: Adobe Commerce is known for its security features, including data encryption and regular security updates. This makes it a safe platform for businesses to process transactions and store customer data.
Integration with third-party apps: With its vast library of third-party apps and extensions, Adobe Commerce can be easily integrated into your store, allowing you to add new features and functionality without needing to develop them from scratch.
Support and community: Adobe Commerce has a large and active community of developers and users who provide support and resources for businesses using the platform. This makes it easier for businesses to find solutions to any issues.

What’s next with Adobe Commerce?

Over the past few years, the eCommerce industry has expanded at a never-before-seen pace. The potential of an eCommerce business seems to be unmatched, but in a rapidly evolving economy, it also comes with problems that every eCommerce business must overcome.

So, if you have a platform that is flexible, adaptable, and scalable like Adobe Commerce, you can overcome these difficulties and scale your business like a pro. As an award-winning Adobe Gold Partner, Ranosys can assist you in leveraging the power of best-in-class Adobe products with certified experts to deliver a compelling customer experience.

Want to mitigate your eCommerce business risks?

In the eCommerce ecosystem, if you’re striving for high sales and conversion rates, you definitely need an eCommerce analytics tool as your ally. If your data is segmented into different systems like marketing platforms, CRM, etc. you struggle to draw insights that prove fruitful for your business. Lucky for online retailers and merchants, there are several analytics platforms like Adobe Analytics and Google Analytics 4 and some noteworthy implementation partners that can help you achieve this feat. However, it is imperative to understand which amongst Adobe Analytics vs Google Analytics 4 is a good fit for your eCommerce platform.

For starters, the basic difference between Google Analytics vs Adobe Analytics is that while the former is only a web reporting tool, the latter assists with web reporting and analytics. Apart from some major differences between the two, both Adobe Analytics vs Google Analytics leverage the almost-same interface that makes it easy for marketers to transition from one to the other.

As for all those who struggle to answer the question, ‘Should I choose Adobe Analytics or Google Analytics for my eCommerce site,’ this blog does it once-and-for-all.

Adobe Analytics vs Google Analytics 4: A brief overview

Before we dive into the details of Adobe Analytics vs Google Analytics, let’s first briefly walk through both these tools.

Adobe Analytics is a tool of the Adobe Cloud Suite that allows you to analyze and track data throughout a user’s journey and derive behavioral insights to predict future outcomes. This tool tracks your user and shopper behavior to derive actionable insights and prepare relevant reports. This means, you can evaluate visitors to your site, traffic sources, pages visited, products browsed or added to cart, and so on, all in real-time. Even if your data exists in third-party tools, Adobe Analytics will analyze all your data sources to provide you a holistic view of your customer journey.

Coming over to Google Analytics 4, well it needs no introduction. Google has recently released Google Analytics 4 (GA4) that allows you to build reports and perform web analytics together. As Google has revamped Universal Analytics with machine learning capabilities, it allows you to identify trends, predict outcomes, and calculate potential sales/revenue of products/segments. With the new GA4, Google allows you to implement event-based tracking, which means you now keep an eye on visitors, searches, and sales in real-time.

The different types of data analytics in eCommerce & retail

If you’re in the eCommerce business, you already know the importance of data analytics to deliver personalized solutions at reduced costs, boost sales, understand new shopping patterns, onboard new shoppers, and reduce cart abandonment rates. The usual process includes data requirement specification, data collection, data processing, data cleaning, and data analysis. However, marketers and data analytics experts make sense of data for reporting in four ways:

Descriptive analytics: As a foundation of data analytics, this process considers historical data collected over-time about how a user interacted in the past. eCommerce specialists can predict future outcomes like product demand and customer behavior trends to effectively handle specific situations. For example, when you study a user’s past shopping behavior, it leads to discovering what drives them towards checkout.
Diagnostic analytics: This process involves using data to determine trends and correlations between processes and behavior patterns. For example, you can determine which marketing activities drive the maximum purchases with diagnostic analytics or drill down website performance to evaluate revenue changes month-by-month.
Predictive analytics: It involves analyzing past data to help businesses forecast future possibilities unlike descriptive analytics which uses data to describe actions that have already happened. For example, you can use predictive analytics to determine the sales and engagement for products, optimize strategies as per future outcomes, and plan budgets accordingly.
Prescriptive analytics: This is more of an advanced process that involves deep analytics and specialized software. For example, when you run an email marketing campaign, you analyze the metrics of your first email like clicks on link, opens email, etc., to personalize and deliver more targeted content to potential buyers.

What insights can you achieve from an eCommerce analytics tool?

Once you generate reports via both Adobe Analytics vs Google Analytics 4 tool, the following are the insights you can achieve from it.

#1: Insights into user behavior

The information from this report covers user behavior during the purchasing and checkout process.

Shopping Behavior Report details the number of sessions at different journey stages. For example, visitors who viewed products, added them to their carts, initiated checkout, and completed their sessions with a transaction. It dives into visitor behavior and how they move in a sales funnel.
Checkout Behavior Report tracks how a user behaves during checkout, at what checkout stage do they abandon their carts, to assess and optimize checkout experiences.

#2: Insights into product performance

The information from this report covers product popularity, sales, and overall performance.

1. Product Performance Report provides two views:

Summary View details the sales metrics such as product revenue, average price, unique purchases, average quantity, product refund initiated. It also details Shopping Behavior as in the number of products sold per the number of product views and number of products sold per number of product detail views.
Shopping Behavior View talks about product engagement, product detail views, product add-to-cart, product removed from cart, product checkouts, etc.

2. Sales Performance Report details information (tracked via transaction ID) about revenue, tax incurred, shipping charges, refunds initiated, and total number of products sold.

3. Product List Performance Report talks about product cross-selling and upselling opportunities, product list views, product list clicks, and product list click-through-rate (CTR).

#3: Insights into marketing

The information from this report covers details around internal and external marketing efforts.

Internal Promotion Report provides insights around your website modules like promotional banners placed on the header to assess clicks, conversions, and revenue.
Order Coupon Report shows performance of your order coupons in terms of redeemed ones, total revenue, and average value.
Product Coupon Report provides details around product coupons for total revenue, unique purchases, and product revenue per coupon.
Affiliate Code Report provides details on how much affiliate sites contribute to the total success of your online stores.

Adobe Analytics vs Google Analytics 4: How does these tools differ

When it comes to analytics, you obviously want to leverage the best tool that helps you accomplish all your enhanced eCommerce goals. And both Adobe Analytics vs Google Analytics 4 can help you achieve it. However, depending on your business objectives and needs, the capabilities you need might vary from reporting to analytics to both. With urgency to deliver personalization in full throttle, data analytics has taken the centerstage, which is selecting the right tool is highly crucial.

Here we discuss the potential differences between Adobe Analytics and Google Analytics 4 and their respective capabilities.

ATTRIBUTE	GOOGLE ANALYTICS 4	ADOBE ANALYTICS
Type	Google Analytics, throughout its versions, has been a web reporting tool, meaning you can not run actual analytics on it.	Adobe Analytics is a web analytics and reporting tool that provides you the real opportunity to derive insights on user behavior, sales, marketing, and everything else.
Core Tracking Setup	Google Analytics 4 depends on dimensions, metrics, and its combination to track website interactions. For conversions, you need to implement custom events and related parameters.	Adobe Analytics includes conversion variables (eVars), success events (events), and traffic variables (props) for tracking interactions, visits, and conversions on your eCommerce store.
Data & eCommerce Tracking	You can track eCommerce data via DataLayer push codes using predefined event names like ‘view_item’, ‘add_to_cart’, ‘purchase’, etc.	You can track eCommerce data by utilizing success events (s.events) that implement interactions like ‘scOpen’, ‘scRemove’, etc. Adobe Analytics provides advanced eCommerce tracking that breaks down each metric such as discount that can be given per product, total orders on hit and sub-hit products, total visits, revenue generated per product, tc.
Information Tracking	Google Analytics does not track users’ email addresses.	Adobe Analytics tracks a shoppers’ email address that you can use for email marketing campaigns.
Reporting	Google Analytics 4 allows you to create custom reports, dashboards, and visualization leveraging eCommerce data. Some capabilities include: #1: Google Exploration - This is an inbuilt GA4 report that allows marketers to drag and drop combinations of metrics/dimensions, segments, and filters. #2: Google Data Studio - Post integrating your Google Analytics 4 property to a blank report in Google Data Studio, you can create visual reports using different filter drop-down options. #3: Custom Reports & Dashboards - You can create custom reports and dashboards within Google Analytics 4.	Adobe Analytics also provides you with reporting capabilities, however, not as diverse as Google Analytics 4. #1: Similar to Google Exploration, Adobe has an in-built tool called Workspace that allows you to drag-and-drop combinations of eVars, s.props and s.events to create visual reports. #2: Adobe Analytics plugin tool for MS Excel makes the sharing of reports a very easy and convenient process. #3: It comes with pre-structured reports that allow for extensive audits around eCommerce clicks, conversions, and shoppers.
Tag Management	Google employs Google Tag Manager as its dedicated tag management solution and facilitates a direct connection between them. Some features of GTM are: 1: Tags are used to define what is fired and the events/parameters associated. 2: Variables are custom in nature and recyclable for different tags. 3: Triggers decide when and where to fire tags/rules. 4: Tag configuration in GTM contains all the available apps as per the tags’ condition.	Adobe employs Adobe Launch to manage both first-party and third-party tagging setup for Adobe Analytics. Some features are: 1: Instead of tags, Rules define what is fired and what events it will result in. 2: Instead of variables, Data Elements are custom and repurposed variables. 3: Events (within Rules) decide when/where to fire an associated rule. 4: Extensions in is the store for all Adobe owned and other third-party apps as per the rules’ condition.
Debugging Solutions	In Google Analytics 4, you can preview your tag setup before you implement it, thus establishing a higher control over which tags and variables are fired in response to a web interaction.	Adobe Analytics employs Adobe Launch where the latter relies on browser debugging solutions such as Adobe Experience Cloud debugger for debugging (QA) and validation capabilities.
Privacy and Consent Management	Google Analytics 4 can be directly integrated with any consent management tool to create pre-built conditions wherein tags are fired only when user consent is receivd.	Adobe Analytics
Data Storage	In Google Analytics 4, you can store data for 24 months and cookies for 1 month.	Adobe Analytics stores customer data for lifetime whereas cookies for 15 years.
Testing	Google Analytics employs Google Optimize as its dedicated A/B, multivariate testing tool.	Adobe Analytics employs Adobe Target as its testing tool, directly integrated with the platform to receive summarized data around clicks, cost, user behavior, best-selling products, etc.
Cost	Google Analytics is a free tool.	Adobe Analytics is a paid tool.
User-friendliness	Google Analytics is an easy-to-install tool that only requires a small JavaScript snippet. Its interface is easy to use and suitable for mobile devices as well.	Adobe Analytics requires more programming commands and custom variables. Its interface is also user-friendly.
Attribution Model	Google Analytics employs multi–channel funnels to provide details around online traffic, its source, what visitors search for, the time duration they spent on your online store, etc. You can also generate event reports for page views, recurring orders, etc.	Adobe Analytics comes loaded with several custom attribution models. For example, you can use the first-touch attribution model to assess the effectiveness of onsite product recommendations. You can use the last-touch model to analyze keywords or track conversions that have a short cycle.

Adobe Analytics vs Google Analytics 4 for eCommerce: Which tool to pick?

The answer to this question depends on what you’re trying to achieve. If you have a nominal budget and want to focus more on reporting than analytics, then Google Analytics 4 is the right tool for you. However, if you’re looking to leverage advanced eCommerce analytics than reporting, Adobe Analytics is the better option. We can help you get a better understanding of the tools and help pick the best eCommerce analytics tool for your eCommerce store. Connect with our certified Adobe experts and Google Analytics implementation specialists to master eCommerce analytics and reporting.

We help you break down eCommerce analytics.

The retail banking landscape is changing dramatically, fueled by shifting consumer behavior, digital acceleration and an increased focus on customer experiences and technology-driven solutions. Banks are faced with the challenge of seamlessly integrating their branches, mobile applications and call center systems and creating true omnichannel experiences. Through high-performance low-code development platform, OutSystems for digital banking can help banks stay competitive and differentiate themselves in today’s modern digital world.

In this blog we will discuss various digital banking challenges and how OutSystems banking solutions solve those challenges.

Digital banking challenges and OutSystems capabilities to rectify them

Impacted with the high agility in the market and diversity in the expectations customers demand, the banking industries face disruption in adopting the emerging sustainable technology. Here are some significant challenges & banking solutions that help to drive transformation successfully:

#1. Delivering personalized banking experience

Customers expect their banks to offer the same flawless real-time user experience they witness in other industrial genres. The BFSI industry faces data silos oriented around products rather than a customer’s journey. As a result, the development of a true end-to-end customer-centric omnichannel banking experience becomes a challenge.

How OutSystem helps:

OutSystems UI framework provides UI patterns with beautiful built-in responsive screen templates for web and mobile. With these, you can easily incorporate Screen Templates into your applications according to business requirements. In the banking industry, you can choose branch locators, dashboards, and request management templates.
With OutSystems full-stack capabilities to customize the UI of applications and Theme Editor features allows you to customize the overall style of the application.
OutSystems Experience Builder allows you to create and test prototypes in hours and generate production ready-code with experience and development best practices built-in minutes. With its built-in native behaviors and animations, the OutSystems platform ensures seamless banking applications.
Banks can utilize OutSystems device syncing capabilities, available in Forge to track customer journeys and provide personalized solutions. For example, when the customer decides to pause their application process on one device and wish to pick up the process on another device, your internal employees can see where the customer left off and re-engage with the prospect to help them complete the rest of the application process.

#2. Lack of digitalization in banking customer service

Banks are still on paper for some critical workflows and using manual data entry, legacy processes, and course of action, ruining their ability to reduce costs, provide consistent data in real-time, streamline operations, and deliver innovative solutions to their customers. To provide a seamless customer service experience, banks need to orient their processes around the customer journey.

How OutSystem helps:

OutSystems Case Management Framework (CMF) helps build apps that allow digital innovation by transforming complex banking processes and efficiently managing cases like loans, regulatory compliance, incident management, KYC, etc.
With pre-built capabilities like process auditing and collaboration, SLA management banking organizations can break down data silos and align architecture by delegating, blocking, escalating, or scheduling tasks.
As the platform is a full-stack enterprise development platform, it empowers banks to build applications that address every use case, from omnichannel customer experience to rebuilding an entire core banking system.
OutSystems Workflow Builder auto-generates professionally designed, frictionless user experiences by building and publishing internal productivity applications with a single click.

#3. The escalating costs and depleting performance levels of legacy systems

With decades of customization, customer data, and investments locked into monolithic systems, banks are tied to them for the future. The legacy systems are prone to inhibiting banking application development and delivery. The hand-wired business logic and rigid transactional interfaces don’t allow quick extensions, and some applications deliver zero flexibility. Because of the monolithic nature, many banking applications find it difficult to be agile enough to meet the needs of their customers.

How OutSystem helps:

The OutSystems visual development environment increases development speed by as much as ten times. Organizations either already agile or want to adopt agile methodology can quickly iterate to keep pace with changing customer needs or regulatory pressures.
With the integration capabilities of OutSystems, you can connect applications to all of your banking systems, and real-time decisions can be made between the back office and the customer so that your customer has an account decision in a matter of minutes.
With the OutSystems platform, banks can track the customer experience for a critical 360-degree view of the customer. This allows the bank to provide automated messages and actions based on previous usage or transactions made by the customer.
By building customer service portals and mobile applications using OutSystems, banks make it easy for customers to view and amend personal information, view transactions, initiate payments, and set up and manage alerts on their account activity.

#4. Disparate data silos

Customers prefer information that is not repetitive for products and transactions with the banks they have given once. But banks using traditional systems find it difficult with data silos and disparate systems. The lack of data exchange between different departments of banks can harm operational efficiency and, in the end, customer experiences.

How OutSystem helps:

With the power of low-code, OutSystems provide banks a way to move from COTS (commercial-off-the-shelf) tailor-made to the banks and customer needs.
OutSystems can transform the support process from a siloed communication channel that reacts to customer requests to a proactive omnichannel experience designed expressly for customers needs.
Banks can develop mobile applications with OutSystems to easily integrate an appointment scheduler that allows users to schedule an in-branch appointment on the web or mobile device that the bank branch manager can pick up, making communication easier and breaking down silos.

#5. Staying compliant and secure with the pace of innovation

The banking industry faces constant challenges in staying compliant and secure with customers’ information. The banking applications need to be built with enterprise-grade security. Considering that customers’ demands are increasing with the pace of innovation, there is a substantial impact on risk management for banks slowing down productivity.

How OutSystem helps:

OutSystems Sentry sets a higher standard for extensive security built-in to protect the entire application lifecycle. The additional security is specifically designed for organizations like banks dealing with sensitive customer data.
OutSystems AppShield makes your apps resilient and resistant to tampering and reverse engineering, making it impossible for hackers and cybercriminals to meddle against security control.
AppShield and Sentry are both capabilities of the OutSystems platform to protect sensitive information like financial transactions, passwords, and account information. This can be minimized by encrypting all sensitive information and disabling data storage.

#6. Customer onboarding with accelerated time-to-market

Customers want to experience the same convenience in banking as they do in digital lifestyle applications. Banks have been using traditional off-the-shelf solutions for onboarding customers for account opening, loan approvals, pending transactions, etc., which makes it challenging to customize and improve their digital services on time.

How OutSystem helps:

OutSystems enables a bank to develop a fully digital onboarding process on multiple platforms that customers can use to integrate into any third-party system. This makes user authentication easier by text message, photo ID, automated ID verification with pre-built integration into the KYC solutions, and links to verify an email address.
OutSystems rapid application development allows you to build scalable applications faster that are also highly reliably according to your business requirements.
The low-code platform OutSystems intelligent workflow capabilities and pre-populated data in forms to reduce the application process, significantly increasing customer satisfaction and reducing the abandonment rate drastically.

#7. The crunch of resources

The banking industry previously outsourced processes to make it efficient, incurring high costs. Outsourcing reduces the visibility of operations procedures, making it risky to compliance with GDPR(General Data Protection Regulation) protocols.

How OutSystem helps:

With OutSystems, you can create digital banking applications in a matter of weeks using a single code base. You can create the base of an application once and then customize it for other devices in just hours, cutting down the development time and reducing the costs of resources. This enables you to provide your customers with a consistent experience in viewing your products or services.

Discover how we assisted Orient Commercial Bank (OCB) in developing a state-of-the-art mobile banking app to deliver superior experience to its corporate users.

Read the case study

Why is OutSystems for digital banking the right choice?

With retail banks facing constant challenges in their digital strategy, the technological decisions banks will make have a major effect on the BFSI industry. Banks need to have robust digital transformation strategy and to help OutSystems banking solutions build applications to meet the ever-evolving needs of customers and provide frictionless experience.

Let’s discuss how banks can create customer-centric applications and transform the banking experience:

#1. Architect with the scale, security, and availability of cloud-native

With the advantage of the cloud-native architecture of the OutSystems platform, you can transform business by building enterprise-grade applications that are scalable, secure, and agile. OutSystems offers the vertical and horizontal scalability needed for the most complex consumer experience without affecting speed and performance. It offers next-generation visual, model-driven development tools with elite-level CI/CD practices that transform your mobile banking applications. The applications built with OutSystems low-code platform are secure by design, and the cloud automates much of the work associated with business continuity.

#2. Digitization of retail banks

OutSystems help to quickly create high-quality mobile banking with various extensible pre-built workflows, screen templates, and UX/UI components. To meet customer demands and brand guidelines, OutSystems provides you with easily customizable UI/UX. You can engage your customers with device-native capabilities like FaceID, push notifications, or a camera and offer an optimal experience, even offline or in poor network conditions.

#3. Streamlined banking operations

OutSystems helps you build robust and secure backends that streamline and automate business processes or integrate your own. It provides user authentication with pre-built connectors for identity management. OutSystems helps you leverage notification frameworks, visual process modeling, and out-of-the-box connectors to internal systems like CRM and ERP to ensure your back end supports the front end.

#4. Make data-driven decisions

OutSystems gets easily connected with user analytics platforms and services to continuously collect user data and locate friction points, helping the banking industry make data-driven decisions. With the help of full lifecycle support and built-in dependency analysis, your business can respond to customer feedback, changing preferences, and regulatory requirements by deploying changes instantly and safely.

OutSystems can let your business leverage emerging technologies like AI, ML IoT, and cloud capabilities to create innovative services and functionalities with a platform that continually.

#4. Integrate with your current stack and beyond

The OutSystems low-code platform relieves your team of time-consuming, complex integration development through its best practices, like quickly adding pre-built connectors, web services, and APIs to their apps, along with data, backend, and workflow integrations. Complex system integration is easy with plug-and-play elements. It generates the code for connecting external systems. If your business requirements change at some point, you can easily adjust existing integration.

Leverage OutSystems capabilities for BFSI with Ranosys

The banking industry must have a robust digital transformation strategy encompassing all aspects, from omnichannel customer-facing applications to streamlined back office operations to their core banking systems. Ranosys has helped several banks transform their legacy systems as trusted partners. Connect with our certified low-code experts to better understand digital transformation in the BFSI industry.

Explore how OutSystems provides banking solutions with certified experts.

In this digital advanced world, poor integration between technology systems can create a barrier to delivering marketing and customer experiences. With increasing business complexity, persistence to deliver omnichannel experiences, and increase in the number of integrations to your central system, businesses find it challenging to nail down the right set of features and capabilities to deliver connected solutions to shoppers. So, how are businesses coping with this? Well, most organizations are changing their technology stack by shaping systems, modernizing applications, and unifying platforms. Connected commerce is revolutionizing the way brands interact with customers, and to empower this, Adobe Commerce has come up with next-generation solutions for eCommerce.

The new extensibility capabilities of Adobe Commerce are designed to reduce costs, streamline marketing workflows, minimize coding, breakdown data silos, and much more. But before implementing the capabilities of Adobe Commerce, brands must understand what composable architecture is and how they can leverage it.

Why do enterprises need a composable architecture?

Composable architecture leverages a pick-and-assemble configuration wherein online retailers can choose the best commerce solutions for their online store and integrate them to the central solution via APIs. Unlike the monolithic systems, composable commerce follows a modular approach, resulting in an open, scalable, and flexible eCommerce solution bound to deliver superior experiences. You can choose the features you wish to implement to your eCommerce store, integrate them via APIs, and modify/remove them as you wish.

Overall, it allows your organization to be more agile while adapting, evolving, innovating, and responding faster than ever before. Some of the reasons why organizations need composable architecture:

Speedy innovation: With composable applications, you don’t need backend code to make changes, as the business processes can be configured within the API. With the unified processes across multiple touchpoints, there are no data silos and unnecessary work, providing you agility.
Complexity support: Composable architecture can support complex business models that span across markets and channels. Companies who want to bring seamless shopping solutions from a web browser to mobile applications, augmented reality, and virtual reality need a composable architecture.
Custom solutions: Organizations can create their own packaged business capabilities by picking the best tools, giving the flexibility to focus on delivering value.

Next-gen capabilities of Adobe Commerce to deliver connected experiences

With Adobe Commerce modular and open architecture, developers will have access to customize the application and meet business requirements. As businesses are now adopting a microservices approach, developers must build custom integrations to bring together APIs and data from multiple sources. Adobe has come up with capabilities to reduce the time of integration between multiple systems, decrease the cost of deployment if each and enhance the overall performance, security, and scalability of the composable architecture.

Let’s discuss some of the Adobe Commerce capabilities and how they are benefiting businesses in delivering connected experiences.

#1. Adobe Developer App Builder

Adobe Developer App Builder provides a unified third-party extensibility framework for integrating and creating a custom experience. It empowers developers to extend and build applications that work seamlessly with other Adobe solutions. Some of the features of Adobe Developer App Builder are:

You can build secure and scalable apps with easy integrations with Adobe Commerce hosting and storing data of all the tools and APIs a business needs to create these plugins and integrations.
With App Builder, you can build custom applications and automate processes with event-based integrations, authentication services, end-user access controls, data storage, and CI/CD pipelines.
Designing UI is easy with React Spectrum components of Adobe that match the look and feel of Adobe Products.
The applications are secure and easy to manage where admins can view, test, approve, and publish apps that users can access in Adobe Experience Cloud.
Common use cases for App Builder include integrating with enterprise systems like ERP and PMS and building single-page applications to enhance buyer experiences.
App Builder gives developers flexibility in extending Adobe Commerce capabilities and agility to integrate with third-party microservices or even build new microservices.

#2. API Mesh for Adobe Developer App Builder

API Mesh is an API orchestration layer that enables enterprises to integrate private and third-party applications and other software interfaces with Adobe Cloud tools like Adobe Commerce, Adobe Experience Manager, Adobe Marketo Engage, Adobe Analytics, Adobe Target, and Adobe Campaign. It allows developers to combine multiple data sources into a single GraphQL. Adobe Commerce users can consider the API Mesh a way to integrate other APIs to storefront management APIs for strong communication across departments. Some of the features of API Mesh are:

It can directly connect to GraphQL APIs, merging their services with other external platform services into a common Mesh. This allows development teams to focus on the presentation layer of the application and not the integration layer.
When publishing content from a CMS, your data can be transferred directly to your applications through API mesh.
API Mesh allows you to swap one microservices to another without doing anything at the application presentation.

#3. Adobe I/O events for Adobe Commerce

Adobe I/O events enable enterprises to build reactive, event-driven applications based on events originating from various Adobe services, such as Creative Cloud, Adobe Experience Manager, and Adobe Analytics. Some of the features to look out for are:

With Adobe I/O events, developers can create event-driven applications that take action when a shopper performs an action on an Adobe product. This helps enterprises to efficiently customize processes and integrate systems while maintaining SaaS systems.
Developers can build applications in App Builder that subscribe to over 500 commerce events like inventory updates, order status, price updates, and so on.

#4. Catalog service

Recently, Adobe Commerce has updated its Catalog service and developers can now connect it with API Mesh. Catalog service is a multi-tenant SaaS service that gives you faster catalog data retrieval to power exceptional storefront shopping experiences. Built with your existing Adobe Commerce Catalog data, the Catalog service also integrates with other Adobe Commerce features like Live Search and Product recommendations. Faster retrieval and more reliability mean a better customer experience leading to better conversions.

#5. Live Search

Live Search via Adobe Sensei is an AI-powered tool that lets you search faster and smarter and provide relevant results for B2C shoppers. Live Search in Adobe Commerce leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning to offer a personalized search experience, rely on user queries, and boost conversion rates. Live Search powered by Adobe Sensei benefits you with extended product recommendation capabilities, intelligent faceting, synonyms management, and merchandising rules making it a perfect fit for composable architecture applications.

#6. Quick Checkout

Adobe Commerce enables a fast checkout experience for first-time and repeats shoppers. It is easy to get up and running with friction-free onboarding that does not jeopardize integrations or customizations. Quick Checkout delivers a seamless shopping experience without waiting for hours or in line, increasing sales and reducing operational costs.

#7. PWA Studio

A PWA eCommerce platform uses a variety of performance optimization and responsive design strategies to load content fast on any network and provide a consistent experience across desktops, tablets and smartphones. With Adobe Commerce PWA studio, you can transform the mobile experience, help merchants gain new customers, improve conversion rates, and boost search engine rankings (SEO).

#8. Store Fulfillment

With Store fulfillment for Adobe Commerce, merchants of stores and warehouses can have advanced mobile-enabled BOPIS solutions to meet increasing customer demand for omnichannel fulfillment while reducing costs. Some of the features of Adobe Commerce Store fulfillment are:

Store fulfillment provides omnichannel flexibility to turn your stores and warehouses into pickup points and fulfillment centers, making BOPIS easier for store employees.
It helps store employers accurately and quickly fill orders with picking, staging, and handoff capabilities.
Deliver a seamless end-to-end omnichannel fulfillment experience with mobile convenience.
Improve operational visibility across store-level supply and inventory allocation to drive timely local fulfillment.

Implement the next-generation Adobe Commerce capabilities with us

Delivering agile and accurate unified experiences is crucial for every eCommerce business, and with the out-of-the-box features of Adobe Commerce, you can accomplish enhanced customer experiences. As an award-winning Adobe Solution Partner, Ranosys can assist you in implementing these capabilities and leverage them to the fullest.

Leverage the power of Adobe Commerce with our award-winning experts.

If we were to ask you what determines your organization’s health and growth, the answer would be revenue. As long as your revenue trends upwards, it indicates the accelerating potential of your teams, how resilient your organization is with trends and tech advancements, and your ability to scale up. However, maintaining this consistent revenue growth is easier said than done. In today’s evolving landscape, organizations, and even leading names, struggle to streamline their sales cycles and accelerate revenue growth. Then comes the post-credits of technology advancements, dynamic user behavior, and the utter necessity of making sense of massive data sets, which makes the entire process daunting.

Such a situation is more common than you can imagine and it’s exactly the type of use case Salesforce Revenue Cloud accomplishes. A product of the Salesforce ecosystem, Revenue Cloud is an amalgamation of several powerful Customer 360 tools, equipping your sales, finance and operations teams with the weapons they need to streamline their revenue lifecycle and drive business growth.

Here we discuss the empowering potential of Salesforce Revenue Cloud, how it works along with other Salesforce Cloud products, and why it is the right tool for your business, both B2B and B2C.

What is Salesforce Revenue Cloud?

Salesforce Revenue Cloud is a cloud-based revenue management platform, a part of the Salesforce Customer 360 Platform known for its revenue stream and customer relationship management capabilities. Salesforce Revenue Cloud provides a 360-degree view of customers, from acquisition to retention along with several tools to assist with subscription management, pricing, invoicing, etc.

It combines the capabilities of Configure, Price, and Quote (CPQ), Billing, Partner Relationship Management, and B2B Commerce. Utilizing the Salesforce Revenue Cloud is meant to assist businesses in better managing their income streams (also known as revenue streams), getting more out of forecasting skills, increasing efficiency, and accelerating development across all sales channels.

Salesforce Revenue Cloud combines a variety of existing Salesforce products, such as Salesforce CPQ & Billing, to support and enable a more comprehensive sales engine, which includes subscriptions, recurring revenue, and consumption-based models.

What value does Salesforce Revenue Cloud bring to my business?

Often, business owners ponder over the question of what a new tool can do for their business and why they must invest in it. As for Salesforce Revenue Cloud, its array of features make it a must-have tool for organizations who wish to grow their revenue and keep track of it. Here are some use cases that Salesforce Revenue Cloud implementation accomplishes:

#1: Gain actionable customer insights

Track user activities across their subscription to gain meaningful insights about their needs, preferences, and behavior and use it to improve their experience with your products/services. Subsequently, your sales reps are equipped with key customer data and sales insights to offer personalized services to users.

#2: Accelerated sales cycle

Leads follow a lengthy sales cycle before converting, the more time your reps spend in nurturing it, the longer the sales cycle gets. So, shortening of these cycles is imperative to amplify revenue growth and close deals quicker. Salesforce Revenue Cloud product, Salesforce CPQ assists reps with a speedy lead-to-quote process. You can even automate the process of quote generation as per product catalog to provide a consistent buying experience.

#3: Effective picking-and-bundling of products

B2B sales reps are often asked custom quotes of product combinations, a task that results in several inconsistencies when done manually. Salesforce CPQ empowers reps to bundle thousands of products and services from catalogs within seconds with high-level accuracy. Subsequently, its discount approval system assists finance teams in establishing control over discounts and sales teams in maintaining their desired profit margins. Ultimately, as B2B buyers receive custom quotes for their products, it drives customer loyalty.

#4: Self-service tools for accelerated selling

There is a lot of to and fro that happens between buyers and sellers and the more complicated and lengthy that sales cycle becomes, so does the operational costs escalate. For organizations that wish to streamline their sales cycle, Salesforce Revenue Cloud is the right automation tool to enforce the quote-to-cash process. It provides self-service tools for B2B commerce buyers to order their products, saving precious rep time and resulting in higher revenue opportunities.

#5: A high rise in repeat orders

The cost of retaining your existing customers is 4 times lower than acquiring new customers. Therefore, it is imperative that you provide a consistent experience to your buyers throughout the sales cycle. With Salesforce Revenue Cloud, you bring together sales, finance, customer service, and operations, thus simplifying the buying-and-selling process and providing real-time insights to your team about ongoing processes. When your teams have complete information about a buyer and their sales journey, you can take actionable steps to encourage their conversions into loyal customers.

The different tools of Salesforce Revenue Cloud

Salesforce CPQ: This tool allows businesses to configure, price, and quote products and services accurately and quickly, resulting in higher win rates, shorter sales cycles, and increased revenue.
Salesforce billing: It automates the billing process and manages revenue recognition, resulting in faster and more accurate billing, improved cash flow, and better compliance with accounting standards.
Salesforce discount approval system: With this tool businesses can set and manage discount approval workflows, ensuring that discounts are granted only when necessary and with proper authorization, resulting in better control over pricing and increased revenue.
Subscription management: It enables businesses to manage the entire subscription lifecycle, from subscription creation and management to billing and revenue recognition, resulting in more efficient subscription management and increased revenue.
Salesforce partner and channel management: A tool that helps businesses manage their partner and channel relationships, including partner onboarding, lead distribution, deal registration, and commission tracking, resulting in better partner engagement and increased revenue through partner channels.

Salesforce Revenue Streams:

Salesforce Revenue Streams refer to the various sources of revenue generated by a business using Salesforce Revenue Cloud or other Salesforce products. In other words, Salesforce Revenue Streams are the different ways in which a business can generate revenue by leveraging the capabilities and functionalities of Salesforce Revenue Cloud.

The following are the Salesforce Revenue Cloud streams-

Salesforce Revenue Cloud Components

There are following components which makes Salesforce Revenue Cloud Ideal for your business:

Error-Free Billing Process: The Billing component of Salesforce Revenue Cloud is designed to automate the billing process and minimize errors. This includes features such as invoicing, payment collection, and revenue recognition. By automating these processes, businesses can reduce the risk of errors and ensure that invoices are accurate and delivered on time.
Conversion Rate Acceleration: The CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote) component of Salesforce Revenue Cloud helps businesses accelerate their conversion rates by streamlining the quoting process. CPQ allows enterprises to configure products, set prices, and generate quotes quickly and accurately, which can improve the customer experience and help close deals faster.
Keeping Track of Revenue: The Revenue Recognition component of Salesforce Revenue Cloud helps businesses keep track of their revenue and ensure compliance with accounting standards. This component automates recognizing revenue and provides detailed reports and analytics to help companies to understand their revenue streams and make informed decisions.

Salesforce Revenue Cloud Cycle

The Revenue Cloud cycle refers to the process of managing revenue operations using the Salesforce Revenue Cloud platform. Here are the steps involved in the Revenue Cloud cycle:

Pricing and Product Management: Businesses use the Salesforce Revenue Cloud platform to manage their product catalog and pricing strategies at this stage. This includes creating and managing product SKUs, setting pricing rules, and creating price books.
Quoting and Contracting: Salesforce Revenue Cloud to generate accurate and timely customer quotes, negotiate and finalize contracts, and manage contract renewals.
Order Management: Businesses use Salesforce Revenue Cloud to manage the order fulfillment process once a contract is finalized. This includes creating and managing sales orders, order fulfillment, and inventory.
Billing and Collections: In this stage, businesses use Salesforce Revenue Cloud to manage their billing and collections processes. This includes generating invoices, managing payment collections, and processing refunds.
Revenue Recognition: Companies use Salesforce Revenue Cloud to manage their revenue recognition process. This includes ensuring compliance with accounting standards, recognizing revenue appropriately, and managing revenue forecasting and reporting.

How Salesforce Revenue Cloud behaves with other Salesforce tools

Salesforce Revenue Cloud is designed to integrate seamlessly with other Salesforce products and tools, allowing businesses to manage their entire revenue lifecycle in one place. Here are some ways Salesforce Revenue Cloud can work with other Salesforce tools:

#1: Salesforce Revenue Cloud Integration with Sales Cloud

Integrating Salesforce Revenue Cloud with Sales Cloud can help sales teams to manage the entire sales process, from lead to cash.

Steps to integrate: This integration can be done in a few simple steps.

Connect Salesforce Orgs: The first step is to connect the Salesforce Orgs for Salesforce Revenue Cloud and Sales Cloud.
Configure Data Mapping: The second step is configuring the data mapping between the two orgs. This involves mapping the fields in Salesforce Revenue Cloud to those in Sales Cloud.
Configure Workflow: The third step is to configure the workflow. This involves setting up the business processes in Salesforce Revenue Cloud and Sales Cloud. For example, a sales rep can create a quote in Salesforce Revenue Cloud, and it will automatically create an opportunity in Sales Cloud.
Testing and Deployment: The final step is testing and deploying the integration to production.

What use cases this integration solves: Let’s take an example of a company that sells a software product that requires a license. When a sales rep creates an opportunity in Sales Cloud, they can automatically generate a quote in Salesforce Revenue Cloud, which includes the license fee. When the customer accepts the quote, Salesforce Revenue Cloud will create an invoice and send it to the customer. When the customer pays the invoice, Salesforce Revenue Cloud will update the opportunity in Sales Cloud, and the sales rep will be notified that the deal is closed.

#2: Salesforce Revenue Cloud Integration with Service Cloud

Integrating Salesforce Revenue Cloud with Service Cloud can help service teams to manage customer contracts, renewals, and subscriptions. This integration can be done in a few simple steps.

Steps to integrate: This integration can be done in a few simple steps.

Connect Salesforce Orgs: The first step is to connect the Salesforce Orgs for Salesforce Revenue Cloud and Service Cloud.
Configure Data Mapping: The second step is to configure the data mapping between the two orgs. This involves mapping the fields in Salesforce Revenue Cloud to the fields in Service Cloud.
Configure Workflow: The third step is to configure the workflow. This involves setting up the business processes in Salesforce Revenue Cloud and Service Cloud. For example, a service rep can view the customer’s subscription status in Service Cloud, and use that information to provide personalized support. Similarly, a sales rep can view the customer’s billing and payment history in the Salesforce Revenue Cloud, and use that information to create tailored sales pitches.

What use cases this integration solves: Configuring the workflow also includes setting up automated processes and triggers, such as creating an invoice when a subscription is renewed or sending a notification to the customer when their payment is due. These processes and triggers can be customized to fit the business’s specific needs.

#3: Salesforce Revenue Cloud Integration with Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Integrating Salesforce Revenue Cloud with Salesforce Marketing Cloud allows businesses to create personalized marketing campaigns based on customer data in Salesforce Revenue Cloud. For example, a business can use information about a customer’s purchasing history to create targeted email campaigns promoting related products or services.

To integrate Salesforce Revenue Cloud with Salesforce Marketing Cloud, businesses need to set up data synchronization between the two clouds. This involves mapping the fields in Salesforce Revenue Cloud to the corresponding fields in Salesforce Marketing Cloud to share customer data between the two clouds.

#4: Salesforce Revenue Cloud Integration with Analytics Cloud

Once Salesforce Revenue Cloud is integrated with other Salesforce Clouds, businesses can use Salesforce Analytics Cloud to analyze the data and gain insights into customer behavior and business performance. Salesforce Analytics Cloud allows businesses to create customizable dashboards and reports that show key performance metrics, such as revenue growth and customer retention rates.

By analyzing the data in Salesforce Analytics Cloud, businesses can identify trends and patterns in customer behavior and use that information to improve their marketing and sales strategies. For example, suppose a business notices that a particular product is selling well among a specific demographic. In that case, they can create targeted marketing campaigns to further promote that product to that demographic.

What use cases this integration solves: Here are some common use cases for integrating Salesforce Revenue Cloud with other Salesforce Clouds:

A business wants to provide a seamless customer experience by giving service reps access to the customer’s subscription and billing information in Service Cloud.
A business wants to create personalized marketing campaigns based on customer data in Salesforce Revenue Cloud by integrating it with Salesforce Marketing Cloud.
A business wants to gain insights into customer behavior and business performance by analyzing the data in Salesforce Analytics Cloud after integrating Salesforce Revenue Cloud with other Salesforce Clouds.

Salesforce Revenue Cloud features in a nutshell

The Salesforce Revenue Cloud has many amazing features, making it an incredibly powerful tool for growing your company. Some of them are:

Create new revenue streams: We can implement consumption pricing, launch a subscription product, or simply create a new product or service we have always wanted to offer.
Upsell and cross-sell: We can empower our team to make seamless contract amendments for add-ons, swaps, and upgrades so they can upsell and cross-sell confidently.
Manage revenue: The Salesforce Revenue Cloud makes it easy to identify when a sale has been made, which reduces the risk of revenue recognition errors and ensures that your financial statements are always accurate.
Gain better customer insights: With Revenue Cloud, We can track customers’ activities with our subscription products and use insights to improve their experience with us—and our bottom line.
Powerful analytics: Get insights into our business that help us make more informed decisions by combining data from across your organization.

Discover the potential of Salesforce Revenue Cloud for your business

Integrating Salesforce Revenue Cloud with other Salesforce Clouds can provide businesses with a comprehensive solution for managing their revenue streams and customer transactions, from purchase to renewal to revenue recognition. Following the key steps outlined above, businesses can configure their Salesforce instance to fit their specific needs and create a seamless customer experience. And as a trusted Salesforce partner, our team of certified experts can guide you in analyzing data and gaining insights into customer behavior and business performance to make informed decisions and continuously improve their sales and marketing strategies.

Sumit Saini

Senior Software Engineer

With a focus on Salesforce Sales and Service clouds, Sumit has demonstrated a comprehensive understanding of Apex and extensive experience in customization, debugging, and analysis. His contributions have been instrumental in driving success for many clients in the Salesforce ecosystem. Connect with her on LinkedIn.

Want to expedite your business ROI with Salesforce Revenue Cloud?

With high customer expectations, the retail industry is on the edge to deliver seamless shopping experiences that stand out. With that in mind, Adobe Analytics empowers retailers to be more creative in gathering and analyzing data to gain in-depth insights into consumer behavior. However, simply implementing Adobe Analytics to your website won’t deliver results. You must make the platform robust via high-end customizations to utilize its capabilities fully.

In this blog, we will understand what challenges retailers face while implementing data analytics in their business and what are the Adobe Analytics implementation best practices.

What challenges does the retail industry face?

The retail industry is quickly adopting data-centric technology to increase sales, leveraging massive data across its supply chain and at diverse customer touchpoints. Here are a few challenges retailers face before implementing analytics:

Businesses need data that provides more customized information to gain insights, segment customers, and deliver relevant marketing messages. But disparate data from multiple sources often results in profiles too segmented to be actionable.
Most companies know the importance of data security, but many ignore it due to the complexity it creates. With bulk data gathering in the retail industry, the lack of big data security protocols results in internal and external risks affecting customer loyalty.
Organizations need data from all the touchpoints to manage stock reliably and support marketing and sales teams in demand forecasting. Enterprises find this challenging to collect data from individual stores and online stores. Hence, Adobe Analytics tool is required for measuring valuable data.
Retailers reach customers online or offline both ways, which makes customer experience challenging. That’s why providing customers with a smooth experience on the website becomes a priority. This is only possible when visitor tracking, mapping user behavior, measuring the impact of landing pages and banners, etc., come in handy to let users find information a lot faster.

Adobe Analytics best practices for retail

Let’s discuss Adobe Analytics implementation best practices that are essential for the retail industry to make customer tracking smoother:

#1. Merchandising variables

One of the most complex best practices of Adobe Analytics is eVars (merchandising variables). Adobe Analytics collects data in multiple ways, which can be used to gain insights. Merchandising variables allow you to tie the value of a variable to a specific product for a particular event. It can help you to find :

How are visitors finding the products with the highest margins
Are we getting value from recommendations or a live search
Which products have lost the most revenue due to discounts

#Product String: Adobe Analytics Product String Builder extension automatically sets the products variable for you by looping through your data layer, grabbing all the product-related data, and formatting it in the proper syntax.

There are two types of eVars:

Product Syntax: It is the standard approach for tracking and reporting in Adobe Analytics for eCommerce tracking and reporting. It stores contextual information about products like color, size, name, quantity, shipping, discounts, price, etc. You can choose product syntax when merchandising value is available at the same time.
Conversion Syntax: It allows you to set a value other than the product string. You need to choose conversion syntax when the attributes you want to bind are not necessarily available in the same hit as the product you want to bind them to.

#2. Event serialization

Sometimes data does not match in back-end systems, be it purchases, submissions, checkouts, add to cart, or any other conversion event. It works by combining each instance of an event with a unique ID. Adobe Analytics features eliminates double counting. Retailers can flexibly align various systems by successfully implementing event serialization analytics.

#3. Segmentation

Adobe Analytics lets you create, manage, share, and apply influential, focused audience segments to reports along with other Adobe Experience Cloud tools. Segments give better audience insights by following values:

Visitors-based on attributes: browser, device, number of visits, country, gender
Visitors-based on interactions: campaigns, keyword search, search engine
Visitors-based on exits and entries: social media, landing page, referring domain
Visitors-based on custom variables: field, defined categories, customer ID

Adobe Analytics segmentation lets you identify patterns of consumer spending and associated behavior.

#4. Adobe Launch

Launch makes integrating easier with Adobe Analytics to Adobe Experience Platform, Adobe Target, and Adobe Audience Management. You can connect Adobe Launch with multiple technologies and turn data into action so you can deliver powerful, memorable experiences. Adobe’s current method is through tags in the Adobe Experience platform. Tags in Adobe Experience Platform is a tag management solution that lets you deploy analytics code alongside other tagging requirements.

#5. Set up alerts

Adobe Analytics tool lets you create and manage alerts to track and monitor data 24/7. Retailers can monitor data anomalies and maintain data integrity.

#6. Create calculated metrics

Calculated metric tools in Adobe Analytics offer a highly flexible way of building and managing metrics. They allow you, as marketers, product managers, and analysts, to ask questions about the data without changing your analytics implementation. Conversion and bounce rate metrics are the two most important calculated metrics in digital analytics for retailers. But with huge audience segmentation, retailers need to apply additional calculated metrics to enrich the analysis.

Calculated metric	Why should retailers implement the metric?
Missed revenue	Retailers can calculate lost revenue if a customer chooses not to buy a product during checkout.
Checkout abandonment rate	To keep track of the percentage of customers that are leaving checkout after initiating the checkout process. Makes you understand the checkout flow.
Repeat purchase rate	For measuring the proportion of customers that make more than one purchase. Helps in understanding customer loyalty.
Subscription rate	Tracking on how many unknown visitors turned into potential customers. If the visitors give any information like email address, they can be counted in funnel prospects.
Revenue/ Visitor	Measure site traffic with different dimensions.
Add to cart rate	Retailers can measure the percentage of visitors who add products to their cart during a single session and compare it across different products.

#7. Import product costs

Retailers must analyze which products are earning the most revenue to upscale the product performance. Adobe Analytics has the feature of bringing product costs into the platform to identify your most profitable products.

#8. Advertising analytics

Advertising Analytics lets retailers see all google and bing Paid Search data side by side within Adobe Analytics. By bringing the data together of these search engines in Adobe Analytics, you can analyze that same data leveraging Advertising Analytics. The integration of Advertising and Adobe Analytics will enable you to analyze and report on metrics like impressions, clicks, costs, and quality scores across dimensions like campaign, Ad group, keywords, etc.

#9. Data sources

In Adobe Analytics, you can upload ad campaign data and process it for dimensions and metrics, just like Advertising Analytics KPIs.

#10. Customize calendar

The retail calendar 4-5-4 is a guide for retailers that ensures sales compatibility between years by dividing the year into months based on 4 weeks, 5 weeks, and 4 weeks format. You can customize the calendar as per your business needs.

What are the data and segments across the Adobe Experience Cloud?

Adobe Analytics plays an important role in delivering data-driven decisions while integrating with other Adobe Experience Cloud solutions:

#1.Adobe Target

Adobe Target is a personalization tool where users can set up tests like A/B and multivariate tests and offer personalization experiences to end users. By integrating Adobe Analytics with Adobe Target, retailers can centralize data, making data analysis simple and efficient. With the data sent to Adobe Analytics via Adobe Target, all variables/metrics can be used to further explore the targeted users and gain in-depth insights. To measure the success of the target activity, use the clicks on the call-to-action and important milestones later in the funnels, such as actual conversion.

#2.Adobe Audience Manager

Adobe Audience Manager is a powerful data management platform that can help retailers to build unique audience profiles by integrating with Adobe Analytics. Retailers can incorporate data such as demographic, psychographic, CRM data, and advertising information in the Audience Manager to target unique segments and send personalized messages across multiple touchpoints.

#3.Adobe Campaign

Integration of Adobe Campaign and Adobe Analytics allows you to understand the success of your email campaigns directly from the familiar Adobe Analytics interface. You can easily analyze your desired email KPIs like decisions, opens, and clicks directly in the Adobe Analytics workspace. Retailers can also use the behavioral data from Adobe Analytics to trigger a tailored email in near-real time. You can send personalized messages to prospects who retailers have lost in the checkout process and reduce cart abandonment.

#4.Adobe Experience Platform

Adobe Experience Platform allows retailers to ingest Adobe Analytics data through the Analytics Source Connector. It requires processing rules like segmentation and visitor identification for mapping each Analytics variable.

#5.Adobe Commerce

Adobe Commerce and Adobe Analytics integration enables you to bring together the end-to-end customer journey focus of Adobe Analytics and the eCommerce platform. This lets you get a complete picture of your store’s overall performance.

Implement Adobe Analytics for your retail business with a trusted partner

Adobe Analytics implementation best practices for your retail business helps deliver one-on-one digital experiences across several devices. With Adobe Analytics, you invoke the power of data analytics and powerful reporting to optimize your campaigns for maximum performance and sale. If you need assistance with Adobe Analytics implementation for segmenting, identifying profitable products, tracking customer journeys, etc., you can connect with our certified experts to explore more of its business-driven features.

Explore how Adobe Analytics drives eCommerce personalization.

In today’s digital ecosystem, to deliver consistent experiences, businesses need to implement technology and data together. However, they face challenges in data gathering, deriving actionable insights, and employing those to deliver better customer experiences. The only solution is to build a unified data system that collects data across all organizational departments data to streamline operations across departments. If you’re leveraging Salesforce CRM along with other tools like ERPs, PIMs, etc., ensuring proper integration between all internal and external systems is imperative. A seamless Salesforce CRM integration is how you gain a unified view of your customers and operations.

In this blog, we will understand the Salesforce integration challenges, benefits of Salesforce integration, types of Salesforce integration, Salesforce integration strategies and patterns, and how seamless integration helps make data-driven decisions faster.

What is Salesforce CRM integration and why is it important?

Salesforce CRM integration unifies all your internal and external tools and streamlines data flow between multiple applications. Integrating all tools with Salesforce CRM empowers decision-makers with a holistic view of marketing, sales, commerce, and customer service operations.

As a modern business, it is highly unlikely to employ only one tool to suffice all your evolving business requirements. MuleSoft suggests that organizations employ over 900 apps across the cloud, on-premise, and legacy systems. All these applications must be connected with your Salesforce CRM to facilitate data flow, prevent data redundancy, and provide a unified view of operations across all internal and external tools.

Importance of Salesforce CRM integration:

With proper data management and integration, businesses gain a unified view of their customers which empowers your organization to make data-driven decisions faster and serve customers in a personalized manner.
Salesforce CRM integration opens up new opportunities for businesses to assemble and study disparate data together to improve decision-making, minimize risks, and unearth valuable insights.
Implementing the power of machine learning and artificial intelligence via Salesforce Einstein, it becomes easy to analyze and process data, to optimize strategies based on statistical finds and not estimates.

Why seamless integration between systems is the need of the hour?

Enterprises employ hundreds of applications that only increase with time. Every department uses multiple software and systems, all of which host data specific to their operations. However, it might be possible that data that exists in one department might be useful for another department. In such scenarios, siloed environments hinder deriving real insights from data sources that further disrupts customer experiences. Therefore, it becomes imperative that businesses integrate apps and data across departments and environments to drive innovation at scale, gain competitive advantage, and achieve digital transformation.

#1. Increased demand of customers pressuring businesses to deliver digital faster

Employees and customers want seamless digital experiences and expect organizations to deliver these experiences faster. With the rapid shift to remote working and the need for increased productivity and efficiency, migrating apps to the cloud, and automating business processes, are now key focuses of organizations.

#2. Need for connected customer experience

With high customer expectations, intense competition, and dynamic customer interactions across departments and channels, enterprises are now more focused on improving their overall customer experiences. But organizations find it challenging to integrate end-user experiences across all channels. Integrated systems help improve customer engagement, business transformation, and innovation to deliver connected experiences.

#3. Data silos set back digital transformation

With lack of integration between systems or applications, enterprises usually build data silos unknowingly that further impacts an organization’s efficiency and results in lack of proper collaboration between departments. The need for extensive data insights and analytics is why businesses must focus on integrating systems.

Types of Salesforce integrations

Before implementing Salesforce integration, you must decide on the architecture:

#1. App-based integration: Application integration enables individual apps, each designed for specific purposes, to integrate with one another. The integration can be done either with low-code or no-code solutions. Salesforce CRM app-based integration can be implemented with the help of MuleSoft Composer and is ideal for SMEs and solopreneurs.

#2. Code-based integration involves writing code manually and hosting the code for Salesforce API integration. It is a complicated method and allows intricate and difficult integrations for your business.

#3. Salesforce data integration: Salesforce data integration utilizes SOAP and REST APIs which handle data synchronization requirements. It does not require any coding in Salesforce and is the easiest way to integrate the platform with another application. The app can send customer data into the Salesforce database for recordkeeping or export Salesforce data into a BI tool.

#4. Business process integration: Salesforce allows enterprises to integrate systems or applications not just internally but with external systems as well and connect with customers, partners and suppliers by automating business processes. For example, connecting email marketing tools like Marketo to the Salesforce database or automatically aggregating data for reporting purposes.

#5. User interface integration: Integrating UI with Salesforce will allow users direct entry into multiple applications from a single platform. This prevents the need for repetitive sign-ins by integrating the UI of both platforms. This integration will enable you to control email marketing campaigns from a single dashboard rather than switching tabs.

The different Salesforce integration patterns

Every integration is unique, but standard requirements and issues should be addressed. Most business owners choose from two main options for integration patterns:

#1. Direct integration: Direct integration is either a direct API or database integration between Salesforce and other platforms. It is a simplified approach that may seem limited in flexibility but will satisfy your business needs. Most often, it’s a single integration, like sending data entered into a form to a Salesforce database.

#2. Server-based integration: Server-based integrations require manual coding and can be more beneficial for complicated integrations like merging business processes and UI of different apps. It is a flexible solution that reduces the effects of system updates on the integration and gives you more control over data flows. Server-based integration involves solutions delivered according to a hub-and-spoke and an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) model and hosted in the cloud and on-premises systems. Server-based integration fits small businesses as well as large enterprises as well. Salesforce follows the following patterns for server-based integrations:

Request and responses: Salesforce invokes a process on a remote system, waits for the completion of that response, and then tracks the response.
Fire and Forget: Salesforce invokes a process in a remote system but does not wait for the completion of the process. Instead, the remote process receives and acknowledges the request and then hands off control. A business can do the same in the following ways:
– Process-driven platform events
– Customization-driven platform events
– Workflow-driven outbound message
– Apex based callouts
Batch data synchronization: This is the most widely used integration process where data is sent in batches and synchronized to reflect updates from external systems. For example, you can quickly extract customer activity databases from Salesforce and import them into an on-premise warehouse.
UI update based on data changes: The Salesforce UI needs to be updated as per orders or case management changes. For example, a customer initiates a payment. The customer service rep needs a real-time update in Salesforce from the payment processing application indicating that the customer has successfully paid the outstanding order amount.
Data virtualization: Salesforce will access the data from external systems where it is stored in real-time. It reduces the need to persist data in Salesforce and reconcile data from external systems.

APIs and data integration methods in Salesforce

The solution to integration challenges is API which allows two applications to connect and share data. Companies should choose CRM API integration as:

It increases your IT team’s productivity and powers digital transformation. As APIs are produced and designed for their ease of use, it results in seamless data integration.
APIs are easy-to-manage to enhance security, scalability, and performance.
It is discoverable and accessible through self-service.

Data integration methods in Salesforce:

ERP, CRM, supply chain management tools, email marketing solutions, and social media applications seamlessly integrate with the Salesforce platform. However, you need the right tools, best practices, and integration strategies to achieve a bi-directional sync. There are many ways by which you can import or export data from third-party systems to Salesforce. Let’s discuss a few of them:

#1. Data Loading: The data loading integration method pushes data within and from Salesforce. The application can also move customer data from one system to another, upload new data in bulk, export records to backup, or move them to another. There are two tools for data loading:

Data import wizard: It is a built-in data migration tool in Salesforce and can be used for up to 50,000 records. The data import wizard supports many Salesforce platforms as well as other platforms. It is a great tool for simple data load and import but not for complex data load operations.
Data loader: Salesforce data loader can be used for large data loads to import, export, edit, and delete 50,000 to 50,000,000 records. It imports various data objects, including custom ones, and schedules regular data loads.

#2. Salesforce Connector: A powerful integration method allows Salesforce applications to connect seamlessly and handle data stored in external sources. Salesforce Connector eliminates the need to switch tabs. You can use it when your business needs to display, search, and modify data stored in external systems and don’t want to duplicate data storage in Salesforce.

#3. Outbound from Salesforce: Outbound message in Salesforce is a method of integration that sends the data to an endpoint (external service) in the form of XML (Extensible Markup Language). It is used to send object field data to third-party applications to perform specific tasks as per requirement. You can even consume SOAP APIs to perform the integration.

#4. Inbound into Salesforce: Salesforce provides REST and SOAP APIs endpoints that external systems can use to perform CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) operations on data storing in Salesforce. Inbound integration is synchronous and requires more communication.

#5. Publish-subscribe messaging-based: This pattern of Salesforce allows subscribers to be notified of publishing content. An asynchronous pattern allows the subscriber to pick up the message later, eliminating the chances of getting messages lost while implementing integration.

#6. Third-party Salesforce CRM integration tools: MuleSoft is a third-party tool offering various connectors and accelerators to integrate applications and systems. MuleSoft Anypoint integration platform allows the seamless integration of applications, systems, and tools without codebase changes, making system-to-system integration easy, effortless, and cost-effective.

Implement Salesforce integration with a trusted partner

Salesforce integrations are a great way to connect your applications and systems, enforce automation, drive productivity, and deliver connected experiences to customers. As a trusted Salesforce partner, our team of certified experts can provide you guidance on implementing and managing integrations to maximize the overall ROI of your investments.

Reap the most benefits of your Salesforce CRM with us

In an era where customer demands and expectations change rapidly, businesses often find it challenging to offer experiences that are interactive, user-friendly, secure, and built using the right software. Here, the choice of a mobile app development software becomes imperative because a lot of what your digital solution is and does depends on it. Enterprises need to enable innovation, drive fundamental change, improve operational efficiency, and ultimately, deliver higher business value for employees, customers, and shareholders.

And this is where a high-performance low-code platform like OutSystems can help organizations develop visually-appealing and model-driven mobile apps fast and at scale. With OutSystems, you can develop enterprise-grade applications for all your custom use cases and unlock the benefits of low code mobile apps.

In this blog, we will discuss the various OutSystems mobile app development features, types of mobile apps you can build with OutSystems, how OutSystems mobile app best practices help in rapid application development, and solve challenges businesses face in building applications.

OutSystems: An introduction

OutSystems is a low-code mobile app development platform that empowers you to develop pixel-perfect mobile and web apps via drag-and-drop functionalities easily integrated with third-party systems and customized as per your business requirements. While OutSystems provides you with several templates for application development, you can add your own custom codes for innovative features and functionalities. As you don’t need to code apps from scratch, it results in future-eady mobile and web applications fast and at scale.

Here are some noteworthy features of OutSystems low-code platform:

The OutSystems mobile app architecture allows you to create differentiated customer experiences that transform your legacy architectures, simplify enterprise app development, and accelerate business processes.
The OutSystems platform develops serious enterprise-level apps with serious productivity that eliminates high maintenance costs and eases optimization and enhancements.
OutSystems empowers enterprise owners to expedite application development from months to weeks. Its drag-and-drop capabilities and graphic user interfaces streamline the entire application development process.
Not just the development of apps, OutSystems also eases and speeds up the integration of applications with on-premises and existing cloud databases.

Types of applications you can built with OutSystems

With innovation baked into its core, OutSystems makes it easy for you to develop apps that fulfill your custom requirements, take note of dynamic market trends, and accomplish your digital transformation initiatives. Regardless of what your business use case is, OutSystems’ high-performance low-code platform does it smoothly, scalably, and securely.

Now, coming to what you can build with OutSystems, it includes:

Mobile apps: These are the standard responsive mobile applications that can be installed on the devices directly, leverage a native UX, have access to the permissions of the device, and can be employed offline too.
Responsive web apps: These are the applications that can be accessed by the users without installation, through their native mobile browsers. These apps use web responsive technologies to quickly adapt to multiple devices and mobile browsers.
Develop only the mobile backend: OutSystems can also be used as the backend for your custom-built native mobile app, which uses traditional tools such as Android Studio, Visual Studio, XCode, and respective native languages.

OutSystems: The platform you need for rapid application development

Every aspect of the OutSystems platform is developed with the goal of helping organizations create enterprise-grade apps quickly and digitize their operations faster. Let’s have a look at some of the features of OutSystems that assists with rapid application development:

OutSystems delivers enterprise-grade applications six times faster than manual coding.
The OutSystems platform delivers new features across the full application lifecycle.
With a fully integrated UI framework, OutSystems builds beautiful, user-friendly applications that run across all devices and screens.
OutSystems low-code platform delivers advanced, end-to-end applications with full-stack support for successful front-end development.
The low-code platform OutSystems easily integrates complex existing systems with your own for development without boundaries.
Enterprise-grade architecture-deliver applications built for the enterprise with scalability, security, reliability, and governance.

Challenges faced while developing mobile applications: How OutSystems helps

Some of the common challenges in mobile application development faced by enterprises are integrating different systems, technologies, and ecosystems and a lack of involvement by business users. Even developers don’t want to spend time tracking bugs, debugging them, and coding hard as they wish to prioritize more value-added tasks such as security analysis, testing and gauging software requirements, and designing software.

Companies are looking for ways to build applications faster in response to the ever-increasing developer workloads and changing business needs. At the same time, the OutSystems platform is already capable of solving a broad range of customer solutions, such as application modernization and workplace innovations to business process automation. Let’s discuss some of the major challenges in mobile application development and how OutSystems benefits them:

#1. Need for secure mobile applications

Nowadays, almost every industry relies on mobile applications like banking, healthcare, government, insurance, education, fashion, and many more. Investing in mobile app security helps protect users’ data and secure applications from external threats such as hacking. Mobile applications available in app stores might not be fully secured, as said, and hence users get exposed to malicious attacks or data breaches. In recent years cybercriminals have been targeting B2C applications more aggressively than ever before, leading to downtime, intellectual property theft, and hefty regulatory fines. Therefore, businesses should understand the criticality of integrating security while developing mission-critical applications.

How OutSystems helps:

OutSystems includes a comprehensive set of built-in security features that supports the complete development lifecycle of an application and helps in DevOps processes, laying the foundation for a secure SDLC. Apps developed with this platform automatically include secure code patterns that safeguard against prevalent mobile application vulnerabilities.
OutSystems provides automated application security checks that warn developers about potential security risks when they publish applications. OutSystems also complies with other general security requirements such as identity management, access control, encryption, single sign-on, etc.
To help you build safe and secure applications, OutSystems offers AppShield, an additional cost add-on, which adds a layer of security. AppShield reduces potential risks, avoids regulatory fines, reduces manual coding work, and protects against data leaks. It includes native code obfuscation, root detection, repackaging, code injection protection, emulator detection, and keylogger protection securing mobile apps at rest or run time.

#2. Interactive UX

Today’s users have little patience to put up with slow loads, complicated navigation, incomplete information, or glitches which often leads to an unsatisfactory and inefficient experience. Businesses are trying to provide mobile apps that are easy to use and solve a user’s problem. Also, a user should be able to understand the UI/UX enough to spend time on applications. An engaging user interaction enhances brand image and boosts sales.

How OutSystems helps:

OutSystems platform delivers mobile apps with an attractive user interface via an fully-integrated UI framework called OutSystems UI that offers customizable themes for mobile apps.
Outsystems mobile app development includes a huge library of samples and patterns through which you can get amazing mobile apps having a magnificent look and feel.
OutSystems have features that enable you to provide modern UI/UX experiences like a drag-and-drop editor, grid and flex layouts, smart vertical spacing, and accelerators, such as UI patterns and screen templates, to build different mobile screens rapidly.
The screen editor of OutSystems gives a perfect real-time preview of designs on multiple screens, to deliver responsive experiences across devices.

#3. Simplified developmental approach

Businesses need their applications to be developed rapidly, efficiently, and at budgeted costs. The obstacle is that many companies still use legacy systems to build applications that affect business continuity and reliability. Also, it has a domino effect where one problem can lead to another. Legacy systems are common bottlenecks that require huge maintenance costs. Hence, enterprises need legacy modernization to reduce costs and improve flexibility, collaboration, and consistency.

How OutSystems helps:

As OutSystems produces highly performant hybrid applications, you can deliver your mobile app to multiple operating systems faster. An application developed with OutSystems can easily run on both iOS and Android devices. There is no need to adapt the code for each type of device.
Manual coding consumes a lot of time and effort for a developer, leading to increased costs and development time. However, when applications are developed on OutSystems, the development speed increases by almost ten times. Hence, by considerably reducing application development time, OutSystems allows organizations to save costs in the long run.
Mobile apps developed on the OutSystems platform can access all of the native capabilities and APIs of the device (be it Android or iOS) by using plugins. The capabilities are limited to cameras, geolocation, and notifications and include Bluetooth, barcode scanners, and more.
OutSystems has all the tools required to develop applications that run offline. Mobile apps developed with OutSystems automatically store all the app content on the device so that it can be easily accessed for offline use.

#4. Difficulty in integration

Enterprises usually face a big time issue seamlessly integrating their existing systems with external ones and building a single source of truth for data and ongoing operations. Such problems can lead to frustrations and doubts about limited or buggy solutions and digital transformation overall.

How OutSystems helps:

OutSystems provides tools to simplify the integration and synchronization of multiple data sources of REST APIs, SOAP web services, and external database connections.
OutSystems can use open-source components and easily integrates with external enterprise systems, databases, or custom apps.

5 mobile application development pillars and major OutSystems trends

Many enterprises are leveraging the OutSystems low-code platform to create front-end and back-end applications and digitizing end-to-end processes. Therefore, OutSystems is an optimal solution to create highly functional and complex applications at scale in less time. To meet the expectations of customers, businesses need to look for these four core pillars of building applications:

Developer experience
Workflow automation
Security and Compliance
Development and operations

Based on these four pillars OutSystems has predicted 5 application development trends to look out for before modernizing their teams, dev practices, and tools to achieve their goals. They are:

DevSecOps: Security and compliance requirements are validated at every stage of the development cycle.
Hybrid integrations: Organizations need to connect real-time data management, governance, and auditability across multiple touch points, which begs for more tools in hybrid integrations supporting businesses to make data-driven decisions.
Cloud-native platforms: To implement business agility, you need to develop cloud-native applications, one that is highly distributed and scalable and enables the creation of resilient and fit-to-purpose enterprise apps.
DesignOps: Design at scale while minimizing technical complexity, meeting business goals, and creating amazing UX.
PWA-first: Progressive web apps combine functions of both native apps and websites. As it uses a single code base for all devices and is searchable and light, it is way faster than native apps while being easy to maintain.

Accelerate mobile application development with a trusted partner of OutSystems

So far, OutSystems is one of the best solutions which combines the power of low-code mobile app development with advanced mobile functionalities. Through a focused approach on intuitive user experience, easy integration, and building fast applications, OutSystems platform has laid a solid foundation in developing mobile applications. At Ranosys, we have assisted several enterprises to build their mobile applications and we can solve your business use cases too. Connect with our certified experts to know how OutSystems can revolutionize your business operations.

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The banking and financial services industry (BFSI) is constantly evolving and adapting to new technologies in order to improve efficiency, security, and customer experience. In the next few years, we expect to see several major banking technology trends that will significantly impact the BFSI industry. In this blog, we will take a closer look at the top 4 BFSI technology trends likely to shape the BFSI industry in 2023.

What role does technology play in the BFSI industry?

The banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI) industry plays a predominant role in the global economy. For a very long time, the industry has relied on a legacy model with limited digital capabilities. More than customer experience, for the BFSI industry, technological integration is required to enhance the security of their operations, employ the vast amount of data to drive meaningful insights, scale processes, and make remote banking an easy undertaking. Now is the time for financial firms to shift their focus to digital enhancements and innovation and thrive in the dynamic landscape.

The top 4 technology trends for the BFSI industry

With changing user expectations, inherent innovation demands, emerging trends, and substitutive business models, technology trends in 2023 for the BFSI industry will help financial firms in achieving digital sustainability and stay competitive and secure. The following are 4 BFSI technological trends that shape a productive future for the BFSI industry and how leading-edge platforms like Salesforce help accomplish these goals.

Trend #1: Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT)

Blockchain is a distributed, decentralized digital ledger that is becoming more and more popular in the BFSI sector. Blockchain technology is the perfect option for financial transactions since it enables many parties to share a single version of the truth. Blockchain technology is highly secure and impervious to hacking due to its distributed nature, making it an excellent choice for financial organizations wishing to increase security and transparency. DLT, a term often used interchangeably with blockchain, refers to a more general approach of distributed ledger technology, which can have different implementations other than blockchain, like Hashgraph and Tangle.

Smart contracts are among the most exciting uses of blockchain technology in the BFSI sector. Smart contracts are agreements that automatically carry out their conditions because they are put straight into lines of code. The efficiency of financial transactions can be considerably improved by programming these contracts to carry out automatically when specific circumstances are satisfied. In addition, blockchain can be utilized to develop new financial services and products, including digital assets, digital identities, and more.

How does Salesforce help?

World’s leading CRM platform, Salesforce in 2019 released its own blockchain platform, Salesforce Blockchain, leveraging Salesforce Lightning application builder and the open-source blockchain technology by Hyperledger Sawtooth. This low-code platform allows BFSI companies to build smart contracts, networks, and decentralized apps for sharing verified data via the distributed ledger technology (DLT). The best part, Salesforce Blockchain also employs artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to automate processes.

As Salesforce is still improving on this platform, currently its main components include:

Blockchain Builder: This helps developers and admins in creating decentralized apps, transparent to partners. It also features custom APIs for application setup.
Blockchain Connect: This helps in distributing the Salesforce Blockchain apps safely and securely to clients with a read-and-write access.
Consensus Mechanism: The protocols set up in this allows the network to decide which process fulfills the requirements.
Hyperledger Sawtooth: This blockchain-based protocol is used for building the Salesforce Blockchain and ensuring the safety of smart contracts for the DLT solution.
Smart Contract APIs: These APIs allow BFSI enterprises to add alternative business models. For developers, APIs allow developers to build and deploy business logic.

Trend #2: Low-code for accelerated application development

The BFSI industry is under constant pressure to deliver new products and services to customers quickly, and low-code and no-code platforms provide a solution to this challenge. Low-code and no-code platforms like Salesforce will continue to grow in popularity among BFSI companies as they enable faster development and deployment of applications without the need for extensive coding knowledge. These platforms provide a drag-and-drop interface that allows developers to create applications quickly and easily.

How does Salesforce help?

The current trend in development is leveraging low-code tools and platforms to build apps fast, optimize them as per the changing market trends, and reduce the workload on coders in terms of app development and launch. For the same, Salesforce has launched its low-code and pro-code capabilities that empower everyone in your organization to create and launch apps irrespective of their technical prowess. These innovative Salesforce low-code tools include:

Einstein Data Detect: Privacy laws are a complicated affair, which is why this new tool from Salesforce makes it easy for you. Einstein Data Detect leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate the discovery and protection of sensitive data and alerts organizations to take necessary measures around data privacy.
Dynamic Interactions: This tool leverages the simple drag-and-drop feature to create interactive solutions. They include list, form, chart, and so on, built by developers and easily implemented by admins who then control its interaction with other components.
Einstein Automate: When it comes to automating manual operations, the process can last for months. Einstein Automate reduces this number to days by employing leading-edge technologies like AI, data integration, and process workflows. This empowers businesses to automate complex tasks, go digital faster. Einstein Automate also brings together few other tools like:
– Flow Orchestrator to compose automation workflows
– Mulesoft Composer to automate integrations from internal and external data sources to Salesforce
– Pre-built solutions to streamline operations
– OmniStudio for other no-code tools
DevOps Center: This tool from Salesforce acts as a central dashboard for tracking changes across the development and production lifecycle, enhancing collaboration via version control as a single source of truth, and managing governance. DevOps Center allows developers to launch apps faster, integrate them with systems, and migrate changes across sandbox environments without any custom coding.

Trend #3: Cloud Adoption

The BFSI industry is expected to continue its migration to the cloud, with Salesforce playing a key role in this transition. This will enable companies to reduce costs and improve scalability. Cloud-based platforms like Salesforce provide the flexibility and scalability that BFSI companies need to adapt to changing market conditions. They also provide the security and compliance that is required for the BFSI industry. With the cloud, BFSI companies can access their data and applications from anywhere and on any device.

How does Salesforce help?

Although Salesforce has a dedicated platform called Financial Services Cloud available, BFSI enterprises can also leverage multiple SFDC, Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and so on. However, to structure them for your BFSI firm, these clouds would require heavy customization, which is why it is advised to employ Salesforce Financial Cloud for all such needs.

Financial Services Cloud (Salesforce Financial Cloud) is inclined towards retail, B2C organizations like insurance companies, banks, mortgage brokers, etc. Like other clouds, Salesforce Financial Cloud helps connect disparate data sources together across departments to deliver consistent user experiences. For its immense benefits, Salesforce Financial Cloud is currently leveraged by capital market, wealth & asset management, insurance companies, and banking & lending.

FSC household data model allows financial advisors to manage their user’s household businesses and related persons in one place. Admins can employ person or individual data models to set up account-contact relationships (ACR), account-account relationships (AAR), and contact-contact relationships (CCR).
Financial Services Cloud supports investment accounts, bank accounts, and insurance policies via pre-defined record types to keep track of a user’s investment and define roles of a member in a financial account.
It includes referral components to help advisors in keeping a track of leads and referrals. The referrer information is easy-to-view as individual records.
Actions Plans in Salesforce Financial Cloud allow you to automate repetitive tasks and fulfill deadlines. You can auto-assign tasks to team members and accomplish compliance protocols.
Advisor Analytics lets you leverage reports and dashboards to empower financial advisors with data-driven insights to improve user experiences. There are several predefined reports available that you can customize as per your needs.

Trend #4: Big data analytics

There is no denying that BFSI enterprises generate huge amounts of data, most of which is not analyzed properly to derive data-driven insights. This is where big data analytics can help banking and financial services organizations, in optimizing performance, driving digitization, and making most of the incremental response modeling techniques. By implementing predictive modeling (to predict user behavior), risk analytics (to optimize and control risks to boost revenue), and segmentation (by using algorithms to segment customers and implement data-driven insights for better user experience), BFSI enterprises can help maximize return on investment and optimize customer targeting.

How does Salesforce help?

Salesforce provides you with a wide array of internal and external tools to assist with big data analytics. Enterprises can leverage Salesforce CRM, Einstein Analytics, and Tableau CRM to derive actionable insights, predict outcomes, and explore recommendations, all with AI-powered analytical tools.

CRM-connected analytics: You can seamlessly integrate your CRM and other internal/external tools with Einstein Analytics to build a single source of truth for your data, right into Salesforce. From this single dashboard, you can review insights from both internal and third-party data, gain recommendations, and take the next steps for your business. Empowered by intelligent and predictive analytics, you can drive business productivity at scale, customized for your business and people.
Augmented analytics: Leverage the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning to gain a holistic view of your customers and make smarter business decisions faster. AI-Augmented analytics in Salesforce helps you predict future outcomes, evaluate how your data changes with respect to other data points, and how it adapts over time, all while drilling into a single dashboard. Einstein Analytics features include data prep tools and model visualization and operationalization to derive predictive and prescriptive insights. The best part, you can take all these actions from your Salesforce CRM.
Enterprise-ready analytics: Einstein Analytics business intelligence software solutions are built on top of world’s leading CRM platform, Salesforce, known for frequently releasing seamless and regular upgrades to ensure superior performance of their technology, top-notch security of data, and engaging user experiences.
Cognitive analytics: Salesforce introduced the addition of sentiment analysis, intent, and object detection to its Einstein Analytics AI platform to automate insights and employ predictive modeling within its CRM.

– Einstein Sentiment assists with evaluating the level of customer satisfaction via textual analysis of emails and/or social media content.
– Einstein Intent helps in analyzing a user’s intent or queries to optimize current processes and improve experiences.
– Einstein Object Detection allows you to train your models to identify objects in an image along with dimensions.

Implement Salesforce CRM with a trusted partner for higher success

Undeniably, the dynamic potential of Salesforce for the BFSI industry is immense. You can implement a full-suite of Salesforce tools like SFDC, Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Salesforce Financial Cloud, Einstein Analytics, and Tableau CRM to improve banking operations and deliver superior banking experiences. As a leading Salesforce Partner, we help you leverage the right internal and external Salesforce tools to drive productivity, implement analytics for actionable insights, and ensure the safety and security of user data.

We help you implement Salesforce the right way for your BFSI firm.

Want to implement Salesforce integrations to your business?

In this digital era, businesses are well-versed with the revenue-generating potential of data. However, there is no denying that vast amounts of data is being generated across sources such as CRMs, ERPs, IT, mobile apps, and custom applications. The struggle over here is to employ this data for higher insights, greater productivity, and efficient operations. And this is where seamless and secure integration amongst all your internal and external business systems play an essential role in resolving conflicts around data inconsistency, irregularities, duplicacy and so on across departments and customers.

If you leverage the Salesforce CRM platform, you know about the company’s appetite for cutting-edge innovation and seamless business connectivity. Not only can you employ Salesforce integrations to connect any number of internal and business tools, but deliver connected experiences to your users, employees, and stakeholders. From increasing productivity and enhancing customer experience, to enabling a holistic view of customer interactions, Salesforce CRM integrations is what you need to grow your business at speed and scale.

In this blog post, we will discuss the benefits of Salesforce integrations and how it can change the way you view, share, and access information across systems and channels. Also, we will cover the top 7 Salesforce integrations in 2023 that your business needs for competitive advantage.

Deliver connected experiences with Salesforce integration

Salesforce integration means connecting the data and functionality available in the SaaS CRM platform with other internal and/or external platforms to provide users with a unified experience. This interconnection amongst a solid CRM and other leading-edge tools suits most business models and promises endless adaptability to business processes. Salesforce third-party integration solutions can streamline collaboration between teams, enable cross-platform data visibility, and provide a complete view of operations.

Benefits of Salesforce integration with third-party applications

Salesforce integrations have resulted in increased efficiency and productivity of various businesses across the globe. Here are some benefits of salesforce integration that you can leverage for your business:

Data can be converted to a common format and be synchronized or exchanged between several applications.
A holistic view of company operations boosts your team’s productivity and eliminates friction by automating business processes.
Integrating internal/external systems with your Salesforce CRM results in non-redundant data, which expedites data-driven decision making.
Make collaboration easier through effective communication across teams with Salesforce integration.
It improves transparency between teams and critical information becomes easy-to-access and use.
Access data from different sources with the help of APIs and unified CRM platforms.

7 must-have Salesforce CRM integration for higher business productivity

In this blog, we will cover the 7 Salesforce integration that you must leverage for your business.

#1: Salesforce integration with Adobe Marketo for sales-marketing alignment

Adobe Marketo is a SaaS-based marketing automation software that helps you streamline lead engagement, nurturing and conversion activities along with a wide array of other solutions. Marketo Salesforce integration enables you to streamline operations between sales and marketing by keeping leads, accounts, and other records intact. It can boost productivity, improve ROI, and develop specialized campaigns to gain new customers. Check our blog, Why and how to integrate Salesforce CRM with Adobe Marketo to integrate these powerful platforms.

Salesforce Adobe Marketo integration major achievements:

With Adobe Marketo Salesforce integration, your sales reps and marketers can gain a real-time view of data for better insight and intelligence.
Salesforce Marketo integration provides consistent data across both platforms preventing data redundancies and errors.
Salesforce and Adobe Marketo integration create a more comprehensive picture of your leads and contacts, providing behavioral and demographic insights.
The integration allows you to create automated workflows for better lead nurturing, making the work seamless.
Automate email campaigns with personalized messages for different segments of your target audience from Salesforce or/and Adobe Marketo and seamlessly update results on both the platforms.

#2: Salesforce Mulesoft integration for seamless connectivity between platforms

Salesforce Mulesoft integration is widely acclaimed to assist with any/all of these objectives- allow seamless integration between internal/external systems, employ automation to boost operational efficiency, and leverage data-driven insights to improve digital experiences. Check our blog, MuleSoft Salesforce integration: Best practices and use cases to know more around this combined solutioning and how to achieve this goal.

Salesforce Mulesoft integration major achievements:

You gain the complete picture of your operations and process across internal and external platforms with Salesforce integration with MuleSoft, which means you don’t have to juggle between several tools to gain a 360-degree view of all business/user data.
Seamless integration leads to better insights, higher analytics and faster decision-making.
A unified view of your data helps develop scalable integration frameworks and deliver connected experiences across channels.

#3: Salesforce Zendesk integration for superior customer service

Zendesk is a popular customer support platform that allows you to manage customer conversations across email, social channels (Twitter & Facebook), chat, and phone. The idea behind Zendesk is to empower organizations to track, prioritize, and improve customer relationships by offering superior customer service.

Zendesk Salesforce integration allows you to unite two customer-facing teams (sales and customer support) on the same page. It provides your sales team with complete access to the sales and supports data from both tools, creating a single customer profile. This holistic view is then leveraged by your support agents to offer relevant solutions fast.

Salesforce Zendesk integration major achievements:

Zendesk Salesforce integration allows you to maintain all customer data in a single system (on Salesforce), accessible from either of the platforms.
Salesforce Zendesk integration allows sales reps access to customer tickets and conversations conducted by the support team. Sales reps can then view, create, and update tickets while seamlessly collaborating with the support team.
The integration gives agents access to a unified view of customer information through which they can deliver engaging customer service experiences, drive upselling opportunities, and boosy sales and support agents’ productivity.
Salesforce Zendesk integration creates automatic workflows for instant resolutions improving the productivity of sales and support teams.

#4: Salesforce Adobe Commerce integration for personalized shopping experiences

Adobe Commerce is an open-source eCommerce platform from Adobe providing merchants with flexible headless and API-based functionalities for building cross-channel online stores. Salesforce and Adobe Commerce integration allows synchronizing CRM and eCommerce data, such as orders, contacts, inventory, and more, to generate a holistic view for shoppers and teams across divisions. Check out our resource on Salesforce Magento integration and how partnership ensures success.

Salesforce Adobe Commerce integration major achievements:

Salesforce Magento Integration helps you to capture and nurture prospects as they engage with your store and digital content.
It allows your business to plan marketing campaigns based on customer response analysis.
You can manage your contacts, collect shoppers’ information and make it easily accessible to all.
The integration synchronizes data between the Salesforce CRM and Magento, thus boosting order management efficiency.
Adobe Commerce Salesforce integration creates a seamless sales cycle by easily importing and exporting customer data, products, invoices, and billing information.

#5: Salesforce SAP integration for accelerated digital transformation

SAP is a leading ERP (enterprise resource planning) platform that unlocks end-to-end automation to enhance business efficiency and improve coordination between sales, marketing, accounting, manufacturing, distribution, and customer support departments. Salesforce SAP integration ensures smooth and seamless data handling and management, gaining valuable insights about the customers through real-time data automation. Check out our blog on 8 ways Salesforce integration with SAP accelerates business transformation to evaluate the various use cases you can accomplish with this combined solutioning.

Salesforce SAP integration major achievements:

Salesforce SAP integration synchronizes data and removes order management inefficiencies, eliminates time delays, and allows for a seamless order fulfillment, invoicing, and delivery process.
Salesforce SAP integration enables data consistency by utilizing data for various business processes, eliminating the need for dual data entry, and decreasing data redundancies/errors.
The integration provides a 360-degree view of your customers’ purchases and preferences on a single dashboard, to execute custom marketing strategies.

#6: Salesforce Slack integration for enhanced collaboration

You’re probably aware of Slack as a preferred workplace communication app that allows you to communicate with anyone in your organization. Its intuitive, engaging and segmented dashboard allows you to organize communications by channels or send private messages to share data, files, images, and more easily. Salesforce Slack integration facilitates easy communication between Slack and Salesforce Chatter, improving collaboration and productivity.

Salesforce Slack integration major achievements:

Salesforce Slack integration ensures that all relevant team members always have access to the lead’s status. This reduces miscommunication and gives a clear picture to teams.
The integration of Salesforce Slack unifies all the information on one platform without letting teams switch between applications, saving costs and time.
With the help of Salesforce Slack integration, you can create specific channels and organize communications by channels or private messages to keep things in one place.
Salesforce Slack integration enables users to ease their routine jobs, enhance performance, and eliminate human errors. You can standardize voice mails, emails, prioritizing tasks, and other daily activities.

#7: Salesforce DocuSign integration for document signing and management

DocuSign is an electronic signature tool that allows you to send, sign and track agreements and approvals from anywhere on any device digitally. Docusign salesforce integration can help your close business deals faster, shorten sales cycles and reduce paper waste.

Salesforce DocuSign integration major achievements:
Salesforce DocuSign integration digitizes and streamlines agreements and simplifies approval workflows on secure digital platforms.
The Docusign salesforce integration provides real-time updates into Slack.
It lets you easily create contracts with information about customers’ profiles in Salesforce.

Partner with Ranosys to implement Salesforce integrations effectively

To ensure your applications send the right data at the right time and to the right teams, Salesforce integrations is the excellent choice for your business. Be it native Salesforce integration or third-party integrations; our Salesforce-certified experts will help you overcome all system integration challenges and suggest the best practices for synchronization.

Know more about Salesforce integrations via certified experts.

The financial industry landscape is changing dramatically, driven by shifting consumer behavior, an increased focus on customer experience and a higher reliance on technology-driven solutions. Banks, FinTech, insurance, financial services, e-retail, etc. every industry wants to thrive in this environment, improve their financial solution and deliver seamless digital payment services, be it UPI, BNPL, crypto-based payments, credit/debit card transactions, and so on, customers today expect a secure and easy payment experience. However, many companies struggle to deliver such seamless digital payment experiences due to high dependence on legacy-based operations and manual processes. With the rise of these disruptions, OutSystems high-performance low-code platform is coming up to be the right choice to assist enterprises in digitizing their payment solutions rapidly and streamlining finance operations while improving the customer experience in banking.

In this blog, we will learn about the fundamentals of the payment process, digital payments trends, and how OutSystems is helping solve disruptions in digital payments along with the OutSystems payment gateway integration process.

The fundamentals of payment process

Before diving into the details of OutSystems-enabled digital payment solutions, here are a few basic terminologies you must know about.

Terminology 1: Payment and payment methods

Payments mean the exchange of value for the benefit of any products or services. Payments can be made through cash, cheque, credit card, debit card, or online digital payment solutions. Earlier, barter systems were used to make payments, but today’s monetary system allows payments to be made via a nation’s established currency (and exchange of currencies in case of international or cross-border purchases). In today’s digital ecosystem, users make payments by leveraging online tools/mediums like the internet, tech stack, or digital platforms. The payment methods are:

Large value payment system: These are used to settle large sums of money inter-bank or inter-country.
Retail payment system: The transfer of funds from customers to merchants in exchange of goods or services. Retail payment system is classified into four major categories (shown in the diagram below)

Terminology 2: Payment ecosystem

When a customer initiates a transaction with a business, there are five parties involved:

Merchant: Offers a product or service the customer is willing to pay.
Customer: Chooses to transact with your business.
Issuing Bank: Issues payment cards to the customers on behalf of card networks. They are responsible for the financial backing of any transaction undertaken through that card.
Card Networks: Facilitates payment card transactions.
Acquiring Bank: The host bank for the merchant’s bank account. It collects the funds from the issuing bank.

Terminology 3: Payment process

The payment process more-or-less includes the following 7 steps:

The customer purchases a product or service and makes the payment
The merchant submits a transaction
The payment gateway securely sends the transaction to the processor
The processor verifies and approves the transaction
The customer’s bank sends money to the processor
The processor sends money to the merchant’s bank and the status of the transaction- either approved or denied- to the gateway
The merchant receives the message of approval or denial along with the money if it was approved

Difference between a payment gateway & payment processor

After the terminologies, we need to understand the difference between payment gateway and processor (often used interchangeably by users, however, they are two different terms). Refer to the below table:

Payment Processor	Payment Gateway
A payment processor is a service responsible for keeping the communication between merchants and banks and managing the transfer of funds, so you get paid.	A payment gateway is a transaction processing tool that captures, stores, and transmits your card information from customers to acquirers.
Intermediary between business, customer’s banks and merchants banks.	Intermediary between a business and customer.
Can be used alone.	Must be used with payment processor.
Used for in person transactions.	Used for eCommerce or card not present transactions.

The different types of payment gateways

Refer to the below table:

Hosted Payment Gateway	Self-hosted payment gateway	API-hosted payment gateways
Direct users away from the checkout page in your website. They are redirected to the Payment Service Provider (PSP) site.	The payment information inside the merchants website is gathered from the user.	Users input their credit or debit card details directly on the merchants page.
It provides a secure, easy and customized tool.	It provides great customer service to users	It Provides a secure , easy and customized tool .

Digital payment integrations in OutSystems

The following are two types of payment integrations in OutSystems:

Payment gateway connectors: Several payment gateway connectors are readily available on the OutSystems Forge. This repository comes with reusable, open-code modules, connectors, UI components, and other solutions to speed up app delivery time. It also includes basic configurations and documentation that can be used to integrate these connectors.
API: The payment gateway integrations like API or non-hosted payment gateways can be integrated using the REST API in OutSystems.

The payment gateway will provide the full documentation for consuming the API and configurations needed.

Process for digital payment integration in OutSystems

Finalize the payment gateway and the integration approach you want to use.
Create applications to support the core services and also the data model required.
Define the data model. These data models may differ and depend on your selected payment gateway. But, the common entities can be the core entities, log entities.

How to connect API payment gateway integrations in OutSystems?

The following steps will help you integrate API-based payment gateway integrations via REST API in OutSystems:

Create applications and modules required for API Integration as Integration service.
Create a data model for business case and API integration.
Consume the required API’s. Refer to the API documentation for details.
Add Server/Service action to use these APIs.
Now, the server/service actions that are created can be exposed in our applications to be used.
Follow best practices and security practices while consuming and using these APIs in application.

Disruptions in FinTech and banking industry: How OutSystems helps

Over the past few years, hundreds of FinTech and digital payment solution providers have emerged worldwide, bringing much-needed change. In 2023, the digital payments industry will undergo immense transformation powered by rapid technological advancements and growing consumer demands. Some of them are as follows:

#1. The utter need for digital transformation in digital payment

Despite technological advancements, the FinTech industry is still using legacy systems slowing down digital transformation. Traditional software development is a long and expensive process. It can take months to develop, test, and deploy an application that might be outdated by the launch time. Banks need to spend a lot for such long development cycles. Only companies that can offer faster time-to-market products and services can sustain their business in this digital world. The demand for cashless and contactless payment methods will keep on rising. Thus the banking sector must be ready to adopt new technologies to facilitate more digital transactions. The BFSI industry should focus on users’ behavioral patterns to make sure they are offering customized and tailored solutions to customers.

How OutSystems helps:

OutSystems enables rapid application development by a fully digital onboarding process of new users in the mobile application.
Since OutSystems can integrate the apps into any third-party applications that enforce user authentication via text messages, photo ID, automated ID verification with pre-built integration for KYC solutions, and links to verify the email address, it makes the process more customer-centric, efficient, and faster.
OutSystems made this easy through intelligent workflow capabilities to reduce the application process significantly, increasing customer satisfaction, and reducing the abandonment rate drastically.
It reduces overall operational and development costs with faster development cycles.

#2. Improving customer relations

In banking and FinTech, customers demand personalized recommendations for services. Most enterprises cannot fulfill their needs because of the large number of users. A large part of customer experience for FinTech firms is how easily the platform or application can be used. The whole idea is to reduce the manual efforts of users and create a seamless experience with the increased efficiency and user-friendly features of the payment platform. The trust and loyalty of its customers doubles. The growth of digital transactions will initiate quick payment options that can be done from anywhere.

How OutSystems helps:

Through low-code platforms, enterprises can use existing customer data and tailor their services based on each customer.
OutSystems enables banking and FinTech omnichannel, where customers can complete all transactions through any digital device of their performance.
OutSystems can create an intelligent customer centric-experience by enabling hyper-personalization capabilities for an omnichannel experience.
OutSystems high-performance low code offers a 360-degree view of customer data for superior customer engagement.
OutSystems empowers customers to open digital accounts within minutes.

#3. Reducing risk and fraud in digital payment

Build robust security applications with strong fraud and risk monitoring ability to deal with data theft, money laundering, and security breaches. Although FinTech organizations may have systems that enable businesses flexibility, they might lack proper data governance, putting customer data at risk. And data security should be one of your primary concerns. In addition to ensuring the privacy and security of financial transactions and operations, you should also ensure that customer support data is well protected.

How OutSystems helps:

OutSystems renders many features that can help online payment companies to monitor risk effectively.
Through OutSystems, built-in security features protect customers’ details and prevent them from falling prey to fraudulent activity.
With extensive tracking features in OutSystems, you can quickly identify and resolve technical issues, reducing risk and fraud.
The OutSystems platform can automate various manual business processes, reducing human errors. They can also create workflow automation processes using drag-and-drop tools.
Through OutSystems, you can alleviate constraints on legacy software and decrease dependency on IT experts.

#4. Compliance

The FinTech and banking industry adhere to strict regulations, and any developed application must meet the requirements. If a business is not compliant, then it may land into serious troubles like paying fines, which is a tedious task to manage. Since banking and FinTech companies hold huge amounts of funds and extremely sensitive customer information, they are under intense scrutiny by the governing bodies. Maintaining compliance with such strict procedures is a major administrative and operational hurdle for firms of any size and must be tackled precisely. Banking and finance industries are expected to leverage the data collected through new technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning. This helps in implementing digital strategies for their swift business operations and efficient solutions.

How OutSystems helps:

OutSystems low-code capabilities manage operational tasks smoothly and reduce the risks associated.
OutSystem automates various tedious compliance procedures and frees up organizational resources and time for other business processes.

Leverage the OutSystems platform to integrate your digital payment gateway

FinTech companies must be digitally adaptable, agile, and able to transform data. The OutSystems platform radically simplifies app development and delivery, empowering digital payments to keep up with a rapidly evolving industry landscape. As OutSystems’ trusted partner, Ranosys helps enterprises to expand their capabilities and deliver innovation while staying compliant and mitigating risk at scale.

Vidya Suryawanshi

OutSystems Lead and Architecture Specialist

A certified OutSystems Lead and Architecture Specialist having 10+ years of experience in developing applications. She is a passionate System Analyst hazving multiple OutSystems Certificates with expertise in architecture, code refactoring, performance improvement and integrations. Connect with her on LinkedIn.

Manish Gupta

OutSystems Solution Analyst

An OutSystems Champion, Manish is a 7x OutSystems certified Solution Architect. His expertise lies in handling the complete lifecycle of full stack software development with skills to architect high-impact solutions, envision and design great new products, solve complex problems and manage cross-functional collaborations. In his free time, he likes to organize DevCamps, write about low-code, make tech videos, and solve challenges in community forums. Connect with him on LinkedIn.

Let’s build an eCommerce roadmap for your liquor brand.

We live in an era where we can get both perishable and non-perishable things delivered at their doorstep, thanks to the surplus available eCommerce solutions. And a more recent and trendy addition to this list are alcoholic beverages, with top spearheading eCommerce sales categories being wine, beer, and spirits. In fact, alcohol eCommerce is the next big D2C trend, with the global market projected to hit $42 billion by 2024. Like all the market segments, alcoholic beverages experienced a significant upsurge during the pandemic, leading to a 42% growth in alcohol eCommerce in 2020. As sales peak and more brands move their operations online, the wine eCommerce vertical would become a lucrative opportunity for wineries and wine producers.

Here we discuss the burning potential of the liquor eCommerce market, the top alcohol eCommerce trends, and the tips to develop a winning wine eCommerce strategy for maximum DTC conversions.

Digital commerce: The silver lining for the wine eCommerce industry

There are two kinds of alcoholic retailers, one that functions as an Amazon of drinks, meaning they source different liquors from producers, aggregate them in one location, and start selling (the B2B2C approach). Or, you are the producer and wish to sell your drinks directly to the consumers (the D2C approach. Either way, you can employ alcohol eCommerce and sell beers, wines, or spirits online. However, when you shift your alcohol business online, the challenges increase exponentially. You have to figure out remote age certification, familiarize yourself with state, local, and country laws, consider tax, compliance, shipping, etc.

Considering everything, a wine eCommerce solution that embraces leading-edge technologies, seamlessly integrates with all required business systems, and helps maintain all your online and offline sales on one channel just may be the solution for wine manufacturers and distributors. With the powerful modern-age eCommerce solutions like Adobe Commerce, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Shopify Plus, and commercetools, you can establish a concrete online presence and serve customers locally as well as globally.

The question, however, remains how can wineries leverage this digital opportunity successfully. To solve this equation, let’s first understand the challenges that might be holding you back from leveraging a wine eCommerce platform or building a wine marketplace online.

The top challenges faced by the alcohol industry when moving online

Most wine producers and sellers have still not figured out how to sell and fulfill orders online. Liquor eCommerce is still a new vertical and is currently being studied and slowly adopted by related brands. That said, here are some challenges wine eCommerce industry faces initially when moving online:

#1: The varying laws and regulations from state-to-state

Unlike non-alcoholic beverages, the selling of liquor involves a lot of licenses and compliance with district, state, and federal laws. This entire process is very time-consuming and requires related brands to obtain hefty approvals depending on where they are located and where they wish to sell. Due to this, many wineries and wine producers/retailers face challenges around alcohol transportation, shipping, logistics, and getting approval from authorities in the shipped location.

#2: Conveniently and efficiency manage and fulfill orders online

Combined with regulatory constraints, alcohol sellers also experience challenges around the proper storage requirements of their distilled beverages for maximum taste preservation, which demands carriers who have the proper tools and systems for transporting such beverages. Then, there are customer expectations around same-day, next-day or speedy deliveries, which are difficult to fulfill. This makes the entire order fulfill process for liquor and wine eCommerce marketplaces a challenge.

#3: Delivering the much-in-talk personalized experiences to users

eCommerce is all about omnichannel, connected, and personalized experiences, which becomes a jigsaw puzzle for wine brands to solve, especially when they are just penetrating the market. The entire equation of getting an up-and-running wine eCommerce platform for evolving the number of touchpoints is a little hard to get for wine manufacturers and retailers.

#4: Build a strong audience group online

While your brand might be famous in your area or district, when looking to sell borderless, you need to build trust in your product with your wine eCommerce solutions. This might feel like kickstarting your business all-over-again, especially online. Then, you also have to ensure that all your customers are within the legal age limit of consuming your beverages.

#5: Build a well-integrated wine eCommerce system for higher sales

While leveraging a wine eCommerce platform is just the first step, you need to bring all your operations online, from inventory, product management, and order fulfillment, to shipping, payment systems, customer relationship management software, and so on. This requires well-knit integrations to your core eCommerce platform, which can appear to be overwhelming and even discourage you from moving online.

Why wine brands must capitalize on these 7 alcohol eCommerce opportunities

Every business wants to maximize their profits, penetrate new markets, and adopt new practices and technologies. For the alcohol industry, embracing liquor eCommerce is a way to keep growing their B2B landscape while building a D2C channel for higher sales. While wine eCommerce is a big part of that equation, there are different eCommerce platforms and technologies that can simplify things for you. Here we discuss the rising opportunities for liquor and wine eCommerce marketplace that wineries and wine producers can leverage.

#1: The D2C avenue in wine eCommerce

The D2C wine eCommerce market is worth billions of dollars with more than half of the wineries considering the channel to be the fastest-growing in terms of sales. Reports suggest that wineries that sell directly to consumers yield higher profit margins than wholesalers. For small retailers, wine eCommerce is a perfect way to sell higher and faster, and to a higher group of consumers. While you can continue engaging with other B2B wine businesses, you can develop a taste for your beverages amongst consumers with your wine eCommerce platform.

#2: There is still room for wine brands in the eCommerce market

While it is true that a few wineries and wine producers have adopted the eCommerce approach, there is still room for other wine players who wish to chunk a massive piece of the revenue pie. There is tremendous potential in the alcohol eCommerce marketplace, only if you know how to leverage it properly. Consider these notable liquor and wine eCommerce marketplace success stories:

Drizly, a liquor and wine eCommerce marketplace reported a 350% year-on-year increase in their eCommerce sales
Wine.com, a premium wine specialty retailer, ended 2021 with 115% increase on year-on-year sales
ISWR, a drink market analysis company, reported an 80% increase in the overall value of alcohol eCommerce sales in 2021

#3: There is high customer demand for wine eCommerce

While shoppers are used to buying food and non-alcoholic beverages online, they eagerly look forward to browsing liquor eCommerce sites and get their dose of happiness delivered at their doorstep. For renowned wine and alcohol sellers might find it easy to attract audiences to their online stores, small and medium-sized sommeliers can indulge in tasting sessions, discounts, offers to get more visitors and build a reputation for their tasteful drinks. For that, wine sellers need to pivot the challenges around supply chain automation, speed and efficiency, transparency, personalization, minimal error margins, and lower prices to succeed in the online B2B and D2C liquor and wine eCommerce marketplace.

#4: Provide B2C experiences to your B2B buyers

While D2C commerce is one revenue channel addition to your business, you can leverage your wine eCommerce platform to sell to B2B buyers like suppliers, wholesalers, and retailers. However, you need to note that even B2B buyers expect personalized shopping experiences such as custom pricing, volume discounts, custom taxation rules, automated price quote requests and negotiation; all of which can be delivered by a single platform that enables both B2B and B2C hybrid selling. Wineries and wine manufacturers can leverage a sophisticated, responsive, and mobile-optimized, design-driven, and fully-integrated wine eCommerce platform that delivers a frictionless experience to new and returning customers.

#5: Leverage innovative technologies to improve wine eCommerce operations

Technological innovations across production, sales, personalization, order fulfillment, product recommendation, shipping and delivery are beginning to take over. In fact, wine sellers are also:

Testing sensors to help with vinification and wine aging, and adjusting the price of every bottle based on their aged number of years.
Match customers with products as per their taste preferences and palettes with a predictive personalization software that captures data for each individual consumer as they visit the site, the products they look at, return, and so on. These software also rank every SKU based on their likelihood of imminent purchase.
Leverage technologies and predictive algorithms to ease personalization, assess what has been achieved, and capitalize on it.
Implement alcohol eCommerce trends around triggered personalization, omnichannel marketing, and email marketing to achieve the highest ROI.
Innovate packaging solutions for boxed, canned, and single-serve wines.

The top alcohol eCommerce trends for liquor sellers and how to leverage them

In the last few years, wine eCommerce has become a more mainstream product in multiple marketers and its user base has expanded to include discovery-led wine drinkers and those who buy it regularly. For sellers who already are online or wish to build a wine marketplace online, the following alcohol eCommerce trends are a must-consider.

#1: Practicing the human-centric selling approach

When it comes to wine, people will need an experienced wine seller to guide them through their offerings, how one merlot is different from the other, and which is the best option for them. As people would be buying liquor online, they cannot taste or smell the wine before buying, which is why you must replicate that experience online as best as you can for new buyers or seasoned wine connoisseurs.

Solution:

You can set up virtual wine assistants on your wine eCommerce platform to assist people who are clueless about wines and its purchase.
Add detailed product descriptions, tasting notes, wine pairings, food items to drink with, and related information to help users understand the wine better.
Collaborate with local partners to organize wine tasting events, invite customers, and let them experience your wine to make better purchasing decisions.

Read how we helped build a multisite eCommerce solution for Wine Connection here.

#2: Deliver a frictionless online buying experience

Alike with everything else bought online, even wine eCommerce needs to be speedy and responsive. Slow and archaic websites are a big let-down for users. Additionally, not everyone will be browsing your website on a desktop. You need to consider all the modern alcohol eCommerce channels, from web, social, mobile, app, web app, etc. and offer a consistent and connected experience throughout.

Solution:

Leverage the best wine eCommerce platforms for your business that help you smoothly launch your products and helps you gain maximum visibility via search engines.
Look for features like easy drag-and-drop functionalities to develop product pages, multilingual and multi-currency support, integrated B2B functionality for such buyers, seamless integrations third-party tools, live search & product recommendations, inventory & order management, data warehousing, payment processing services, and so on.
Implement live order tracking from purchase to delivery for complete transparency.
Run a wine club or subscription model to build stronger brand-consumer relationships.

#3: Personalize experiences and sell your brand’s story

A good brand story is perfect to develop an initial connection with your shoppers. Combined with personalization, you can position your wine eCommerce business for assured success.

Solution:

Explore new ways of storytelling and marketing to detail how your wine is different from competitors. Highlight your wine’s origin, how artistic it is, and what makes it unique.
Feature local artists on your bottle and website to emphasize on the quality of your wine.
Personalize your wine eCommerce site to encourage customer loyalty and average order value.
Automate email marketing campaigns to a user’s behavior and their stage in the buying journey. You can integrate with powerful marketing automation tools like Adobe Marketo Engage for that.
Add preferred payment solutions to deliver localized checkout experiences.
Implement analytics and reporting tools like Adobe Analytics to study market trends and user behaviors/preferences.
Seamlessly integrate with competitive third-party systems like CMS, OMS, tax management, and inventory management tools to bring all metrics and users on a single dashboard.

#4: Take a mobile-centric approach for your wine eCommerce business

While it is true that mobile eCommerce sales for wine, beers, and spirits is not promising, the rising trend around mCommerce denotes that it would become a preferred buying channel for users in the future. It is why you must equip your wine eCommerce website with responsiveness, agility, and scalability to boost your mobile sales.

Solution:

Implement responsive UI/UX designs for your wine eCommerce website.
Test your liquor and wine eCommerce marketplace’s speed and performance across devices and screens and optimize your brand’s experience for mobile.
Don’t forget to check the legal age of all your website visitors.
Build a social store for your wine eCommerce business and link it across all popular social media platforms.

#5: Leverage customer data to created branded experiences across touchpoints

The power of data is immense especially when it allows you to know your customers better and push personalized communications across. This data is collected via marketing automation, social engagement, user journey mapping, mobile app usage, email interactions, and offline engagement at tasting events.

Solution:

Wineries can leverage all this data to drive one-on-one inbound and outbound communication with consumers to personalize every interaction and optimize the wine eCommerce opportunity.
Link technology, data, design, and cross-channel marketing to maximize business value and gain a unified view of every consumer.
Create concierge customer service solutions where customers at a distance can seek the best taste for them.
Integrate POS systems, compliance, inventory, fulfillment, and one-on-one behavioral marketing automation to personalize and optimize every touchpoint.

Implement modern wine eCommerce solutions with certified experts

While the wine eCommerce industry is still under-development, the promising potential of a liquor and wine eCommerce marketplace is a significant driver for the wineries and wine producers/retailers/wholesalers. Partnering with a leading wine eCommerce solutions provider will help you leverage the right platform, third-party technologies, and external systems to build an agile, resilient, and scalable wine eCommerce system. Our experts have helped leading wine retailers and producers in the APAC to launch their multisite wine eCommerce solution online, leveraging the competitive Adobe Commerce platform. Connect with our certified experts for your specific business needs.

How to identify the right eCommerce platform for your wine business?

How MuleSoft Salesforce integration can help?

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In today’s experience-driven era, user experiences should not only be personalized but omnichannel and connected. Now more than ever, it is important for a business to seamlessly connect their core systems with external tools and applications, to fulfill the equation of a connected UX. And when it comes to integrating systems and breaking down data silos, MuleSoft Salesforce integration bridges the gap between your internal and external systems and allows businesses to provide seamless, scalable, and well-integrated experiences. MuleSoft has been a part of Salesforce for the past two years, empowering enterprises to leverage this powerful combination to boost system performance and operational efficiency.

Here we will discuss the MuleSoft Salesforce integration, its benefits, best practices, and use cases.

Introducing the powerful platforms: Salesforce & MuleSoft

Salesforce is one of the most efficient CRM software with dedicated cloud-based solutions for all your enterprise activities- sales, marketing, customer service, commerce, and other functional departments. Its competitive offerings of Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud, Salesforce Order Management System, Salesforce Community Cloud, Salesforce Einstein and other external systems and tools acts as a complete package to accelerate business transformation, automate mundane tasks, improve user experiences, and allow seamless collaboration between teams.

As powerful as Salesforce as a core system is, it still requires a seamless integration with other third-party tools and systems to deliver an unmatched performance and meet customer demands throughout. This can only be possible with an API-led connectivity that unifies valuable data sources, and systems, while empowering users and employees with a seamless transition between these tools. And this is where an agile platform like MuleSoft comes into play. With MuleSoft, enterprise owners can integrate their business-critical internal and external systems and create consistent experiences faster.

MuleSoft is a platform that gives IT teams the tools to integrate data and systems, automating workflows and processes and help create seamless omnichannel experiences with security, governance, and compliance. With that said, MuleSoft fulfills the following objectives for enterprises:

Unlock systems and data with integration
Drive production and efficiency with automation
Create engaging digital experiences

MuleSoft and its Anypoint integration platform allow connecting applications, systems, and tools without any codebase changes, making system-to-system integration easy, effortless, and cost-effective.

What can Salesforce MuleSoft integration do for you?

Now before you invest into Salesforce MuleSoft integration, the probable question is what difference can it make to my business ROI?

Salesforce integration with MuleSoft brings all your internal and external systems together, meaning you don’t have to switch between tools and can leverage a 360-degree view of all your business data on a common/single dashboard – cloud or on-premises, utilizing pre-built connectors.
With all systems integrated, you can implement better analytics , derive higher insights, and boost processes for faster and smarter decision-making.
Leverage the power of combined data to develop scalable integration frameworks and deliver seamless omnichannel experiences faster.

Does your business need a Salesforce MuleSoft integration?

Companies need the connectivity to provide customers with real-time and relevant experiences. With disjointed or poorly integrated systems, enterprises find it hard to unify business processes and deliver connected solutions throughout. Subsequently, they rely on legacy systems or siloed data sources, none of which help them achieve the desired operational goals. MuleSoft Salesforce integration benefits enables organizations to unlock, analyze and act on data to innovate and adapt to change faster, creating well-knit experiences for their employers and customers.

The following are some reasons why your business requires a Salesforce MuleSoft integration:

#1. Want to accelerate digital transformation

In today’s economy, companies are under tremendous pressure to meet customers’ expectations of personalized, integrated, and connected experiences across multiple channels. Most companies are already on their digital transformation journey, modernizing legacy systems and automating business processes. Organizations can bring change when they bring disparate internal and external systems together, draw insights from it, and drive operational performance status. With Salesforce MuleSoft integration, enterprises achieve seamless connectivity to boost their system’s functionality securely and scalably across the enterprise for different users, such as customers, suppliers, and employees.

#2. Break down data silos for better information exchange

To keep up with business demands and unlock the real power of data for improved business ROI, a scalable and strategic approach for integrating both internal and third-party systems is required. Salesforce integration with MuleSoft allows enterprises to integrate and unify data with an API-led approach, where businesses can easily compose connected experiences while maintaining security and data safety. Business owners can reuse their existing APIs and microservices across the organizations rather than building from scratch, while establishing a complete control over the process.

#3. Reduce manual efforts and effectively automate them

Salesforce MuleSoft integration helps you get rid of the time-consuming and error-prone manual workflows and instead automate these steps for higher efficiency and productivity. This powerful integration between two platforms provides a highly customized no-coding approach to integrate tools and applications, thus saving time and boosting the agility of business processes.

#4. Reduce the risk security threats and revenue spend in rectifying them

Undoubtedly, enterprises today generate vast amounts of data across channels and systems. However, often they either cannot bring it together onto a single platform, effectively study and derive actionable insights from it, or enforce stringent data safety protocols to prevent data loss, leaks and associated security threats. Hence, to safeguard your data, MuleSoft Salesforce integration benefits provide you with robust security features ensuring that data is protected as it flows through the integration solution.

#5. Seamless coordination across the organization

Business requires seamless communication and coordination between teams owing to interdependent tasks, which often isn’t a possible solution due to existing data silos, resulting in poor visibility of activities, adversely affecting the ability to make decisions. Enterprises with diverse service portfolios must connect their IT department tools with Salesforce via MuleSoft to meet specific data and reporting requirements.

What are the Salesforce MuleSoft integration best practices?

Salesforce MuleSoft integration empowers enterprises to build strongly connected systems. If as a business you’re looking to explore more around combined solutioning, here are some of the MuleSoft Salesforce integration best practices recommendations:

#1. Understand end-to-end business requirements: Before starting the integration or connectivity, both Salesforce and MuleSoft must have a basic understanding of business use cases, data elements,, orchestration and transformation is needed.

#2. Segregate responsibilities: MuleSoft and Salesforce need to segregate the tasks between them to define the workflow and data transformation. For example – MuleSoft is automating the data which Salesforce must save on its CRM.

#3. Security: A business has to choose the right technology before integrating Salesforce and MuleSoft. The connector must be secure, reliable, and authenticated in the highest possible way.

#4. Environment Mapping: Illustrate with a diagram about workflows clarifying data flow between MuleSoft environments and Salesforce systems exposing potential issues in connectivity. So mapping out how the strategies will work and interact with each other.

#5. Property Mapping: Mapping external systems data with Salesforce is one of the most important steps. We have to document all external data systems with Salesforce properties so that it will ensure the completeness and quality of the data.

Salesforce MuleSoft integration use cases

The power of connected data is required across all industries, and with the robust integration between Salesforce and MuleSoft, businesses can transform their operational productivity for higher success. Here are some of the use cases for applications connectivity, MuleSoft Salesforce integration patterns and the technology used behind it:

#1. Aggregation of data

Enterprises collect huge customer data from multiple channels for semantic purposes. This data needs to be aggregated on a single system for efficient data analysis and processing for further use. The data is aggregated in data warehouses, data lakes, or dashboards, and automated via MuleSoft Salesforce integration patterns, thus saving time and eliminating human errors. Some of the MuleSoft Salesforce integration example where businesses can use data aggregation are:

To create highly personalized customer journeys
Aggregate data from first-party data sources to stay competitive
Create comprehensive reports building a single view of the customer
Collecting sensor data and ERP data for advanced analytics
Preparation of executive sales dashboards
Data migration from on-premises applications to cloud-based data warehouses

#2. Streaming data ingestion

Every industry relies on streaming data, to establish a continuous flow of data generated by various sources. This data can further be processed, analyzed, stored, and acted upon for delivering personalized content for multiple devices. Salesforce MuleSoft integration helps by bringing in real-time data from connected devices to businesses and provides simple reports. Some of the business scenarios where MuleSoft Salesforce integration can help are:

Sensors in vehicles
Finance industries where you can track stock prices and compute risk
Retail industries can combine user click data

#3. Data sync between multiple applications

Data integration tools are used to bridge information silos and leverage leading technologies in the middleware. MuleSoft Salesforce integration ensures the building of business applications that provide real-time insights. For real-time sync, it can further be classified into two patterns:

Synchronized data transfers: When the receiver of the information requests data transfer and waits until the sender transmits the information. For example, checking a prepaid balance for your SIM card. Some of the business scenarios where synchronized data is used are:

Generating sales reports from the CRM system
Searching for a customers invoice within the ERP system
Patient’s record

Asynchronous data transfers: The target gets the information without acknowledgment in integrating asynchronous data. The source sends the data and does not experience any wait time. Also known as the fire and forget pattern, where you can integrate large amounts of data with the help of MuleSoft. Salesforce MuleSoft integration ensures the messages are processed correctly. Some of the business use cases where it is used are:

To send promotional texts or emails to customers
Processing insurance claim receipts

#4. Sharing data with external partners

Data sharing with your external business partners, such as suppliers, contractors, and the government, is necessary for efficiency in transactions. MuleSoft Salesforce integration makes it easy for organizations to securely share huge data, eliminating data silos for internal and external partners. Some of the MuleSoft Salesforce integration example are:

Purchase order data shared with suppliers
Invoices for payment data purposes with your suppliers
Sending tax information to government agencies

#5. Bulk data movement

In bulk/ batch data, the data is collected and processed to create batch results. The data is drawn from the systems and organizational data stores to process large data efficiently. It works well in scenarios where real-time data processing is not required, and data can be analyzed historically. It optimizes and provides better utilization of resources as no constant processing is required. Salesforce MuleSoft integration helps in processing your bulk data easily, securely, and cost-effectively. Some of the business scenarios are :

Migration of invoices from ERP to payment systems
Reconciliation and analysis of financial transactions such as ATM or banking transactions
Summarization of shipping and tracking data

#6. Orchestration and data processing

Orchestration is the process of breaking siloed data from multiple sources, combining, organizing, and making it available for data processing. With MuleSoft Salesforce integration, you can easily process your data, maintain compliance with data privacy laws, remove data bottlenecks and enforce data governance. Some of the business use cases are:

Activating new customer bank account- background verification, employment verification, credit score check
New hiring in the company – salary account setup, work locations, IT assets delivery, etc.

#7. User interface integration and mashups

MuleSoft Salesforce integration aggregates content in one place for human consumption, which enhances the user interface. It works as an aggregator of services for multiple functionalities. Some of the common examples of business use cases are :

Mobile applications
Websites
Intranets

#8. Broadcasting events

Events like new hires, expense approvals, payment process, website traffic, etc. MuleSoft Salesforce integration identifies, captures, and notifies events to downstream consumers and uses this data for further analysis. Some of the use cases for broadcasting events are :

Tracking shipments
Sending notifications to customer
Promotional notifications
Inventory updates
Website traffic surge user clicks or downtime

Partner with us to unleash the power of Salesforce MuleSoft integration

Salesforce MuleSoft integration is the best choice when dealing with complex systems to improve siloed environments and prioritize the customer experience. We can help you with digital transformation, drive innovation, and create a connected customer experience. With our certified experts, you can leverage Salesforce MuleSoft integration services to boost productivity and help businesses build an integrated approach that is reliable and scalable.

Boost system connectivity with MuleSoft Salesforce integration

Arif Khan

System Analyst

Arif Khan has 7+ Year experience with architecture and developing highly scalable and available product engineering and digital transformation systems. He is a Research and development expert with Mulesoft, AWS services, System Architecture, and DevOps. He is an expert in translating business requirements into technical solutions and is fanatical about quality, usability, and scalability. Connect with him on LinkedIn.

When it comes to naming the leading eCommerce platforms, Adobe Commerce is known for its connected shopping experiences across channels, geographies, and new brand sites. In fact, Adobe Commerce currently powers more than 141,800 websites worldwide, becoming the 4th largest online retail platform. However, the real benefit of Adobe Commerce isn’t only with its strong native setup, but also its powerful technical SEO capabilities such as easy accessibility of server logs, flexible testing around link crawling, and complete control of multi-domain sites amongst a few.

For eCommerce retailers staying on top of SERPs is as important as delivering personalized shopping experiences, especially when reports suggest that 37% of all traffic to eCommerce sites come from search engines. With Adobe Commerce, you get the best of both worlds, a headless, microservices-led, and cloud-based eCommerce solution with competitive eCommerce SEO functionalities.

Here we discuss how online retailers can improve their eCommerce SEO and how Adobe Commerce helps you achieve your SERP goals.

But first, why does eCommerce SEO matter?

eCommerce SEO helps you to improve the visibility and searchability of your online store, making it easier for potential customers to find your products and services. By optimizing your site for search engines, you can increase the organic traffic on your website, which can lead to more sales and revenue. Additionally, a good SEO strategy can help your brand to build trust with your customers. Here are a few reasons why eCommerce SEO is important:

Increased brand visibility: A higher ranking in SERPs means that an online store is more likely to be seen by potential customers. This can help drive more traffic to the site and increase the chances of making a sale.
Superior user experience: SEO can help ensure that an online store is easy to navigate, loads quickly, and is mobile-friendly. This can lead to a better user experience, which can help increase the chances of a customer making a purchase.
Cost-effective: SEO is a cost-effective way to drive traffic to an online store. Unlike paid advertising, SEO can help an online store get found by customers who are actively searching for products and services.
Increased brand awareness: By appearing at the top of SERPs, an online store can increase its brand awareness. This can lead to more loyal customers and can help increase the chances of repeat sales.

How is Adobe Commerce well-positioned to accomplish your eCommerce SEO goals?

Of course, technical SEO is not the only reason why you must pick Adobe Commerce. But, if you’re looking to revamp your eCommerce site or wish to make more of Adobe Commerce than its default settings, the following points will help you understand its powerful eCommerce SEO capabilities.

Its robust nature allows you to seamlessly integrate with required high-quality extensions.
Its multi-domain nature allows you to host multiple international sites, while customizing their meta titles and descriptions without any domain migration.
Utilize server logs and tools like Google Search Console to assess your site’s performance, its crawlability, and issues that require immediate attention.
Seamlessly and easily integrate with custom data layer and analytics tools to manage tags, conversions, and sales.
Custom admin settings provide complete control over what content is being indexed or crawled
Make sure your site is mobile-friendly and has a fast loading speed.
Use alt tags to describe the images on your site, as this can help search engines understand the content of your pages.
Use internal linking to help search engines discover the different pages on your site and understand their relationship to each other.
Use header tags (H1, H2, etc.) to structure your content and make it easier for search engines to understand the main topics covered on your pages.

While these are only some points that underscore the potential of Adobe Commerce SEO, we will cover all online retailers can accomplish top search rankings and high traffic with its technical SEO.

How to manage your eCommerce SEO with Adobe Commerce?

Adobe Commerce is a more functional and easy-to-use dashboard with competitive meta-data capabilities. With minimized JavaScript and security improvements, you improve your site’s performance, positively impacting your eCommerce store’s rank on search engines. It provides you with canonical tags to prevent content duplicacy. And the best part, it is perfectly optimized for mobile devices and screens, improving your overall traffic and on-the-go experiences.

Long story short, the better your Adobe Commerce SEO is, the higher it will appear on search engines. The following are some ways you can improve eCommerce SEO on your Adobe Commerce site.

#1: Content management

The powerful Page Builder feature of Adobe Commerce allows you to drag-and-drop blocks for insertable headings (H1, H2, etc.), widgets to insert content to product pages, alt texts for images, meta titles & descriptions, and so on. Page Builder allows you to create best-in-class shopping experiences without developer support.

#2: Leverage user-generated content for higher sales

User-generated context helps you to generate more promising content on your product pages, one that will directly result in sales. As more than 25% of product searches are done via images, allowing users to upload real-time photos will boost your chances of sales. With the Product Reviews tool, you can enable your eCommerce store to showcase product reviews with ratings. Moreover, you can also specify the SEO guidelines for such user-generated content with this easily configurable tool.

#3: URL management

Adobe Commerce allows you to establish complete control over your URLs such as the ability to customize the URL format for products, categories, and other pages. This allows for creating URLs that are easy for users to understand and remember and that accurately reflect the content of the page.

301 Redirects: When you move your pages to a new destination, you have to direct the search engines to the new page, which is achieved by 301 redirects. In terms of SEO, 301 redirects instructs search algorithms to index and rank the new page. You can master 301 redirects with Adobe Commerce flexibly and scalably.

Either, admins can rewrite URLs for products, categories, content pages, custom URLs, and so on.
Or, you can automate the 301 redirect creation so when you change a product URL, a 301 redirect is added by default.

SEO-friendly URLs: It is advised to use short, descriptive, and keyword-driven URLs. Ensure that the URLs are relevant with your site’s content & structure and include your focus keyword that you’re trying to rank for. With Adobe Commerce

You can employ the URL key feature to optimize your URLs internationally for product, category, and CMS pages.
You can add suffixes to your product or category pages such as .html.
Remove file names from your URLs via Web Server Rewrites

#4: HTML tags, schema and structured data

While users mostly concentrate on what’s on the product pages, search engines need other kinds of information not visible to shoppers. However, this information makes it easy for search engines to understand what a page does and its about.

With Adobe Commerce SEO, you can optimize your page titles and meta description for products, categories, and CMS pages.
Integrate with popular third-party tools, to quickly create meta templates for different pages, which can be really time-saving if you have thousands of products in your store.
With the Product Schema feature available by default in Adobe Commerce, to add schema markup to your page inline. However you can use extensions to enable schema markup in Google’s JSON format.
In Adobe Commerce, structured data can be added to a webpage using the schema.org vocabulary, a set of tags and attributes that can describe different types of content, such as products and reviews.
You can add Alt Text to your product, category, and CMS pages and if no Alt text is available, Adobe Commerce will automatically add product name to images (not for CMS pages).

#5: Crawling and indexing

Crawling refers to the process by which search engine bots (also known as spiders or crawlers) visit a website and follow links to other pages within the site. The bot then retrieves the content from each page and adds it to the search engine’s index. On the contrary, indexing refers to adding the content retrieved during the crawling process to the search engine’s database. The search engine then organizes the content in the index based on relevance and other factors, so it can be easily retrieved when a user performs a search.

In Adobe Commerce, the crawling and indexing process is mainly done by search engines, but there are ways to improve the process.

Canonical tags: This is a HTML code that tells search engines if it is the master page or another page is the master page. Adobe Commerce natively supports canonical tags on product and category pages. Adobe Commerce SEO will automatically use domain and URL Key for product and category pages.
Adding meta robot tags: You can add meta robots no-index and no-follow directives to your product and category pages of your Adobe Commerce store. All you have to do is set the robots.txt contents to your store admin panel and set the instructions for index, follow, no-index, or no-follow to it.
XML sitemap: This sitemap lists all the images and pages on your website, thereby allowing search engines to efficiently and effectively crawl on your website. Adobe Commerce has native integrations to create and configure sitemaps to your store along with additional features.
HTML sitemap: This list displays the set of pages based on the hierarchy in which they are displayed on the website. You can create an HTML sitemap in your Adobe Commerce store with an extension, control the pages that are included to it, and split sitemaps by store views, etc.
Breadcrumbs: These text links tell a user their current location in the website. These are added to the top of the page and are clickable. These are automatically enabled to your store and work with all custom themes. These are based on the hierarchy of pages on your website.

#6. Site speed

Site speed is an important aspect of any eCommerce platform, including Adobe Commerce. It refers to the time it takes for pages on a website to load for users. A faster site speed can help you to deliver a better user experience and can also help with SEO. Adobe Commerce improves your eCommerce site’s speed by:

Natively optimizing images for faster loading times
Minimizing the use of external scripts and plugins
Employing a content delivery network (CDN) for quick caching
Enabling browser caching
Using a faster web server version

#7: International SEO

Do you have a multi-domain eCommerce site that also sells to international customers? Well, then Adobe Commerce allows you to manage your international sites by providing complete control in terms of domain name, language, and location. Let’s see how.

Hreflang tag: This tag allows search engines to know about a site’s global and regional language variations of the URL. Although Adobe Commerce doesn’t offer natively support for Hreflang tag, you can implement it by HTML in the sitemap or the head of the page.
Meta content: When your site appears in a search, a brief meta description summary shows below your header. This summary helps readers decide if this is the proper link to click on by providing a brief overview of your website and its contents. Adobe Commerce SEO allows you to add different meta content and tags for all your domains from a single dashboard.
Language translation: By default, Adobe Commerce allows you to enable translations for pages and products via theme strings in the admin panel.

#8: On-page eCommerce SEO and technical SEO

On-page SEO refers to optimizing the content and structure of a website to improve its ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs). This includes optimizing titles, descriptions, headings, and keywords. Technical SEO refers to optimizing a website’s underlying code and infrastructure to improve its search engine visibility. This includes optimizing the website’s structure, URLs, and navigation and ensuring that the website is mobile-friendly and loads quickly. In Adobe Commerce:

On-page SEO can be optimized by using the built-in SEO features in the platform, such as setting up meta tags and optimizing product and category pages.
Technical SEO can be optimized by ensuring that the website is mobile-friendly and loads quickly, using clean and structured URLs, and setting up proper redirects. Additionally, implementing AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) can help to improve the website’s load time on mobile devices.

Improve your eCommerce SEO game with Adobe Commerce

While your product quality might be top-notch, until you market it effectively, your prospects will not know about it. Therefore, to garner maximum traffic to your Adobe Commerce website, you need to leverage Adobe Commerce SEO best practices to deliver personalized content and offer competitive shopping experiences. Our experts have worked with several brands to help them optimize their eCommerce SEO, boost search performance, and improve online sales. Connect with our professionals to know how you can improve your SEO game of your Adobe Commerce store.

Level up your eCommerce SEO game with certified experts.

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There was a time when generic marketing could do the deed for enterprises. However, today marketers live and breathe in an economy of change- change in market trends, change in consumer behavior, change in client expectations, change/advancement of technologies. It has become rather imperative that marketers must employ intelligent, analytically-driven, and automated solutions to distinguish themselves from the pack. Particularly, today is the time for the marketing automation process and leading platforms like Adobe Marketo Engage.

The focus in 2023 and beyond is on superior customer experiences, positive ROIs, and accelerated growth. And along with Adobe Marketo Engage marketing automation, marketers can now deliver personalized marketing campaigns and better results. Here we discuss what are the marketing automation trends in 2023 and how Adobe Marketo Engage can help accomplish those goals.

What is marketing automation?

Marketing has always been about two things: improving a user’s understanding of a product/service and influencing them to invest in it. However, as the audience group continues to expand and employ different channels to look for solutions, not all users would resonate with your marketing campaigns. This is where cross-channel personalization becomes really necessary and this is one aspect you can fulfill with marketing automation.

Marketing automation involves automation, analytics, and artificial intelligence delivered across channels through a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform and employed by marketing teams to orchestrate personalized marketing campaigns. From account-based marketing to demand generation, the benefits of marketing automation cover all your marketing goals.

What is Adobe Marketo Engage?

Adobe Marketo Engage is a digital experience platform from Adobe that assists with non-transactional B2B and B2C consumer marketing. A leader as per the Gartner Magic Quadrant for B2B Marketing Automation Platforms, Adobe Marketo Engage helps you deliver the marketing impact you expect while promising a superior digital experience. For marketers who wish to improve marketing ROI, grow lead pipeline and revenue, provide superior user experiences, and maintain pace with innovative tools and technologies, Adobe Marketo Engage and its modern marketing automation features are a smart investment.

Is Adobe Marketo Engage the right tool for my business?

Like all the other things in today’s competitive landscape, Adobe Marketo Engage is not the only marketing automation tool you’ll come across. But why are we pitching this tool and not others? Because Adobe Marketo Engage is not only a tool for markers but professionals involved in demand generation, sales, product management and marketing, and brand administrators.

Of course, your organizational goals, budget, and possible ROI of your use cases will play a predominant role in narrowing down the choices, but if your answers to the following 5 questions is yes, then Adobe Marketo Engage is the right tool for you.

I want to build personalized marketing campaigns, operationalize strategies, and measure my marketing ROI.
I want to align my sales and marketing departments and provide my sales reps with higher insights around prospect behavior for better contextual engagement.
I have teams across countries and regions at different maturity levels.
I want to use the marketing automation platform for different business lines, products, and brands.
I want to align my marketing investments with the sales pipeline and revenue.

The manner in which your company employs Adobe Marketo Engage is vast, depending on the goals you wish to accomplish and the people who use the platform. From lead management,, nurturing, and scoring to bi-directional CRM sync, email marketing, SEO, revenue attribution, retargeting, program and campaign analysis and more, there is nothing that Adobe Marketo and its extensive marketing automation features can’t fulfill.

The marketing automation trends for 2023 and the role Adobe Marketo plays

Now that you know the importance of intelligence and automation in marketing, let’s discuss the top marketing automation trends for 2023 and how Adobe Marketo Engage can help you deliver, achieve, and accomplish your goals.

#1: Personalization and funnel-based content optimization

A report by Adobe states that 72% of consumers state that personalized messaging is what drives user attention and engagement. In 2023 and beyond, marketing personalization will result in higher conversions and better ROIs. However, to deliver on the personalization promise, brands need to look for tools that collect and manage customer data, employ the power of AI to analyze it closely, and optimize/segment content based on different audience groups/behaviors/job roles.

How Adobe Marketo Engage helps:

Leveraging Adobe Marketo’s Web Personalization tool, you can tailor web campaigns (Web Personalization), derive insights on your existing customers and engagement to identify more revenue-driven opportunities (Account-based web marketing), remarket to segmented audiences (Website Retargeting), and utilize AI-driven content recommendations for better site experiences (ContentAI). Other ways you can achieve web personalization in Adobe Marketo Engage is:

With triggers and filters, you can automate account and lead-based experiences while personalizing content to offer only relevant solutions to your buyers.
You can analyze, vertical-related, geolocation-based, and behavioral data even for anonymous visitors to personalize their experiences right from the start.
Test content that works best for your advantage with A/B testing and automated winner selection.
Leverage the power of Adobe Sensei to automatically identify the best performing web content and scale your efforts across verticals.
Assess the performance of your personalized web campaigns with reports on website campaign performance, impression, clicks and conversions, top referrals, and so on. You can view all these insights on a single dashboard.

#2: Automate cross-channel marketing efforts

Today, consumer journeys span across more channels than ever. From social media, search/display ads, and emails to mobile, in-person events, and so on, marketers struggle to keep tabs on their customers/buyers throughout these ever-evolving number of channels. Cross-channel marketing is one of the latest trends in marketing automation. Therefore, an imperative task for marketers will be to derive more engagement across the complex user journeys and interact with buyers regardless of where they are.

How Adobe Marketo Engage helps:

With Adobe Marketo, you can organize, manage, and track all your cross-channel marketing activities from a centralized hub. Let’s explore how:

Email Marketing: You can design responsive and personalized emails (Rich Text and HTML) with dynamic content based on the viewer in minutes. All these emails can be previewed for different screen sizes. Based on when the engagement happens, you can trigger emails across channels based on a user’s activity/inactivity. You can test your emails via A/B testing to assess which version performs better and generate performance insights reports or view the same on a single dashboard.
Event Marketing: You can set up, automate, and personalize events (both online and offline) in Marketo in minutes. From sending invitation emails and post-event emails to setting up engagement triggers, scoring attendees, and providing Event Check-in from mobile, you can accomplish all. You can also leverage pre-built event partner integrations to automate activity and workflows.
Text Messaging: Trigger personalized text messages based on user behavior across channels to boost SMS engagement. Marketo’s built-in compliance management allows buyers to opt-in and continue their journey on their preferred channel. Marketers can also measure the effectiveness of their SMS messages via Marketo’s advanced marketing analytics.
Social Media Marketing: Adobe Marketo allows you to launch social media sweepstakes and referral campaigns with social ad form fills from within the platform. Moreover, you can directly publish landing pages on social channels enabled with social sharing buttons. And when it comes to analyzing your social efforts, you can leverage Marketo’s detailed analytics with social audience, social share, and social funnel metrics.
Paid Marketing: Adobe Marketo offers native integration of paid social media channels such as Google AdWords, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Once integrated, you can sync audiences across platforms and target known and anonymous visitors with personalized ads. You can integrate your lead gen forms to your Marketo instance and set up triggers to move them to email or nurture programs. The best part, marketers can analyze and optimize their ad spend using multi-touch attribution.

#3: Automate lead generation, segmentation and targeting workflows

A lead generation strategy that leverages a clear pipeline and results in high-quality leads is one marketers dream of. With increasing competition, lead generation channel evolution, and changing user browsing patterns, enterprises need to look out for personalized approaches to create demand and forge meaningful connections with multi-channel buyers.

How Adobe Marketo Engage helps:

When it comes to lead generation as one of the marketing automation trends, Adobe Marketo Engage can help you generate high-quality leads, send more marketing qualified leads (MQLs) to the sales team, utilize lead scoring and nurturing to qualify sales-ready leads, and positively impact your marketing ROI.

Targeted personalization is one of the most powerful marketing automation features and with Marketo Engage you optimize content across emails, landing pages, social media channels, webpages and more.
With powerful behavioral, geographical, and firmographic analytics, you can listen to customer behavior and implement changes in real-time.
Leverage advanced lead scoring models to qualify leads before sending them across to the sales team for conversions.
Optimize and test emails, landing pages, calls to action, content, imagery, etc. to garner maximum high-quality leads via A/B testing and multivariate testing and send the winning version to all your prospects.
You can set up triggers and filters to assess lead engagement and only send marketing qualified leads (MQLs) to the sales team.
Enable a seamless bi-direction sync of account lists, campaign activity, and engagement between your CRM and Adobe Marketo Engage.
Create granular audience segments based on their real-time engagement across the journey to set up dynamic marketing strategies.

#4: The implementation of AI marketing automation

An Adobe survey states that 91% of top-level enterprises believe in the power of AI for marketing automation and expect to use leading technologies in several marketing processes from customer acquisition, audience targeting to customer engagement, retention, account-based marketing, and ROI measurement. With AI marketing automation and machine learning, marketers can execute complex strategies and build a culture of successful results and high-quality leads.

How Adobe Marketo Engage helps:

Adobe Marketo Engage leverages the power of Adobe Sensei, the AI and machine learning tool to personalize experiences, optimize content, and measure marketing performance across channels. You can implement AI and machine learning in Adobe Marketo to accomplish the following tasks:

Predictive Content: Marketo Engage along with Adobe Sensei analyzes behavioral, demographic, and firmographic data to identify the right piece of content for your users and prospects and deliver it to them across the right channel at the right time. Marketo scans and catalogs all your content assets and automatically adjusts to your prospect’s preferences as they move across their journey.
Predictive Audiences: When hosting an event, Adobe Marketo identifies people in your database that are more likely to register or attend without driving opt-outs. Predictive Audiences in Marketo Engage also pinpoints people who will not hit the unsubscribe button when you send them an email that doesn’t resonate with their pain points.
Account profiling: When practicing account-based marketing, AI-led marketing automation via Marketo Engage helps you identify accounts that are almost-ready to convert. With the Account Profiling feature, you can create predictive best-fit lists, cross-sell/upsell lists, and quick-win lists.
This helps marketers devote time engaging the right accounts.

#5: Aligning marketing with sales for improved results

Operational alignment between sales and marketing teams is definitely a recipe for success in 2023 and one of the most advantageous marketing automation trends. Seamlessly connecting your sales and marketing personnel drives growth and helps deliver cohesive experiences. As for lead-generation and revenue growth, a closer alignment between two powerful departments of your organization will result in higher engagement and more informed decision-making.

How Adobe Marketo Engage helps:

When investing in marketing automation, Adobe Marketo Engage is how you can orchestrate an efficient engagement between sales and marketing. The following marketing automation features within the platform helps you fulfill this marketing automation trends for 2023:

Sales Insight: This feature is baked into your CRM and helps share valuable insights with sales regarding lead behavior and engagement. Salespeople can track lead activity like email opens, website visits, form fills, etc. to assess the next step they wish to take. They can send custom emails, run multi-step campaigns, and assess a lead’s interest in the product/service. All this data is synced between Marketo and your CRM, resulting in seamless cross-channel experiences.
Sales Connect: Empower your sales reps with real-time detailed insights about high-scoring leads from both sales and marketing touchpoints via Sales Connect. Marketers can also assess sales engagement in the Activity Log across channels to formulate the right experiences for each prospect. As complete visibility is enabled for both sales and marketing, they can identify the best ways to convert leads and drive revenue.
Targeted Account Management: The combined power of automation and data analytics in Adobe Marketo helps you forge custom inbound and outbound ABM strategies. As Marketo Engage seamlessly integrates with your CRM, it allows both salespeople and marketers to work together, focus on high-value accounts, launch personalized journeys across channels, and strive towards the common goal. The best part, all this information is available on a single dashboard for both your sales and marketing people to assess attribution and ROI of combined efforts.

Accomplish your sales and marketing goals with Adobe Marketo Engage

When it comes to marketing automation, there is no other platform as versatile, data-driven, and resilient as Adobe Marketo Engage. In fact, this powerful platform from Adobe lets you fulfill all marketing automation trends in 2023 and beyond. Although we’ve summarized quite some powerful marketing automation features and functionalities of Adobe Marketo Engage, our experts can walk you through a live demo of the platform and how it can add value to your enterprise’s marketing and sales goals.

Himanshu Ganoliya

Technical Lead – MarTech

How much value can Adobe Marketo bring to your organization?

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Salesforce is one of the most powerful and adaptable business platforms available today. From customer relationship management, digital commerce, to marketing, sales, customer service, analytics, and more, Salesforce has a solution for full-suite organizational needs. However, frequent upgrades, new features, and even the initial transition of utilizing Salesforce can be difficult for enterprise owners. If not properly supported and maintained, implementing Salesforce can become challenging, often resulting in the under-utilization of the Salesforce licenses.

Therefore to leverage Salesforce to its fullest potential, many organizations have adopted a range of Salesforce management and maintenance approaches, including hiring a full-time administrator, outsourcing to an IT company when an issue develops, and depending on their in-house IT professionals.

However, as more businesses seek to be more proactive and strategic in orchestrating their customer experience, it makes sense to connect with trusted Salesforce partners and explore everything enterprises can achieve with its platform. As a result, Salesforce managed services have become a more attractive solution for many businesses.

What are managed services?

To understand what Salesforce managed services include, it is imperative to first walk through the terminology of managed services. It is the process of hiring a team or a vendor to assist with the day-to-day management of your IT environment. It enables a company to onboard a highly skilled team of consultants and specialists that operate as an extension of their in-house team.

What is Salesforce managed services?

Salesforce managed services are a flexible, scalable, and cost-effective methodology of managing, supporting, and expanding the capabilities of your Salesforce investment. This allows you to focus on key competencies with a team of specialists handling maintenance, upgrades, and constructing new blocks to accommodate new business processes and invoke new functionalities.

This approach helps you to implement new functionalities and features of the Salesforce platform, regularly upgrade your versions as per updates, and make changes across several clouds without relying too much on your in-house Salesforce capabilities and technical skills.

What is included in Salesforce managed services?

Salesforce managed services comprise of end-to-end solutions to implement and maintain the platform. Here are some of the solutions offered as a part of our Salesforce managed services, which help your business to thrive:

#1. Bespoke consultation, strategy, and roadmap formation

As a leading Salesforce consulting partner, we help enterprises to zero-in the right Salesforce features for their business. We first analyze your operations to evaluate the issues that can be solved by Salesforce. Once we know how Salesforce can help your business, we develop a Salesforce customization roadmap and engage a tech team for development, deployment challenges, upgrades, migrations, and maintenance. Overall, our goal is to help you increase business productivity and maximize the platform’s output.

#2. Seamless implementation of Salesforce core clouds and other systems

The biggest USP of Salesforce is its ability to customize and adapt as per the specific business needs. Whatever goals you wish to accomplish, Salesforce has the right solution for you and because you can tailor it for your enterprise, it functions as an innate part of your business operations. Our Salesforce implementation services include almost everything required to start with the Salesforce, its core clouds, and other systems, including consultation, migration, customization, development, and deployment.

When deploying Salesforce, it is usually better to hire an MSP rather than rely on the platform’s admin resources. MSPs help to reduce implementation costs, have a team to manage business requirements, and are agile in risk management.

#3. Migrating your legacy enterprise system to Salesforce

With our Salesforce migration services, we help you move your legacy data to Salesforce or between two or more Salesforce instances without losing or compromising on data quality. Our managed service providers (MSPs) manage the deadlines, tools/add-ins/apps, data model, data cleansing, security, compliances, data integrity, business continuity, and other variables to ensure successful data migration.

#4. Constant optimization of Salesforce solutions

Optimization is mandatory to continuously enjoy the full benefits of your Salesforce setup. Our Salesforce experts help you optimize things at the technical, functional, and process levels to help you continue enjoying the benefits of your Salesforce investment. We augment core solutions like Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Customer 360, Commerce Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and other tools.

Along with uncomplicated workflows, our Salesforce managed services increase collaborative productivity, resulting in maximum ROI. Our Salesforce experts regularly analyze any new needs and changes based on the latest developments , releases from Salesforce, or additions to the IT stack.

#5. Secure integrations with Salesforce clouds, systems and third-party tools

One of the primary reasons why enterprise systems lack in their digital capabilities is a lack of seamless integration with leading tools. Salesforce allows businesses to integrate apps and services they already use or wish to use seamlessly and easily. With our certified Salesforce experts, we help you integrate core Salesforce clouds, Salesforce tools, and third-party applications for enhanced performance, productivity, and collaboration.

#6. Regular upgradation

This feature allows you to enhance Salesforce functionality via installing custom add-ons, upgrading packages, and other methods. Upgrading the platform ensures that your business is taking advantage of the current industry trends and connecting it with Salesforce for improved performance.

#7. Support and evolution

Your Salesforce solution could have continuous support. By improving workflows, our Salesforce managed services help you save time on the daily administration routine. Furthermore, we take care of proactive updates of your Salesforce solution to enhance the proper usage of your investment. Similarly, users are trained on both standard and custom functionalities to ensure that the company gets the most out of Salesforce.

#8. Extensive customization of all your Salesforce tools

Invoking the capabilities of Salesforce managed service, we offer a plethora of customization choices for your organization, ranging from apps, campaigns, reports, and email templates to workflows, dashboards, and more.

#9. Data management and analytics

Each team’s and business’s data management requirements are unique. Our Salesforce managed services consultants will assist you in establishing your information architecture and streamlining your data flows as needed.

The different use cases of Salesforce and how core clouds help

In times of uncertainty and cut-throat competition, it has become critical for enterprises to focus on intelligent, efficient, and flexible solutions that fulfills market trends and change in consumer expectations. With Salesforce managed services, enterprises save time and money while automating their operations and letting their workforce focus on intelligent solutions.

As a part of our Salesforce managed services, we help you leverage the following cloud solutions.

#1: Salesforce Customer 360 platform as a single source of truth

While Salesforce must only be one part of your enterprise system, you can leverage its Customer 360 platform to develop a single source of truth for all your operations. With Customer 360 implementation as a part of Salesforce managed services, you can connect your data across sales, service, marketing, commerce, personalize every interaction, and drive significant business growth.

#2: Salesforce Service Cloud to drive improved customer engagement

With Service Cloud’s Contact Center solution, enterprises can deliver proactive and personalized customer services across channels at scale. This improves agent productivity and efficiency by unifying conversations across channels. The Service Catalog feature provides enterprises to automate service requests, saving considerable agent time and energy. Flow Automation automates lifecycles of incident management and customer onboarding.

#3: Salesforce Sales Cloud to unlock extensive opportunities

Sales teams can improve the success rate of their lead to order with the Salesforce Sales Cloud. Sales Cloud centralizes all your customer information, logs their conversations with a company representative, and automates mundane tasks so that you can focus on converting more leads to clients. Akin to order Salesforce platforms, Sales Cloud is easy-to-use and highly customizable, your salespeople can efficiently use the platform.

#4: Salesforce Marketing Cloud to drive marketing ROI

With the personalization and automation attributes of Salesforce Marketing Cloud, marketers can grow their pipelines and reduce the cost of related strategies. They can even share segments with the Salesforce Customer Data Platform (CDP) to deliver omnichannel experiences across video, email, and mobile.

#5:Commerce Cloud to improve online shopping experiences

The composable storefront of Commerce Cloud allows merchants to practice a headless approach and offer connected shopping experiences quickly across devices and channels. Moreover, Commerce Cloud ensures the complete security and scalability of your online site. Its Store Associate feature bridges the gap between physical and online shopping, helps associates in translating insights to meaningful experiences, keeps track of inventory levels, and turns your storefront into a fulfillment center.

#6: Salesforce Mulesoft integration to connect internal and external systems

With Salesforce Mulesoft, you can practically integrate Salesforce clouds and tools with any third-party system and applications. Salesforce administrators can enable pre-build connectivity in Salesforce and Mulesoft developers can maintain them in Anypoint platform, reducing the total implementation and integration time from months to days.

The Salesforce managed services benefits for your enterprise

Salesforce managed services saves you from the costs and hassles of recruiting in-house staff and delivers many other benefits. The entire idea of opting for Salesforce managed services is to help enterprises make the most of their Salesforce licenses and fulfill business use cases with its tools and systems. Here are a few benefits of Salesforce managed services.

Cost-effective: The cost of hiring a skilled Salesforce consultant is a financial burden on a company. Organizations can control their business costs with the help of Salesforce managed services.
Fills skill gap: Companies all over the world have stated that finding a suitable talent who will fit the company’s requirements at the correct pricing has become extremely difficult. Salesforce managed services bridges this knowledge gap cost-effectively.
Continuous updates: Without regular system updates, the system will become vulnerable to major security issues. Fortunately, Salesforce managed services assures businesses of safety and security of your enterprise solutions with frequent updates.
Proactive solution: Previously, most companies had no clear idea of managing critical system procedures, making business management risky. Salesforce managed services safeguards technical investments by increasing operational efficiency and resolving configuration issues.
Scalability: When a company expands its operations, its vision and goals must evolve to meet market demands. Organizations do not need to re-open the employment search for a new post with the managed service package. They only need to update the contract with the existing Salesforce Service operator to ensure a smooth maintenance procedure.

Why choose Ranosys for Salesforce managed services ?

If your organization wishes to leverage the right potential of the Salesforce platform, then managed services are the solution for you. As a trusted Salesforce partner, our Salesforce managed services provide ongoing Salesforce expertise to assist you in managing and maximizing your Salesforce platform to adapt faster and capture more business value.

Know more about our Salesforce managed services.

In a perfect world of digital advancements, global supply chains are in a state of flux. The shortcomings of overloaded warehouses, siloed data, shortage of drivers, shipping delays, geo-political uncertainties, and other related shortcomings have resulted in several supply chain challenges. Even with speedy innovation, many businesses struggle to keep up and reduce their technical debt.

Over time, legacy applications slow down operations, contracts, forms, and result in shipping discrepancies, impacting the overall customer experiences. Naturally, such enterprises look out for related solutions to adjust to this fast-paced demand and supply. With OutSystems supply chain low-code development, you can replace legacy applications, develop order management systems, and improve transparency end-to-end.

In the blog, we take you through the current state of supply chain management, what are supply chain challenges and solutions, and how the OutSystems platform can help ease the situation along with associated use cases.

The current state of the supply chain industry

Even under the best circumstances, the supply chain and logistics industry face security risks, key material shortages, and rapid demand and supply transformation. 2022 was a year with uncertainties and a highly competitive environment, and as we look ahead to 2023, supply chain disruptions are set to stay.

In 2023:

Geopolitical tensions will stay, and essential materials can be inaccessible. Major trade routes could be shut down, and organizations will look for friendshoring or nearshoring relationships where supplied goods will be more secure.
Cybercriminals are likely to damage supply chain networks. They could also hack warehouse equipment like barcode scanners via IoT. Hence strong automation and AI are required to ensure end-to-end transparency and visibility of the supply chain.
The rising impact of e-commerce sales on product manufacturing, and organizations will demand more products to meet the demands. The prevalence of last-minute delivery challenges relies on suppliers that often experience difficulties. Retailers may need to review their inventory list network and create a seamless experience and operational capabilities.

Therefore, organizations need to implement mature, responsive, and agile supply chain planning capabilities.

What are the most concerning supply chain challenges in 2023?

Instead of relying on a patchwork of legacy systems that struggle to meet customer demands, the supply chain and logistics vertical need to leverage and implement evolving technologies. The current supply chain complexity leads to inefficiency, high operational costs, and delayed shipments. Significant challenges a business faces in supply chain management are:

#1. Heavy reliance on legacy applications

Anything that evades tightly scripted time causes vendor issues, shipping delays, and doesn’t take into consideration labor shifts which can lead to huge supply chain disruptions. In 2023, the supply chain companies can face massive challenges in port congestion, shortage of containers, labor, and transport equipment leading to operational difficulties and truck or driver shortages. With the shift from physical in-store shopping to eCommerce, organizations need to use tracking software and modern applications instead of manual processes to overcome these challenges.

#2. Unforeseen Costs

The lack of availability of any one material due to uncertainty like inflation or natural calamities breaks suppliers’ commitments leading to unpredictable costs and expensive product deliveries. Hence it is a must to enable transparent inventories. This challenge calls for automation, machine learning, and predictive analytics to provide a unified view of chain demands and deliver tailored experiences. Also, a focused approach for end-to-end integrated (E2E) solutions to avoid supply chain disruptions.

#3. Increasing order volumes

With the ever-increasing customer demands, businesses cannot maintain already escalating inventory costs and overburdening transactions. As order volumes increase, supply chain enterprises require an automated system that logs in their inventories for every order placed and prevents operational inefficiency or mismanaged supply chain. To handle these, E2E supply chains must leverage software solutions that help them handle ever-increasing order volumes while fulfilling customer expectations.

How OutSystems helps overcome these supply chain challenges: The use cases

With irregularity and disruptions likely to continue, organizations need to practice supply chain digitization at the earliest. And OutSystems low-code platform helps accomplish this digital transformation goal of supply chain by reducing development time, evolving systems and building agile supply chain systems and applications. Some of the use-cases of OutSystems that helps in solving supply chain challenges include:

#1. Supply Chain Optimization: With low-code solutions like OutSystems, you can create legacy-free software that boost supply chain operational efficiency. Through OutSystems high-performance low-code platform you can accelerate integrations with data model consideration, APIs, and pre-built integrations to ensure faster steps and automation. This way, you can partially or fully automate most supply chain tasks like invoicing, inventory management, and warehousing.

#2. Supply chain tracking: Real-time tracking is essential for making the process transparent in the supply chain and provide users with timely updates. With OutSystems, enhanced integration capabilities of low-code allow businesses to improve connections across various systems for easy tracking. It allows maximum supply chain flexibility, IT governance, and integrated cyber security.

#3. Centralized information: For business managers, manual tracking of information amongst warehouses becomes a tedious task and slows down operations. Therefore, developing an OutSystems software that brings together multiple data sources across warehouses and integrates them to a unified tracking system with ERPs is crucial. With OutSystems, supply chain enterprises centralize all their information across warehouses to enable a holistic view of details including notifications about the expiry of products, inventory and product availability, and all the related particulars for teams across cities.

#4. Improved communication between cross teams: Low-code platforms like OutSystems help improve communication between raw material suppliers, warehouse managers, importers, logistics, and distributors located across geographies and cities. It offers a wide variety of user experience elements, such as forms and dialog boxes to provide smooth collaboration between the involved parties. This facilitates better decision-making by creating legacy-free solutions that improves communication between cross-functional teams and employees.

Why enterprises must employ OutSystems for supply chain management

While the supply chain challenges that logistics companies face today can be overwhelming, there are technology-driven solutions to help overcome these challenges through OutSystems. The low-code platform manages supply chains that are agile and predictable. Some of the benefits of choosing OutSystems as a platform for your supply chain enterprise are:

#1: OutSystems improves operational process efficiency

Since organizations have complex and dynamic supply chains that include provisioning, raw material supply, warehousing, and distribution of products to consumers, OutSystems help bring together all these processes under one roof, improve operational visibility and overall efficiency.

Organizations want to increase the resilience of supply chains and meet unique needs effectively. With OutSystems, you can cut down the development time, enabling companies to adapt to market conditions, disruptive events, or evolving marketing strategies.

#2: Unlock the power of digitization for your enterprise systems

Supply chain management demands faster digitization, and with OutSystems, you can make changes easily, avoiding lengthy processes of logistics software. You can adjust the workflow as per your enterprise needs, reducing their dependencies on other departments. Implementing automation and artificial intelligence to your company’s workflows modernizes your legacy systems, allowing for improved supply chain management.

#3: Eliminate data silos between teams

OutSystems-led supply chain applications and tools eliminate data silos between systems and warehouses to unlock better collaboration. This allows you to focus on important tasks and new business opportunities rather than accomplishing traditional routine management.

#4: Real-time tracking for employees, partners, suppliers and users

OutSystems ensures real-time sharing of information like orders, payments, shipping, and delays to provide a 360-degree view of details across systems and teams, improving collaboration between people, processes and vendors.

Simplify supply-chain management with OutSystems and Ranosys

Every supply chain and logistics company needs to enforce stringent supply chain management protocols to improve inventory management, automate order fulfillment, and step towards a legacy-free future. Through OutSystems high performance low-code, organizations can build adaptable applications fast to improve process efficiency and enable seamless collaboration. As an OutSystems Partner, we help supply chain enterprises in modernizing their legacy applications for better logistics, boost your ability to manage processes systematically, and increase overall ROI.

Know how OutSystems assists with supply chain management.

When it comes to delivering memorable storefront experiences, merchants along with B2C commerce developers put their best foot forward (or in terms of the solutioning, bring together client and server code) to make this happen. As an eCommerce development agency, we are often asked to develop custom functionalities or seamlessly integrate with third-party systems for a competitive digital experience. And in the case of a leading eCommerce platform like Salesforce Commerce Cloud, this goal is accomplished via SFCC cartridge.

Here, we’ll be discussing Salesforce Commerce Cloud cartridges, its importance, and proper development and implementation procedures.

What is a cartridge?

Think of a cartridge as a container that contains code scripts, templates, controllers, form definitions and more, all of which is required to either extend a functionality or integrate with external applications. Similar to a container, it consists of folders and subfolders ready for deployment to an SFCC store. Remember, every storefront has at least one cartridge, however, mostly, it contains multiple cartridges.

There are two types of cartridges –

Generic cartridge: It contains generic or usual business functionalities that can be reused and deployed on many sites.
Application-specific cartridge: These cartridges are specific to a site and consist of merchant or storefront-specific functionalities of an eCommerce store.

What is an SFCC cartridge?

Salesforce Commerce Cloud as a B2C and B2B commerce platform needs no introduction. An offering from world’s #1 CRM, Salesforce, SFCC is known for its highly flexible and customizable architecture and is a digital commerce solution of choice for many leading brands and merchants.

As market trends and consumer demands rapidly evolve, it becomes imperative for merchants to implement new functionalities and features and offer desired digital solutions to their shoppers. Like other eCommerce platforms, Salesforce Commerce Cloud also offers extensions and third-party integrations via SFCC cartridges. A Salesforce B2C Commerce cartridge will improve the overall performance of your SFCC solution, depending on the feature you wish to implement. And since a Salesforce cartridge is deployed along with its structured folders and subfolders, it promises code, efficiency, and smoother organization.

Salesforce Commerce Cloud cartridge development

As said before, an SFCC cartridge is used to invoke a new business functionality or feature or to seamlessly integrate a third-party tool, application, or system to the storefront. Many third-party platforms already have their cartridges developed to integrate their system to the SFCC store. However, every now and then, our Salesforce developers are asked to build custom cartridges specific to their requirement and deploy it to the existing cartridge stack on the storefront.

A cartridge stack is an agreeable order of individual cartridges of a B2C Commerce storefront. The base layer is formed by SFCC cartridges that contain basic functionality followed by Plugin cartridges, LINK cartridges, and then finally the custom cartridges that determine the unique branding of your online store.

Subsequently, B2C Commerce developers also can refer to the LINK Marketplace, a robust and rich Salesforce store (as a part of the Salesforce B2C Commerce LINK Technology Partner Program) consisting of readily available Link cartridges, choose, and deploy them to the storefront.

Developing a new merchant or site-specific functionality involves Salesforce cartridge development and testing as per the Storefront Reference Architecture (SFRA) guidelines. Post-development, it has to be uploaded to the server. Moreover, a Salesforce B2C Commerce developer will also configure the cartridge stack for their online site to determine which cartridge runs first after registering the Salesforce cartridges in Business Manager.

Employing SFRA for Salesforce B2C Commerce cartridge development

Earlier, Salesforce Commerce Cloud was known as Demandware and leveraged SiteGenesis as its underlying code architecture. However, as the market progressed and higher importance was placed on customer experiences, merchants witnessed challenges around SiteGenesis’ performance and scalability, Salesforce went ahead with a more modern and composable approach via the Storefront Reference Architecture (SFRA).

Although we scripted an entire resource on the benefits of SFRA and why merchants should migrate from SiteGenesis to Storefront Reference Architecture (SFRA), its speed and performance improvements with a mobile-first responsive approach offers a better and more optimized experience across channels, devices, and screen sizes. Its MVC architecture and modular tech stack of JavaScript controllers, HTML5, CSS3, and Bootstrap Mobile Framework delivers user-driven experiences and boosts conversion rates.

With SFRA and the cartridge stack, our Salesforce B2C cartridge development team builds custom cartridges with specific features from ground up. The cartridge stack determines which server-side code runs. SFCC cartridges earlier in the path override the functionality of those later in the stack. With SFRA, every storefront has a base set of cartridges over which the custom Salesforce B2C cartridge is stacked.

Getting SFCC cartridges certified and approved by Salesforce

Every Salesforce B2C Commerce cartridge developed has to be first approved and certified by Salesforce. Every Salesforce Partner needs to strictly adhere to the cartridge development guidelines, incorporating the best practices as set forth. Our team has worked along with several clients to get their cartridges approved and certified. Moreover, we are also adept with publishing the cartridge to the Link Marketplace.

Case Study: Developing a custom SFCC cartridge for Pace Payment

Summary: Drawing on Ranosys’ expertise of Salesforce B2C Commerce Cloud SFRA cartridge development, Pace Now offers SFCC merchants an easy and seamless way to integrate Pace to their eCommerce stores.

Challenge: A popular payment solution, Pace offers shoppers to pay for their purchases in three installments over a 60-day period. However, the absence of a readymade SFRA plugin for SFCC merchants meant that the latter had to consume APIs to implement Pace payment solutions to their online stores. Therefore, Pace wanted to improve this implementation for merchants with a Pace Payment SFRA cartridge that demanded no coding or development initiatives.

Result: Our certified experts developed an SFCC cartridge for Pace that is easy to integrate with SFCC storefronts without any rigorous coding work and allows shoppers with the flexibility to complete their purchases and pay in installments. Moreover, our team also implemented the plugin in the latest stable SFRA version 6.0.

Does your business require a Salesforce B2C Commerce cartridge?

As a merchant, you will be extending the functionalities of your SFCC store to offer better shopping experiences. However, with SFCC cartridges, developed and deployed by a trusted team of experts, you can easily accomplish this goal. As a trusted Salesforce Partner, we can help build custom cartridges, manage LINK Marketplace cartridges, upgrade SFCC cartridges as per new Salesforce releases, and easily launch new cartridge versions to your storefronts. Connect with our experts and we’ll help you develop custom Salesforce B2C Commerce cartridges.

Partner with us for SFCC cartridge development.

Know more about MACH Commerce for MAX results.

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Today’s digital commerce industry is driven by perfection from customer experiences to marketing strategies, eCommerce features, omnichannel solutions, and mobile adaptability. Brands believe that if their solution is not magical or perfect enough, customers simply will replace it for a brand that closely aligns with their demands. However, today, monolithic systems have become obsolete, tedious to maintain, and simply too old and rigid. They don’t possess the scalability, flexibility, and agility demanded by modern experience-led enterprises. And this is where MACH commerce comes into play.

With the increasing touchpoints and the necessity of rendering personalized services every time and everywhere, brands find it increasingly difficult to test new features, integrate new platforms and systems, and implement changes as per the market trends with inefficient, time-consuming, and burdensome monolithic systems. Here we discuss the challenges faced by businesses still reliant on their monolithic structures.

The traditional commerce system of monoliths is no longer promising enough

Unlike MACH commerce, Legacy systems or applications operate on a tightly knit front-end and back-end. That means anytime you want to modify a part of the core system, you will have to run and deploy the entire procedure again, not just the modified component. In addition, it is a challenge for enterprises that must evolve continuously and adapt to the market. As technologies complicate further, businesses will need to support everything that comes their way, which will be complex with outdated systems and architectures.

In addition, monolithic structures pose challenges for developers as well.

Lack of agility: In a monolithic architecture, there are separate teams for the front-end, back-end, or database. So, tasks must be shared across different teams whenever a modification request is made, which delays the rolling out of new features or leads to missed business opportunities.
Scalability issues: For consistent business growth, scalability is imperative. However, adding more servers or scaling up can only be achieved horizontally with monolithic systems. It creates more issues than solving them.
Fragile interdependency: In a monolithic architecture, the system’s components are highly associated and dependent on each other, unlike an headless commerce architecture, resulting in a single point of failure. Even if any system has a minor issue, the entire architecture is compromised. It hampers developer productivity and prevents them from digging deep into the systems for issue solutions in case anything goes wrong, and they have to take responsibility for it.
Repeated system testing: As monolithic architecture is one core unit, if a small system segment changes, the entire application must be tested again. It makes comprehensive and repeated testing mandatory, even when it’s unnecessary. Moreover, since the front-end, back-end, and database are internally dependent, the efforts involved in automatic testing and quality assurance protocols rise by a manifold.
Complex system: A commerce system should be such that it can constantly evolve and maintain pace with changing customer and market demands. However, all such prospects are challenging to implement and manage, even for versatile developers. Eventually, an enterprise, dependent or unwilling to transform its eCommerce legacy system, finds it hard to offer a personalized experience to its customers and scale as per the growing digital touchpoints, translating to a loss in sales, revenue, and ROI customer service base and reputation.

The microservices architecture solves the inefficiencies of the monolithic systems

Organizations need a flexible, agile, and compartmentalized architecture to quickly fulfill customers’ needs and rapidly scale for the future. That answer is microservices.

A microservices system decouples the front-end and back-end, connected only via data layer/API. All the systems work independently, which means they can be developed, deployed, scaled, and managed independently.
In a microservices approach, applications are designed as a set of small services, with each service functioning as a separate unit with its programming language, database, and framework.
With easy scalability, flexibility, and agility, the benefits of a microservices architecture are abundant, but modern brands don’t just need an MSA approach; they need a MACH (microservices, API, cloud, and headless) system.
With a MACH commerce platform, brands enjoy the capabilities of the cloud, the flexibility of microservices, and the freedom to launch digital stores that rapidly anticipate and fulfill consumer behavior and future trends.
Only API-led, cloud-native microservices and headless commerce architectures allow for rapid application development with unified real-time data required by consumer-centric enterprises.

Why does MACH commerce make sense in today’s competitive market?

Once you’ve realized that MACH commerce architecture is the right solution, the next question is, “What next? How should I adopt this system?”

If you’re looking for a MACH commerce platform, in that case, there are only two probabilities: you either work on a monolithic application, or you might have built some existing applications with APIs, but lack the institutional knowledge around how to achieve complete digital transformation. Such modernization is typically centered around the following tracks:

#1. The silver lining of the Cloud-led transformation: Adopting a cloud strategy involves a radical shift in the technical operations, application functionality, and infrastructure costs. However, going to the cloud in digital commerce is more than a lift and shift activity. A cloud-based architecture like MACH commerce empowers your solutions with the following capabilities.

#2. DevOps: Unifying software development (Dev) and software operations (Ops) allow developers to deploy applications in lesser duration and at lower budgets. Modern commerce solutions require frequent modifications and deployment, and DevOps can easily and rapidly fulfill such demands.

#3. Easy scalability during peak traffic: A modern cloud solution should scale up and down as per user requirements to ensure optimal performance at the lowest possible cost. It is one of the most significant benefits of a cloud-based solution. You can scale up your infrastructure during peak traffic times and scale down when needed.

#4. Flexible, rapid, and low-cost development: With SaaS (software-as-a-service) and PaaS (platform-as-a-service) cloud solutions, businesses can focus on coding the applications and configuring them as per their needs instead of leaning their attention toward application deployment, hardware, and software requirements, data storage, and scaling.

#5: Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment: In a monolithic architecture, from ideation to launch, the time taken to introduce applications to the market generally ranged between several months to years. Moreover, this entire cycle must be repeated when a new feature is being deployed or a code block is changed. With the advent of automated technologies, applications can now be changed swiftly with minimal effort leading to several daily deploys.

With CI/CD integration in digital commerce, fixes and updates can now be coded easily and rapidly, moving from the version control to the production stage in minutes instead of months and years with monolithic systems. In a microservices environment, CI/CD includes:

A/B testing: It allows developers to test two or more variants of a page for user experience. The variation that performs better and adds value to the business for a given conversion goal is rolled out to the platform.
Canary Releases: A software testing technique that incrementally rolls out a version to a small subgroup of users before it is rolled out to the platform. If the version performs well, integrates seamlessly with other platforms, and benefits conversions, it can be enforced on the entire infrastructure.
Blue-Green testing : This technique runs two identical production environments: Green- the current version, and Blue- the upgraded version. At any given time, only one production environment is active. You conduct deployment and testing on the blue environment. Once completed, you can switch the router so that all the incoming requests are directed at the blue version, which becomes the current production environment. At any given time, if something goes wrong with your new version, you can immediately roll back to the latest version, i.e., green in this case.

The leading eCommerce platforms for a MACH transformation

Customer experiences across every digital touchpoint drive today’s commerce ecosystem. Brands and retailers can’t do with a subpar or an at-par commerce experience; they must continuously and rapidly drive innovation and omnichannel features.

#1: Adobe Commerce: A leader leading its way to the future of commerce

Adobe Commerce previously known as Magento Commerce, leads the battalion of impeccable customer experiences. This robust, seamless, flexible platform has been fulfilling the needs of business verticals- B2B, B2C, and DTC, you name it. Its headless commerce architecture is a hard-line proposition where merchants explore a mix of services or solutions for their online stores.

Merchants can either construct Progressive Web Application (aka an app that runs as a website) powered by the PWA Studio to create primary site experiences. Merchants can also build custom front ends using PWA Studio for varied breakpoints and web/social/ mobile experiences and/or employ Adobe Experience Manager for a full hybrid deployment. Such competitive flexibility and reduced time-to-market offered by Adobe Commerce’s headless commerce architecture prove its mettle in the dynamic retail landscape.

Adobe Commerce allows for headless deployment using REST APIs and GraphQL APIs. While REST APIs are reliable and powerful, especially during bulk processing, nothing beats the speed, agility, and intuitive developer experience offered by GraphQL APIs.

Learn more about how Adobe Commerce can help you build an immersive digital retail experience.

#2: Salesforce Commerce Cloud: A microservices-led digital commerce revolution

Salesforce Commerce Cloud has fulfilled the commerce goals of several sizable organizations. Known for delivering personalized customer experiences in a developer-friendly way, Salesforce Commerce Cloud uses commerce APIs and other headless deployment options as per merchant goals. Its fast, flexible, and trusted platform comes with a modern development toolset to allow speedy implementations, scaled to the exact needs. So, whether a merchant is building an online storefront, a social store, a web store, or developing a commerce app, Commerce Cloud fulfills all requirements with ease.

With Commerce Cloud’s headless architecture, developer-friendly tools, PWA frontend, AI-powered personalization, and scalable commerce APIs solution, merchants can launch online stores at a reduced time-to-value and total cost of ownership.

Headless commerce storefront runs on managed runtime that allows automatic scaling as business needs grow, even during peak traffic periods. As a fully-managed platform, it allows merchants to run storefront experiences where the backend can be integrated with third-party services like OMS, PIM, and ERP (read about Commerce Cloud and SAP integration) 3X faster via Mulesoft Accelerator.

As an offering from the world’s #1 CRM platform, merchants can integrate Commerce Cloud with Marketing Cloud, Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and Customer 360 Platform effortlessly and seamlessly to gain a complete 360-degree view of their customers.

Read more about Salesforce Commerce Cloud features.

#3: commercetools: The blueprint of modern commerce

commercetools lays the foundation of a modern commerce platform where you can build, grow and scale. Its microservices-based, API-led, cloud-native, and headless capabilities facilitate connecting your internal legacy systems, external API providers, and the commerce platform. With commercetools architecture, retailers can deliver the best commerce experience across several touchpoints on a large scale.

With every aspect of your commerce platform in complete control through commercetools, enterprises can easily lay the foundation of memorable shopping experiences that quickly scale for the future.

Final Outlook

Modern customers want personalized experiences across every touchpoint- social media, website, app, messenger apps, etc. The increasing breakpoints have created a renewed sense of urgency for merchants to build a unified omnichannel presence wherever the customers are. With rising customer expectations, merchants need a sustainable, scalable, and flexible platform that helps them compete, lead consumer-facing applications, and modify their commerce architecture iteratively and systematically. Building digital stores using the MACH (Microservices, APIs, Composable & Headless) approach allows merchants to stay agile and flexible throughout.

With our expertise in world’s leading platforms you can easily lead this retail shift with technology platforms like Adobe Commerce, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, and commercetools.

Want to know more about MACH Commerce?

Learn more about Salesforce for logistics & transportation

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In the digitally evolving world, customer expectations have changed drastically. Now, customers don’t just shop for products, they shop for superior and personalized experiences. The transportation and logistics industry has been taking a significant toll since the rapid expansion of the eCommerce industry, post 2019. The order volumes are at an all-time high with shrinking profit margins for the logistics industry. Customers want a real-time view into the entire supply chain process- from ordering, shipping, and tracking to fulfillment. So, how do you keep pace with the ever-increasing demand while delivering excellent customer experiences? The answer is Salesforce for transportation and logistics industry.

Salesforce CRM for transportation and logistics helps you automate processes, optimize sales and marketing, manage data, and analyze it for strategic business decisions, collaborate with teams, and improve customer service easily and efficiently. Salesforce for the transportation & logistics industry empowers professionals with a robust platform for proper supply chain management, hassle-free customer service, and easy business procedures. Salesforce can transform your B2B sales and provide a 360-view of customers to deliver customized experiences at scale.

Let’s look at how Salesforce for transportation & logistics solves challenges across organizations.

Introducing Salesforce for the transportation and logistics industry

As we move into an era where customer experiences matter more than product attributes and customer expectations evolve every minute, transportation and logistics companies will need to understand their customers deeper to provide tailored and timely experiences. The Salesforce CRM delivers seamless and personalized customer experiences by improving internal business processes. removing operational complexity, breaking down data silos, allowing every member of your team to gain a unified access into customer data, and empower shoppers to track order fulfillment from start to finish.

As a business leader, you can leverage the Salesforce Customer 360 platform by integrating it with your existing systems, migrate your legacy solutions to its SaaS-based cloud ecosystem, all in efforts to improve customer experiences. Salesforce CRM this industry along with its cutting-edge technology features enables easy client interaction, transparency in shipments, streamlined management across the supply chain, and more.

Along with the huge benefits, Salesforce for transportation and logistics mainly focuses on the following:

Automate and manage lead flow to increase revenue
Improve supply management, forecasting, and supply control
Deliver personalized and seamless customer experience
Onboard and train the workforce on the platform
Provide single customer view to entire teams across departments, leading to higher data-driven decision making

Challenges in logistics sector & how Salesforce CRM helps

	Challenge	How Salesforce Helps
Tedious manual processes	The transportation and logistics industry still relies on legacy models and traditional sales practices generating beyond-management paperwork, which is difficult to keep a track of, resulting in inefficient customer support experiences. In the long run, this impacts customer retention numbers.	Salesforce CRM digitizes operational processes to eliminate manual tasks and provide transparency across departments. It helps in replacing paper-based documentation and ensures smooth shipping experiences for customers. You can even explore insights around cost metrics to figure out fake orders and errors in transit which lets you deliver goods on time.
Absence of fleet management in logistics	For an enhanced delivery experience, managers must be able to track the route, monitor the vehicles, volume of goods and idle time. With the traditional approach in logistics organizations are unable to gather information correctly. Hence, in the era of quick delivery some brands are incapable of managing the fleet.	With the help of Salesforce CRM, you can create real-time visibility into fleet management, shipment location, and status. You can create interactive reports, dashboards, and visualizations to gain real-time insights around logistics route, current fleet, and expected deliveries, supporting management in decision-making. Salesforce even empowers you with AI-driven predictive analytics via Einstein AI to forecast trends and customer demands and stay on top of it.
Supply chain disruption	Supply chains are riddled with complexities around demand surge, geographical conditions, traffic, delay in shipments, and so on. As some of these aspects are beyond any control, logistics and transportation service providers find it hard to manage deadlines, complicating the process further. Overcoming this situation is often challenging for logistics and transportation companies.	Salesforce CRM for transportation and logistics deploy fleet management solutions to map data such as GPS location, current weather, speed of vehicle, fuel level, or safety of goods. These insights help in estimating the time duration for delivery of goods and real-time location of the fleets.
Personalization at scale	To create an impact in customers' minds, a brand is always looking for tailored solutions for customers. For the logistics industry creating a smooth shipping experience across every touchpoint builds strong customer trust. But delivering personalization at scale can be challenging.	Salesforce CRM allows us to integrate data and handle logistics issues perfectly. With customer feedback, businesses can improve customer relationships and engagement at scale.
Time management	With the boom in eCommerce businesses worldwide, time management seems challenging for the shipping and logistics sector. Customers don’t want to deal with brands who deliver late or provide an unsatisfactory experience.	Salesforce CRM can assist you in managing records through a single dashboard. It ensures keeping track of lead timelines. Moreover, implementing Salesforce Service Cloud assists in providing the right customer service experience as agents leverage a unified view of customer data including their previous conversations with agents, and then provide the right solution. Agents can even automate call forwarding to appoint it to the right available agent for speedy case resolution.

How is Salesforce CRM beneficial for the transportation and logistics industry?

Salesforce CRM helps companies in gaining a competitive advantage by helping them drive customer experience and loyalty. Its entire suite of innovative Cloud solutions are targeted towards connecting your shipping experience from start to finish.

Salesforce delivers intelligent services in real-time at every stage of customer interaction. It keeps customers engaged with automated quotes, tracking, customization and managed lead flow for seamless experience at scale.
Salesforce gives a 360-degree approach to compete better, meet customer expectations via feedback and suggestions, and automate your supply chain network for efficient operations.
Salesforce’s AI functionality allows quick data analysis to gain deeper insights around agent productivity, attrition and satisfaction of their employees.

Here is how Salesforce CRM drives transformation of the transportation and logistics industry. The implementation of Salesforce CRM drives digital transformation of the transport and logistics industry. With its highly relevant solutions Salesforce offers ample of benefits some of them are:

#1. Empower employees with digital tools: Many companies have remote workforces and often face struggle to keep the department aligned. To keep the workforce productive, Salesforce provides companies digital support capabilities, collaboration tools, and employee support communities from where you can create effective employee onboarding and training programs. This keeps employees effective, connected, and satisfied.

#2. Digitize business processes: Transportation and logistics traditionally relied on paper or spreadsheets resulting in tedious and time-consuming manual handling of operations. Salesforce CRM is a powerful and flexible digital platform that allows companies to automate and streamline business processes. With Salesforce, you can digitize legacy processes involving tons of paperwork with digital records for easy access. This allows them to organize and access their entire business data on a single platform with real-time transparency in shipping journeys at scale.

#3. Connect with ecosystem partners: Since most of the transport and logistics companies are part of complex supply chain networks and must collaborate, Salesforce allows you to automate and consolidate partner information in one place, onboard more partners easily, and maximize revenue. This increases transport capacity and relaxes network bottlenecks by providing API-led system integration solutions and digital collaboration solutions.

#4. Omni-channel service: In the recent digital era, shippers and consignees both need seamless experience and transparency in status of shipping when dealing with order shipments. Both B2B and B2C companies must build uniform supply chains that can be easily scaled up and down as per the current demand. Salesforce helps consolidate all customer information and interactions in a single place to support agents with real-time updates for effective customer service solutions.

The full-suite Salesforce Cloud ecosystem for transportation and logistics operations

Salesforce for transportation and logistics is a popular implementation as it simplifies complex business processes. With Salesforce platforms like Marketing Cloud, Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and Mulesoft Anytime Platform, enterprises can become more responsive, agile, and resilient. The best part- the Salesforce ecosystem makes it easy for logistics and transportation industry to transform their operations, meet customer demands at scale, and improve shipping experiences and efficiency. Salesforce Clouds is making companies more responsive, agile and resilient by optimizing product flow, reducing delays, and meeting the demands. So here are some of the Salesforce solutions that the transportation and logistics industry can implement to improve internal processes, improve order fulfillment, and offer superior experiences.

Salesforce Sales Cloud: Sales Cloud has powerful capabilities that can skill up your sales representatives to close deals faster. It can also help in assisting businesses in converting quotes into actual orders and create accurate funnels. Implementing Sales Cloud in transport & logistics can help to boost sales and increase ROIs.

Salesforce Service Cloud: With a holistic 360-degree view of your customers, you can utilize Salesforce Service Cloud to deliver superior customer services, implement self-service portals, create real-time service dashboards, stay proactive, and assist with easy product returns. Salesforce Service Cloud empowers customer service teams with the tools and information that improves service experiences. When they contact you for help, agents can route them to the right agent, or glance previous transcripts to service them better.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud: Salesforce Marketing Cloud streamlines the online marketing campaign management process. It enables logistics companies to deliver customized campaigns to deliver personalized messages to every customer across the most preferred channels for effective marketing. Salesforce Marketing Cloud in transportation and logistics is how you can attract, recruit and retain more customers and drive sales.

Salesforce Customer 360: Salesforce Customer 360 can help transportation companies to connect data across the ecosystem to enable better collaboration, communication, and data-driven decision making. Customer 360 can unite your teams to accurately manage supply chains, forecast demands and offer connected experiences.

Mulesoft Anypoint platform: For transportation and logistics Mulesoft Anypoint platform seamlessly integrates data and systems both inside and outside of Salesforce, unifying all the partners across on a single dashboard. Mulesoft facilitates connectivity between partners and logistics firms by providing you with business insights all in a single-view dashboard simplifying tasks to deliver customer experiences.

Salesforce CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote): Salesforce CPQ implementation in this industry eases the complex pricing tariffs as per the delivery location. This eliminates manual processes and saves time which can now be spent on driving conversion rates.

Salesforce Einstein AI: Salesforce Einstein AI provides predictive analytics and machine learning tools for the transportation and logistics sector to draw useful insights. It keeps sales representatives informed across every touchpoint.

Partner with us to implement Salesforce in transportation and logistics

Salesforce for transportation and logistics results in a resilient supply chain, enable transparency across departments, network with partners and connect them on a single dashboard, simplify complicated operations, and ultimately offer better shipping experiences. As a Salesforce partner, we understand your concerns around legacy modernization, digital transformation and superior customer experiences. Our Salesforce CRM for transportation and logistics implementation experts assist in enhancing business and boost your ability to manage processes systematically and increasing profits.

Have questions about Salesforce for transportation and logistics?

The healthcare industry is one of the fastest-growing sectors and significantly contributes to the local economy. And today, healthcare service providers are adopting transformative solutions that can assist them in managing patient data securely and integrating various procedures to increase productivity and drive higher value. And this is where Salesforce for healthcare comes into play.

Currently, the healthcare system deals with several issues that drive up its operating costs and reduces overall revenue. A few examples are the lack of communication between medical and non-medical staff, siloed patient records, tedious paperwork, reliance on outdated legacy models, data security issues, expensive medical equipment, and service shortcomings from insurance providers.

To address such challenges and make operations seamless, the healthcare sector needs a cloud-based platform like Salesforce, which can help them overcome inconsistencies and improve patient experiences.

What is Salesforce Health Cloud?

The Salesforce Health Cloud is an innovative Salesforce for healthcare CRM system that empowers similar enterprises to create personalized interactions and improve overall patient experiences. With Salesforce Health Cloud, you can connect people, data, and processes to efficiently acquire, assist, and engage patients throughout their healthcare journey. By providing access to critical data and actionable insights, it also empowers your team to achieve commercial success in the areas of sales, business operations, and patient services.

Salesforce Health Cloud integration with legacy systems

The Salesforce platform’s ability to be highly customized and seamlessly integrated with legacy systems is one of its most significant Salesforce for healthcare benefits. You don’t need to worry about switching to a new enterprise resource planning (ERP), electronic health record (EHR), or electronic medical record (EMR) system because Salesforce Health Cloud integration allows you to link it with your organization’s existing system.

Salesforce Health Cloud is an extension of Salesforce for businesses already using the platform, and it is designed to interact effortlessly with medical record systems. Additionally, Salesforce Health Cloud implementation extends to historical systems, and empowers healthcare professionals to combine patient data from other sources to leverage a unified view of patient profiles.

What role Salesforce plays for the pharma industry

When it comes to healthcare, all that matters is that it should increase patient engagement, care quality, resource utilization, and cost-effectiveness. But there are some challenges that healthcare organizations have been facing. Overcoming these challenges, Salesforce healthcare CRM provides multiple solutions that result in a seamless collaboration between healthcare professionals and ensure an enriching patient experience, always.

Here are a few challenges faced by the Healthcare industry and how Salesforce CRM can help.

	Challenge	How Salesforce Helps
Patient experience	Different stakeholders in the healthcare industry have access to data that is stored in various places,resulting in inconsistent service offerings to the patients.	With Salesforce CRM, you can integrate the patient's experience at various points of their care journey to provide a holistic view to everyone in your team and offer more connected and relevant experiences.
Automated workflows	For healthcare professionals and patients, it is essential to have prescriptions, reports and other medication documentation readily available. However, traditional systems make it complicated and time-consuming for both the professionals and patients.	Automated workflows for prescriptions and patient referrals are possible with Salesforce pharma CRM. These processes acquire patient data immediately, saving both time, resources and overhead costs.
Data security & compliance	Data breach has been one of the major concerns of the healthcare industry. Due to lack of proper security measures, sensitive details of patients are freely accessed by cybercriminals which costs millions in damages to healthcare providers.	With Salesforce Healthcare CRM, you can simplify healthcare processes by encrypting sensitive patient information. It also provides access controls so that only relevant or assigned medical practitioners can see the patient details.
Performance monitoring	In the pharma industry it is very difficult to monitor the need for medical equipment, pre and post-discharged records, track of appointments, staff performance, and more.	Salesforce for pharma has the ability to organize internal teams of caregivers into tasks, allowing them to engage with patients and check on their ongoing treatment and scheduled appointments. Moreover, Healthcare CRM provides a variety of modules to make work easier and raise service quality by storing accurate data and soliciting customer feedback.
Precise and accurate patient records	It is important to create and keep up-to-date patient records that include information about medications, in- and out-patient treatment histories, care provider details, prescriptions and tests, payment information, health insurance, names, and emergency contacts.	With Salesforce pharma CRM you can keep accurate and precise patient information and unify them on a single dashboard, which allows providers to offer specialized and better care services to their respective patients.

What are Salesforce healthcare benefits?

Salesforce is a way for healthcare payers, providers, manufacturers, and businesses in other healthcare verticals to meet their customers’ rising demands, while simultaneously improving overall patient experiences. One of the significant benefits of Salesforce Health Cloud is gaining a holistic view of patients to explore opportunities for communication (both internally and externally) and personalize services/products to suit their medical needs.

So, here are some of the most significant Salesforce healthcare benefits:

#1: Leverage one Salesforce Cloud ecosystem than disparate systems

Challenge: Healthcare organizations must speed up R&D timelines and carefully manage resources to remain competitive in the face of pricing pressures, patent expirations, and the new era of customized medicine.

Solution: Salesforce healthcare CRM implementation partners can help increase patient retention and recruitment by using customized communication solutions, which include Health Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and Experience Cloud. And, Salesforce helps you shorten your time to market by connecting systems and people on a secure platform and getting real-time data from any device and data sources.

MuleSoft also helps you combine data from different systems to gain insights and improve efficiency on a single platform.
Marketing Cloud customizes long-term engagement and targets patients based on trial criteria to yield comprehensive insights.
Salesforce Health Cloud help acts as a central repository for your team and patient data, enabling collaboration throughout the clinical research process.

#2: Effortlessly manage patient expectations

Challenge: Healthcare businesses have a limited opportunity to abandon the conventional healthcare paradigm and innovate in the new and customer-centric digital environment.

Solution: Salesforce for healthcare enhances patient programs while lowering operating costs. Providers can employ Salesforce platforms like Salesforce Marketing Cloud to tailor strategies for every patient and bring in new clients and referrals, such as physician referrals, online marketing, and traditional advertising. This is another area where Salesforce CRM for healthcare thrived.

#3: Improve inbound patient experiences

Challenge: A healthcare organization’s contact center serves as its front door. Healthcare professionals frequently need help understanding a patient’s interactions with the healthcare system. A successful patient access center needs a complete picture of patient data to provide a connected and improved experience. Claims, social media, website usage, and patient satisfaction are all included in this.

Solution: Salesforce allows your agents to have complete visibility into interactions between patients and providers.

The healthcare representatives can readily direct members and patients to the best available level of care.
Care coordinators can provide more on the first call and faster resolutions by looking at this data on a single platform.
Incident calls can be converted into opportunities, and agents can find care gaps to book more appointments and create a highly customized, seamless patient experience. As a result, patient satisfaction and health outcomes will both increase.

#4: Accurately forecast future patient needs and market trends

Challenge: Care management with forecasting is getting more networked and sophisticated as people live longer and have a comprehensive range of care preferences. Care plans must be created by healthcare organizations and shared by doctors, patients, and families.

Solution: Salesforce healthcare CRM can be used for your healthcare business to make forecasts, examine patient behavior, and do much more. You can maintain your predictions with Salesforce by using clearly defined sales stages that are tailored to match your particular language and enlist the assistance of your entire care team. You can get a real-time overview of forecasts made throughout the organization using Salesforce’s healthcare forecasting feature. This features in-line forecast adjustments, single-click digging down, and more.

Leverage Salesforce CRM for healthcare with us

When patient satisfaction and happiness are all you need as a healthcare provider, Salesforce provides cutting-edge, effective results and streamlines operations, which can help you deliver a digital health experience by improving patient access, engagement, and more. As a leading Salesforce for healthcare partner, we have assisted several healthcare organizations in fulfilling their patient’s needs while providing the best healthcare solutions.

Explore more of Salesforce for healthcare solutions

Today organizations collect massive data to understand their customers better, create excellent products, and deliver superior experiences across multiple channels. However, when it comes to segmenting and analyzing this data to derive actionable insights, most enterprises don’t know where to start or what to do. First things first, business leaders need to leverage a competitive data analytics tool and strategy in place to make sense of the data you’re collecting. And this is where the several Adobe Analytics features can help you.

Adobe Analytics is a data analytics tool from Adobe Experience Cloud that helps businesses to bring together data collected from several digital channels, analyze it to derive real-time insights and use it to execute effective marketing campaigns and build better customer experiences. An Adobe product, you can seamlessly integrate it with other Adobe platforms like Adobe Target, Adobe Sensei, Adobe Campaign, Adobe Commerce, Adobe Experience Manager, and more to better target audiences and marketing activities.

With so much noise around data collection, analysis, segmentation, and implementation, here our experts discuss the challenges enterprises face while making data-driven decisions and how Adobe Analytics features and powerful capabilities help personalize experiences for each and every user.

What is Adobe Analytics?

Adobe Analytics allows you to analyze data from multiple sources/channels across a customer’s journey to generate valuable insights and gain a holistic view of the customer. Then, you can tailor your products/services/content to offer superior experiences that match with your users behavior, history, and expectations. Empowered by the Adobe Analytics tool, you can collect, store, process, and quickly analyze behavioral data to initiate data-driven decision making for improved ROIs.

Coupled with in-depth analysis, versatile reporting, and predictive intelligence, businesses can build better customer experiences and improve sales and marketing performances with Adobe Analytics implementation best practices.

Why implement Adobe Analytics for data-driven decision making?

In today’s digital ecosystem, an enterprise cannot just rely on assumptions and predictions while creating competitive customer experiences. Enterprises need concrete data and insights before allocating campaign spends and investing in strategies. Unlike finding a needle in a haystack, marketers need to smartly play the field by measuring the ROI of their performances and assisting enterprise leaders with data-driven decision-making.

Adobe Analytics increases the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns with its powerful capabilities. As a business owner, if you face any of the challenges mentioned below, the myriad of Adobe Analytics features can help to overcome them.

#1. Irrelevant data impacting business decision-making

Challenge: Without relevant and quality insights from the amassed data, business decisions will impact. To make informed decisions, the data collected must be relevant and reliable so as to derive actionable details about user behavior, marketing campaigns, and overall ROI.

How Adobe Analytics help:

1. Multichannel data collection: Adobe Analytics offers multiple ways to collect data from various channels like mobile, web, emails, and campaigns. All this data can be compiled on a single Adobe Analytics dashboard to gain a unified view of customers and marketing effectiveness.
2. Custom variables: It captures the data that matters the most for business. For example, if you want to know your product bestsellers and which search terms they use when browsing products, Adobe Analytics provides you with those insights.
3. Offline data integration: You can integrate any third-party data source to Adobe Analytics to and to gain a complete view of your marketing efforts. Using attributes from all the sources allows you to get insights about customer traits, demographic data or sales stage, etc.

#2. Compromised analysis due to lack of proper tools

Challenge: Often, organizations struggle to perform data analysis due to the lack of proper tools, processes, and people. The absence of in-depth data analysis hampers user experiences and results in higher operational costs.

How Adobe Analytics help:

Leveraging the several Adobe Analytics features, companies can now analyze data, study it to understand user behavior, and implement the founding to overall strategies. This includes:

1. Advanced segmentation: Adobe Analytics segmentation automates data collection, storing, segmenting, and management to help you focus on deriving profits from it. This advanced Adobe Analytics feature helps you evaluate customer behavior for remarketing and leverage the insights to improve visualizations like site design, navigation, content layout, etc. It also enables you to get a comprehensive way by analyzing customers’ online and in-store experiences.
2. Ad-hoc analysis: With the Analysis Workspace feature from Adobe Analytics tool, you can dynamically analyze data tables, visualizations, and components to create breakdowns and segments in real-time. You can also apply customizable default settings for greater conversion and create multiple reports in a dashboard without switching tabs.
3. Cohort analysis: You can analyze a group of people with common attributes, track them, and understand their behavior to build new audiences and improve customer experience with Cohort analysis. This helps in creating effective and budget-friendly marketing campaigns focussed around profits and improve business decision-making.
4. Cross-device analytics: With this out-of-the-box capability of Adobe Analytics that unifies mobile and web interactions of the customer journey to make better decisions with complete data.
5. Customer journey analytics: It provides actionable insights for higher customer conversions through business intelligence and data science to stitch and analyze cross-channel data.
6. Flow analysis: With the flow analysis feature, you can witness customer paths and their current journey stage on your website or app. This ensures the creation of meaningful and personalized customer journeys with different segmentations in the same report.

#3. Getting real-time insights

Challenge: Since AI and machine learning are yet to be implemented frequently to collect, measure, and analyze data, businesses encounter challenges deriving real-time insights about their processes and how to improve their customer experiences.

How Adobe Analytics help:

1. Marketing attribution: Adobe Analytics offers a variety of attribution models to predict user behavior, leading to smarter spending decisions and delivering the right message across user-preferred channels.
2. Anomaly detection: It filters vast data through statistical modeling and machine learning to identify factors that impact processes. Adobe Analytics features automatically detects anomalies with clear visualizations to drive better insights faster. It can notify changes for seasonal events like black friday, the holiday season, and spring break to identify metrics and segments accordingly when used in the analysis workspace.
3. Contribution analysis: Coupled with Adobe Analytics feature of anomaly detection, contribution analysis allows marketers to better understand data and replace complex data with better visualizations to simplify and accelerate decision-making. Contribution analysis removes junk data to get relevant insights using AI.
4. Intelligent alerts: Adobe Analytics lets you monitor data smartly with smart alerts when you are away and notifies you when in case of an uncertainty, for example, unusual traffic on a website.

#4. Siloed analytics

Challenge: Limited information, duplicate data, and departmental inefficiencies are the main causes of siloed analytics, which often leads to miscommunication and inefficiencies. Data silos resulted in partial behavioral views, paralyzing departments from executing effective campaigns.

How Adobe Analytics help:

1. Advertising analytics: When running ad campaigns, Adobe Analytics features allow you to break down data silos and get a clear view of advertising to create data-driven ads for audiences. You can import data from search engine impressions, clicks, cost, etc., to spend effectively on ads.
2. Remarketing triggers: Adobe Analytics lets you take advantage of data in real-time and set up remarketing triggers to send personalized messages at the right time. Adobe Campaign and Adobe Analytics integration help reduce cart abandonment and provide action triggers for newsletter signups, email subscriptions, and more.

#5. Lack of required skills for data analysis

Challenge: Despite having analytics teams, businesses need to interpret data effectively, while taking business-critical decisions. Companies must look for platforms that can add value to their insights and present reports through automation, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.

How Adobe Analytics help:

1. Unique processing rules: Adobe Analytics processes business data on the server side so they do not have to rely on IT teams or manually take up the task. This also allows you to dig data in real-time without going back and creating new reports. With processing rules, your business can segment customers efficiently and meet all their needs.
2. Advanced calculated metrics: It lets you build metrics to shape your data through your analytical creativity. For example, if you want to create a metric for ‘new visitors’ for those who visit a website for the first time. Additionally, you can use functions like mean, multiply, currency, percent, time, etc.

How can a business effectively employ the Adobe Analytics tool?

Adobe Analytics enhances your marketing efforts and helps deliver personalized email campaigns. The several Adobe Analytics features are divided into four main categories that help a company to make data-driven decisions effectively. Some of them are:

#1. Web Analytics

Adobe Analytics enables you to measure traffic sources, customer pathing, content efficacy, and engagement to better understand your website visitors. Hence website analytics plays an important role in business success. Adobe Analytics allows us to gain better insights of data, powerful segmentation, and visually appealing reports through Adobe Sensei integrations. It improves customer experience and engagement by avoiding poor mobile and web experiences. This shapes real-time insights that drive decisions to fulfill your business goals.

#2. Marketing Analytics

Adobe Analytics combines collecting, organizing, and analyzing valuable data quickly, giving marketers a complete understanding of customer behavior that lets them deliver meaningful and tailored experiences. The Adobe Analytics tools like anomaly detection, customer attribution, and cohort analysis prepare businesses for ROI-driven marketing spending. And with automation, AI, and machine learning capabilities, you will have insights to analyze, visualize, share, and act on. Overall, Adobe Analytics improves visibility into the performance of marketing and advertising campaigns to engage better and convert faster.

#3. Attribution

Attribution is an excellent way of evaluating the performance of marketing campaigns, and Adobe Analytics understands it well. Hence Adobe has come up with various attribution models to help marketers make decisions on campaigns, keywords, and advertisements that meet the organization’s goals. Adobe Analytics features analyze the marketing funnel to improve site traffic, conversion rates, and brand engagement. This also helps make intelligent decisions while investing in productive marketing activities.

#4. Predictive Analytics

Predictive Analytics helps businesses to analyze future events using data models, statistics, and machine learning. This eliminates manual marketing tasks and provides companies with important insights mined from massive datasets through machine learning and advanced statistical models.

Leverage the power of Adobe Analytics with our certified experts

Adobe Analytics has several out-of-the box features for your business despite having an easy-to-use interface that empowers marketers to analyze data and implement recommendations. In case you need assistance with Adobe Analytics’ custom reporting capabilities, interactive dashboards, real time insights and more to make data-driven decisions, you can connect with our certified experts to explore more of its business-driven features.

Let’s discuss what Adobe Analytics can do for you.

In today’s digital-first ecosystem, brands cannot do with subpar experiences. Without personalization and tailored content, it is next-to-impossible to survive the cut-throat competition and fulfill KPIs around annual sales and revenue. And all of this has to be achieved keeping the dynamic buyers’ expectations in mind. No longer can businesses rely on traditional marketing tactics to achieve goals and instead focus on customer segmentation and behavioral targeting to deliver personalized experiences.

Leveraging the benefits of behavioral targeting, brands can identify user personas through data intelligence and AI-powered capabilities of Adobe Target to fulfill customer expectations and offer tailor-made experiences to every customer across every channel and device.

Here we talk about behavioral targeting, its importance and how it leads to enhanced eCommerce personalization. Furthermore, we will also discuss how Adobe Target helps deliver this in-demand personalization via behavioral targeting.

What is behavioral targeting and why is it important?

Behavioral targeting involves keeping tabs on every action that your customer takes on your digital stores – be it clicks, product searches, wishlisted items, most-bought items, preference, and more to identify buying patterns/behavior and then offer similar content and services that results in closed sales. The insights gained from customer journeys is employed by your marketing teams to offer custom-made experiences and boost conversions. When your products and content is personalized to your customers’ behavioral characteristics, it leads to a higher success rate.

Considering how personalization has become a critical factor for business growth, Adobe Target customer segmentation behavioral targeting presents an opportunity to boost engagement and win more customers. Some of the benefits of behavioral targeting are as follows:

Nurture leads with personalized messaging to offer engaging experiences and convert them into customers
Deliver customized content to potential customers rather than general marketing or impersonal messages, encouraging them to make purchases
Provide marketers with insights into consumer behavior and create tailored campaigns rather than test different ones. This saves money, time, and resources for the brand
Marketers can build target audience and buyer personas using behavioral data
Creates personalized mobile or website experiences for higher conversions, which leads to better ROI

Types of behavioral targeting

The ample benefits of behavioral targeting empowers brands to grow audiences, retain customers, and remain competitive in the marketplace. With Adobe Target personalization, brands can leverage multiple types of behavioral targeting for customer segmentation and creation of powerful tailor-made experiences.

#1. Website engagement: For behavioral targeting in website engagement, you can send personalized messages via pop-up promotions, ads, and links to related content. These actions capture visitors’ attention allowing your brand to segment customers based on how they respond or interact with the content. This ultimately helps marketers to retain and engage with potential customers and leads.

#2. Campaign engagement: Adobe Target campaign engagement helps you analyze user behavior like email interaction, clicked and opened links, and so on. Brands can even segment customers who have not opened or engaged with the emails and send them compelling offers. Such follow-up messages based on customer segmentation, buyer personas, and buying behavior offers the highest level of personalization. This allows marketers to nurture leads in a way that they appreciate your tailored content, leading to more purchases and higher revenues.

#3. Purchase behavior: Adobe Target behavioral targeting helps in retaining customers through purchase behavior. Marketers can use purchase behavior to deliver Adobe Target recommendations of products/services based on AI-driven intelligence of Adobe Sensei, closing more deals. Subsequently, the immense benefits of behavioral targeting expands a customer’s lifetime value (CLV) by engaging with content that addresses their likes and dislikes.

Behavioral Targeting vs Contextual Targeting

Point of difference	Behavioral Targeting	Contextual Targeting
Ad placement focus	Delivers ads based on a user’s historical browsing data to increase personalization	Selects contextually relevant content to serve ads
Cookies	Leverages cookies in browsers to know customers better	It does not collect cookies
Effectiveness	More effective as it shows relevant ads to users based on their profits and purchase patterns	Less effective as it is not based on actual behavior of users

Make the most of the benefits of behavioral targeting with Adobe Target

The different types of behavioral targeting empower marketers to use the amassed user insights for the sake of eCommerce personalization. However, to leverage the benefits of behavioral targeting to the maximum, marketers must follow a four-step process and employ Adobe Target to run tailored campaigns. Let’s have a look at these steps:

#1. Collect customer data: eCommerce websites ask for user data, which is used in creating a customer’s profiles in the database. Over time, your digital stores collect more and more of user information, their preferences, clicks, likes, product search, geographical information, and so on. All this data compiled helps marketers to understand user behavior and track customer journeys. The marketing team uses this data to offer personalized experiences. Some ways to collect user data are:

Cookies stored temporarily in the user’s memory device
AdTech platforms like Facebook or Google
Track data by Internet Service Providers (ISPs)

#2. Create customer profiles: With the help of data, companies create customer profiles, giving them insights into shopping habits, interests and purchase actions. Brands no longer have to guess what their customers want and who their target audience is and instead focus on employing the benefits of behavioral targeting to deliver custom content, products, and services.

#3. Customer Segmentation: Once you have created several user personas of your potential buyers, sort and segment them into categories based on profiles and behavioral data. The data gives you an idea about different audience groups and the total of customer segments you need to serve. This enables marketers to determine which ads to show which audience group. Audience groups can be:

Demographic
Geographical
Psychological

#4. Create personalized ads: After customer segmentation, marketers prepare advertising campaigns for the different target audience groups. As the content for all audience groups is personalized as per their purchase, behavioral, and geographical information, it leads to higher purchases.

Powerful AI-powered personalization use cases with Adobe Target

Marketers can leverage Adobe Target to create customer journeys powered by AI, personalization, and automation at scale. With Adobe Target personalization, you can provide customers with relevant messages every time and deliver them exactly what they want. Since Adobe Target offers a pre-configured integration with other Adobe Experience Cloud tools like Adobe Sensei and Adobe Analytics it becomes easy for marketers to deliver the best possible experiences across touchpoints.

Let’s discuss how to implement behavioral targeting with Adobe Target and improve conversions:

#1. Adobe Target personalization based on user’s behavior

If brands wish to personalize experiences for returning visitors, or those who have a category preference, click on the product or visit the website within certain times of the day, then you can achieve that Adobe Target. You can personalize suggestions for each visitor, auto-target them with different variations, assess the one with the maximum conversion rate, and auto-allocate the winning version to all visitors.

With Adobe Target, marketers gain a full view of customer data, across digital channels, undertake Adobe Target A/B testing on the site or app, and extend superior customer experiences.

#2. Real-time personalization

Visitors change their minds hundreds of times before they make a purchase. Often these kinds of visitors no longer qualify for the same segment. Adobe Target ensures that different visitors are segmented to different groups, even when they change their preferences, and still receive tailored experiences across channels. Manual steps can be easily automated in Adobe Target and data translates to personalized experiences for every user.

#3. Omnichannel personalization

Nowadays, it is common for shoppers to browse and shop for products across multiple digital touchpoints. The several benefits of Adobe Target ensure the delivery of a consistent user experience based on a single profile view of the customer across all breakpoints. It provides personalization at scale by building a unified progressive profile of a customer, even when they use different information to login from different channels, and offers Adobe Target personalization across channels for an omnichannel experience.

#4. Adobe Target recommendations

Adobe Target provides live search and product recommendations feature via integrated Adobe Sensei module to offer cross-selling and upselling opportunities. You can add sections like ‘Recommended for you’ to offer personalization options based on the history of visitor’s purchases. It automatically displays products, services, or content based on their interests and thus leading to higher cart values. Adobe Target recommendations help you drive relevance and personalization through these:

Marketers’ control of Adobe Target allows marketers to build user personas, implement Adobe Target A/B testing to optimize campaigns, and drive the relevance of the recommended items.
User Context ensures the delivery of relevant content in a timely manner in the form of customized messages with Target’s rich user profile features
Sophisticated models help you handle millions of items in the catalog to give recommendations as per user’s profile with Target’s machine-learning capabilities

#5. One-click personalization with Auto-Target

Auto-target, with its powerful machine learning capabilities, uses every information of visitors such as location, the device used, new or returning customers, etc. to offer behavior predictions and deliver the best recommendation on every eStore visit. Auto-Target reduces the manual work and delivers custom-made content at scale.

Accelerate your marketing efforts with Adobe’s trusted partner

With AI-driven analytics and automated processes, Adobe Target levels up your marketing efforts. The benefits of Adobe Target allows us to personalize and optimize experiences, thus saving time, cost and manpower indulgence. It puts the right mix of automation and control in your hands, allowing you to leverage user behavioral data while implementing strategies that meet your business goals. If you wish the reap the power of Adobe Target for customer segmentation and personalization, as an award-winning partner, our certified experts can help implement the tool for assured success.

Drive personalization at scale with Adobe Target experts.

Want to know more about Salesforce for BFSI?

In today’s digital economy, traditional banking models are shifting from just running a bank to operating as an ecosystem. Unlike times when banks used to operate in silos with few clients to cater to, the modern era is driven by ever-evolving technologies, personalization, mobile-friendly solutions, and connected services.

Therefore, the global BFSI (banking, financial services & insurance) necessitates digital transformative solutions to overcome challenges such as extended sales cycles, strict regulations, rising customer expectations, etc. And, it needs a strong platform to improve their financial advisor’s productivity, reduce the operational costs of financial offerings, and engage today’s customers with tailored financial services for superior experiences.

And this is where Salesforce for financial services and its entire suite of Cloud solutions can help the BFSI industry.

Introducing Salesforce for banking as a all-in-one solution for BFSI enterprises

The Salesforce Trends in Financial Services report says that customers today demand advanced digital services, which has led to the financial industry to implement new technologies to deliver improved customer experiences. The Salesforce BFSI solution helps financial institutions overcome the digital age disruption by using the powerful capabilities of the Salesforce for financial services ecosystem, which combines Customer 360, Sales, Service, Marketing, IT, Analytics, and Financial Service Clouds. While adhering to strict industry regulations, the Salesforce for banking services offers a connected interface through which you can smartly manage sales, customer interactions and experiences, and business processes, and financial teams.

What role Salesforce plays for banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI) industry

Salesforce CRM is known for creating highly personalized experiences for both users and customers. Therefore choosing Salesforce for financial services will help you overcome the challenges faced with your traditional enterprise systems and build a complete ecosystem of Salesforce tools and services that help you stay relevant and competitive.

Here are a few challenges faced by the BFSI industry and how Salesforce CRM for finance can help.

	CHALLENGE	HOW SALESFORCE HELPS
360-degree view of client information	The lack of a clear view of your customers and their financial needs makes it challenging for BFSI firms to stay on top of customer demands, market trends, and make the right decisions, especially when your CRM systems are outdated and enterprise systems aren’t properly integrated.	With Salesforce for banking CRM solutions, you gain a complete holistic view of your customers and practice role-based access to ensure only the right personnel view these personal details. You can integrate Salesforce with any number of wealth management technologies to gain a unified view of each customer.
Outdated legacy software	Most BFSI firms use outdated legacy software that doesn’t support the growing and modern client expectations and functionalities demanded by the sales team. Without proper tools, BFSI companies cannot offer experiences that their clients desire.	Salesforce BFSI solutions empower you to seamlessly connect all your internal systems and view all important information at one place. You can even leverage its out-of-the-box functions to customize the solution as per your needs and invoke the power of AI to derive actionable insights about your clients.
Insights for engaging experiences	In the modern economy, personalization is the key to building long-lasting customer relationships. However, without proper systems and technologies, BFSI firms are unable to gain meaningful insights about their customers and therefore, cannot make predictive financial decisions for clients based on their behavior, information, and history.	The first thing that Salesforce for finance services helps you with is cleaning, organizing, and storing large amounts of data. Subsequently, with Salesforce CRM, you gain real-timeaccess to critical client data, refine it to derive intuitive insights about their journeys, and deliver them exactly what they are looking for. This world-class experience no t only satiates your clients but builds trust in them for your services.
Associated operational risks	As a financial firm, you are already collecting large amounts of customer data. However, as this data is unstructured, BFSI companies struggle to manage these huge data volumes and derive insights to offer personalized financial solutions to their clients.	Not only does Salesforce CRM for finance solutions bring all client information under one dashboard, it uses the power of artificial intelligence in the form of Salesforce Einstein AI to deliver real-time recommendations for every client based on historical data to deliver custom financial solutions and services.
Deliver tailor experiences to your clients	Modern clients are tech-savvy and expect too much from their financial advisors. As for financial advisors, to deliver custom solutions, they require access to their client’s financial information, ability to track their accounts, leverage a live channel for communication and so on. Legacy CRM solutions cannot cut these standards.	With Salesforce for banking CRM, you can organize all your client data, streamline operational processes, and leverage a live chat option to service customers at all times. Salesforce Financial Services Cloud features allows you to leverage its competitive tools and capabilities to embrace digital transformation and offer easy-to-access and use solutions to clients.
Stay on top of regulatory compliances and standards	With evolving industry compliances and standards, it becomes challenging for BFSI enterprises to stay abreast with all necessary compliances to avoid legal issues, safeguard client information from cyber criminals, and fulfill all necessary financial standards.	The Salesforce BFSI Cloud ecosystem has compliance, safety, and regulations baked into its tools. Every communication is trackable, communication between teams is easy, and internal processes are simple to create. You can even build custom reports and dashboards to check ongoing operations, schedule compliance expiration deadlines to ensure you never miss them, and pull together all information from one dashboard.

How does the Salesforce for financial services help the BFSI industry?

The Salesforce for banking platform is a collection of cloud-based tools that BFSI institutions can use to provide sales and marketing, customer service, collaboration and communities, analytics, and business intelligence services in an automated and intuitive manner. It offers three transitional elements to move towards the ecosystem model to give financial institutions a competitive edge.

It offers a 360-degree client view to financial institutions, meaning they don’t have to move between disparate systems to gather complete information on a client.
The Salesforce for financial services Cloud gives BFSI enterprises augmented data intelligence to utilize the precious digital data they have at their disposal. It searches through client data and other information to give banks actionable insights into customer behavior and current trends.
Salesforce BFSI offers a plug-and-play model thanks to its flexibility and agility. As Salesforce is an open and cloud-based technology platform, it can adapt to the growing and evolving needs of the BFSI industry.

The benefits of using Salesforce for banking

The Salesforce for financial services enables BFSI enterprises in accelerating digital transformation by offering a complete Salesforce Cloud ecosystem for managing your operations. The following are some advantages of Salesforce for banking:

Wealth management: Compared to legacy systems, Salesforce CRM for finance significantly simplifies one the most crucial tasks: managing clients’ wealth. You can easily manage your clients’ wealth using the Salesforce for financial services Cloud while also managing communication and processes with Salesforce CRM.

Information gathering: Data is crucial in the financial industry since it serves as the base for customer insights and future decision-making. The Salesforce banking CRM compiles all of this data to offer you a unified view of every client, their behavior, history, and most-demanded solutions, expected financial services, and so on. The custom Salesforce BFSI solution is how you offer personalized financial experiences to every client, every time.

Marketing: Salesforce provides excellent marketing capabilities with Salesforce Marketing Cloud, which helps you run data-driven marketing campaigns and build lifelong customer relationships. Salesforce for banking helps improve the efficiency of your sales funnel and offer omnichannel solutions, automatically.

Customer service: Salesforce CRM for finance is well-known for its customer service and it offers a cloud solution, Salesforce Service Cloud to manage your customer service experiences. Additionally, Salesforce for financial services is a great choice if you want to retain your customers and offer them excellent customer service across touchpoints.

Automation: Financial advisors often have to deal with several steps that they have to repeat for every client. Not only does this decrease your advisor’s productivity but wastes a lot of time that could have been spent on meaningful financial operations. Salesforce for financial services offers automation solutions to automate repetitive steps of a flow and expedite financial processes and operations.

How can BFSI enterprises leverage Salesforce for financial services to improve operations?

Salesforce has grown from its humble beginnings in 1999 into a tool for business success across industrial genres. Thousands of financial institutions use Salesforce for banking today to manage operations, client relations, and sales due to its comprehensive feature set of data-driven analytics, seamless integration across Salesforce Clouds and third-party systems, and top-notch data security. So here are some Salesforce CRM for finance Clouds that the BFSI industry can employ and how they improve operations.

Salesforce Sales Cloud: Many people in the banking industry have some extent of sales responsibility, whether they are financial managers, loan officers, or even bank tellers who are encouraged to recommend basic financial goods and products to customers.

Lead and referral management, customer and contact management, and product and opportunity management are some of the fundamental tasks involved in banks’ sales processes, and Salesforce for banking Sales Cloud allows you to manage all these tasks with ease on a single platform.

Salesforce Service Cloud: Customer service is often yet another crucial component of Salesforce solutions for financial institutions.

Salesforce CRM for finance tool, Service Cloud works together to provide engaging customer service solutions, which allows your BFSI firm to scale its operations easily and deliver consistent omnichannel experiences across all your touchpoints. It also allows you to respond to multiple brands’ and branches’ questions and complaints via various channels, including phone, email, web, social media, and more.

Salesforce Customer 360: A custom data model, a set of security and compliance features, and AI-powered business intelligence are further elements that serve the financial services industry. Salesforce for banking Einstein AI provides proactive insights, fact-based reporting, analytical planning tools, and relevant client management to make sense of all client data and offer them financial solutions that you desire. Using integrated CRM software like Salesforce Customer 360 provides a unified view to your team, view customer data across departments, utilize insights derived to improve business processes and experiences, and boost decision-making.

Salesforce Financial Services: The Salesforce Financial Services Cloud is a complete financial suite of solutions that would allow you to take care of your client’s wealth with the utmost ease. It is designed to serve the requirements of commercial and retail banks, asset managers, insurers, and wealth management firms. With Salesforce for financial services, you can scale up, develop customer self-service capabilities, provide financial advice, and expedite claim processing. It also allows you to build a seamless customer experience for each client and increase employee productivity.

Partner with us for Salesforce with financial services

The banking and financial services sector (BFSI) is undergoing a major digital transformation as customers increasingly rely on technology to connect and transact with businesses in this critical sector. Salesforce BFSI solutions help financial companies with cutting-edge solutions to meet the needs of their clients. As a preferred Salesforce for banking partner, we have assisted several BFSI enterprises in understanding your custom requirements and provide the best financial solutions while leaving no stone unturned. Utilize Salesforce for financial services novel capabilities to achieve digital transformation goals and strengthen customer relationships.

Learn how Salesforce is the right solution for BFSI.

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Today, competition is fiercer than ever, and technology is advancing rapidly, so as an eCommerce retailer, you need to keep up with the exceptions of your customers. Because over time, your eCommerce platform will begin to slow down, lack vital features, and offer limited functionality. And to improve the customer experience and your team’s operations, you must do eCommerce replatforming for scalable and robust performance of your business.

What is eCommerce replatforming?

eCommerce replatforming is shifting your online store to a new platform and architecture from legacy systems to improve customer experience, scalability, stability, and security of your eCommerce site and stay ahead of industry benchmarks.

In general, it’s data, assets, and content migration from one online store to another. For most businesses, this process includes comparing platforms, installing the new system, transferring data, and setting up the new eCommerce site.

Top 10 non-technical advice for eCommerce replatforming

Tip 1: Do not compromise on the best practices

It’s not uncommon to witness companies invest too much in unwarranted custom-built features whilst neglecting common best practices. At this juncture, you must remember that a significant portion of customer expectations are related to implementing industry best practices for higher results.

TIP 2: Empower your team. Teach them how to deliver on the roadmap.

eCommerce website replatforming is much more than changing platforms. It requires new training, new processes, often new partners, and in most cases, a degree of a cultural shift within your internal team. Like any change, your team will need time to accept it and come to terms with it. So, as an eCommerce business, you must ensure your team is at least consulted before moving. Once the new platform has been defined, take some time to build your roadmap. This roadmap needs to include what you as a company expect from your implementation partner and your team and how you will be supporting your team in becoming/remaining a successful bunch.

Tip 3: Mutual trust between client and provider

Usually, we refer to trust between client and provider as a passive attitude, which empowers either of the two parties to do things without being questioned too much. Given that we don’t live in a perfect world, the above kind of trust easily leads to issues of all sorts, like delays, misunderstandings, etc.

A project to replatform a transactional eCommerce website can be defined as a project to replatform a eCommerce business, therefore, the dependencies are many, and the complexity is high.

Tip 4: Expectations

It is only natural to have expectations that are not technical. Although some may think that these should be addressed, they play a considerable role in terms of customer satisfaction and in designing a solution that is not only technically correct but also built in a way that people will like using it. Furthermore, in most cases, the partner that designs and develops the solution is also responsible for supporting the client on an ongoing basis. Understanding these non-technical expectations will help the tech partner design a functional and sustainable support plan.

Tip 5: People

Teams and companies are made of people, no matter how big a company is, the relationship with the people you work with will always have a direct impact on the outcome of the project and the overall satisfaction of the client and the partner.

Tip 6: Ask to be challenged

First of all, the challenge is not about proving people wrong or demonstrating that one has a better idea. It’s a method to validate a decision is being made for the right reasons based on sufficiently reliable information. It’s about providing a different perspective with the hope that this will add value to the conversation.

Many companies perform retrospective/post-mortem meetings once projects have failed and fail to do the same when projects succeed. So, organize a pre-mortem workshop before you kick off your project. In short, this workshop mainly encourages team members to come up with all possible reasons why the project could fail.

Tip 7: Don’t start with why!

Start with WHY means: starting by understanding the reasons behind a choice. Starting with HOW means allowing the person to explain the reasoning that led him/ her to that choice. If the goal is to understand, then start by putting that person at ease.

When you seek to understand why your clients have requested a given feature or defined a process, we need them to discuss their choice openly. Especially during meetings with multiple people, how you go about doing this can make a substantial difference. The same goes for clients seeking, for example, to understand the current status of a project or the reasons that led the developers to act. In many cases, starting with WHY can create undesired pressures that were not even intended.

Tip 8: Phase that builds

Sometimes projects can be very complex and lengthy in nature. To avoid seeing the performance of the teams decrease over time, it is important to phase the project appropriately. Regardless of the project size, it is good practice to face it in a manner that will allow both teams to work efficiently without feeling too pressured at each delivery point.

However, this approach causes projects to be longer and groups together all possible fail points right at the final stage, when in fact, one would hope to avoid having any. So it’s not ideal. Instead, we need to think of the project as a group of modules that come together to deliver a unified set of tools.

How to phase a eCommerce replatforming project:

Define the project’s goal and explain the reasons to your internal team
Consult with the team, collect all wishes and preferences, and prioritize them
Share the vision and the “wish list” with the chosen partner
Together, review these and collaboratively build a more defined set of requirements
Organize a pre-mortem workshop with the partner and collaborate on mitigating risks
Enter a Discovery Phase, where you need to validate assumptions, define data flows, integrations, design, etc
Design a roadmap that delineates milestones
Define the tasks that will need to be performed to achieve each milestone
Define which milestones must be completed before the solution can go live
Celebrate each milestone to keep your team’s attention levels high
Data migration phase 1
MVP Pre-go-live UAT
MVP Pre-go-live training to make the best use of the set of tools rather than each standalone module
Migrating live data and the final push to production servers should be a swift operation
Hand-holding should then be provided during the first period after the launch
Carry on with a continuous integration method to deliver the new features one at a time

Tip 9: UAT – Unbelievably Arduous Task

While approaching the final stages of the project both teams will be under pressure from their respective companies. This is a phase during which the teams need to work even more supportably, helping each other understand how to test appropriately and efficiently. Bugs and other things that neither party considered must be addressed swiftly, and communication takes on a critical role.

Tip 10: Stop, assess, go-live

Before you flick the switch, you need to remember that your team has been working on the eCommerce migration and on the existing solution, so they will be tired, and you, as a company, need them to be fresh, focused, and ready to take on the usual workload, but on a whole new platform. Furthermore, it’s virtually impossible to test all possible scenarios and edge cases, so do expect that after go-live, there will be situations for which your team will need additional support and won’t be as efficient as you may hope. It’s natural and unavoidable; you need to prepare them for it.

Motivate. Make sure they see that you, as a company, understand the effort that has gone into the project up to that point
Collect their opinions and understand where they feel strong and where there are gaps to bridge in their readiness
Organize more training if necessary, or get additional support ready from the partner to assist if necessary
Do a test run. Before launch, ask your team to solve some scenarios
Make sure you’re not going live just before your biggest peak
Ease your team by choosing the right timing or phase go-live across segments, like, for example, territories if separate teams manage these
Celebrate go-live with your team after the successful launch
Do a retro meeting even if it was a total success and learn from it to make communication easier

Leverage eCommerce replatforming with a trusted partner

Although eCommerce replatforming is a tedious undertaking, along with a trusted digital commerce partner with experience across Adobe Commerce, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Shopify Plus, and commercetools, you can build a roadmap for eCommerce site development. Our certified experts carefully understand your business requirements to provide a sustainable online store development roadmap. Connect with us for eCommerce replatforming services.

Thinking of replatforming your eCommerce site?

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Is your business still following the legacy way of storing customer details distributed across the service, marketing, sales, IT, and commerce platforms? Well, then your employees might find it challenging to view data siloed across departments when they want to. Often, enterprises fail to realize that the lack of a holistic view of their customers across various stages and departments results in incomplete and unsatisfactory experiences. To empower customers and employees, your business needs robust software that gives you a 360-degree view of operations, aligning all your teams onto a single dashboard. And this is where Salesforce Customer 360 platform can help you.

Salesforce Customer 360 architecture connects your IT, service, marketing, sales, and commerce operations to provide a single complete view of every customer process across the cycle. But is Customer 360 Salesforce the right solution for your business?

Here we discuss the different use cases of Salesforce Customer 360 platform that can help your business offer impeccable customer service and boost retention rates.

Salesforce Customer 360: An Introduction

Unlike disparate platforms, Salesforce Customer 360 consolidates all Salesforce products into a suite solution. This means enterprises no longer have to work on different software and can leverage Salesforce Customer 360 for their sales, service, commerce, marketing, and IT needs. This unified solution allows different teams to view complete customer data across departments, utilize information important for their processes, and take further action.

But this only scratches the surface of what Salesforce Customer 360 architecture can do.

The Salesforce Customer 360 architecture

Salesforce Customer 360 CRM (customer relationship management) platform consists of Salesforce products- Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud, Analytics, and other state-of-the-art tools.

You can add further leading functionalities like:

Salesforce Einstein for live search and product recommendations
Salesforce Genie to gain a complete real-time hyperscale view of customer data with powerful automation and personalization
Integrate data from any platform and take action on it via Mulesoft integration and Tableau
Automate workflows in Slack for repetitive processes

With a Salesforce ecosystem, your enterprise is on its way to achieve digital transformation much faster than ever.

The following is a brief overview of what all is included in Salesforce Customer 360 platform:

Without a doubt, Salesforce Customer 360 is one platform that handles all your business end points from customer discovery to post-purchase solutions. This new Salesforce CRM system has everything your business would need to build and grow relationships with your customers across sales, service, marketing, commerce, and IT.

For B2C companies, Customer 360 Salesforce CRM tool helps managing customer relationships throughout their order lifecycle
For B2B companies, Customer 360 Salesforce CRM system assists in closing more leads, boost lead generation numbers, and onboarding more customers

How does Salesforce Customer 360 CRM provide unified experiences?

While we talk about how the suite of Customer 360 Salesforce CRM system offers a holistic view of customers across departments, channels, and touchpoints, the real question is this feat achieved.

Salesforce Customer 360 is a single-click user interface. Admins can reconcile data across cloud systems for a single customer view.
All Salesforce products reference a customer across different channels via a single ID regardless of the particular they use to identify themselves. This means if a customer logs into one channel via their phone number and another through their email ID, Salesforce will recognize it via a single ID. Moreover, admins can reconcile data across Salesforce Clouds with Salesforce Customer 360 platform.
Every out-of-the-box functionality comes pre-defined in the Salesforce Customer 360 tool. Service Cloud is pre-established in the Salesforce 360 connection. Email and drip campaigns in Marketing Cloud leverage content and data from Customer 360 platform. All data and events in Commerce Cloud are sent to Customer 360 connections.

Business use cases of Customer 360 Salesforce CRM tool

By now, you’ve understood how the Salesforce Customer 360 platform prevents data duplication, empowering teams to offer unified experiences at scale. The complete suite of Salesforce Customer 360 platform offers several use cases depending on different departments. As this innovative Salesforce CRM system is designed for organizations of all sizes and genres, these use cases are how you can integrate all your teams together to offer unified experiences at scale.

Let’s review a few of these use cases of the Customer 360 Salesforce CRM implementation tool.

#1. Sales teams to onboard more customers with Sales Cloud

Challenge: While there might be a consistent influx of new prospects and leads, most opportunities are lost due to the lack of complete information about them. When sales reps encounter data silos such as remarks left by previous sales reps, their current stage in the sales process, it becomes challenging to close more leads.

Solution: With Salesforce Sales Cloud as a product of Customer 360 Salesforce CRM, you gain a holistic view of your leads to establish complete control of your sales pipelines. Automation of a few repetitive tasks allows sales reps to concentrate on what matters the most- closing more leads. You can leverage powerful Sales Cloud functionalities like data transparency, mobile-friendliness, tailor-made interactions, and data transparency to boost sales. Other benefits include:

Automate lead entry and assigning process
Improve sales rep efficiency
Reduce sales rep ramp time
Leverage CPQ & Billing to generate error-free bills

#2: Personalized service experiences with Service Cloud

Challenge: Most times, customer service teams aren’t able to understand customer queries or locate customer details in their portals. As significant time is spent on searching customer data amongst several disparate systems, read prior conversations with service agents than on servicing customers, it results in an unsatisfactory experience, which often leads to customer loss.

Solution: With Salesforce Service Cloud as a suite product of Customer 360 platform, service teams no longer have to spend time looking up customer details. Instead, they can employ a single platform to capture data across systems, understand queries, and offer personalized solutions. Service Cloud empowers your service teams to function as trusted advisors with its robust tools like live agent support, in-app support, knowledge centers, social media, and self-service communities. Other features include:

Lightning Service Console
Case Management
Automated Case routing
Telephony integration
Social customer service
Custom reports and dashboards
Service process automation

#3. Run productive and ROI-driven campaigns with Marketing Cloud

Challenge: For marketing teams, running behavior-driven campaigns is essential for positive ROI. However, when marketing teams lack complete information about customer base, user behavior, buying patterns, frequency, geographical data, and so on; they cannot forge tailored marketing campaigns targeting specific target audiences. The lack of personalized approach, makes it impossible to track marketing ROI similar to trying to find a needle in a haystack.

Solution: With Salesforce Marketing Cloud, you gain a complete 360-degree view of your customers, right from the time they browsed your channels till acquisition and their current stage in the buying funnel. With live campaign data, you can identify what marketing assets work better than others and optimize strategies based on your findings in real-time. This boosts the overall ROI of your marketing campaigns. Other features include:

Emails and marketing automation
Social media engagement, listening, and advertising
Push notifications
Customer marketing analytics

#4. Unify sales, marketing & service teams

Challenge: Customers expect consistent interactions, regardless of business departments. However, as data is fragmented between different teams and their respective systems, cross-team members find it difficult to access information when they need it. Incomplete information results in distorted experiences that no enterprise owner wants.

Solution: With the Salesforce Customer 360 platform, you bring sales, service, commerce, marketing, analytics, IT and so many other innovative tools under one roof. Customer 360 enables cross-department teams to work together with a singular goal of offering personalized superior experiences across touchpoints and channels, at scale. This innovative Salesforce CRM system provides an integrated system so they can make more informed decisions, acknowledge customer needs faster, and forecast new opportunities. Some of the features of Customer 360 are:

Unification of data and consent management
Advanced audience segmentation
Enhanced customer engagement

#5. Tailored online experiences with Commerce Cloud

Challenge: An eCommerce platform can only do so much for your business. To offer personalized experiences, brands need to run targeted campaigns based on purchase history and behavior, offer quick resolutions based on case histories, and boost sales numbers. However, with poorly integrated systems, enterprise owners fail to reap the benefits of such costly investments.

Solution: With Salesforce Commerce Cloud, you can connect your marketing, commerce, and service teams to engage customers across touchpoints and channels and offer superior experiences. With the Customer 360 platform, you can power both B2B and B2C operations and build personalized storefronts. Integrated with Einstein AI and automation, teams have the opportunity to boost customer loyalty via targeted journeys based on previous behavior. Salesforce Commerce Cloud features include:

Synchronize customer data with real-time customer profiles, orders, and purchase history
Run automated email campaigns for personalized engagement
Follow up on lost sales and create segments based on past purchases
Unified view of customers, catalogs, content, and orders

Implement Salesforce Customer 360 platform with a trusted partner

Salesforce CRM has out-of-the-box solutions for your business with easily implemented cutting-edge technology to make faster and more informed decisions, increase profits and deliver the best customer satisfaction. Salesforce CRM tool’s innovative and secure cloud technology allows businesses to improve business faster. In 2023 Salesforce is coming up with product upgrades, new features, and advanced AI technology to make tedious tasks easier and automated.

Have questions about the Customer 360 platform?

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Since we live in an omnichannel world, it is essential to deliver consistent shopping experiences during each customer contact across all touchpoints- including online chat, email, social media, mobile phone apps, and even the customer service center. But today, customer care representatives are overwhelmed with data due to this omnichannel client experience. And while having access to this data is essential for delivering excellent experiences, it is very time-consuming and difficult for support teams to sift through millions of lines of legacy data stored in spreadsheets, databases, or, worse, siloed systems that do not communicate with one another. And that’s where Salesforce Service Cloud can help.

With Salesforce Service Cloud features, brands can offer engaging customer service solutions, which allows your company to scale its operations with utmost ease and help deliver consistent omnichannel experiences across all your touchpoints. By Salesforce Service Cloud implementation, you seek to improve your customer service with live agent and in-app support, knowledge centers, social media, and self-service communities.

What is Salesforce Service Cloud?

Salesforce Service Cloud world’s most popular and connected customer service software solutions. Salesforce Service Cloud services are built on the Salesforce Customer Success Platform, providing a 360-degree view of your customers and allowing you to deliver smarter, faster, and more personalized experiences. Leveraging Salesforce Service Cloud benefits, you can manage case interactions, enable live agent chat, and build a connected knowledge base from one platform. Based on their prior activity data, you can have personalized customer interactions or even up-sell your products and services.

Why should you invest in Salesforce Service Cloud?

For business users, it is common to contemplate the ROI of their investments into solutions before indulging in them. It is also the case with Salesforce Service Cloud services. So why should I invest in Salesforce Service Cloud?

Salesforce Service Apps for customer service, self-service, contact center, field center, and employee center help businesses offer a complete and connected experience. The immense Salesforce Service Cloud features help you offer personalized and proactive solutions to customers, turn your agents into your most trusted advisors, and ensure sure-shot customer success. When you offer positive service experiences ro your customers, it makes them more likely to purchase again. With Salesforce Service Cloud, you can:

Empower your agents to offer customer service across any channel and device, email, phone, SMS, self-service sites, social media, live chat, and so on.

Automate processes and streamline workflows to route cases automatically to agents. Through the Service Console, agents can view complete information about the customers, their history, behavior, preferences, recent purchases, and so on on a single dashboard, boosting case resolution numbers and customer satisfaction.

Turn your agents into most trusted advisors for your customers. As the Salesforce Service Cloud platform connects sales, marketing, and customer service departments under one roof, it allows reps to view all required information about users and then offer personalized solutions, incentives, and special offers depending on their buying patterns.

Allow customers to self-service their queries, making it easy to find answers to their questions with Salesforce Service Cloud self-service site and portal solutions. Build branded self-service sites via the Experience Builder templates and offer resolutions leveraging the AI capabilities of Salesforce Einstein.

Connect your on and off-site workforce to view user journeys via Salesforce Field Service mobile app to deliver connected solutions from phone to field.

Set up macros in the Salesforce Service Console to group together a few repetitive and manual steps, automate them to be triggered via a single click.

And that’s not it! Salesforce Service Cloud benefits and features extend way beyond the above-described. However, you now have an idea about the Salesforce Service Cloud console, its implementation, and best practices.

Typical pain points of customers and service teams how Salesforce Service Cloud solves them

	Pain Points of customers and reps	How Salesforce Service Cloud drives value
Customer expectations and satisfaction	Meeting customer expectations in today’s cut-throat competition among thousands of eCommerce businesses is a very challenging task because of the information, data, and choices customers have.	Salesforce Service Cloud allows you to tap into customer insights via built-in analysis tools to improve customer experiences and satisfaction scores.
Inefficiency of the ticketing system	It is difficult to manage case numbers or track inquiries on a spreadsheet. Too many incoming requests in the inbox makes the entire task disorganized and difficult to track.	Salesforce Service Cloud features of help desk automatically assigns incoming cases to the right agent at the right team and also empowers customer success managers to track the progress of their support team. You can automate processes and streamline notifications to automatically route cases to the reps without overflowing their inboxes.
Siloed customer service	Customer service agents often do not have a complete view of a user, having to rely on multiple tools to gain a unified case history information, which is why they fail to offer desired resolution, leading to longer wait times and lower customer satisfaction scores.	The Salesforce Service Cloud case management tool allows reps to track user information on a single dashboard and communicate via their preferred channel. For customers posting comments on a company’s social page, agents can route these posts to the support team and even automate customer feedback.
Lack of context about the ticket raised	Without a holistic view of a case, reps have to rely on old notes and voice transcripts, which requires a lot of time and effort.	The Salesforce Service Cloud feature of interactive voice response (IVR) automatically routes inbound calls to the queue and under its Search Console, provides a unified view of customer data- account info, case history, contract information to accelerate case resolution and elevate customer satisfaction.
Aging customer database	Service teams often struggle to compile user information from different channels, resulting in fragmented interactions, extended case resolutions, and lower satisfaction scores.	Salesforce Service Cloud features allow you to search across emails, social media posts, chat transcripts, old notes, voice transcripts, contracts, etc., to compile user information fast and offer quick resolutions.
Evolving user behavior and market trends	Mostly, service teams measure customer success via CSAT and CES. However, with changing technologies, evolving trends, and dynamic user behavior, it becomes challenging for reps to improve customer experiences and boost retention rates.	The Salesforce Service Cloud Customer Success Management (CSM) tool measures and analyzes user preferences and sentiments across multiple channels to predict customer expectations set in the present and future. With this info, reps can improve CSAT scores and mitigate risks of lower customer churn rates.
The growing trend around self-service	Most user queries don’t require customer service team’s time, which could have been spent in handling complex issues.	Salesforce Service Cloud features of self-service portals allows users to find answers to their questions instead of dialing customer support. Retailers can build branded sites for self-service with all possible queries and even invoke the power of AI via Salesforce Einstein to improve the overall customer experience.
Talent Shortage	Customer service teams often have to result in mundane and repetitive tasks, which is why most professionals don’t wish to pursue it as a career path.	Several Salesforce Service Cloud features of case management, automated routing, computer telephony integration, and service cloud console makes it easy for reps to contribute to customer success efficiency in a meaningful manner. This also reduces the cost of customer service and boosts employee retention.

7 competitive Salesforce Service Cloud features that improve customer service levels

The following are some of the Salesforce Service Cloud features that make it one of the most comprehensive customer service platforms with the most lucrative benefits. These include:

#1: Salesforce Lightning Service console

The Salesforce Service Cloud console unifies all customer data across channels and devices, including customer profiles and case histories, as well as dashboards that speed up history tracking and perform numerous additional tasks without having to switch tabs or screens.

#2: Salesforce Service Cloud case management

With easy access to a case’s entire context and the ability to study every customer interaction and data on a single dashboard, Salesforce Service Cloud enables reps to resolve every case quickly and easily. By automating case routing, service teams can focus on speedy resolutions without having to register cases manually.

#3: Automated case routing

As mentioned before, this Salesforce Service Cloud feature allows delegating service work automatically with absolute intelligence. It enables you to manage the workload among the agents, assigning tasks to the personnel with the required skills and qualifications. It can do this well across various service channels, including phones, websites, emails, and social media.

#4: Computer telephony integration systems in Service Cloud

This Salesforce Service Cloud feature improves customer satisfaction scores and agent productivity. With the CTI systems, your agents can view entire customer information before picking up the phone, call customers via a single click, automatically log all their calls into systems, and move calls to other agents or departments without leaving the Salesforce Service Cloud console.

#5: Social Customer Service in Service Cloud

The customer service teams are empowered with necessary tools by the Social Customer Service to handle user queries on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media platforms and send them across to required agents. You can integrate Social Customer Service to your CRM to gain a 360-degree picture of conversations about brands on social channels.

#6: Custom Reports and Dashboards

By leveraging real-time reports in the Salesforce Service Cloud, business owners can view the entire case history of a customer and make more informed decisions faster. With an excellent dashboard that gives the agents a 360-degree view, they can easily track cases and customer information right at their fingertips to offer resolutions quickly and easily.

#7: Asset and Order Management

This Salesforce Service Cloud feature, allows customer success managers to maintain all information about a user’s assets, support histories, orders, and other relevant information at one place, giving their agents a comprehensive overview of all the actions taken and focus on improving CSAT scores going forward.

Case study: Empowering the customer success team of Rutland Cycling with Salesforce Service Cloud

Leveraging the competitive capabilities of Salesforce Service Cloud, the leading bike brand in the UK – Rutland Cycling, improved its customer service standards by providing their customer success team with a holistic view of user information who otherwise had to access disparate systems and toggle between different tools to gain this customer information. And with integration of Salesforce Service Cloud to their Salesforce architecture, Rutland Cycling now delivers superior omnichannel customer experiences across every channel and device.

Implement Salesforce Service Cloud features with a trusted partner

Several Salesforce Service Cloud features serve to enhance both the efficiency of customer service representatives and the overall customer experience offered by the brand. Based on your unique business needs, Ranosys can help customize Salesforce Service Cloud features, configure tools, and seamlessly migrate your data.

Explore Salesforce Service Cloud benefits for your business.

Security has always been a critical concern for enterprises. And it becomes even more significant when it comes to web and mobile applications. In building and launching applications, business owners often need to remember that one of the most fundamental aspects of creating applications is ensuring complete protection and data security. According to a survey, around 98% of mobile apps are not secure.

As cybercrimes continue to grow, ensuring the complete security of your mobile application, its assets, and data is more important than ever. As incidents around data hacking continue to grow, enterprise applications suffer from unexpected downtime, data vulnerability, and intellectual property theft, ultimately hampering your enterprise’s reputation. More importantly, such data breaches can result in hefty fines as per data privacy laws such as GDPR, OWASP, PCI DSS, HIPAA, and PSD2. Hence, securing mobile applications will put your business in a much safer spot in today’s competitive industry.

To help you build and safeguard mobile applications with low-code development, OutSystems offers AppShield as a security component. Let’s dive deep into the blog and understand how AppShield enables you to develop safe and secure mobile applications.

What is OutSystems AppShield?

In today’s digital transformation ecosystem, it’s not just the tech stack that is evolving and improving, but also the entire setup around hacking and cyber crimes. AppShield, an additional cost add-on from OutSystems, secures your applications by automatically adding additional layers of security during app deployment, thus making your apps resilient and resistant to intrusion, tampering, and reverse engineering. OutSystems AppShield makes it impossible for hackers and cybercriminals to tamper against security control or inject malicious code during run-time and rest-time for data hacking.

For IT leaders, AppShield delivers secure applications that reduce potential risks and avoid regulatory fines.
For developers, AppShield reduces the manual coding work, valuable development time, and skill needed to produce more secure applications.
For business, AppShield helps protect company data leaks and other mobile application shielding protection issues that can affect brand reputation.

The features of OutSystems AppShield

OutSystems AppShield features support your software development lifecycle (SDLC) to continuously monitor the latest security attack methodologies. The following are the main features of OutSystems AppShield, currently available for Android and iOS operating systems.

#1. Root detection

When hackers unlock or hack your devices to access controls it is referred to as rooting. Hackers often root devices to access sensitive information and other secrets stored in your mobile phones. Root detection informs you know if this is the case. Root Detection in AppShield keeps apps safe and gives freedom to choose how and when your device responds to a rooting scenario. The protection available for iOS applications includes jailbreak detection, just like root detection.

#2. Repackaging detection

Repackaging is when attackers obtain a copy of your app’s source code, add malicious functions, and redistribute it to users. Repackaging detection through OutSystems AppShield allows you to protect your app against such issues.

#3. Code obfuscation

Code obfuscation is the process of modification of executable code so that it is not available for comprehension or hacking. With OutSystems AppShield, you can implement obfuscation to make your source code intricate, preventing hackers from accessing it. This technique acts as a defense mechanism against hacking attempts and guards applications.

#4. Code Injection protection

Code injection is a technique that allows a hacker to add his arbitrary code to be executed by the application. Attackers can take advantage of user inputs to take complete control of your app and execute commands as they wish. Code injection by OutSystems AppShield helps you block these attacks and stop hackers from making your app perform functions you never intended.

#5. Debugger protection

To hack an app, debugging is the most common technique, which lets hackers get to the build of your app. Debugger protection prevents hackers from using this troubleshooting software against mobile apps.

#6. Keylogger protection

A keylogger is a software that lets you track and record what users are typing on their keyboard. Cybercriminals can use them to capture sensitive data like passwords and account numbers to commit fraud. Keylogger protection from OutSystems AppShield prevents them from stealing data from under your fingertips.

#7. Screenshot protection

With OutSystems AppShield screenshot protection, you can protect your app from malware that sends screenshots of personal information or your digital wallets to hackers.

#8. Emulator detection

Emulator detection is the ability to tell when your application is running on another device rather than an actual device used by hackers for entering into your apps. Emulator detection from OutSystems AppShield can let you know if your emulator is putting your app at risk.

What risks does OutSystems AppShield address and why employ it?

The Open Web Application Security Project, or OWASP, is an international non-profit organization for web application security. OWASP’s top 10 security risks are put together by a team of security experts worldwide. OutSystems AppShield addresses a few of them; let’s have a look :

#1. Broken authentication and access controls

Unguarded authentication systems can give hackers access to user accounts and even the ability to compromise an entire system. If an app doesn’t set these standards, it’s a security risk, according to OWASP. Therefore, if an app is run on a rooted or jailbroken device or through an emulator, AppShield provides an extra layer of security.

#2. Injections and cross-site scripting

When untrusted and unauthenticated data interrupts your code or an attacker adds custom code to your URL path, it can result in all sorts of issues with your mobile applications. The most common are SQL and XML injections. OutSystems generates your code so you can ensure the code is up to standard. AppShield includes code injection protection, repackaging detection, verification of the application signature, and blocks debugger and emulator access.

#3. Sensitive data exposure

Web applications must protect sensitive information like financial transactions, passwords, and account information. This can be minimized by encrypting all sensitive information and disabling data storage. AppShield blocks the copying of local data, includes proper data encryption, and repackaging protection, and ensures security mechanisms can’t be removed from your app.

#4. Code tampering and mobile security

Attackers will exploit code modification via malicious code of the third-party app or phishing attacks. Through OutSystems AppShield, you can prevent code tampering as it stops attackers with root, jailbreak and repackaging detection. Also, it blocks hackers from accessing debuggers and emulators to find entry points.

Is OutSystems AppShield right for my organization?

If your web application needs to store sensitive user data like financial numbers, personal information, and passwords, then OuTsystems AppShield becomes a must-have implementation. OutSystems AppShield provides an extra layer of security, prevents data leakage from compromised devices, and maintains the app’s integrity and security.

Moreover, if your enterprise or mobile application deals with the following data, then OutSystems AppShield will strengthen the security and protection prospects of your application with extensive security layers and safeguard user information.

B2B or B2E mobile applications with sensitive data
Subject to security or privacy regulations
Industries like banking or financial services, healthcare, or insurance

Build secure applications with OutSystems AppShield and Ranosys

To succeed in the digital world, building safe applications is an essential to protect enterprise data and discourage hackers. OutSystems AppShield addresses all the security concerns of modern applications to safeguard sensitive data subject to privacy regulations. Repackaging, code injection, and other best practices of OutSystems AppShield keep your application secure and safe. At Ranosys, we have assisted several enterprises to shield their apps. Connect with our certified low-code experts to gain a deeper understanding of OutSystems AppShield and its business value for your enterprises.

Leverage OutSystems AppShield with Ranosys.

Abhishek Paliwal

Senior OutSystems Consultant

Abhishek is Senior OutSystems Consultant working with Ranosys for 3+ years. He is certified with reactive and mobile app development, having expertise to build the enterprise application in OutSystems. He has also dedicated his efforts to help in OutSystems practice development within the Organization. Connect with him on LinkedIn.

Manish Gupta

OutSystems Solution Analyst

The key to a successful eCommerce business is not just a great shopping experience but delivering a unified experience. Consumers expect companies to understand behavior and tailor interactions to their needs and preferences. To keep content and commerce together, Adobe has developed a unique yet powerful Adobe AEM and Magento integration.

But how does integrating Adobe Commerce and Adobe Experience Manager promote business growth? In today’s competitive ecosystem, companies need to focus on not just improving their shopping experiences across channels, but also develop an effective CMS strategy for digital marketing. By integrating Adobe AEM and Adobe Commerce results in a perfect harmony that allows these platforms to work independently and together, translating to improved user experiences for businesses and consumers.

Let’s dive deep into how this combined solutioning works and why to integrate AEM and Adobe Commerce and deliver tailor-made online solutions.

AEM & Adobe Commerce: An introduction

Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) is a content management and digital asset management system that allows businesses to create, deliver, and manage content across multiple digital touchpoints.

On the contrary, Adobe Commerce, earlier known as Magento Commerce, is a popular omnichannel eCommerce platform for B2B, B2C, and D2C industrial genres to offer personalized solutions to shoppers globally. Both are products of Adobe Experience Cloud and therefore, seamlessly integrated with each other and other Adobe products such as Adobe Analytics and Adobe Target.

Why should you integrate AEM and Adobe Commerce?

The powerful Adobe AEM Magento integration empowers businesses to rebuild rich customer profiles and deliver personalized, relevant and timely content, extending seamless and consistent user experiences across channels. Here are some of the benefits of Adobe AEM Magento integration:

#1: Coupling two powerful Adobe products for consistent CX

Usually, in large enterprises, different teams are responsible for eCommerce development and content creation, development, and optimization. Coupling Adobe Experience Manager and Adobe Commerce results in a rich storefront experience with Page Builder and PWA Studio. As the marketing team can optimize and update content by leveraging components like product teaser and product carousel, they can easily create experience pages via the no-coding drag-and-drop features and even reuse components to develop other product sections.

This way, you can have a content team focussed on publishing while your developers can work on PWAs to offer a consistent experience throughout. No longer has your marketing team rely on standard development processes to deploy content or implement A/B testing on their eCommerce solutions, accelerating speed-to-market and providing complete autonomy.

#2: A simple and easy-to-use frontend with a powerful backend

When it comes to listing powerful CMS solutions, Adobe Experience Manager has built its name in the market. For merchants that had to rely on traditional ways of managing frontend customer experience, Adobe AEM is a fresh wave of faster and simplistic innovation. By integrating Adobe Experience Manager and Adobe Commerce, you develop a single platform for both brand and commerce experience with omnichannel capabilities. Adobe AEM takes care of your product listing and product detail pages, publishing content via serverless systems with the push of a button.

This ease and efficiency empowers marketers to implement real-time updates who otherwise had to depend on the development team for product content management.

#3: Personalizing experiences for each shopper

In an era when personalization has become a critical undertaking and valuable asset for enterprises, Adobe AEM allows marketers to refine content based on user browning history and profile. This means, shoppers can now view content based on their needs and preferences, in their language for products they like or wish to buy. As editing product pages is only a matter of minutes using Adobe Experience Manager, you can implement personalization easily and efficiently.

#4: Improved asset management and reusability

When running eCommerce sites, developers are often overwhelmed with the amount of media available. In terms of storing data, the built-in Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) Digital Asset Management (DAM) system allows the effortless storage and management of assets without worrying about storage space. In fact, you can even add metadata and tags to your files to simplify asset management and find them quickly.

As mentioned before, with Magento integration with AEM, you can reuse content and components across multiple pages. Adobe AEM employs the CIF (commerce integration framework), which contains all the front-end components used to create carousels, listing pages, product pages, and so on. You can reuse these components across different Adobe Commerce implementations. This facilitates repurposing of content to speed time-to-market and ensure experience consistency.

#5 Built-in Adobe Experience Cloud analytics tools

Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) is built-in integrated with many other tools like Adobe Analytics, Adobe Target, Adobe Audience Manager, and Adobe Campaign. For merchants who wish to use these products with their Adobe Commerce system, their built-in integration with AEM makes them easy to add and configure, accelerating their development and iteration process. This way you can track behavior across every step of the user journey and offer tailored customer experiences across channels.

How to integrate Adobe AEM and Adobe Commerce?

To ensure a seamless Magento integration with AEM, Adobe recommends the use of Commerce Integration Framework (CIF). The CIF extension allows AEM to directly access the commerce instance consisting of all the data via GraphQL APIs.

As a cloud service, AEM CIF connector comes in-built and only integration with Adobe Commerce is required. However, in case you’re using AEM as on-premises, you might have to download the AEM CIF connector from the software distribution portal to leverage product pickers, product assets view, and product consoles as provided in the package and improve the authoring experience.

Features of Commerce Integration Framework (CIF) :

1. Enables deeper integration with Adobe Commerce and thus enhances the AEM experience.
2. AEM CIF core components setup can be used with minimal or no modifications.
3. AEM CIF Core Components contain reusable elements that combine AEM components rendered server-side with React commerce components rendered client-side to offer dynamic experiences.

Let’s discuss CIF’s architecture and components, which helps integrate AEM and Adobe Commerce.

CIF architecture: Adobe Commerce helps with backend solutions that store business logic and commerce data. Conversely, CIF enables this Adobe AEM Magento integration via a well-defined architecture. AEM CIF Core Components project provides tools, components, code, and documentation to accelerate integration between Adobe AEM and Magento.

Commerce add-on: The commerce add-on offers commerce experience management tools to securely integrate Adobe AEM & Adobe Commerce. Businesses can try innovative commerce authoring tools to manage product catalogs and link customer experience to deliver relevant and exciting options of filters/ product selectors.

Commerce core elements: CIF core elements include Product details and lists, Shopping cart, and checkout.

The core elements of CIF haw product modules such as teasers, carousels, featured products, and related products. They are reusable, and when combined with AEM components, they offer server-side and client-side React components to create scalable experiences.

Steps to Synchronize AEM and Adobe Commerce

Since the code to Adobe CIF connector is itself open source hence we will discuss some of the basic steps which are used after CIF is connected.

Prerequisite: Set up Adobe Commerce and Adobe AEM

Magento AEM Integration Steps:

1.Set up a CIF Venia Project store locally.

2. Create install directory in AEM -sdk->author->crx-quickstart (For author)

3. Add CIF-author-addon-commerce-far file in the install directory.

4. Open OSGI configuration and search com.adobe.cq.commerce.graphql.client.impl.GraphqlClientImpl~default and click on edit

5. Add your GraphQL API and allow HTTP communication

6. Click on Save

7. Go to AEM admin -> Tools-> Cloud Services

8. Click on CIF configuration

9. Click on commerce and edit its properties

10. Make its property similar like shown below. Then, click on Save

11. All the products and category will be on frontend and admin (under commerce, as shown below)

How Ranosys helps with Adobe AEM and Magento integration

Being fast and accurate is crucial in the eCommerce business and with the seamless Magento and AEM integration, you prepare a digital architecture for success. Both industry-leading solutions will enhance your customer and commerce digital experiences. And with an award-winning Adobe team, Ranosys can assist you in building this hybrid commerce solution and leveraging its capabilities to the fullest.

Want to integrate Adobe AEM with Magento?

Lavish Vasuja

Senior Software Engineer

Lavish Vasuja is a Senior Software Engineer with over 3 years of experience in working on Adobe Commerce, Adobe Experience Manager, Shopify Plus, and commercetools platforms.

Bhagchand Saini

Technical Lead

Bhagchand Saini is a Technical Lead in Adobe Experience Manager & Adobe Commerce Technology. He is a certified full-stack developer with 7+ years of experience in the IT domain.

Willy Wonka and the Technology Factory eBook.

DOWNLOAD HERE

Have you ever found it confusing to choose the right eCommerce third-party integration tools for your business, just like Charlie from Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory picking his candy? When investing in third-party eCommerce platforms, merchants have doubts which tool is right for them, they seek for advice and everyone around is having different preferences. There are well over tens and thousands of third-party technology providers offering excellent tools that merchants could plug in to their digital commerce platforms. Hence with Willy Wonka & The Technology Factory we will answer two major questions for merchants:

How to shortlist potential third-party integration tools for your eCommerce platform?
Based on what criteria should merchants use when selecting third-party eCommerce platforms?

Here we answer these questions and particularly what it takes to implement & manage third-party integration tools that are right for your eCommerce platform.

Step 1: The landscape

All third-party eCommerce tools are divided into varied categories depending on their specific role like marketing automation, merchandise, intelligence, reporting, etc. Your selection of third-party management tools for eCommerce will depend on your business landscape. There are some must have third-party eCommerce platforms you must implement and manage. These include CRM, ERP, PIM, shipping providers, payment gateways, marketing tools, analytics platforms, reviews and ratings, etc. all of these third-party tools play an integral role in offering an omnichannel integrated eCommerce experience, more of which has been covered in our resource, The benefits and challenges of a fully-integrated eCommerce system.

Step 2: Third-party integration tools shortlisting approach

During this phase, we recommend merchants to do three things that merchants can apply with minor changes:

Pinpoint gaps between their business needs and current overall eCommerce platform
Define which of those gaps could become part of our development roadmap. The details can include bridged gaps with custom development, internal process changes, or if there is a need for a third-party integration tool.
Meet with relevant third-party eCommerce tech partners to deeply understand the product and the services that provide and how they could add value to an eCommerce system.

These three steps are further discussed below.

Step 3: Pinpointing gaps between the eCommerce solution and your needs

As a first step, it is important to ask yourselves why you are looking for integration with third-party tools in the first place. You need to flash out the underlying goal and make sure it becomes imprinted in the minds of everyone taking part in the shortlisting process. The reason for doing this is that once the process starts, you will feel like Charlie with his golden ticket entering Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory.

So, you need to focus on two things:

What are you looking to achieve? What’s the goal?
What are the KPIs that will define success?

Now you need to assess your current ability to execute, implement and manage third-party integration tools, regardless of the solution you will pick. Review the overall capacity you have for any work, which can be delivered by the relevant team:

How many people are part of the team?
How much time can each of them put towards achieving that goal?

It’s essential to dig deep before purchasing third-party eCommerce platforms because the more third-party tools you integrate, the more complexity you add to the equation, causing future dilemmas to become even harder to solve. At this stage, you should have a measurable goal and the team capacity required to achieve this goal.

PS: Not the entire gap between your current eCommerce solution and your business needs might be bridged by the third-party integration tools, which is why you need to explore the tool completely to decide whether you want to implement it or explore further avenues.

Step 4: Choosing what gaps to bridge with third-party integration tools

The gaps between your overall eCommerce platform and business goals can be broken down into several elements, which might require changes in internal processes or current eCommerce system or require additional configurations that are currently absent. What you need to remember is that more you implement third-party integration tools, the more you will have to manage, and the harder it will get with time.

Therefore, you should break down the gaps into smaller cracks, assess what you need to offer an omnichannel experience, what can be purchased/added and what can be custom coded. Consider the long-term cost of ownership on these third-party eCommerce solutions, conduct an in-depth analysis, and then implement them. In case of custom coding a functionality or integration with a third-party tool, these are the differences.

Third-party eCommerce platforms	Custom coded eCommerce tools
Cap-ex cost reduction	No licensing cost
Overall eCommerce platforms can be easily upgraded	Re-coding is required every time the core eCommerce system is upgraded
Switch the third-party tool easily for better available solutions	Need to check its compatibility with the eCommerce platform
Reduction in innovation costs	An opportunity to create something that doesn't exist in the market yet, which can be resold to others in the future
Tech partner to take care of tool capabilities	Greater control to personalize, edit or add features

For trend-driven and volatile third-party eCommerce platform features, focus on third parties because eventually, their competitors will have better solutions, possibly at a lower price, and you need to remain flexible.

Step 5: Shortlisting and meeting the tech providers

At this stage, merchants have to take the final decision on all the possible third-party integration tools and choose the best amongst them. Here is what they should do:

Look at what third-party tools successful sites (especially the competition) are using by leveraging tools like BuiltWith.
Use sites like Chiefmartech to get a list of promising new third-party management tools. As they are new in the market, they would be delighted to strike a conversation with you.
Tell the established and the new third-party integration tools about what you are looking to achieve, what you currently have, and how much time you can dedicate.
Exclude those that can’t help fulfill the vision or that need to find workarounds to make it happen.
Prioritize third-party eCommerce platforms that offer prompt customer support and publish plenty of content to help achieve success.
Do not get a demo scheduled until you know precisely what you should be looking out for. Consult with your team and that of the eCommerce solution partner to gain an inside-out view.
Ask to speak with some clients using that third-party eCommerce tool to understand its capabilities and functionalities.

Step 6: Selecting the right third-party technology provider for eCommerce

Now that you have seen a demo, received prices, spoken with clients, and asked clarification questions, it’s finally time to select the winning third-party integration tools. Since you’ve already spent the necessary time and efforts in shortlisting the right third-party eCommerce platforms, any decision you make isn’t going to be that fumble a choice. Besides, investing in a third-party integration tool will be a short-term commitment.

Explore the right third-party eCommerce platforms

Third-party integration tools for your eCommerce solution come with different benefits, functions, and features. While you do consider cost, customer service, and scalability when choosing a third-party eCommerce platform, always keep an eye out for new and innovative tools in the market. While there are immense benefits of an integrated eCommerce experience, our certified professionals can help you further narrow down the aspects that matter the most for your business.

Need help finding the right eCommerce tools?

Is D2C eCommerce right for your B2B business?

CONSULT NOW

Your business strategy as a B2B manufacturer has always been straightforward: supply products to retailers, who then mark them up and sell them to end customers. But as we go into a time when many retailers have closed their doors due to the pandemic and accelerating commerce growth, does that model still make sense?

When managing individual customer relationships was a challenging endeavor, the wholesale/distributor model was helpful. But technology like Adobe Commerce, has completely streamlined the order management workflows for B2B to D2C eCommerce. As a result, more and more businesses are following Nike’s strategy of selling directly to customers (DTC).

Direct-to-customer (DTC or D2C) isn’t a new eCommerce trend. It has been existing for quite some time; however, with disruptor brands, evolving customer shopping habits, unstable market dynamics, and the uncertainty of what lies ahead has accelerated its adoption.

What is the D2C eCommerce business model?

The term “direct-to-consumer” (also known as “D2C” or “DTC”) has gained popularity in recent years in the marketing and business worlds. It refers to companies that sell products and services directly to consumers without any middleman (i.e., the consumer doesn’t need to go through a retailer or a third-party). A D2C business model has the following features:

No middlemen: DTC businesses don’t manage their products through wholesalers or retail stores.
Manage the end-to-end process: D2C companies manufacture, market, sell, and ship their products themselves which allows them to know their end consumers in a better way.
Direct customer relationships: You can interact with the people who purchase your product if you have a direct customer relationship. You can ask them for comments on your items and utilize that input to help you decide how to make them better.
Customer journey insight: DTC business gets complete control over the customers’ journey from research to purchase phase.
Platform-based: Many D2C businesses use online platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Amazon and Google to sell their products directly to consumers.

How to turn B2B business challenges into D2C eCommerce opportunities

When moving from B2B to D2C, it is expected to experience roadblocks along the way. Here we talk of the potential challenges you might encounter when transitioning from B2B to D2C and how to effectively tackle them.

Challenge #1: Potential conflict with partner retailers

Till the time you were a B2B manufacturer working with retailers, everything was simple and easy. However, now when you’re ready to sell direct to consumers in the same market, it might create conflict with your retail partners. One of the biggest barriers brands face is the fear that this B2B to D2C eCommerce transition will jeopardise relationships with their channel retailers. Will partners see this DTC shift as a threat and consider the evolving B2B brands as competition, eventually dropping them as product source altogether?

Keeping your partners happy while carrying out this huge undertaking can be a daunting process. However, manufacturers need to brainstorm ways to resolve this channel conflict and conclude that direct-to-consumer channel leads to greater sales and brand awareness for all partners. In B2B vs D2C, you can realign your value chains around your customers and share the accumulated real-time data to offer irresistible consumer experiences.

Solution 1: Offer innovative products on your eCommerce site

Not every product you manufacture ends up at the retail store. Similarly, it doesn’t have to end up on your website either. Build a product strategy that keeps things smooth with your channel partners and adds innovation to your web store. Or, you can rebrand your existing B2B products to give it a more personalized D2C touch that your retailers miss. Bring together products in a custom package that only you offer. Build better offers catered to your customers and give them amazing discounts. You can even create custom products for your D2C website- one that your retailers don’t have.

Solution 2: Don’t forget to promote your B2B retailers’ business

Because you want to keep doing business with your channel retailers, a way to get into their good books is via promoting their brick-and-mortar stores. So, when a customer searches for a product online but wants to buy it in store, you can direct them to a local retailer. This way you can get a sale, keep your partners happy, and increase visibility on your website. You need to remember even with all the potential risks and challenges, your competitors will sooner or later start selling directly to consumers, even if you don’t.

Challenge #2: Finding the right D2C eCommerce platform for your operations

For a D2C eCommerce website, you need a technology platform that facilitates selling to customers. Additionally, you might want to integrate these new systems with your existing technology stack. When entering the D2C arenas, you need to complete the eCommerce puzzle with every related technology like the PIM, ERP, tax rates, shipping, tracking etc. B2B brands need to evaluate their current business operations while onboarding a new one, without resulting in any setbacks for both business 2 business and direct to consumer channels.

Solution 1: Select an eCommerce platform that supports your B2B and D2C goals

If your B2B brand functions offline, you need an eCommerce platform to start selling online. Of course you can consider other marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, or Rakuten, but in reality, you will just replace one brand with the other, one with far more control over your products than your partner retailers. Furthermore, you wouldn’t gain any market insights that your own D2C eCommerce platform will provide.

So, select an eCommerce platform that supports both your B2B and D2C ordeals. You can choose from Adobe Commerce, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Shopify Plus, and commercetools to design websites for two different business models.

Solution 2: Find an renowned platform partner for integrations

An experienced eCommerce agency partner like Ranosys can help you pick the right platform that fits your business needs. Additionally, they can help to integrate your D2C eCommerce platform with your existing systems.

One key aspect to consider is- use tools for their specific purposes only. For example, an ERP software is perfect for product specifications and operational information. But you can’t use it to collect user data to enrich customer experience.

Challenge #3: Attracting the right customers to the D2C eCommerce website

Traditionally, B2B brands aren’t responsible for attending to customers’ needs or sparking their interest in the products. You can constitute it as a merit and a demerit at the same time.

Merit- since your partner retailers and distributors handle all the marketing activities, all you need to do is focus on building the product as per the retailers’ needs and getting them on their shelves.

Demerit- since you have no relationship with the end customers and don’t know what they like or dislike, creating personalized experiences becomes a far-fetched dream. However, D2C eCommerce tends to change all of that.

When you move to a D2C eCommerce channel, you’ll become responsible for getting customers to your online store and persuading them to complete their purchases. And this is where most B2B brands have a chill down their spine. Manufacturing for customers is one thing but selling it to them is a whole new level. Product personalization, localized experiences, multiple payment solutions, data-driven drive, SEO and marketing capabilities, and omnichannel strategies become imperative to extending impressive customer experiences when you shift from B2B to D2C.

Solution 1: Tell your D2C brand story

Moving to D2C eCommerce is not just about recovering sales, revenues or ROIs lost during the pandemic, it is also about facilitating a strong connection with your customers so that you become a successful D2C brand. It is why it is significant that you tell your brand’s unique story. Let your customers know why you did what you did and how you’re different from your competitors, especially those retailers who used to source products from you.

Solution 2: Create own-brand D2C products

While there might be a product portfolio you share with your retailers and wholesalers, you can always forge personalized relationships with your customers via a unique product segment. Having your own brand online channels with D2C cater to customers while alternatively selling to retailers will lead to less complex operations and more streamlined online and offline selling.

Solution 3: Create product content that educates your customers

Retailers have always faced the conundrum of representing products in an understandable and customizable manner. Customers don’t like complex product pages, especially in today’s fast-paced digital era.

By adding product specifications to your product representation, you unlock the treasure trove of innovative products that lead to incredible D2C eCommerce experiences
Focus on data-driven design format to add intuitiveness and authenticity to your D2C eCommerce website
Includes videos, blogs, and social postings to showcase your products in action, boost its selling quotient, and help customers identify a need for the product in their lives
Real-life examples always boost customer engagement and persuade them to complete their purchases

Solution 4: Do not forget setting up a social store

Every omnichannel marketing strategy must include the power of social media. Managing a social store along your physical outlet (omnichannel experience) is an excellent long-term solution to market your comprehensive D2C eCommerce business. D2C merchants can easily connect their eCommerce storefronts to Instagram, which gives them the ability to buy products right from the app-rather than exploring the products on the website.

Challenge #4: Order fulfillment system for a new consumer-facing interface

When you make the DTC pivot, you will move from large orders to smaller ones. Logistics will play a key role- seamless, on-time, trackable deliveries will impact customer experiences. As a D2C eCommerce brand, if you’re not able to get an order delivered as expected, they will most likely not return back to your site. Similarly, if a customer experiences an issue with your delivery, you need to make it easy for them to reach you out and get it resolved as quickly as possible. Make products return easy and breezy. However, to do so, you need an automated approach, one that uses the right tools, people, features, and capabilities and provides the right results.

Solution 1: Automate inventory management and order fulfillment

When you start your D2C business, you don’t really have the infrastructure to meet the Amazon-set shipping and delivery standards. Needless to say, you will suffer space and inventory related constraints. From receiving inventory, storing it in their warehouse, packing and shopping orders, processing returns, and customer support, practicing order fulfillment can be challenging, especially if you’re launching your D2C eCommerce platform in different regions. Therefore, you must invest in technology to automate inventory management and every BUY button on your website.

Solution 2: Ensure fast and flexible shipping

To put things into perspective:

Over 87% of consumers say that they judge a merchant’s capabilities and if they will shop again as per their shipping and delivery experience
63% of consumers say they constitute fast and seamless shipping as a positive experience
66% of customers say they want shipping to be a free option to have a positive experience

See where we’re going with this?

To make D2C work, you need multiple shipping options but without overwhelming your employees. Shipping forms an imperative part of your direct-to-consumers approach. Without offering a seamless, fast, and reliable shipping experience to your customers, they won’t shop again with you.

It is why you integrate your D2C eCommerce store with a shipping software to consolidate orders from multiple selling channels, automate shipping, allow users to track their orders at each point, send them notifications about order status, ensure on-time delivery, and share contact information of the delivery personnel. Post delivering the shipment, you can also send emails requesting satisfaction and recommendation scores.

How Adobe Commerce supports your B2B to D2C migration

Adobe Commerce is known for its flexibility, scalability, and world-class experiences delivered by its implementation partners across the globe. Along with its extensive marketplace of extensions and third-party integrations, Adobe Commerce empowers you to personalize your stores as per your business needs. Here is a brief how Adobe Commerce supports your D2C eCommerce objectives:

#1: Run your B2B and D2C business from one platform

As said before, when you opt for a D2C eCommerce business model, it doesn’t mean you are closing your B2B business. Therefore, you need a D2C eCommerce platform that supports both business models (B2B and D2C), manages all your brands, and serves all your customers.

Adobe Commerce supports your business 2 business goals with features like one-click recording, order by SKU, rule-based fulfillment, tiered account with buyers with varied permissions, self-service customer portals, customized catalogs and pricing. Furthermore, Adobe Commerce and its page builder, live search, PWA studio, customer account management, real-time inventory management, sell and fulfill from anywhere features promises superior D2C growth.

#2: Personalize experiences for all customer segments

Additionally, Magento 2 supports many languages, making it perfect for companies that sell their products internationally. This makes it possible for you to design a store that is accessible in a variety of languages, making it easy for clients from around the globe to shop at your store.

With Adobe Commerce, you get to study the requirements and behaviors of a D2C audience from your website, app, social channels, and every other platform where you ask for user information, create buyer personas, and use them to boost CX. The AI tool, Adobe Sensei and its live search and product recommendation capabilities allows you to personalize experiences based on their purchase history and behaviors. The best part, you can then extend personalization to all your touchpoints- social, email, SMS campaigns, web apps, apps, and eCommerce websites.

#3: Custom UI/UX themes

Regardless of how many D2C eCommerce brands are out there, every brand is unique in terms of their products and brand story. With Adobe Commerce, you can lay the foundation of your exclusive brand story and develop a custom theme from scratch to reflect it on your D2C eCommerce site. In fact, you can develop personalized storefronts for all your sales channels, creating a truly distinctive and omnichannel experience for your customers.

#4: Product catalogs

As a comprehensive D2C eCommerce ecosystem, Adobe Commerce has no limits on the number of products you can add to your D2C eCommerce store. With Adobe Commerce Page Builder, you can edit and manage product content, videos, images, and 3D visualizations without developer indulgence. Its drag-and-drop functionality empowers you to undergo multiple content updates in hours rather than months. Even so, Page Builder also allows you to perform customer segmentation to deliver relevant and tailored content to shoppers, driving cross-selling and upselling opportunities.

#5: Scale up as your business grows

With Adobe Commerce, you can easily scale as and when your business grows. Instead of deploying all D2C eCommerce features at once, you can deploy sophisticated ones when needed. From offering BNPL solutions to allowing BOPIS and standard shipping, Adobe Commerce allows you to innovate and scale without increasing technical overheads or compromising on security.

How Ranosys can help

The biggest challenge to building a D2C eCommerce solution is migrating from your existing one while making the process undetectable and seamless for users. Our certified Adobe Commerce experts help you build powerful D2C eCommerce solutions from scratch or replatform from another eCommerce system. Our team also assists with extending the capabilities of your D2C store by custom development and integrations. As you grow, our professionals ensure superior performance at all times with consistent managed services. Connect with our experts and know more about our D2C eCommerce services.

Make a move to the D2C space with Adobe Commerce.

Want to boost sales productivity with Salesforce?

Today’s consumers want personalized experiences and expect companies to understand their unique needs and expectations. A single bad experience can turn your customer away. Therefore, sales teams are under a surmounting pressure to deliver customized and consultative buying experiences to win customers, turn them to loyalists, and elevate ROI and growth margins.

In fact, 78% of buyers seek help from the sales teams and consider them as advisors for a more personalized experience. This can only be accomplished if you know what a prospect needs at the moment and across which channel. And Salesforce along with its comprehensive suite of cloud solutions prove to be just the right solution for your business.

From gathering details about a potential lead, to assisting the sales reps in tailoring their interaction with them at every stage of their customer journey and providing superior customer service, Salesforce Sales Cloud strikes the right balance between improving sales efficiency and serving your customers better.

Our Salesforce sales funnel experts have put together their hands-on experience to explain Salesforce Sales Cloud features and benefits, which will change the way your sales team functions.

Salesforce Sales Cloud: Introduction

Salesforce Sales Cloud is a cloud-based platform designed for sales people to have meaningful interactions with customers, leads, and prospects. With a 360-degree view of customers across the sales funnel stages on Salesforce, it allows information to flow freely, offer timely relevant content, give partners customers data, create accurate quotes to close deals, surface AI-powered account insights, and more.

Some of the amazing Salesforce Sales Cloud features include contacts creation, product order ID creation, inputting product pricing details, triggering email notifications based on a shopper’s behavior, tracking orders, sales reps placing orders on behalf of the customers, and much more.

Since Sales Cloud is a module in Salesforce, it natively supports Marketing Cloud and Service Cloud and can be seamlessly integrated with Salesforce Commerce Cloud.

Why should you invest in Salesforce Sales Cloud?

Most often, business owners ask this question, ‘Why should I invest in Salesforce Sales Cloud?’. Regardless of whether your sales performance is rust or riches, Salesforce Sales Cloud will take it a notch up. When you have a single dashboard for all your sales rep to know about customers, orders, revenue, margins, ROI, and Salesforce sales funnel; there is hardly any need to integrate other third-party applications or systems. With Salesforce Sales Cloud:

You gain in-depth insights about your customers- from every click, browse, product added to cart, previous buying statistics, and whatnot
Bring together your sales and marketing teams to collaborate on client retention and customer service strategies
Forecast your sales performance and create relevant sales strategies
Empower your sales and customer service reps to holistically view complete details about a customer and deliver an integrated experience
Capture more leads by automating lead entry and nurture them via personalized campaigns
Get a consolidated view of your sales pipeline to win more deals
Analyze and track competition to deliver a better message, improving Salesforce sales productivity
Automate business processes to save time of your sales reps and improve sales workflow efficiency

And that’s not it! Salesforce Sales Cloud benefits and features extend way beyond the above-described. However, you now have an idea how the platform your sales funnel stages with Salesforce.

Typical pain points faced by sales rep and how Salesforce Sales Cloud solves them

Salesforce Sales Cloud focuses on the sales component of your customer/client relationship management (CRM) and how your reps handle leads, contacts, accounts, and opportunities throughout the funnel. Although it does offer customer support, that quotient is better handled by Salesforce Service Cloud.

Here are a few challenges faced by sales reps and how the excellent Salesforce Sales Cloud features remedies them.

	Pain Points of Sales Rep	How Salesforce Sales Cloud drives value
Automating lead entry and assigning process	When sales receive a new lead, they spend an average of 6 minutes on inputting and assigning them to a respective rep. Initial data entry takes 3 minutes. Since this process has to be repeated for all incoming leads, it affects the sales team’s productivity and sales workflow as well.	Salesforce Sales Cloud allows you to automate this process, resulting in a 50% productivity improvement. The web-to-lead feature of sales cloud automatically consolidates all incoming leads, saving a lot of man hours, which can now be spent on optimizing the sales processes.
Improving the lead conversion process	Without a complete view of the lead, sales teams struggle in nurturing them with effective communication, assigning them a stage in the sales funnel, and converting them to customers.	Salesforce’s web-to-lead feature allows sales teams to quickly read information about a lead via ‘lead list view’; assign lead scores to prospects to connect with them based on set priorities; get details on the total number of incoming leads, the date of generation, and status; ask for follow ups from sales reps assigned the respective leads through ‘Chatter’. Also, you gain clear visibility in your Salesforce sales funnel performance on the dashboard, the ROI of your marketing spend, and make data-driven decisions.
Close more deals and win more customers	Without a 360-degree visibility into the sales pipeline, sales teams find it difficult to identify leads that are almost ready for conversion and those that require more nurturing. Due to a lack of a platform to analyze competitor insights, reps have no idea why customers turn to the products/services of their rivals. Ultimately, it impacts their final sales numbers and hampers business growth.	Salesforce Sales Cloud helps you gain every single detail about your prospect, lead, and customers on its dashboard. With features like, ‘My Stuck Opportunities’, ‘Know Your Competitors’, and ‘Opportunity Closed Lost Reason’, reps have holistic insights into lead behavior, track competition, identify areas of improvement, and plan the next course of growth accordingly.
Improve sales rep efficiency	Most days, sales reps spend their time taking charge of manual processes that kills their productivity and hampers creative growth.	By automating manual tasks, Salesforce Sales Cloud boosts your sales team’s efficiency. It allows reps to connect and consult with product/service experts on how to sell the solutions and onboard more customers. Reps can quickly access all information consolidated on a single dashboard to get more visibility. Through ‘roll up summary fields’, reps can view the Open Opportunity and Closed Won Opportunity scores for an account. Once a lead is won and the sales funnel stage in Salesforce is changed to ‘closed won’, it automatically changes its status to Customer. Salesforce automatically sends thank you emails and customer onboarding resources to the respective sponsors.
Reducing sales rep ramp time	Often, sales leaders fail to identify which assets are being under-utilized and which teammates are able to close deals sooner. This results in increased employee turnover costs with unclear and directionless expectations.	Salesforce Sales Cloud assists sales leaders to track rep progress and provide them guidance on the next steps in real-time. It empowers new sales hires with required information, sets realistic expectations, and facilitates consistent communications via a Chatter group.

How is the Sales funnel changing with Salesforce Sales Cloud?

In today’s dynamic digital environment, buyers are increasingly looking for one-to-one interactions with product/service experts. Salesforce Sales Cloud features and tools empowers your sales team to handle every interaction for success. With a Salesforce sales funnel, your marketing and sales teams can track, interact, and nurture with leads, prospects, and customers.

To keep a track of consumer journey, Salesforce provides several built-in features and tools like lead management, data and analytics which improves decision making for sales and marketing teams.

Here is a visual representation of Salesforce sales funnel stages depicting customer journeys.

Competitive Salesforce Sales Cloud features and tools that drive sales efficiency

With the change in a modern approach to selling, businesses are leveraging the Salesforce Sales Cloud to create powerful buying experiences through automation, data transparency, and advanced intelligence to prioritize and optimize customer relationships. Salesforce Sales Cloud comes with powerful tools that allow the sales team to win more deals and build deeper customer relationships through tailor-made interactions. These include:

1. Salesforce Sales Cloud Automation: Automation is cutting down low-value repetitive tasks and letting salespeople focus on selling instead of administrative work. Salesforce Sales Cloud enables you real-time view of your customers, including automatically capturing new contacts from email, activity history, key contacts, and ongoing communications. This increases the number of calls and emails a team can make to boost process and workspace productivity.

2. Salesforce CPQ & Billing: There are several touchpoints in a customer’s journey. For example, the marketing team sending personalized messages, sales people calling into accounts, and finance professionals getting involved in quoting and billing.

Through Salesforce CPQ and billing, you can transform your business model from transactional product sales to recurring customer relationships, which helps sales reps to select the right products and services for your customers. The process of CPQ and billing eliminates recalculation and duplication, enabling faster data flows. Billing is integrated with Salesforce CPQ to generate invoices, payments, and revenue records. With Salesforce Sales Cloud, you unify your configuration, pricing, quoting, billing and payment collection on a single platform. The integration between CPQ and billing empowers you with the following:

Generate error-free bills
Simplify billing for subscribed users
Improve sales performance
Strengthen customer relationships

3.Sales Cloud Partner Relationship Management: 75% of the world’s commerce is sold via an indirect channel that is through partners or franchise. Companies depend on sales reps to attract, acquire and serve their customers. How salespeople interact with customers is equally important as it reflects on your brand. Companies must equip them to become trusted advisors.

Here comes Sales Cloud Partner Relationship Management which:

Simplifies onboarding, recruiting, training and supporting your salespeople with features like configuring lead distribution, deal registration, and marketing development funds with the interactive wizard of Salesforce
Provides the information they need to close deals and makes them more productive
Salesforce PRM (Partner Relationship Management) delivers performance insights across devices and channels to help track KPIs and explore opportunities for cross-selling and up-selling
Prevents lead conflicts, automate lead distribution, registers deals, and more with prebuilt PRM solutions

4. Sales Cloud Einstein: Every business needs to capture leads, build lead pipelines, track and manage opportunities, close deals faster, manage customer relationships post-sales, and keep track of their sales team’s performance.

To monitor all these activities, Salesforce has an AI-powered tool called Sales Cloud Einstein. Einstein offers you all the insights and data to stay informed about business developments and other key moments that affect your relationship with customers. With the implementation of Salesforce Einstein, brands gain email content recommendations, practice engagement scoring, etc. Sales Cloud Einstein boosts decision-making and productivity with AI and automation by:

Building pipelines faster with Einstein Lead Scoring
Identifying customer sentiment, competitor involvement, and overall prospect engagement with Einstein Opportunity Insights
Eliminating manual data entry and save time with Einstein Activity Capture
Enhancing relationships with Einstein Account Insights.

5. Salesforce Marketing Account Engagement: Merchants expect marketers and salespeople to engage customers with tailored content. Doing it manually is extremely tedious, hence suggesting marketing automation. Marketing automation aligns the marketing and sales team with selling more efficiently. Here is how your business can benefit from Salesforce Marketing Account Engagement :

Attract and generate high-quality leads
Get real-time alerts of prospect’s activity during sales calls
Build stronger connections with personalized outreach
Through Salesforce Customer Segmentation, launch tailor made campaigns

Leverage Salesforce Sales Cloud benefits with certified experts

When it comes to buying, today’s customers expect more than knowledgeable sales people. If you want to automate workflows, unify data, and boost productivity in reduced time, Salesforce Sales Cloud is the right solution and with Ranosys certified experts team you can achieve productivity in reduced time.

Have questions? Connect with our Sales Cloud experts.

The thought of building a multi-vendor marketplace like Amazon or Etsy is not an easy task. You might worry about complexities like onboarding sellers, handling the logistics of third-party transactions, and managing the necessary technology stack. But to keep your customers from shifting to big marketplaces like Amazon, many organizations are now launching their own platforms. With a multi-vendor marketplace platform, everyone gets specific benefits – store owner, vendor, and buyer.

Store owners will get better ROI with full control over marketplace activities
Vendors will be able to boost sales by reaching a broader audience
Buyers get a variety of products to choose from and they can compare products, prices, brands etc

To increase customer satisfaction, streamline operations, earn higher revenues and achieve faster growth, businesses are looking for developing multi-vendor marketplaces. So how do you choose an eCommerce platform for building a multi-vendor marketplace?

Choosing an eCommerce platform for multi-vendor marketplace

The process of multi-vendor marketplace creation can be time-consuming and expensive, with myriads of features to consider and match them with your business goals.

Here comes Adobe Commerce, a reliable, flexible, enterprise-level platform to create a multi-vendor marketplace packed with all the competitive functionalities by default. With Adobe Commerce, you create a unified, multi-vendor marketplace platform that lets you simplify your workflow, build unique eCommerce customer journeys, and deliver a seamless customer experience.

Let’s explore how Adobe Commerce helps businesses develop a marketplace platform and make enterprises thrive in the digital world.

Features of Adobe Commerce multi-vendor marketplace

Multi-vendor marketplaces have completely revived the eCommerce business model. In a marketplace website, a wide variety of products and services are provided by multiple sellers. It offers competitive prices, a commission revenue model to owners, and smooth order fulfillment and shipments operations. Adobe provides a seamless experience, integrations, ease of use and other advantages. Let’s look at the various selling features for a multi-vendor marketplace platform for customers, owners and sellers.

Feature	Sellers	Owners	Customers
DASHBOARD	Interactive vendor dashboard to track orders, sales, revenue, shipping info, analytics, and so on	Customized analytics dashboard with insights around GMV, average order value, acquisition costs/customer, and so on	No such dashboard available; however, customers get access to seller pages along with product portfolio
CUSTOM FEATURES	Easily manage business information & operations like product list, orders, payments and sales analytics.	Customizable product attributes for different categories & types A custom homepage to accommodate top-selling, trending & in-demand products along with current deals Commission management to allow different rates for different sellers and categories	Multi-lingual support to make website content visible in a shopper’s native language Product recommendations and filtering wide range of products
SECURITY	Role-based access to different teammates based on their job responsibilities	Easy and automated marketplace account registration process with licensing confirmation to be able to sell to consumers	Secure account and payment gateways to preserve your personal and financial information
SEO CAPABILITIES	Editing all URLs to make them SEO-friendly and easy to share	Admin provides SEO friendly URLs which make seller public pages easily readable to users.	No benefit as such but consumers can compare seller pages and products
ONBOARDING	Automated account and product approval	Streamlined onboarding of sellers with intuitive account registration and automated notifications	Easy onboarding process in different formats like social media, email or phone number.

Why build a multi-vendor marketplace platform with Adobe Commerce

As a merchant, you need a robust technology stack with functionalities and extensions that offers seamless development of multiple eCommerce platforms simultaneously. Adobe Commerce is a scalable and secure platform that provides exemplary levels of user experience. With its next-generation PWA theme, you deliver enhanced customer experiences while fulfilling buyers’ and sellers’ requirements.

Let’s understand more about why Adobe Commerce is the right choice for building a multi-vendor marketplace platform :

#1. Adobe’s UI themes and extensions

Adobe Commerce (Magento) has a huge library of paid and free extensions that can be used on the platform for implementing modules like order management, vendor management, shipping, and more. Adobe Commerce has all the extensions available for seamless integrations; such as payment gateways, customer support, analytics, accounting etc., to improve the overall functionality of the marketplace. Along with responsive and customizable themes available in the Magento marketplace, you can tailor them as per your branding guidelines without having to build them from scratch.

#2. Adobe Commerce order management

By executing multi-vendor functionality, eCommerce business owners can manage their respective online stores independently. Vendors own all the processes in their online stores and can modify it as per their user base. Adobe Commerce helps vendors with quality control, order management, commission management etc., to maintain a balance between customers, vendors and admin. Magento’s inventory and order management capabilities allow multi-vendor admins with multiple brands, products and customers to create seamless cross-channel commerce experiences. This enables smooth management in organizations that are in a multi-vendor marketplace.

#3. Advanced product recommendations

Adobe Commerce Live Search provides AI-enabled interactive product search and recommendations from thousands of vendors. Live Search is a machine learning tool that ensures faster, personalized, and relevant results through an organized search functionality and product categorization to make product search easier for customers. Website owners can get customer insights that are further useful in personalized experiences.

#4. Marketing tools

Adobe Commerce is a well-optimized platform which gives website owners and vendors SEO-friendly multi-vendor platforms. It helps sellers and brand owners with customer insights to improve consumer journeys. Administrators can analyze data like the number of page visits to develop marketing strategies for more marketing visibility. Adobe Commerce consists of many extension modules like email marketing, CRM, SEO/SEM, marketing automation, and advertising that can be easily integrated with the platform for functionality extension.

#5. Checkout enhancement

Smooth checkout experiences is a critical attribute of your overall eCommerce experiences. Everyone likes one-step checkout, and with Adobe Commerce, various options exist to create a user-friendly checkout process. In multi-vendor eCommerce platforms, one-step checkout lets customers purchase quickly, and there are fewer chances of an abandoned shopping cart. Adobe Commerce allows customers to track orders and derive insights from the checkout page, enhancing the overall shopping experience.

#6. High standards and quality

Adobe maintains strict quality control and test processes for extensions added to the marketplace. In Magento, every extension goes through a three-step review process where functionalities are checked against business, technical, and marketing guidelines. This includes plagiarism, security, coding standards etc. While implementing any such extension, businesses owners and sellers can rest assured in terms of the business and ROI function of all these third-party systems.

#6. Adobe’s Vacation mode:

With Adobe’s multi-vendor marketplace extension sellers can go on vacation mode by raising a request to disable their store temporarily for mentioned time. It allows sellers to take a break from their shop for some time, if that is what sellers want. Sellers can still reply to customer inquiries and feedback.

#7. Streamlined onboarding:

With Magento’s features, onboarding vendors is as simple as possible. Magento gives plenty of options like registration with social media, email or phone numbers. This allows vendors to have a smooth experience to easily manage their profiles. In fact, customers can also easily register to the shopping site via their social, email or contact no credentials. They are providing vendors with an easy approach to an intuitive process of marketplace account registration and automated account notifications on approval.

#8. Interactive dashboards:

You can create an interactive dashboard through Adobe Commerce, showcasing essential data insights that are relevant for your business. Sellers can track orders, traffic, sales, conversions, shipping info, available product inventories, invoices, etc., by creating an easy-to-use and understandable customized dashboard. This way, sellers can gain valuable insights and use them for advertisements or product development.

Why should businesses build multi-vendor marketplaces?

Creating your multi-vendor marketplace platform is a great way to future-proof your digital sales and get ahead of the competition. Hence, digital commerce is moving towards an ecosystem that emphasizes marketplaces.
A multi-vendor marketplace is a great way to offer more choices in your online store without adding inventory.
Multi-vendor marketplaces give you insights into customers like where they are located, how much they buy, what industries they are in, etc. This data provides valuable insights to help your business with marketing and product strategies.

Developing a multi-vendor marketplace platform with our Adobe Commerce experts

eCommerce giants such as Amazon and eBay did not grow overnight. To compete with leading brands in today’s leading digital world is not an easy task but with unique strategy it is more than possible. To build a marketplace all a business needs is a vision and choosing the right platform like Adobe Commerce. Adobe Commerce platform works seamlessly with multi-vendor marketplaces and delivers an exceptional eCommerce experience. Want to explore how Adobe helps in creating a platform which gives you incremental growth, improves customer experience and accelerates your business? Connect with our Adobe certified experts for a free consultation.

Want to build a multi-vendor marketplace on Adobe?

Developers are always confused whether to create sling models while creating components in Adobe Experience Manager. It is mostly regarding the creation of simple components that read authored properties from the Java Content Repository (JCR) and display them on the page. However, since HTML Template Language (HTL) can easily do this job without AEM sling models, most consider these models to add unnecessary complexities and a time consuming process as well. As development can proceed in a simple and quick manner without the implementation of sling models in AEM, it is often difficult to comprehend their necessity.

For all such developers, here is the answer; sling models are recommended for all AEM components, simple or complex. And when developers build them as per best practices, it saves development time both initially and during ongoing maintenance.

What is a sling model in Adobe Experience Manager?

Sling Models are annotation driven Java “POJO’s” (Plain Old Java Objects) that facilitate the mapping of data from the JCR to Java variables. Why to use AEM sling models? Here is the answer:

Pluggable
Entirely annotation driven. “Pure” POJOs.
OOTB, support resource properties (via ValueMap), SlingBindings, OSGi services, request attributes
Adapt multiple objects – minimal required Resource and SlingHttpServletRequest
Support both classes and interfaces
Easily work with other AEM sling models without changing to bundles
Adobe Experience Manager Sling models are similar to adapter factory and nobody recognizes the difference between the sling objects

Why use Sling Models in Adobe Experience Manager?

The following are some reasons why you must create sling models in Adobe Experience Manager:

#1: JSON Support

Sling models in AEM promise the rightful delivery of content-as-a-service. Sling models allow the easy accessibility of all web content as JSON web services through the .model.json URL extension. JSON is a fundamental feature for the AEM and must be implemented in Adobe Experience Manager.

#2: The processing of images, videos and links

Most developers only assign complex values to AEM sling models whereas others are stored in HTL. However, in the long-term, it can lead to maintenance issues. For example, with HTL you can render an image via fileReference and drop it into the <img> tag. This displays the image from Digital Asset Manager (DAM), which makes the client feel that the code is correct. However, there are two issues with this.

First, the image will be rendered without browser caching. This means that when you update the image, any user that has viewed the image before will see the old version only and not the new one.

Second, the image will always be rendered without adapting to the device it is being viewed in. This means the image will suffer from styling constraints, might appear big or small to a user, ultimately disrupting website performance and user experiences.

Therefore, the only solution is to code all values in the Adobe Experience Manager sling models to prevent bugs and prevent inconsistency in how links work across different components.

#3: Assist during inheritance and override scenarios

Although HTL is a robust syntax, it is still not a complete coding language and lacks support during granular override cases through inheritance. For example, when you want to change the logic of how a component is fetched without having to overwrite the file or create a new component.

When you employ a sling model in Adobe Experience Manager, you can use components without an HTL file, which means you can inherit the components easily, copy-paste them, or make changes to it. As inheritance is common in AEM page components, with components that use HTL files and AEM sling models, the maintenance would become difficult without proper inheritance.

#4: Code consistency

When maintaining codebases, it is imperative to manage pattern consistencies so that both old and new developers can support the codebases. When choosing between sling models in AEM and accessing properties via HTL, the latter can save significant development time, which otherwise would be lost in coe navigation and bug resolution. In case you think implementing complex values via sling models and other simple values via HTL, managing content services would be a troublesome task.

#5: Highly efficient

Most developers contemplate that the difference between properties in the HTL without the complexity of sling model annotations in AEM enhances the speed of development. However, with AEM Component Generator, you can build a complete sling model with zero development indulgence.

In projects where unit test coverage is required for complex fields of sling model, the undertaking of unit tests for simple sling models in AEM will prevent the time that will be spent in mitigating the issues that arise otherwise.

How to create a Sling Model in AEM?

Let’s create a sample project in AEM & implement the sling model into it.

In this AEM Sling model example, we will create a home loan EMI calculator component in Adobe Experience Manager, so let’s get started.

Step 1: Create your AEM project with the help of below command:

mvn -B archetype:generate \
-D archetypeGroupId=com.adobe.aem \
-D archetypeArtifactId=aem-project-archetype \
-D archetypeVersion=35 \
-D appTitle=”Home Loan Emi Calc” \
-D appId=”home-loan-website” \
-D groupId=”com.homeloan.website” \

Step 2: Now let’s create the “homeloanemicalc” component like below.

Loan-amount : Property

Interest : Property

Tenure : Property

Step 3: Let’s create our sling model in AEM on below path:

Path: </home/ranosys/eclipse-workspace/Code/homeloan-website/core/src/main/java/com/constellar/website/core/models/HomeLoanEmiCalcModel.java

Model File Name: HomeLoanEmiCalcModel.java

Step 4: Here the final model looks like:

In the above model we have created three functions which return the user input data like principal, tenure & interest and once we have all required info we do the final calculation and return final results from there.

Step 5: We need to place some div elements in the “Homeloanemicalc.html” file like below & call our AEM sling model.

Final Results of above AEM Sling model example:

Sling models in Adobe Experience Manager

Efficient development is all about improving the speed and quality of deliverables. Developing components via Sling models in AEM helps you move towards modern AEM coding practices and improve the development process. In the long run, AEM sling models will help in saving development time and budget and help release more custom features on your website.

Learn the right way to implement sling models in AEM

Vishal Bansal

Vishal Bansal is a professional with an IT experience of 10 years currently serving as a Tech Lead at Ranosys Technologies. He has played a pivotal role in eCommerce practice development at Ranosys Technologies. Vishal Bansal is Adobe Certified Professional—Adobe Commerce Developer.

In the past decade, the way we shop has changed dramatically. Online shopping has leveled with physical shopping, even exceeding it in case of season or festive sale. All of this is attributed to the changing customer expectations, consisting of modern solutions like BOPIS, customized deals, EMI, BNPL, and so on.

The modern retailers need to offer a unified omnichannel experience across in-store and online channels. This means, offering consistent online experiences across web, web apps, mobile apps, social stores, retail outlets, and all the other applicable touchpoints. And the good news for retailers is that they can easily achieve this expected customer experience standards with futuristic and user-driven Adobe Digital Experience platform.

Retailers can fulfill this by improving customer experience across all channels throughout the buyer’s journey. With its AI capabilities, Adobe Experience Cloud makes retail personalization easier for brands. Let’s understand the state of personalization in retail and how Adobe Experience Cloud has managed to fill the gap with its tools.

The personalization gap in the retail industry

Despite personalization being the strategic goal for most organizations, only a few have come close to achieving it. The firms want to improve the level of maturity in digital and retail personalization at scale but have obstacles like fragmented data, lack of in-house resources, inability to increase ROI, difficulty scaling personalization across different channels, and failure to deliver experiences in real time.

Retailers now need to focus on a unified customer journey allowing real-time access to customer profiles and integrating data. To be well-positioned in the industries, organizations can improve the following things:

A dedicated executive for personalization
Clearly defined retail personalization strategy
Continuous feedback

How Adobe Experience Cloud tools is personalizing retailers in-store and online experiences?

To meet unique needs and wants of customers the key is to incorporate delightful in-store and online shopping experiences. Adobe Experience Cloud tools empowers retailers to leverage personalisation in-store and online both:

#1. Easy payment options

Payment options play an important role in customer experiences, and brands should provide flexible, customer-oriented bill payment options. To deliver the best checkout to consumers, retailers accept popular payment methods, including debit cards, credit cards, PayPal, and Venmo. This enables retailers to get paid faster, reducing the risk of debts and adapting to dynamic customer expectations.

Buy Now Pay Later(BNPL) is also gaining a lot of popularity these days among Gen Z. Adobe Commerce has released a fully integrated payment solution that lets customers securely pay and manage order data from every storefront. Adobe’s payment services are a single solution that enables you to process payments, view reports or analytics, and get notified. It helps you reach new customers by accepting payments in local currencies.

#2. Flexibility in returns and pick-up with physical stores

90% of customers want an easy-to-return feature when purchasing. If the retailer asks for a fee to return, users are most likely to buy from another store. Customers also want nearby store locations to have the return goods option. Customer expectations of delivery and shipment costs have also shifted, as most want same-day delivery and low shipment costs. To handle this challenge, savvy retailers offer BOPIS (Buy Online, Pickup in store) for customer convenience.

Users often search for products from retailers that offer BOPIS before purchasing. With ‘Store Fulfillment’ by Adobe Commerce, merchants with warehouses and physical stores have an advanced solution that lets you deliver enhancing BOPIS or curbside experiences. Store Fulfillment provides omnichannel flexibility, productivity of store employees, improves inventory management, and mobile-enabled BOPIS solution to deliver a seamless experience.

#3. AI-powered Live Search

Retailers with in-store and online business benefit extremely well when they deliver fast, relevant and personalized search results which keeps customers engaged and makes them purchase. Many shoppers navigate by using keywords or categories looking for relevant results. Adobe Commerce Live Search changes it all by AI and machine learning providing quicker and personalized results through search-as-you-type results. Live Search reduces manual tasks for merchants while delivering fast and accurate search results. From a shoppers perspective, it saves time browsing the entire catalog. Retailers can also make users visit their website in-store for an engaging shopping experience.

#4. Increased demand for personalization

Customers want personalized offers, whether shopping in-store or online, as per individual habits. And customers who receive personalized recommendations are likely to buy more than planned. Retailers can make the most of tailored suggestions or promotions during shopping. At this time, retailers are looking for AI-driven product recommendations to conduct meaningful conversations with every visitor. With Adobe Target, you can achieve the ultimate goal of delivering relevant, timely offers that align with customers’ needs. Adobe Target can provide personalization by visually creating and managing A/B testing.

#5. Mobile-enhanced experiences

Though many people use laptops for online shopping, 79% of sales came via smartphones. From buying groceries to ordering dinner users have shifted their habits of buying online leading brands to think about customer experiences. To deliver seamless customer journey experiences a new application built on Adobe digital Experience platform – Adobe Journey Optimizer is launched. With Journey optimizer brands are allowed to send personalized mobile messages via push notifications, or location-based triggers. For example, retailers can notify on which store they have availability of products of shoppers’ choices. Merchants can reach the right audience on the right channel at crucial times when users need personalization the most.

#6. Adobe Experience Manager for engaging content experiences

A CMS like Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) can help you create and personalize content at scale. With automated tools and workflow framework brands can increase engagement at every touchpoint of customer journey. Adobe Experience Manager personalization simplifies relevant data sources in real time to make it widely accessible in the organization. From browse to buy, AEM ensures to deliver engaging CX to drive conversions. Whether it is creating, managing, or delivering content and digital assets across multiple channels seamlessly, AEM ensures personalization at scale.

#7. Adobe Marketo Engage for marketing automation

More than 50% of online shoppers expect a billing receipt email after purchase. More than 40% want to receive a text message when an order has shipped. The rising expectations of users lead to making every interaction the right one. Consumers want to feel every interaction to be personal with the brand. With the help of Adobe Marketo’s machine learning and predictive analytics capabilities, retailers can automate these interactions to ensure consistent personalization on different channels. In fact, you can automate entire customer journeys with Adobe Marketo across touchpoints to deliver relevant and interactive messages.

Leveraging the Adobe Digital Experience platform

While online shopping makes the buying process easier, physical stores provide instant products, with the ability to touch and feel the product. Customers feel more comfortable when they research, browse, compare prices, interact with sales representatives, and checkout without bugs. In the future we will see the co-existence of online and retail experiences. Through Adobe Experience Cloud platform, brands can deliver tailor made offers to individual customers with some in-store tactics and thrive in the world of digital commerce.

Explore how Adobe drives personalization at scale with certified experts.

Modern marketers know that buyers want personalized, targeted content at each stage of their shopping journey. Subsequently, many need help providing tailored content with their buyers’ demands at scale and the Salesforce ecosystem can help brands achieve this intricate level of personalization. With Salesforce Marketing Cloud, you can segment your customers to send across the right content to the right group at the right touchpoint and time. When integrated to your eCommerce store, you can even automate customer segmentation and achieve high-level of personalization.

Let’s understand in this blog what basic attributes companies use to segment customers, the importance of segmentation and how to set up the Salesforce Marketing Cloud for automated customer segmentation.

Primary segments in eCommerce B2B and B2C marketing

Customer segmentation is of five types: demographic, behavioral, interests, psychographic, and custom audiences.

Depending on your eCommerce brand’s needs, your customer segmentation chart would look different. However, the entire goal of customer segmentation is to leverage data to better marketing strategies and improve ROIs.

Why is customer segmentation important in eCommerce?

Segmentation allows effective allocation of marketing resources and accelerates cross and up-selling opportunities. With consumer segmentation, you understand your shoppers’ pain points, assign them a group based on their characteristics, and ultimately develop a product that would meet their needs. Salesforce Marketing Cloud allows you to segment customer data into demographic, geographic, and behavioral categories. This allows for creating more targeted and personalized experiences through all your touchpoints, improving marketing and customer service and encouraging customers to buy often.

Let’s explore the benefits of customer segmentation:

#1. Increased revenue: Segmentation gives you more targeted results to provide correct content and services. It identifies customers and where they are most reachable, and they can always leverage it as a business grows. According to McKinsey, personalization can increase sales by around 10–15% through tailor-made marketing campaigns. In fact, 77% of ROI comes from segmented, targeted and triggered campaigns.

#2. Better engagement: Consumer segmentation helps develop a better connection between your brand and your customers. You can capture the level of engagement through click rates on email, social media following, website visits etc. depending on customer preferences. If a customer dislikes receiving marketing emails, you can reduce the number of emails. Ultimately, this increases brand value and drives better engagement.

#3. Customer behavior: Buying behavior is essential to understand customer expectations and retain them for a longer period. Segmenting customers based on their buying behavior help design relevant marketing strategies, predict market trends, innovate products per the insights, and improve customer service.

#4. Targeted campaigns: Through effective data segmentation techniques, organizations can send out targeted messages to appeal to each segment. It can be an advertisement targeted to one segment, a personalized email, an announcement of new products etc. You can reduce deleting of emails, abandoning carts, and generating revenue through targeted campaigns.

#5. Forecasting: Consumer segmentation helps you forecast future trends and customer preferences and get ahead of them. With data, you can improve your eCommerce marketing strategies to leverage the most returns today and in the future.

Integration of Salesforce CRM and Salesforce Marketing Cloud

An effective implementation of Salesforce customer segmentation helps explore higher growth opportunities, retain more customers, and enhance profits. Salesforce empowers you with :

Customer 360 to record information such as views and attributes
Automation to save time, money, and resources
Audience builder giving deep insight into the customers attributes and behavior

If you have a Salesforce B2C Commerce Cloud store, you can employ the Marketing Cloud Connect (a connector) to seamlessly integrate Salesforce Commerce Cloud with Salesforce Marketing Cloud. When leveraging other eCommerce platforms, you can connect with certified integration experts. This way, you gain access to a single dashboard to view all your customers across multiple touchpoints and forge effective marketing strategies.

Automate Segmentation using Salesforce Marketing Cloud: The steps

The powerful Salesforce Marketing Cloud platform allows you to access rich data resources, build smarter audience segments, automate marketing activities, and get better insights on one platform. Once you have integrated your store with Salesforce Marketing Cloud, you can leverage the below steps to automate customer segmentation.

In Marketing Cloud, you segment data by two options :

SQL Queries
Data Filter

Let’s discuss consumer segmentation by these two steps.

Segmenting customer data based on SQL queries

Structured Query Language (SQL) is one of the best ways to segment your customers from vast data. SQL queries are completely adaptable to your needs like targeting customers based on gender, purchase history, age etc. You can have various elements to target customers in SQL like FROM, WHERE, JOIN, SELECT, and so on.

Example of a real-time scenario for SQL: Marketers want to target and send emails to customers who last purchased in the last six months. Let’s use SQL activity to segment data based on the last purchase date in this case.

To create a SQL Query:

SFCC users transfer the order data CSV on SFTP
Marketers import the order data from SFTP into the SFMC using the file drop source option and import activity in Automation studio to capture customer data in SFMC.
To create an SQL query, click on Journey Builder → Automation Studio → Create Activity, and select SQL query.

Step 1: After completing preliminary steps of creating SQL query you are ready to ‘drag and drop’ the starting source and activity. You can drag and drop filter and SQL activity.

Step 2: Drag and drop the SQL query activity then click on Create New Query Activity.

Step 3: Fill in all the required information, and click on the Next button.

Step 4: Write the SQL query for capturing data that customers purchased in the last six months and select the targeted data extension to store filter data.

Step 5: Choose the update option in data action or any other option as per business requirements.

Step 6: After clicking on the Finish button, you can see SQL query activity is integrated with automation, then click on Save.

Step 7: Click on the Run Once button and run the implemented SQL query.

You can see three records after successfully filtering data using SQL query activity and running automation. You can schedule this automation according to business requirements.

The Salesforce Marketing Cloud Automation Studio will provide you with utmost flexibility to write SQL queries for segmenting databases.

Consumer segmentation through Data Filters

A data filter is a non-technical visual interface to segment your customer data. You can apply ‘AND’ and ‘OR’ operators to create filters using drag and drop features to move fields. Data filters are available in Email Studio under the ‘Subscribers’ drop-down menu.

Example: Marketers want to target sending promotional emails to customers based on gender. In this case, we can use Data filter to segment data.

Let’s discuss how.

Step1: Click on the Create button.

Step 2: A popup box will appear. You can choose either profile attributes or data extensions.

Step 3: Click on the Ok button and choose the data extension in which you want to filter data. Here we choose CustomerDE_Test.

Step 4: Drag and drop the gender field and apply the filter condition, gender is equal to “Female”.

Step 5: Fill in the filter name and description. To save the filter click on the save button.

The ultimate results will appear in only female data in a filter data extension.

Data filters can only apply when there is one data extension. If you want to add two or more data extensions you have to use SQL queries.

Use Case: Automating customer segmentation based on last purchase for Rutland

Automate customer segmentation with certified Salesforce experts

Salesforce customer segmentation allows businesses to make better use of their marketing budgets, gain a competitive advantage over rival companies, and most importantly understand the most vital asset of your business: customers. Salesforce’s built in data filters and SQL query features allow you to filter rich data sources and segment databases. Along with certified Salesforce experts and consultants, you can integrate your eCommerce store with SFMC and automate customer segmentation.

Have Questions? Talk to our Salesforce experts!

Sumit Sharma

Senior Software Engineer - Salesforce

A Senior Software Engineer with overall 4+ years of experience, Sumit has worked on various Marketing Cloud Campaign solutions. He has also managed subscriber data including import, segmentation etc by using Marketing Cloud Tools and database queries. Apart from this, he is an excellent team player with good communication, interpersonal and analytical skills. Connect with him on LinkedIn.

You’re ready to expand your business and explore new channels. That can entail expanding your B2C company to include a wholesale division, or you might already be a B2B eCommerce company prepared to sell directly to customers. In either case, you require a new set of eCommerce features. Your choices are either transferring to a new “hybrid” platform that combines complete B2B and B2C feature sets or making significant customisations to your current platform.

A hybrid eCommerce solution allows you better adaptability to take advantage of the next technological disruption to your industry. A unified catalogue management feature provided by B2B B2C hybrid eCommerce platform enables you to track all your products in one place. This hybrid platform also helps you keep your options open and makes it simpler to experiment with new methods whenever your business is ready.

And that’s where a platform like Adobe Commerce Cloud hybrid platform can help. The customer journey is optimised using this adaptable, scalable hybrid commerce platform from the first click-through to the checkout and beyond.

How does Adobe Commerce Cloud allow B2B and B2C selling together

Magento Commerce B2B B2C hybrid functionalities allow all businesses to thrive. Here are a few points on how Adobe Commerce Cloud helps B2B B2C eCommerce manufacturers selling direct-to-consumer:

#1: One platform to support both B2B and B2C hybrid eCommerce goals

With Adobe Commerce, you don’t have to maintain two separate eCommerce platforms for your B2B and B2C needs, which often requires duplicated efforts and increases budgets. Since both the platforms will share capabilities to deliver superior commerce experiences to B2B and B2C hybrid buyers, housing them in an Adobe Commerce system will help you improve operational efficiency and personalization capabilities.

#2: Competitive features for B2B eCommerce customers, the B2C way

As a solid hybrid eCommerce platform, Adobe Commerce Cloud possesses competitive features such as customer-specific catalogues and pricing, volume discounts, custom taxation rules for B2B buyers, easy reordering, flexible and mobile-optimised payment and checkout, automate price quote requests and negotiation with buyers, B2B specific reporting, automated cross-selling and up-selling opportunities, easy shipping solutions, and convenient account management to provide users with self-service portals to easily access invoices, order history, available company credits, and manage permissions.

Your buyers indulge in frictionless buying experiences by either entering SKUs, CSV file uploads, or picking from an existing requisition list to create orders within minutes or troubleshoot any issues.

#3: Easy content updates with Page Builder

For both B2B and B2C companies, updating content is a tedious job. With Adobe Commerce Page Builder, you can accelerate content creation and even get your non-technical teammates to create new pages, update old ones, preview designs, and publish these pages without having to write a single line of code. Since Adobe Commerce supports customer segmentation, only relevant content would be visible to your audiences, depending on whether they are B2B or B2C or hybrid buyers.

#4: Boost performance with Adobe Experience Manager CMS platform

This powerful CMS platform combines the capabilities of a sophisticated content management system along with the competitiveness of digital asset management. As Adobe Experience Manager seamlessly integrates with your Adobe Commerce storefront to suffice both B2B and B2C hybrid customers’ needs, it empowers you to create personalised content as per your target users across touchpoints and lead content-led experiences that scales as your business grows.

Other features of Adobe Experience Manager include advanced SEO tools for producing meta descriptions and URLs that are search engine-friendly, easy drag-and-drop functionalities to create, update, and deploy content pages without the need of a front-end developer, and workflow management for content creation, approval, and sharing.

#5: Rich mobile experiences via Progressive Web Apps (PWA)

When it comes to offering rich native-like B2B B2C hybrid eCommerce experiences across desktop and mobile touchpoints, the popularity of PWAs is surmounting. There was a time when businesses could rely on responsive web designs and native apps to ensure superior desktop and mobile experience. However, the tediousness of developing and maintaining such apps for all mobile operating environments have forged the way for Progressive Web Apps. This headless commerce technology blurs the line between mobile apps and mobile sites, offering rich app-like experiences within mobile browsers.

With Magento PWA Studio, you can develop, deploy, and maintain a PWA storefront while extending consistent experiences across smartphones, tablets, and desktops for both B2B and B2C hybrid commerce. The best part, with Adobe Commerce PWA Studio, you empower your users to access your product catalogues and shop even via unstable network/internet connectivities. With faster UI/UX navigation and reduced development costs, Adobe Commerce helps you secure both aspects of your B2B and B2C hybrid business.

#6: Multi-channel capabilities to support B2B and B2C customers

As a hybrid eCommerce solution, Adobe Commerce blends physical and online selling into a single unified customer experience as a part of its multi-channel capabilities. With Adobe Commerce Cloud, retailers can:

Offer comprehensive listing and inventory management across marketplaces
Support closely knit digital and in-store shopping experiences like buy online/pick up in store, digital kiosk, and endless aisle strategies in stores and warehouses
Leverage smart and flexible fulfilment methods to reduce shipping costs and wait times
Provide account management permits that allow B2B eCommerce sales reps to place orders on behalf of the customers

#7: Unrivalled performance throughout

B2C eCommerce brands that offer lightning-fast loading times, superior security, and consistent experiences especially during peak traffic times are crowned as the best hybrid eCommerce platform. Therefore, when you start selling B2C along with B2B, you need to work on your page load speeds and choose an infrastructure that is reliable and grows along with your business. With Adobe Commerce Cloud as your hybrid eCommerce solution, you offer unrivalled performance, flexible server capacity, and a secure checkout experience guarded against frauds and cyberattacks. Adobe Commerce easily implements security tools like DDoS protection and web application firewall to keep your B2B B2C hybrid commerce store protected and well-performing at all times.

Case Study with Adobe Commerce Cloud adoption by Techbuyer

Conclusion

B2B buyers increasingly want to order their products online, much like they do with many of their B2C purchases. With trends indicating that these numbers are constantly increasing, it is important to prepare for eCommerce’s future by selecting a top-tier and reliable hybrid eCommerce solution. So, an enterprise platform like Adobe Commerce Cloud allows you to explore new markets and customise your brand-new B2B or B2C hybrid commerce store to fulfil your ever-evolving needs for your targeted customers.

Explore the power of Adobe Commerce for B2B eCommerce with us

Ranosys, a leading digital commerce company will be attending the eCommerce Expo 2022, London UK to be held on 28-29 September at ExCeL London. Our members of the Leadership Team, Anand Ramdeo, Maurizio Stella, and Sourabh Modi will be exhibiting at booth no B65.

eCommerce Expo is an annual conference focussed towards digital commerce and e-retail industry and brings together professionals from across the globe to share insights, discuss about the evolving eCommerce landscape, and contemplate on the present challenges and available opportunities that the dynamic industry presents. A two-day event, eCommerce Expo 2022 will witness over 250 top eCommerce brands and 10,000+ retailers, agencies, media owners, and tech providers. The themes for this year eCommerce Expo London will include the future of digital commerce, digital customer, intelligent delivery & fulfillment, cross-border commerce, and making omnichannel a reality amongst others.

Talking about the Ranosys exhibition at the eCommerce Expo, Anand Ramdeo, CRO said, “With only 3 weeks left until UK’s leading eCommerce event, our team is really looking forward to all the insights, discussions, and networking at the conference. This is the perfect conference to get the brightest industry minds onto a single platform and hear their expertise around the diverse digital landscape. We’re excited to connect with the global community members, listen to professionals from leading global brands, explore the emerging technologies that can help deliver superior customer experiences, and effectively capitalize on the emerging opportunities to boost our growth.”

With over 14+ years of experience in the digital commerce space, Ranosys possesses competitive partnerships across leading eCommerce platforms like Adobe Commerce, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Shopify Plus, commercetools. Their certified team of experts, developers, and consultants have scripted superior customer experiences for global enterprises across the Americas, APAC, and Europe regions. Their dedicated and agile teams for different eCommerce systems boast exceptional capabilities in developing and launching brand-specific online stores across industrial verticals.

Their specialists have even developed state-of-the-art digital commerce accelerators on top of the user-driven and popular digital commerce platforms to reduce time to market to 4-6 weeks, operational costs and total cost of ownership. Their full-cycle eCommerce solutions include development, optimization & customization, migration, integration, and maintenance and support while expanding to certified teams for hire, managed services, and team augmentation.

With the perfect amalgamation of industry leaders, merchants, and agencies, eCommerce Expo will help Ranosys to further its relationships with the stalwarts of the market, improve upon its service offerings in the region through gained insights, and strengthen its base in the competitive eCommerce ecosystem of the UK. Meet our team on 28-29 September, booth no B65.

Ranosys, a Global Salesforce Partner will be attending its flagship event— Dreamforce 2022 to be held from 20-22 September 2022 at Moscone Center, San Francisco, California. As this year marks the 20th anniversary of the Salesforce Dreamforce experience, our Leadership Team composed of Rameshwar Vyas– CEO and Anand Ramdeo– CRO look forward to attending most-awaited Salesforce event in the Americas.

Salesforce Dreamforce is one of the largest yearly tech conferences organized for the global Salesforce community of merchants, partners, agencies, developers, and other professionals to share knowledge, discuss the modern trends that shape the commerce ecosystem, launch futuristic Salesforce products or tools and network with the fellow peers of the community. This year will be a three-day event starting from 20 September 2022 till 22 September 2022 and includes, speaker sessions, product demos, panel discussions, and various other networking events. The event will feature global companies that have used Customer 360 to transform their business and enhance customer experience. Participants would also be able to join live streams via Salesforce+.

“I am enthralled to be attending Dreamforce 2022 and connect with industry experts. This conference will be an excellent opportunity for Ranosys to further explore the power and capabilities of the Salesforce platform, meet with industry leaders in-person after 2 years, attend insightful sessions around experience-led transformation, sustainability, and metaverse/web3, exchange knowledge, and network with fellow Trailblazers. In our current accelerated growth and expansion phase, the insights gained and the connections made in the industry will certainly play an instrumental role in structuring our Salesforce practice in the Americas and worldwide,” said Rameshwar Vyas, CEO, Ranosys.

As a growing Salesforce Partner, Ranosys’ Salesforce competency has transformed businesses globally for over 14+ years. As one of the few Salesforce partners with multi-cloud capabilities across the Salesforce Clouds ecosystem- Commerce Cloud, Sales Cloud, Customer 360, Marketing Cloud, Service Cloud, Community Cloud, and Order Management System, Ranosys has been rated top rated top on Salesforce AppExchange for its innovative and growth-driven solutions. Their team of certified experts have built industry-leading customer experiences across major business verticals like retail & eCommerce, healthcare, logistics & transportation, food & beverages, fashion & apparel, education, and more.

Their one-of-a-kind accelerator solutions based on Salesforce B2C Commerce (Phoenix) and Salesforce B2B Commerce (Harrier) have been trusted by enterprises to reduce their time-to-market. Recently, Ranosys was recognized with the Salesforce Talent Alliance Champion Award in the APAC region, for training and onboarding young professionals into Salesforce and aiding them in building a successful career. Ranosys’ intranet system, Pulse, built on the Salesforce platform with 350+ licenses, has been featured on the official Salesforce website as a success story.

As Ranosys makes significant investments in transforming customer experiences with next-gen Salesforce solutions enabled by modern technologies and analytics, Dreamforce 2022 will serve as a perfect platform to further their collective goals. Ranosys team is excited to meet you at the Moscone Center at Dreamforce 2022.

About Ranosys

For more information, visit https://www.ranosys.com/ Or, fill the form and shoot us an email at sales@ranosys.com

eCommerce platforms have seen a significant uptick in activity in recent years. Although this uptick was because of the pandemic, habits formed during this period stay with consumers in the post-pandemic world. It is not to mean that physical shopping will not be a noteworthy phenomenon for brands, but together with online shopping, it will act as an accelerant to your brand growth. With the new demands of today’s consumers across industrial verticals, merchants are feeling the need for a robust digital commerce experience which offers an omnichannel, customized, and scalable experience while staying on top of trends and user expectations.

While an eCommerce platform alone doesn’t guarantee success, it does play an instrumental role in forging long-lasting relationships with your customers or ensure seamless integration with other third-party systems. As a brand, if you’re looking to migrate your existing eCommerce platform to a modern solution or leverage one from scratch, the following are a few must-haves eCommerce features you must look for.

Self-hosted SaaS-based capabilities
Scalability and support for high volumes
Speed and reliability
Easy of using the platform (PMS)
MultiStore capability for global fulfillment
Integration with line of business applications
High security

Functional requirements for ecommerce website

#1: Self-hosted Saas based platform

Broadly, there are two different types of eCommerce platforms: open-source and SaaS-based.

An open-source eCommerce platform is one where merchants receive a complete, unobstructed access to the software where developers hold full control over it. This means, developers can quickly adapt and customize the eCommerce software to the changing market needs, build new functionalities as and when required.

On the other hand, a SaaS-based eCommerce platform is one which merchants lease, which means that you cannot change the source code. You can, however, leverage all of its features and functionalities as per your subscription. The best part, you don’t have to invest in maintenance, hosting, SSL and security of the platform. It is why the cloud SaaS market has tripped in global market size in the last 5 years owing to the low total cost of ownership.

Amongst the two, a SaaS-based eCommerce platform is a viable option considering the cost of investment and you can choose from amongst the various competitive options like Adobe Commerce, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, BigCommerce, Shopify Plus, and commercetools depending on the features of eCommerce you are looking for.

Points to ask:

What are the following costs: platform licensing fees, commission-based fees, hosting costs, subscription costs for add-ons & maintenance costs?
What is the estimated annual cost of the eCommerce platform?
How much is development cost on the platform?

#2: Proven scalability & support for high volumes:

A site’s scalability and support for high volumes is essential to a brand’s short- and long-term success. Retailers need to keep in mind that even minimal downtime can have a negative impact on eCommerce sales. When asked, 81% of companies said that only 60 minutes of downtime on their website might cost them up to $232,000 in lost revenue. In case of peak traffic or holiday sales, you can’t have your eCommerce site crash mid-sale only because it experienced a more-than-usual influx of shoppers. Everything you’ve worked so hard to achieve in terms of mobile functionality, site speed optimization, and retargeting tactics will be completely undone in your eCommerce platform is not scalable enough.

Scalability is one of the most critical eCommerce features that must be considered when choosing a platform. Your demands and those of your consumers will vary as your business grows and evolves, whether in terms of the products you sell or the frequency and volume of sales. It’s essential to pick a platform that will expand with you.

Points to ask:

How does the eCommerce platform handle scalability?
During generic platform updates, how much delay or downtime does the online store experience?
Can I scale up and down depending on the traffic to my online store?

#3: Speed and Reliability

Site speed is one of the functional requirements for an eCommerce website. Long page load times have been shown to have a negative impact on conversion rates, which means that the longer it takes for your pages to load, the more likely it is that the visitor will leave the site. It is estimated that 40% of customers will leave a cart empty if the load time takes more than 3 seconds, while Statista research indicates that 75.6% of carts are abandoned globally due to site speed.

A speedy and high-performing eCommerce store will offer lightning-fast experiences to your shoppers and ensure their continued interest in surfing and browsing through products. From images to videos, versions, and life-like product views, everything on your eCommerce site must load in a matter of seconds for higher customer engagement and retention.

Points to ask:

How much downtime does the platform experience and how often?
How many products can be uploaded to the system?
How does the platform handle slow loading page speed?

#4: Integration with line of business applications

Seamless integrations are one amongst the noteworthy eCommerce features. An eCommerce platform alone cannot run the entire show without the support of third-party business applications and systems. For growing and expanding businesses, it’s important to connect and integrate with third-party apps and systems to boost the overall functionality, productivity, and performance of your eCommerce solution.

This entails connecting to large data storage and analytics frameworks, synchronizing internal applications, merging data stores, and integrating partner, storefront, and marketplace data with back-end applications. Payment gateways, OMS, CMS, shipping providers, SMS, customer loyalty programs, accounting, marketing automation, ERP, email marketing tools, etc., are some examples of tools and systems that you will have to integrate to your eCommerce platform to ensure a consistent and end-to-end shopping experience.

Points to ask:

How easy is it to install plugins to the platform?
Is there a restriction to the number of plugins that can be integrated and any apps that are off the limit?

#5: Multi-store capability for global fulfillment

Since customers are no longer limited to geographies and regions, your eCommerce platform must adopt a global approach to service shoppers worldwide. Unlike erstwhile times where you needed to develop a new online site from scratch for different countries, merchants can now leverage multi-store capabilities of eCommerce platforms that will allow them to offer localized experiences to shoppers across boundaries. Retailers can now create multiple stores from 2 to n numbers depending on your business needs.

A modern eCommerce platform automatically detects a person’s browsing location and showcases a relevant online site customized in the regional language, currency, payment methods, product recommendations, product catalog, top-selling products, most-bought products, shipping duration, and so on.

#6: Unrivaled security

The success and longevity of your eCommerce platform depends on the security level provided by it. With concerns around cybersecurity and data leaks, it is imperative for merchants to build a secure and fortified online store that protects user information including their personal details, payment data, the ignorance of which can cost brands thousands to millions of dollars in remediation.

Top eCommerce platform threats	Security solutions
Financial hack	Switch to HTTPS
XSS	Third-party eCommerce security plugins
Bots	Install antivirus and anti-malware software
DDoS attacks	Use firewalls
Forceful attacks	Secure your online store with SSL certificates
SQL injections	Multi-layer security protocols

A popular platform like Adobe Commerce offers security features such as:

Role-based access control to determine and restrict file system permissions
Random admin URL to make it tedious for hackers to guess you backend URL
Protection against cross-site scripting attacks (XSS) and stringent password management.

Another leading-edge eCommerce platform like Salesforce Commerce Cloud offers security solutions like:

API development on web, desktop, and mobile apps to ensure secure customer logins
API-led admin access
Installing a web app firewall on the online storefront to check for attacks

#7: Product Management System (PMS)

As easy it is to use a product management system, the faster your admins can update, add or delete products to offer compelling shopping experiences. When looking for an eCommerce platform consider the following aspects:

The product upload functionality (bulk, CSV or Excel files)
Advanced features like recently viewed, top-selling, wishlist, product comparison, etc
Dynamic filters like sorting, color range, size range, location, type etc.

As one of the functional requirements for an eCommerce platform, a robust system empowers your admins to create customer-driven stores, thus maximizing revenue margins.

Points to ask:

How easy is it to create different categories and map them to products?
Can I bulk-upload products with high-resolution images?
Can I create product variations and combinations based on dynamic filters?
Can I map different shipping options to a product?

How Ranosys can help

Developing an eCommerce store can be a challenging undertaking, but with the right team, you can create an online store that promises fantastic experiences to both the brand and customer. Although these eCommerce features are just a brief synopsis of a few competitive attributes you cannot miss, there are several others you must look into. As an award-winning digital commerce company, we’ve assisted countless brands in bringing their vision to life. With competitive partnerships across Adobe Commerce, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Shopify Plus & commercetools, we can help you choose the right eCommerce platform depending on your business needs.

Finding it hard to choose the right eCommerce platform?

The world of cookies is coming to an end. Until recently, cookies were paramount to understand customer behaviors and derive rich insights to offer tailored experiences. Cookies was how online merchants offered personalized solutions to their end users. And since users were provided a customized experience via cookies, they didn’t mind accepting cookies (for most times). So, if cookies have worked well for both users and brands, why are they going away?

By 2023-end, Google plans to stop supporting third-party cookies on its Chrome browser, ending the decades of data-driven performance advertising actions.
Apple’s 2021 iOS update featured a new consent protocol called App Tracking Transparency (ATT) to limit how app owners use data to optimize their campaigns.

Individuals want personalization and prefer brands that can provide it, but with the increased risks and threats around cybersecurity, they are concerned about sharing their personal information. At the same time, every online merchant needs some information like location, address, devices, even their childhood pet, and favorite color to offer similar and related experiences to their shoppers.

Here we discuss strategies that will empower merchants/retailers to balance privacy and personalization in the cookie-less era.

The rise of consent-based marketing in the cookie-less era

Google’s announcement of ending the support for third-party cookies on Chrome has gotten several brands worried about the loss of traction, attribution, and revenue that were accomplished with performance-based advertising. Over time, ad data and data-driven campaigns will decline, disrupting the buying and optimization process.

To best prepare for the cookie-less era, merchants need to follow a progressive form of data collection that only collects user data post their consent and use it to run data-driven marketing campaigns. With consent-led first-party data, strategic data partnerships, and next-gen technologies, you can forge innovative targeted advertising strategies and strengthen relationships with both new and existing customers. Ultimately, first-party data is not only about targeted marketing or email campaigns – it’s about how brands engage with their customers without collecting their private details exploitatively.

How brands are using first-party data for personalized experiences?

For most brands, shifting to the cookie-less era presents several challenges such as finding new ways for customer acquisition and offering personalized experiences without user data being readily available. Some of the effective ways are :

#1. Forge strategies to collect first-party data: First-party data can be hard to obtain, but when done properly and progressively, it allows the collection of accurate data that your shoppers have no problem in inputting. First-party data is how merchants can smoothly transition to the cookie-less world. Organizations must build a customer data platform (CDP) and move to contextual targeting strategies providing value to new customers. And since you don’t have to spend your marketing budget on collecting shopper information, you save a lot of money in the long run. With a robust first-party data strategy, brands are better positioned to deliver personalized, engaging experiences.

#2. Authenticated targeting: Authenticated targeting is when you use the precise and authentic information provided by users on the website along with the consent of using this data for promotional campaigns. This can appear in a form of pop-up or login screen when an individual enters a website to view content. With authenticated targeting, you can offer a personal touch to your marketing campaigns while amassing the goldmine of data about your customers.

#3. Contextual targeting: Contextual targeting enables companies to identify the interest of users without individual identification. For example, if a person browses for the best sports shoes, he might be interested in sportswear, a healthy lifestyle, or sporting goods. Now similar category companies can pitch content/products to users via contextual targeting and boost cross-selling/up-selling opportunities. This way brands can target an audience group based on their search context and offer relevant products/content/solutions.

#4. Email marketing: With email, marketing organizations can enable one-to-one communication with personalized content and tailor-made preferences. To achieve comprehensive communication with customers, businesses must constantly experiment with A/B testing. The results can be used in CDP platforms to scale AI solutions for targeted segments.

#5. Walled garden social login: Walled garden can be the right choice for some companies. It is called people-based marketing. Login with social media instead of a long process as it is a quicker alternative and beneficial for personalized experiences resulting in fetching precise information. Companies should consider using tactics to minimize loss of control over data and analytics in the cookie-less era.

How does Adobe Experience Cloud balance personalization and privacy?

As customer experience becomes a key differentiator amongst competing brands, organizations are investing more time on developing personalization strategies with first-party data. A leading eCommerce platform, Adobe Commerce lays strict protocols on extending personalized experiences while balancing the growing privacy concerns. Here are some ways Adobe achieves this goal:

#1: Authentication with real-time personalization

Brands can personalize their customer’s journey in real-time by responding to users in a fraction of a second via Adobe Target. This tool provides automated personalization features to match different offer variations and product recommendations for each visitor based on their profile and purchasing history. Their processes and settings are also compliant with data privacy laws.

#2: Customer data analytics

By unifying all the available data under a single system, businesses can gain a complete picture of how customers move across different channels, online and offline. Powered by Adobe Analytics, merchants leverage customer journey insights and interactions across mobile, web, and other marketing channels. With these insights, organizations can build high-value customer segments and deliver excellent experiences. Subsequently, Adobe Analytics incorporates better privacy support for data and personal information of users as per the established GDPR compliances.

#3: Customer journey and first-party data

With tools like Journey Orchestration of Adobe Experience Cloud, merchants empower their stores with speed, scalability, and intelligence required to automate unique customer journeys across channels. Moreover, the Journey Orchestration tool complies with policies with the patented data governance framework of Adobe Experience Platform, ensuring superior customer data privacy at all times.

#4: Content-rich shopping experiences with AEM

Integrating your eCommerce store with Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) empowers merchants to offer content-rich and meaningful shopping experiences at scale across all digital channels. The uncomplicated integration process makes it easy for merchants to connect AEM with their online sites via APIs. The best part, it empowers brands to deliver content quickly, which otherwise would take weeks and months to author. With robust data encryption that does not compromise on data security, AEM offers personalized experiences to your shoppers.

#5: Personalized email marketing with Adobe Marketo

When it comes to personalized email marketing campaigns, Adobe Marketo Engage can help fuel lead nurturing and customer acquisition initiatives. With Adobe Marketo, you can modify your emails for each prospect based on insights and level of engagement from initial contact to purchase. When shoppers receive personalized emails, it encourages them to close purchases, resulting in improved engagement and ROI.

In terms of privacy, users who wish to not receive emails can opt out by unsubscribing. Once a user has unsubscribed from emails, Adobe Marketo will block all ongoing and future marketing emails from being sent. The best part, unless a user has access to the database, they cannot view the lead contact information.

Wrapping up

The growing concern around customer data privacy has led organizations to explore alternative routes for collecting user data and offering personalized experiences. Although moving the cookie era to a cookieless one will present significant challenges, it will be an opportunity for merchants to gain better and more fruitful insights about their customers via first-party data. With the right roadmap, brands will be able to collect required and relevant data from their customers and use it to run tailored marketing campaigns along with powerful eCommerce platforms like Adobe Commerce.

Leverage our specialized experience with Adobe.

Adobe Commerce (Magento 2) A/B feature allows online merchants and retailers to create multiple variants of their online stores accessible to a custom group of target customers. There are several benefits of A/B testing like to increase user engagement, reduce bounce rates, increase conversion rates, minimize risks, and create meaningful content that caters to the personalized needs of your customers. Running an A/B test can have significant positive effects on your site or mobile apps.

Now let’s understand why Magento 2’s A/B testing is amazing:

Built into Magento, so you don’t need any plugins or custom development.
If you’re using The Magento 2 Enterprise edition, the set up is ready for you.
Test up to 10 variants of a page to see which ones your customers like the most.
Test against any metric that you can track in Google Analytics, including bounce rate, page views, add to cart rate, and more.
Designed to test on any product, category or CMS pages.
No ‘flicker’ effect that you get with some A/B testing tools when they load another variant.

What is A/B testing?

A/B testing is the practice of sending proportions of your audience two versions of a webpage in order to compare the difference in engagement or performance. Another variant of A/B testing, MVT (Multivariate testing) is similar but doesn’t restrict to two variants but multiple versions. With MVT, you can create up to 10 variants to find the best-performing version of your store pages.

Why should PO (Product Owner)/Business Owners choose A/B testing?

The ultimate goal for any business is to generate revenue or increase the current revenue. A/B testing can most likely help to grow the revenue margins. Let’s understand how A/B test can do this.

Higher the testing frequency, the more we learn what works and what does not for our customers.
Build a culture of learning and improvement.
Before the final release, we will know which design customers like most.
We can reduce design iterations as well based on the customer most liked design.

How does A/B testing work?

There are two types of A/B testing for eCommerce stores: client-side and server-side testing.

Client-side testing: In this form of A/B testing, once a shopper requests a web page, your server delivers it. However, the experimentation tool uses JavaScript on the shopper’s web browser that changes/personalizes the content being delivered. This way, the end consumer, views a web page that is customized as per the targeting rules. Since this format can be implemented during browser-level JavaScript execution, you can only test superficial aspects like the colour theme, layout, etc. through it.

Server-side testing: In this form of A/B testing, a customer requests for a web page and your server delivers it. However, the experimental tool works on the server-side to determine the best-fit version of a web page based on targeting rules and then delivers that variant to the user.

For example, you can send 50% of your visitors version A and the rest version B of a web page. You can then test them for performance and the goal setup prior to executing the test (conversion rate, CTR, sales, product variant, etc). The one that achieves a score above the threshold can be implemented site-wide.

What can you test with A/B testing?

In terms of your eCommerce website, here a few things you can test:

Page layouts
Different pages like homepage, product page, category page, landing page & product descriptions
CTA copies and button placement
Product photos and videos
Push notifications
Keyword placement and meta descriptions
Social proofs like reviews, testimonials, social media posts
Pop-ups

You can set up a process of testing different items of your eCommerce website and then incrementally go around it. For example, you can first start with page layouts and then test pop-ups, push notifications, etc.

Let’s start A/B testing with Magento 2: The Steps

Before starting with the actual test, let’s summarize what we will do in this test and what we will achieve after this test is successfully executed. We will create a service CMS page with two variants A & B, expected results we will compare with bounce rate of the page.

Pre-requirements before beginning the test: Google Analytics should be configured and active on your Magento site and should be Magento 2 enterprise edition. Followed the below steps to prepare for the first A/B test.

Step 1: Lets create CMS page

1. Go to Magento 2 Admin > Content> Pages
2. Click on the “Add New Page” button.
3. Fillup the all required fields & save the CMS page.

Note : Repeat the step 1 for creating the second CMS page but make sure the URL will be different for both the CMS pages.

After followed by all above steps CMS page display in grid looks like this:

Step 2: Configure Google Analytics Content Experiments for your test

1. Log in to your Google Analytics account.
2. Select your live site account and go to Behavior > Experiments.
3. You are now presented with the Experiments Overview.
4. Click New Experiment.

Step 3: Create your experiment

Creating a new experiment in Google Analytics:

1. Enter the name of your experiment.
2. Select the objective for the test. (Example: Bounces)
3. Select the percentage of traffic you are going to send to the different variants.
4. You can turn on email notifications for important changes.

Note : If your change is small and you want quick answers, then send a high percentage of traffic. If your company is new to A/B testing ,or if it’s a risky change, then reduce the percentage.

Setting up the test:

How do I confirm the A/B test is working?

Use Google Chrome’s incognito or Firefox’s private browsing mode to look at the page you are testing. This will make Magento think you are a new user and give you a different version of the page.
If you look at the URL, you will also be able to see that Google Content Experiments has added some extra details to the web url. The ‘utm_expid’ shows that Google has successfully included this page as part of its testing.

Wait for the results

By doing A/B testing, you have done more than most companies do, to understand your users. Hopefully, you will have discovered something new to improve your pages’ performance.

Vishal Bansal

How many times have you abandoned a purchase just because you couldn’t find the product you were looking for even after specifying your requirement in a site’s search bar? Or, completely stopped buying from a brand because of inconsistent or unrelated search results?

When it comes to enhancing customer experience in the competitive eCommerce ecosystem, It is one way of enhancing your CX and engaging shoppers with personalized solutions. The story here is, customers that use site search are more likely to complete their purchases, only if they can easily find what they wish to buy. Most shoppers are not discoverers but browsers, who input relevant keywords, categories and information to explore just their right product for them. However, to accomplish this goal involves hours and hours of manual entry of rules on the backend, which is not an ideal solution.

Enter Live Search, an Adobe Sensei-powered tool from Adobe Commerce.

What is Live Search in Adobe Commerce?

Live search is an AI and machine learning tool that ensures faster, personalized, and relevant results for B2C shoppers. Live Search in Adobe Commerce combines the capabilities of industry-leading AI along with the machine learning power of Adobe Sensei with catalog information to deliver exact and personalized search results for every shopper query at a lightning-fast speed. This feature is how merchants can deliver “search-as-you-type” experiences, improve product discoverability, and stay on top of user search inquiries.

The evolution of search quality in Adobe Commerce

Magento 1	Magento 2	Adobe Commerce
A simple algorithm that didn’t provide desired results	Elasticsearch provided good search experiences to users but wasn’t suited to the changing user shopping needs.	Live Search leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning to offer personalized search experiences, bank on user queries and boost conversion rates.

Prior to Live Search, Magento 2 offered Elasticsearch capabilities that enabled users to type in their search queries and view relevant results. Elasticsearch was reliable, easy-to-use and configure and did allow adding synonyms, etc., to boost search performance. However, as customer demands became more complex and dynamic, Elasticsearch couldn’t help create customized customer experiences or take note of evolving shopper needs. Therefore, at the Adobe Summit 2021, Live Search was introduced to take search experiences to a next level by leveraging AI, machine learning, and other leading-edge technologies.

Adobe Live Search Storefront

In this new era of online shopping, consumers want to quickly and easily find what they are looking for without having to browse an endless number of options. Live Search can easily become a leading competitive advantage for merchants and commerce-preneurs due to its ability to seamless product discovery.

Adobe Live Search Storefront includes components that give shoppers a view of your store to effortlessly complete the purchase. The storefront section might include creating an account, main menu, promotional offers, discount offers, popular products, expert recommendations, subscription, catalog page, shopping page, etc.

Features of Live Search Storefront

#1. Search as you type : Adobe Sensei can automatically filter recommended products for a query. A concise image of top search results in a popover appears as shoppers type queries into the search box. The live search feature of search as you type shows results for a query of two or more characters, and up to 20. This way, customers can easily find what they are looking for and didn’t know about. This helps to invest time in site optimization, enhancing the overall customer experience.

#2. View all results : By clicking ‘view all results’ from popover storefront in the foote,r all the search as you type results will appear.

#3. Searchable Attributes: To ensure a quick search, following attributes are always searchable – SKU, name, and categories. Searchable attributes save time and give highly targeted results. The results will appear clear, concise, and relatable.

With a focus on speed, relevance, and ease of use, Live Search Storefront is a revolutionizer for shoppers and merchants alike.

How does Live Search functionality improve user experiences?

Customer experience is a key differentiator for brands. It is how merchants/retailers can forge long-term relationships with their shoppers, and turn them to advocates. And with the fast and intelligent search results of Adobe Live Search, brands can level up their customer experience game.

Some benefits of CX with Adobe Live Search are :

#1: AI-powered Live Search: It is built on the Adobe Sensei platform, which makes search quicker and more relevant to the consumer demands. The artificial intelligence capabilities of Live Search enables personalization by understanding buyer’s search activities and tracking the shopper’s preferences, buying behavior, frequency, etc., improving CX.

#2: Extended product recommendation capabilities: When implemented correctly, the ability to recommend products based on search queries can be beneficial for businesses and users. From a shopper’s perspective, it saves time browsing through the entire catalog and instead focuses on products of interest. From a merchant’s end, it helps close more sales faster and cater to a group of serious shoppers.

#3: Intelligent faceting: Adobe Sensei automatically selects and filters each search query using AI technology to refine results, better understand search intent, and compare it with the product attribute metadata to deliver relevant search results. Users can narrow down their search and find suitable products faster by applying multiple filters simultaneously. The best part,merchants no longer need to configure search rules manually.

#4: Synonyms management: Shoppers may use phrases or synonyms while searching. The onsite search bar needs to recognize these product synonyms to understand search intent. Adobe Commerce’s Live Search enables merchants to describe one-way or two-way synonyms. One-way synonyms help shoppers to navigate products in one direction, for example, when searching for summer clothes. Two-way synonyms broaden the search results for shoppers; for example, searching for necklaces will show lockets, pendants, chains, etc.

#5: Merchandising rules: Adobe Commerce Live Search enables merchants to create rules to boost, pin, bury or hide products, optimizing search results. Merchants can :

Boost Products – Displaying products at the top line of the search to close more sales.
Bury Products -A merchant can display products lower so as to give a better exposure to other products.
Pin Products – Pin top-selling and most-sold products on top of search results.
Hide Products – If products are not in stock or suffer from quality issues, merchants can hide products.

Conclusion

Customer experience is a game changer in the eCommerce industry. And one way to enhance CX is getting the search right. Adobe Live Search feature delivers actionable insights into changing trends, shopping behaviors, and search queries to merchants who can then use it to refine product discoverability and conversion rates. Implementing Live Search, available free for existing Adobe Commerce platform users helps bridge the gap between product search and purchase.

Implement Adobe Live Search via certified experts.

Deep Joshi

commerce specialist

Deep Joshi is having 2+ years of experience at Ranosys as a commerce specialist with a demonstrated history of working in Adobe Commerce. He has expertise implementing e-commerce solutions like integrations, omnichannel, optimization in B2B and B2C for different regions across the globe. In his professional journey he has groomed many i Adobe Commerce experts. In his leisure time he likes to travel and play games like chess, soccer. Connect with him on LinkedIn.

In the competitive ecosystem, organizations are under continuous pressure to improve efficiency as their business evolves. Yet, many enterprises still follow a pen-and-paper approach that is longer and is a sustainable solution in terms of operating costs, efficiency, and team productivity. For enterprises that wish to step into the world of digitization, OutSystems Case Management framework can help build applications that allow them to achieve digital innovation at high agility.

What is the OutSystems Case Management framework?

OutSystems CMF is a robust solution to transform complex business information and easily manage cases like claims, regulatory compliance, incident management, etc. It facilitates efficient case-related work using technologies that automate and streamline aspects of a case. It allows companies to compete better in an economic environment in response to technological evolutions.

Case Management Framework: An extension of BPT

Business Process Technology (BPT) and Case Management Framework (CMF) come under the Digital Process Automation umbrella. BPT and CMF are two different conceptual models used to structure case workflows. Both help accomplish business goals through extended capabilities provided to accelerate the development process. But in the rapidly changing nature of modern businesses, Case Management Framework meets the unique needs of organizations.

With OutSystems best practice Case Management Frameworks, organizations can keep track of all processes, tasks, SLA, ad-hoc activities, and decisions while building low code applications faster at greater flexibility.

However, for developing case management apps, it is important to choose the appropriate OutSystems tool. For simple applications, developers use Workflow Builder and for medium and complex applications, CMF (Case Management Framework) is the right tool.

Practical categories of case management framework

Case Management tends to differ, but they unite in their ability to centralize complex work. Case management consists of three use cases: investigative, service request, and incident management. Below is the categorization of these use cases :

Investigative	Service Request	Incident Management
Task delegation	Multiple roles and handoffs	Maintain and demonstrate a chain of information custody.
Case folder synchronization	Continuity of the case

Case Management Framework architecture

Primarily, the CMF architecture consists of three APIs:

Case Services API: It helps to interact with the cases for modification of activity like pick up, release, block, unblock, or close. Also, it helps to maintain the case lifecycle from initiation till case completion. This API also facilitates the execution of the RULES inside an activity.
Case Configurations API: This API is used to configure case-related entities in applications like Case Definition, Case Statuses, StateMachine, and Rules. This API configuration is also responsible for handling the CRUD (Create, Retrieve, Update, and Delete) operations of cases.
Case Process Configurations API: It involves activities pertaining to business processes configurations associated with the case and their SLA (Service Level Agreement).

Case Management Framework architecture

Primarily, the CMF architecture consists of three APIs:

Case Services API: It helps to interact with the cases for modification of activity like pick up, release, block, unblock, or close. Also, it helps to maintain the case lifecycle from initiation till case completion. This API also facilitates the execution of the RULES inside an activity.
Case Configurations API: This API is used to configure case-related entities in applications like Case Definition, Case Statuses, StateMachine, and Rules. This API configuration is also responsible for handling the CRUD (Create, Retrieve, Update, and Delete) operations of cases.
Case Process Configurations API: It involves activities pertaining to business processes configurations associated with the case and their SLA (Service Level Agreement).

Deepak Kumar Yogi

Software Engineer

A certified traditional web and reactive developer, Deepak’s expertise lies in transforming manual processes into fully automated ones and providing solutions using CMF to streamline the business processes. He is enthusiastic in taking more challenging roles and keeping the learning curve consistent. Connect with him on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn.

Manish Gupta

OutSystems Solution Analyst

Your guide to choose the right eCommerce platform

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Choosing an eCommerce platform requires strategic thinking and planning. Whatever eCommerce platform you choose will help lay the foundation and give shape to your online store. However, still, eCommerce platforms represent the part of the eCommerce solution that gives solidity, shape and integrity to the overall structure. Over time, it will be your eCommerce solution that has to change and adapt to the market dynamics and customer expectations. And this is only possible when your eCommerce platform at least delivers one thing: adaptive foundations.

“It’s not about having everything on one platform, it’s about facilitating the use of anything that will come.”

This ebook addresses three key points:

Why should foundations be adaptive?
How will adaptive foundations help the merchant achieve success?
What makes foundations adaptive?

Alongside, you will learn about how an eCommerce solution is a sum of so many factors, other than eCommerce platform, such as culture, vision, digital maturity, and more. On completion, you can choose the most appropriate foundations for your business for your digital journey.

Platform VS solution: The difference

eCommerce Platforms and eCommerce Solutions are two very different things and should not at any point be confused.

An eCommerce platform is a software that facilitates or enables the selling of goods online. Conversely, it alone cannot support a buyer’s journey from start to end. For example, an eCommerce platform does not facilitate the payment of goods unless a payment gateway is integrated to it.

Put simply, an eCommerce platform requires the assistance of other tools and technologies to fully support a customer’s journey.

In comparison, an eCommerce solution is a comprehensive amalgamation of tools/technologies, processes, people, services, competencies, and data all working together like a well-oiled machine. Collectively, these attend to a merchant’s needs and fulfills customer expectations.

Therefore, to select the right eCommerce platform or to avoid choosing one that does not fulfill your goals in the long run, you need to consider several parameters other than just an eCommerce platform.

The formation of eCommerce suites

For an eCommerce platform, both merchants and market pose different requirements. While merchants are looking for simplicity and flexibility to pay for tools they use, markets require a well-integrated solution that offers them an omnichannel experience throughout. While eCommerce platforms have tried building too many features, they were easily outperformed by other third-party service providers that were more affordable and easy to use and integrate.

Today, eCommerce platforms aren’t the only tool merchants need to build online stores but one that lays a strong groundwork where they can plug in additional enhancements. Over time, as customer expectations change, eCommerce platforms/suites will come to include more powerful tools to stay competitive and relevant.

The Fall of Custom Built Solutions

When comparing eCommerce platforms and custom-built solutions, the latter seems to lose the lead for a few understandable reasons:

Custom-built everything must be built from scratch, not a very cost-effective choice.
With so many tools and technologies available in the market, merchants find it challenging to keep up. At the least, integrations must be developed either from scratch using APIs or via file exchange to implement a functionality/trend.
With the rampant speed of change, a custom-built solution delays things for merchants, which means they can’t fulfill consumer expectations and even increases the overall choice of the solution.
Since parts and portions of tools and systems are involved, the entire legal responsibility falls upon the merchant.

Things to consider when choosing an eCommerce platform

#1: SaaS, PaaS, On-Premises, and whatever else will come

SaaS (Suite-As-A-Service) and Open SaaS: SaaS, popularly termed as Suite-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a software developed by a service provider, wherein merchants gain access based on their licensing costs and specific credentials. Merchants can integrate other systems to it via plugins/extensions or via APIs. Customizations to the core, however, are limited with SaaS solutions. Examples of SaaS platforms include Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Shopify and BigCommerce.

PaaS ( Platform-as-a-service): Unlike SaaS, PaaS is a fully hosted solution, retaining the authority for the service provider to edit its core while allowing merchants to also be able to move it to their servers and infrastructure. Primarily, PaaS provides more freedom to merchants with respect to customizations. Adobe Commerce, formerly known as Magento, is an example of PaaS.

On-Premise: A Platform is provided for merchants to install and configure on their chosen infrastructure. Most PaaS platforms used to be on-premise up until SaaS became their biggest competitor.Examples include, SAP Hybris, IBM Websphere and WooCommerce.

#2: Using tech VS being tech

There are two groups of companies selling online:

One that relies on technology and focuses on their brand, its mission, vision, and growth
Other that builds an internal tech team and becomes an all-in-one company

“There is no right or wrong answer here. This is about you and how you like to do things. Merchants can thrive in both cases.”

However, as technology specialists, there are three main downsides of building an internal team and trying to manage both brand growth and technical competencies:

Less inspiration from the outside world.
Harder to retain good technical talents, because it’s not as exciting to always work on the same project.
It can be significantly more expensive to build an internal team.

#3: Your Digital Commerce Maturity

Merchants should measure their internal capabilities through a self-assessment before arriving at any decision. This should be done in 3 distinct phases:

Inside-out Assessment: During which you look at your business and self-assess your digital maturity.
Outside-in Assessment: During which a third-party or your customers provide feedback to define how the world sees your business in terms of digital maturity.
Outside-out Assessment: Measuring your business against industry best practices and not just your competitors.

#4: The dynamic eCommerce ecosystem

The eCommerce ecosystem is divided into four main areas :

Clients: They pay for the evolution and leverage the power of tech.
Platforms: They aggregate best practices that apply to at least 80% of their target audience.
Third-party tech providers: They bridge the gaps between what a platform provides and the needs of 80% of their target audience.
Agencies: They make the exchange information seamless and safe, while providing consultancy and training to merchants.

#5: Your goals

Before selecting a platform, you must mention your SMART (Specific, measurable, achievable, realistic & timely) goals. Setting goals is helpful to understand what digital maturity phases are and how your goals need to be considered. While there are different phases to goal-setting, our eBook, Adaptive Foundations explore more in detail about this.

#6: Your budget

Undeniably, budget plays a critical role during a platform selection process, however, as platform is only a part of the solution not the entire solution, merchants must explore total cost of ownership (TCO) instead.

#7: Your culture

It is imperative to choose a platform that aligns with your internal culture. Some eCommerce solutions might take months to come to fruition while others are done in 3-4 weeks. Therefore, consider your internal culture, project duration, collaboration requirements, hierarchical roles, and so on.

#8: Your current setup

In case of re-platforming, the most challenging is the data-migration phase. Primarily, data migration tools expect a vanilla setup on the other end. Any customization applied to your current solution may impact the future platform’s ability to deliver on the promise. Some platforms can be a bit restrictive; others even provide support for headless development, which means that the platform powers all the flows, processes, and UX frontend of the site is wholly detached from the platform and can be personalized.

#9: Your customers

Customers will likely never realize what platform you have implemented, but considering some of their needs will help you choose the right platform. You have to check whether features are natively-built in or are there additional modules or extensions that can be leveraged to improve the functionality. As B2B, B2C, and DTC customers have different needs, you must consider your target audience before choosing an eCommerce platform. Consider aspects like your global audience base, if you have physical stores that must also be integrated to this online solution for an omnichannel experience, and so on.

#10: Your Catalogue

Before choosing an eCommerce platform, you must check the providers’ catalogue management capabilities. Firstly you need to be clear on what kind of products there usually are: simple products or configurable products, then how many SKUs, variants, and updates of catalog. Some platforms are built to manage extensive and even multiple catalogues in multiple languages and currencies. Other platforms can manage products with hundreds of thousands of variants, but not all can do this natively.

Adaptive Foundations: Why does it matter?

The foundations should be solid and flexible in delivering a proper mix of reliability and scalability for an ever-evolving solution. The solution must be more dynamic to experiment with new tech, channels, etc. and must be extendable to touchpoints and devices across.

How adaptive foundations will help the merchant achieve success?

Merchants need to adapt not only customer needs but new platform features for experimental innovations. Investing constantly in the solution will gradually allow them to enter the “mature” or “leader” phases of digital maturity.

What makes foundations adaptive?

When selecting an eCommerce platform, some key points make them adaptive. These are:

How many fast-growing clients are using the platform?
Are the APIs well documented (ask other clients)?
Does it come with a set of themes that can help speed up initial implementations?

Final Considerations

Adaptability is vital during a platform selection process. Merchants need to first work on the hard facts. Then, once platforms have been shortlisted, choose the one which is more aligned with change and evolution. Check the core features like currencies, languages, locations, warehouses, etc. If the platform has severe limitations on these core areas and extensions and modules provide partial solutions, a merchant needs to decide whether you should compromise.

Explore more on Adaptive Foundations for eCommerce.

A solid technological foundation and internal understanding of how your systems communicate with prospects and customers at every point of the customer journey are essential for marketing and sales alignment. According to Salesforce, a Forbes article noted that 67% of marketing leaders rely on marketing automation, and 21% intend to install a new platform in the upcoming year.

Marketo Engage and Salesforce CRM are two popular tools that revenue teams rely on to manage leads, execute campaigns, and maintain customer records. Additionally, if you work for one of the many companies that utilize both, you’re already familiar with Marketo’s native Salesforce integration. To maintain data consistency across the two systems, the integration lets you sync leads, campaigns, and other records bi-directionally.

Salesforce CRM and Adobe Marketo Engage: An introduction

Adobe Marketo Engage, also known as Marketo Engage or simply Marketo, is a SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) based marketing automation software. It allows you to streamline, automate, and measure marketing engagement, tasks, and workflows to improve operational efficiency and accelerate revenue growth.

Salesforce is the most well-known SaaS-based Customer Relationship Management (CRM) application. It offers a full range of customer services. Additionally, it has built-in applications for leads, opportunities, marketing, servicing, sales, accounts, and more. By saving customer data, contact information, and marketing information, it aids in maintaining relationships with customers. Moreover, it manages platform integration with ease on various platforms.

Syncing data in Marketo and Salesforce?

The typical flow of the lead lifecycle. Source: Root3

The lead cycle is the process used to generate, qualify, and convert your leads into paying customers. In the typical lead lifecycle, leads are first acquired and qualified by marketing, which are then forwarded to your sales team to further qualify and convert them into customers.

Integrating Marketo with Salesforce allows you to streamline the handoff between sales and marketing by keeping your leads, accounts, and other records current across your revenue funnel. Tight alignment between your sales, marketing, and support teams is ensured by a successful sync, which can boost customer retention and sales win rates.

How Sync Works

Marketo syncs with Salesforce all day, every day. Each sync takes some time, pauses for 5 minutes, and then starts again.

Only leads, contacts, and Salesforce campaigns are synced bidirectionally between Marketo Engage and Salesforce CRM. In these cases, any changes you make to either Marketo or Salesforce will automatically be reflected in the other system without you having to do anything manually. Other than that, only Salesforce and Marketo are synced.
Depending on how much data is being synchronized, synchronization will take either less or more time. As a result, the time it takes for syncing to finish will vary, particularly as your business grows and your databases fill up with more actionable information. You can set your sync interval to any duration longer than 5 minutes by getting in touch with Marketo support.
What is Synced between Adobe Marketo Engage and Salesforce CRM?
- Customer objects
- Contacts
- Tasks & Events
- Leads
- Campaigns & Members
- Accounts
- Opportunities & Roles
- User & Lead queue
- Activity
- Salesforce campaigns
Setting up Salesforce for Marketo Sync
The first step is to check two key prerequisites. Prior to integrating your programs, make sure the following steps have been completed:
- Salesforce API permissions: Before you start syncing data, you’ll need access to Salesforce APIs.
- Full admin access: You’ll need administrator access in both Marketo Engage and Salesforce CRM in order to complete your Salesforce-Marketo integration.
After completing those two preliminary steps, you’re ready to start integrating.
Step 1: Adding Marketo Fields to Salesforce
- Go to the lead object from the Customize menu and then Click on Fields.
- Create these three fields, namely – Score, Acquisition Date, and Acquisition Program fields on the lead object.
- Create the same fields on the Contacts object as well.
Step 2: Mapping Custom Fields for Conversions
- Click on Map Lead Fields under the Lead Custom Fields & Relationships section.
- Now, click on the drop-down list near the field you want to map.
- Select the corresponding contact custom field. For each field you’ve created, repeat the previous steps. Once you’re done, click Save.
Step 3: Creating a Profile
- Create a profile with a standard user, name it “Marketo-Salesforce Sync” and click on Save.
Step 4: Set Profile Permissions
- Ensure the following boxes are ticked in the Administrative Permissions section:

Ensure the following boxes are indicated in the General User Permissions section:

Ensure that Read, Create, Edit, and Delete permissions are indicated in the Standard Object Permissions section. Click Save after you’re finished.

Step 5: Set Field Permissions

Find the fields for each object that are not required, and make sure Read Access and Edit Access are not selected for those fields. Once you’re done, click Save.
Once you have disabled all the unnecessary fields, check Read Access and Edit Access for the following object fields. Once you are done click on Save.

Step 6: Create Marketo-Salesforce Sync Account

Create a New User.
Fill in the needed fields. Choose the User License: Salesforce and the Profile that you already created. Once you’re done, click Save.

Step 7: Retrieve Sync User Security Token

Click on My Settings under the sync user’s name.
Search “reset” and then click on Reset My Security Token.

Step 8: Setting Up Sync User Credentials

Go to Marketo’s Admin page, click on CRM, and then choose Sync with Salesforce.com
Fill the Salesforce Sync User credential and click on Sync Fields.
You’ll see a warning, then click on Confirm Credentials.

Step 9: Start Salesforce Sync

To start the Marketo-Salesforce sync, Click on Start Salesforce Sync.
Click on START SYNC.

Step 10: Verifying Sync

In Marketo, click on Admin > Salesforce.
The sync status is visible, and it will show one of three messages: Last Synced, Sync in Progress, or Failed.

Use Cases of Marketo Salesforce Integration

Marketo has all the functionalities a user could need to improve their marketing performance. The data can be used in both directions after Salesforce and Marketo’s sync is complete in order to maximize benefits. Here are some features that this integration offers:

1. Track Customer Behavior

With Marketo Salesforce integration, you can track customer activity throughout the buying cycle by knowing how users access your platform, what they see, how frequently they visit a site, when they move in, and other details such as a customer’s phone number, occupation, postal address, email, contact information, and so on.

2. Create Custom Campaigns

Because of the integration between Marketo Engage and Salesforce CRM, you can generate email campaigns and follow up with a lot more customers utilizing automated but personalized responses. Additionally, lead-specific data, including name and company, can be automatically retrieved from your own CRM system and added to these templates.

3. Real-Time Information

The data transmission between the two systems provides the sales and marketing teams with useful real-time information in addition to data collecting and analysis. With this real-time information on how leads interact with advertising efforts, sales would be better equipped to offer the appropriate answer at the ideal time for maximum effect.

4. Streamlined Content Management

The performance of your advertising campaigns depends on the quality of your promotions. Some CRM software should make it simple for you to create, maintain, and customize your content. The Salesforce CRM and Marketo integration lets you quickly edit your content, add additional elements, and modify it to suit your particular requirements.

5. Data Consistency Across Systems

At its base, marketing automation is a statistical process. Data from different sources must be fed into the marketing automation tool automatically and manually. Data management across numerous digital platforms, like websites, applications, social media, ticketing machines, etc., is made simple with Marketo Salesforce integration.

6. Effective Lead Management

Marketers benefit from Marketo Salesforce integration because it empowers them to draw in customers, give them tailored promotions, and generate sales-ready leads. Using a lead management solution, you can connect with potential clients at scale throughout their entire lifecycle through structured and personalized promotions.

7. Email Marketing

By enabling customized communications and understanding the return on investment for each email sent, Salesforce Marketo integration supports the creation of long-lasting customer relationships. With the help of your clients’ comprehensive datasets being in one place, you can create meaningful interactions with each of your present and potential customers based on their interests, individual habits, and statistics.

8. Enables Account-driven marketing

With the Marketo Salesforce integration, you can identify and target the accounts with the highest sales potential. Share them with others so they can quickly move through the sales funnel. Additionally, you can obtain revenue-based account monitoring, proven lead management capabilities, tailored cross-channel interaction, and account tracking and identification in a unified platform.

How can we help?

Marketo Salesforce integration is the way to go as it can boost business productivity, improve marketing ROI, and develop specialized campaigns to gain new customers. Salesforce Marketo integration is being used by many companies to regularize their advertising campaigns.

With 180k+ integration hours, 150+ technologies integrated, and dashboard customization, Ranosys certified experts could assist you effortlessly in integrating both systems and enabling a bidirectional flow of leads, contacts, accounts, campaigns, and custom objects, and opportunities.

Himanshu Ganoliya

Technical Lead – MarTech

Shubham Agarwal

Technical Lead - Salesforce

Our other speaker for the session is Shubham Agarwal, currently working as a Technical Lead – Salesforce with us. He is a Salesforce Certified Platform Developer I, Salesforce Certified Administrator B2B Commerce on Lightning Experience, and Administrator Accredited Professional. He has over 5 years of experience and today will lend us his expertise around Salesforce Marketo Integration.

In a world where industries have huge amounts of datasets, demand for turning this information into valuable insights is increasing. Microsoft Power BI is one such robust tool that helps you with data visualization and actionable insights. Organizations can perform data analysis and develop dashboards through Power BI within minutes.

Power BI dashboards and reports

The Power BI solution has two main components- dashboards and reports. They look similar, but they are both different canvas visualizations. Dashboards are a one-page canvas where multiple reports or datasets can be compiled together for effortless visualization. On the contrary, Reports are one or more pages and include a single dataset. Dashboards are unavailable on the Power BI desktop, but you can build and view Reports.

Comparing Power BI desktop and Power BI service

Power BI desktop is a tool to create complete data analysis and reports that connect, visualize, and analyze data on a system. At the same time, Power BI service is a SaaS or cloud-based software that supports editing and collaboration for teams and organizations.

There are some tasks that you can do either in Power BI desktop or service whereas some others you can do in both as shown below:

Interactive Dashboards with Microsoft Power BI use-cases

With Power BI, you can connect all your organization’s data and view it together in the form of interactive reports and dashboards. Here are the top 5 Power BI use-cases.

#1.Transform, shape, and model data using query in Power BI :

Power Query is a vital Power BI use case that enables data shaping and transformation. It shapes the data by renaming columns, editing columns, merging data, and replacing values. Moreover, it extracts, transforms, and loads (ETL) datasets and uploads it to Azure SQL database without further optimization or coding, hence improving the data acquisition process.

#2.DAX (Data analysis expressions) :

DAX is a resources library that eases the workload of Power BI users. It enables users to build expressions, measures, and calculate columns. DAX includes date and time, filter, financial, information, logical, math and trig, parent and child, and relationship functions. When implemented, these functions make Power BI dashboards smarter and enhance data visualization.

#3.Power view :

Power View is a tool for data visualization that allows the creation of intuitive charts, graphs, maps, and other visuals, turning raw data into actionable insights. The migration of Power View to Power BI Desktop, facilitating a deeper analysis of the available data and better visualization of reports.

#4.Embedded analytics :

A significant use-case of Power BI is embedded analytics, which allows embedding reports, dashboards, and tiles in web applications or websites. These embedded URLs provide view permissions, filters, bookmarks, and slicers, improving the overall performance of reports.

#5.RLS (Row-level security) :

Power BI is designed to provide security in a controlled manner. Row-Level Security (RLS) filters data-sensitive information and provides data access to only authorized users. The main feature of RLS is it does not restrict data; however, users are responsible for sharing data. Some Power BI use cases for RLS are based on location, business, job, time, etc.

Benefits of Power BI in business

#1. Approach for self-service and business data analytics on Power BI – Through Power BI, you can unify self-service and enterprise data analytics on a single platform. The built-in smart tools and layouts like fixed layout, paginated reports, semantic model, and an application lifecycle management (ALM) tool kit reduces costs and enables higher data security.

#2. More compelling insights – Power BI provides IT professionals collaboration tools to seamlessly turn data into actionable insights. Power BI visualizes details easily, delivers with right insights to ensure the smooth running of your business. The datasets designed with a Power BI algorithm deliver visually appealing insights.

#3. Save time – The combination of Excel and Power BI becomes a powerful combination for enterprises to gather, shape, analyze, and explore critical business insights. You can connect Excel and Power BI to data models and leverage advanced visualizations, modeling, and predictive capabilities all with a single click. This saves a lot of man hours for organizations.

#4. Data security – Microsoft Power BI data loss prevention (DLP) policies helps businesses detect and protect sensitive data. Power BI keeps data accessible to everyone and avoids misuse of important information of a business.

Practical application of Power BI in various industry domains

Industries use Power BI to filter data, analyze, and create impactful visualizations to attain actionable information for their business. Power BI facilitates an excellent dashboard with improved real-time visibility into business performance.

Here are some of the industry domains in which Power BI is helping with its Dashboard examples:

#1.eCommerce : eCommerce is widely using Power BI for its business operations and improving efficiencies by acting on critical insights. Power BI streamlines data management and consolidates for effective presentation, from supplier data and inventory details to customer behavior, relations, and employee performance.

#2.Healthcare: Power BI helps the health workers by keeping track of patients’ testing demands and gathering and storing health records of every patient. Tracking of patients’ journey, case types, and treatment administered helps in preventing future ailments. Healthcare can improve patient treatment, optimize test pricing, enhance marketing, and boost health team collaboration through analytical insights.

#3. Banking and insurance: Tracking claims, business processes, transactions, premiums, policy costs, etc., by incorporating Power BI in data management is a huge success in the finance industry. With Power BI led visualizations and predictive analytics, professionals can easily identify frauds and understand their customers better.

#4. Manufacturing: Power BI use cases help manufacturers monitor production, defective items, consumption rate, labor hours, etc., to minimize costs, increase efficiency, and resource optimization. Management of operations helps business owners to make better decisions.

Final Take

Competitive times like today demand powerful tools like Power BI that can make work easier while boosting workforce productivity and efficiency. Power BI Dashboards help track business operations in the form of highly interactive visualizations. Connect with our experts to leverage the full potential of Power BI and implement it successfully enterprise-wide.

Ravindra Reddy

Ravindra is a Senior Software Engineer at Ranosys. He has over 3 years of experience in Microsoft SharePoint and Power Platforms. He is very well versed in building Power BI dashboards. He believes in learning new technologies and sharing his knowledge with others. Besides work, he is extremely passionate about traveling and exploring new places.

Connect with us for Power BI consulting and development

Ranosys, a global Salesforce Partner, is proud to have been named cc. This award recognizes our commitment to drive net-new and diverse talent in the Salesforce ecosystem and practicing inclusive hiring practices.

The Salesforce Talent Alliance program is dedicated towards connecting partners to Salesforce candidates, bringing new net talent into the ecosystem, empowering them to build a successful career, and building a workforce that reflects diversity, equality, and inclusion around the globe. It achieves this by having Salesforce partners COMMIT to hiring young Salesforce professionals, CONNECT with certified candidates and train to gain CREDENTIALS and become Salesforce certified professionals.

Talking about this recognition, Sushma Vyas, COO-Ranosys said, “ As part of the Salesforce Talent Alliance program, we open our workplace to diverse talents and conduct extensive industry-leading training to create the next generation of Salesforce professionals across a number of roles. And I’m glad that this ability has been recognized with the Talent Alliance Champion award. In our journey as a Salesforce Partner, this milestone will surely help in garnering the right talent and offering solutions designed and developed by a team of certified and skilled Salesforce specialists.”

With a keen focus and commitment towards nurturing and empowering the young generation with knowledge, necessary training, and a platform to forge successful career paths in the Salesforce ecosystem, Ranosys has been consistently fulfilling the objectives of the Talent Alliance Program with its various internal initiatives. Throughout 2021 and until April-2022, Ranosys trained and onboarded over 50+ professionals into Salesforce. Currently, the Ranosys Salesforce practice is led by over 130+ certified professionals handling projects across verticals.

At its service and offerings core, Ranosys is known for its client-centric approach and its ability to deliver innovative solutions across the Salesforce Clouds ecosystem – Commerce, Service, Sales, and Marketing along with Salesforce OMS and SFDC. In fact, Ranosys has several accelerator programs such as Phoenix, Business 360 and Harrier in place to accelerate time-to-market and help online merchants launch eCommerce stores in 4-6 weeks at minimal TCO. Moreover, Ranosys’ intranet system, Pulse, built on the Salesforce platform with 350+ licenses has been featured on the official Salesforce website as a success story.

Motivated by this recognition, Ranosys looks forward to mentor and train fresh talent and deliver wow moments to their customers with the next-gen solutions.

About Ranosys

For more information, visit https://www.ranosys.com/
Or, fill the form and shoot us an email at sales@ranosys.com

Fast, affordable, and robust digital transformation has never been as vital as today. Today’s users have little patience to put up slow loads, complicated menus, incomplete information, or glitches, which often leads to unsatisfactory and inefficient experiences. Enterprises have only one solution to overcome the barriers, which is to build applications fast, right, and for the future in real-time.

Defining a good customer experience with OutSystems

To understand what comprises a great UX design, we need to know what comes with UX. UX design involves a human-centered approach to product development and crafting an experience around the needs and desires of users. A good UX aims to understand humans deeply by diving into their behavior, cognitive process, and wishes.

Good UX is consists of three parts, just like a pyramid:

Delight – Delight is about missing a product when it’s unavailable, and that is where OutSystems Web wants to achieve that quality.
Usefulness – The developer has to understand if the piece of software or tool can solve the user’s problems.
Usability – A developer needs to make the application usable. Apps should be easy to use, and features should not be complicated. So while developing the application, a developer should keep in mind the usability facts.

OutSystems UI/UX pre-built design kits and templates act as an accelerator that substantially reduces the time to turn visions into reality. OutSystems’ low-code capabilities provide the complete framework for UI/UX solutions.

Designing applications from OutSystems UI

The framework OutSystems UI, which came out with version 11 and replaced the old OutSystems Silk, provides amazing building blocks to deliver applications lightning-fast everywhere. OutSystems UI Architecture is the base that acts as a Service Studio to build applications from bootstrap. OutSystems UI Framework creates the user interface base and provides UI web patterns for web and mobile applications.

OutSystems provides an intuitive and seamless user experience. Let’s have a look at some of the components of OutSystems UI framework and how it works on OutSystems web :
1. Screen templates
OutSystems provide developers with predefined screen templates that offer functionality and user interface. When they choose a screen template, the screen is created automatically within the app with sample data that can be tested on devices. Developers can customize these code blocks and change colors and styles to match the brand’s design guidelines.
2. Accessibility
One of the most significant aspects when developing an application is that it should be accessible to everyone. Accessibility is often essential for ethical, practical, and legal reasons. OutSystems UI framework was designed according to WCAG 2.1 ( Web Content Accessibility Guidelines), and hence, it includes all the built-in accessibility features like contrast ratio, forms, and specific customization development.
3. Customizations & theme editor
OutSystems has full-stack capabilities to customize the UI of applications. With the use of Theme Editor to customize the overall style of your application. Developers can customize themes, screens, and UI elements like font, structure, shape, etc. Theme Editor is an excellent tool for digital products to provide delightful, visually appealing, and easy-to-use experiences. It can simply refine specific interface concepts making the user tasks more straightforward.
4. Look and feel
OutSystems UI framework comes with a base theme, and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) developers can edit themes, screens, blocks, and widgets from the base theme. There is automatic responsive behavior of applications developed by OutSystems with an excellent look and feel, boosting user experience.
From badges, progress bars, and counters to carousels and date pickers, developers can draw from the OutSystems Library of 100+ UI patterns to offer familiar user interactions and quickly build even the most complex and rich user interfaces.
5. Forge marketplace
OutSystems Forge acts as a warehouse of reusable, open code modules, connectors, UI components, and business solutions to fasten up application development time. Developers must understand brand tone, user interface, and usability to optimize development cycles and offer personalized user experiences. The Forge is a marketplace where the community shares their software projects created with industry expertise and pre-built templates.
Engaging external integrations and UI/UX experiences with OutSystems
Every business sector is incorporating external integrations like AI, Machine learning, Blockchain, etc. to analyze user interactions which gives an incredibly seamless experience. To promote efficiency and convenience in UI design, OutSystems has enabled these integrations to develop applications.
#1. AI fusion- Artificial Intelligence helps develop modern applications with exemplary architecture and user experiences to determine an organization’s business value and impact. The AI-oriented framework recommends solutions quickly after evaluating the application’s implementation and execution metrics. OutSystems can integrate pre-built components like third-party messaging applications and incorporate solutions like smart-home voice assistants or chatbots. This enables enterprises to deliver modern-driven applications and software that makes a difference to users.
#2. Style guide & reuse UI – OutSystems UI kits are equipped with a Style Guide that allows applications to be built faster by reusing the same components. Understanding brand guidelines and building precisely what a user wants through a library of UI patterns available in the style guide. A progressive web application can be created by importing existing layouts and themes from Style Guide. Reuse UI improves functionality to update customer data and offers power to help users understand applications’ dependencies and analysis. With the help of OutSystems, enterprises can deliver excellent customer experiences.
#3. Blockchain-enabled application – Blockchain is the innovation platform of the future that allows consensus and membership services to be plug and play. Hyperledger Composer toolset is an extensive, open development toolset and framework to make developing blockchain applications more accessible.
These engaging experiences happened because the speed provided by OutSystems UI made development much faster and more reliable. The platform enables developers to develop faster in a more consistent, performant, and modern way.
Build modern applications with OutSystems UI framework
Great applications create great experiences, and with that in mind, OutSystems offers every designer the ability to build applications with fantastic UI/UX quickly and consistently. Through a focused approach to customer experience, OutSystems has laid a solid foundation to develop native applications. Ultimately, OutSystems provides UI/UX development that delights the end-users and establishes a strong business identity.

Get Ready to build amazing UI/UX with OutSystems

Narendra Maheshwari

Solution Architect

As a part of their expansion strategy and low-code ecosystem development, Ranosys, an award-winning Digital Consulting Company is extending its partnership with the leading low-code enterprise platform, OutSystems in the US.

As a certified OutSystems Solution Partner, Ranosys and its team of Global OutSystems’ Champions have helped many organizations achieve their digital transformation goals using the OutSystems’ low-code technology platform. With OutSystems’ growing success and Ranosys’ credentials in developing enterprise applications, this partnership expansion is ready to assist the North American enterprises in their digital transformation journeys.

In the expansion plan discussions with Rameshwar Vyas, CEO of Ranosys, he shared that, “After our successful growth in the EMEA and APAC markets, we are ready to extend our OutSystems partnership to the Americas.”

He continued, “The North America low-code development market is witnessing a rapid growth with a CAGR of 23.4%. As a result, there is an increasing demand for systems integrators to accelerate the use of these development capabilities. By expanding our OutSystems partnership to the US, we aim to deliver innovative solutions that help enable businesses to respond well to the changing market dynamics.”

OutSystems and its low-code technology has transformed enterprise application development and service delivery worldwide. Its powerful platform delivers enterprise level software that meets the dynamic consumer needs of today as well as the flexibility for the future. As a long-standing OutSystems Solution Partner, Ranosys enables the robust features of the OutSystems platform backed by certified architects, developers, and UI/UX designers to meet the enterprise needs. For the same, Ranosys was recently named one amongst the Top 10 Most Promising Low-Code Solution Providers – 2021 by CIOReviewIndia.

Discussing this partnership extension, Anand Ramdeo, Chief Revenue Officer – Ranosys, said, “There is a huge gap between the demand for new digital solutions and the speed at which they can be delivered. Every organization requires fast and agile systems that adapt to new trends and help secure their position in an increasingly competitive landscape.”

He further remarked, “OutSystems helps fulfill these digital transformation solution needs by enabling developers to quickly deliver the complex business requirements of today’s applications. As an OutSystems partner in the US, we will help bring low-code technology to this large market and help fill this solutions backlog. By aligning with OutSystems as a partner, we seek to position ourselves as a leading digital transformation organization that delivers high performance business solutions.”

In addition to being a world-class leader in digital technology solutions, Ranosys also serves clients with its product engineering and digital commerce solutions.

Continuing this legacy of delivering quality and affordable solutions, Ranosys and OutSystems’ partnership in North America will accelerate enterprise growth, navigate the new normal, and create high performing digital transformation experiences for customers and clients alike.

About OutSystems

OutSystems is a low-code platform which provides the tools for companies to develop, deploy and manage omnichannel enterprise applications. OutSystems is a modern application platform developed with a vision to transform enterprise application development with unprecedented levels of flexibility, efficiency and speed. With more than 435,000 community members, 350 partners, and thousands of active customers in 87 countries and across 22 industries, OutSystems is recognized as a world leader in low-code development and helps organizations build enterprise-grade applications at an accelerated pace.

About Ranosys

For more information, visit https://www.ranosys.com/
Or, fill the form and shoot us an email at sales@ranosys.com

Upgrade from SiteGenesis to SFRA with a trusted Salesforce Partner.

Unrivaled innovation, mobile-first approach, pixel perfect online stores- this is what Salesforce Reference Architecture (SFRA) empowers you with and a lot more. Building an online store is a tedious approach, especially when you consider the mammoth of competitors you battle against. To portray your superiority in the market, you need to consider a few must-haves- appealing UI/UX design, lighting fast performance, and speedy on-the-go solutions.

If you run an eCommerce business, you’re aware of Salesforce Commerce Cloud and its top-end agility, scalability, and flexibility features. Undeniably, the SFCC platform delivers differentiated customer experiences, boosts personalized engagements, invokes the power of AI to study customer behavior, and does a lot more thanks to the underlying code base of Storefront Reference Architecture (SFRA).

Traditionally, Salesforce Commerce was built on Demandware and employed SiteGenesis as its code architecture. However, with changing customer requirements, evolving market trends and growing challenges around SiteGenesis’ performance and scalability, Salesforce updated it to the SFRA (Storefront Reference Architecture). This modern blueprint is loaded with the latest mobile-first design capabilities, next-gen improvements in the UX, and all the other features that promise top-notch speed and performance.

However, if you’re still using the legacy SiteGenesis architecture, it is imperative to know its differences from the SFRA and the opportunities that the latter offers for your growing eCommerce business.

What is Storefront Reference Architecture (SFRA)?

Launched in 2018 by Salesforce B2C Commerce, Storefront Reference Architecture (SFRA) offers retailers a platform that is necessary to launch their webstore. Salesforce built the SFRA framework keeping in mind the growing trends around mCommerce and that most technologies were built around desktop, which when viewed on smartphones results in friction in user experience.

SFRA was developed on mobile-first optimized UX, a more robust, scalable and efficient framework than the older SiteGenesis model. It is synonymous with an out-of-the-box and best-in-class experience, with extensibility and customization as its unique features.

SiteGenesis to SFRA: The timeline

SiteGenesis 1.0 (2009): Developed by Demandware, SiteGenesis was developed along the lines of the ‘Pipeline’ (a code execution sequence organized in a prescribed manner within an XML file) architecture, which did not natively support mobile web experiences. Although SiteGenesis provided developers with the freedom to insert custom code during pipeline execution, often finding functionalities relevant to the SiteGenesis architecture was challenging.

SiteGenesis 2.0 (2014): SiteGenesis was responsible for the evolution of the backend architecture, thanks to the ‘controllers’ in the MVC (model view controller) pattern. Although it did enable the quicker development of desktop-led eCommerce experiences, it did not natively support webstore experiences.

The controller model did lead to better code organization, which meant improved support of storefront requests. Yet, not many eCommerce businesses found value in the SiteGenesis 2.0 model.

Mobile-First Reference Architecture (MFRA) (2016): Post the acquisition of Demandware by Salesforce, the latter strived to improve mobile web experiences. This meant, driving significant changes in mobile and desktop web architectures without changing much of the backend. The MFRA architecture allowed the development of mobile web foundation through Bootstrap, HTML5, and CSS3.

Storefront Reference Architecture (SFRA) (2018): After the significant storefront overhaul of MFRA, Salesforce now focussed on revamping the backend to support the latest developments. Salesforce analyzed customer needs and use cases to understand what lacked in the previous versions.

This led to a modern model with improved mobile responsiveness, efficient checkout management, and other developments that would deliver unrivaled ecommerce experiences.

Benefits of Storefront Reference Architecture over SiteGenesis

The following is a comparison between SFRA and SiteGenesis architecture.

	SFRA	SiteGenesis
User Experience	The SFRA architecture was built keeping in mind the growing trend around mobile commerce. It follows a well-designed mobile-first model based on data-driven analysis, customer journey analysis, and heat mapping. This modular coding approach significantly elevates its m-stores and webstore performance.	It focussed on desktop rather than mobile responsiveness. Its design consists of more features per form factor to build and maintain the desktop codebase, which often led to performance lag.
Maintenance & Support	Developers can build storefronts by adding a customization layer on top of the existing reference code and implement new features and capabilities. This way, developers can launch new user-centered features to the storefronts without modifying the core code architecture. Salesforce actively supports the evolution, updation, and development of SFRA. This means, you can expect new features and capabilities as the market and shopper needs evolve. Moreover, there is an extensive availability of training and learning materials on the internet for the same.	SiteGenesis is a legacy model that allowed code duplication and modifying existing ref. Code to implement other features. However, this became a hassle especially as the codebase aged. Subsequently, developers found it challenging to upgrade, maintain, customize, or extend the existing code architecture, which, in some cases, was impossible. SiteGenesis is now a legacy model that is no longer updated by Salesforce. This means, there is no support provided by Salesforce in case of code issues.
Code Architecture	SFRA follows the MVC architecture that leverages technologies like JavaScript controllers, Bootstrap HTML5 and CSS3 that modern developers are well-versed with to create impactful mobile experiences. Moreover, the modular abstracted model supports customizations and upgrades.	Sitegenesis is based on proprietary technologies and requires professionals with knowledge of pipelines, UX Studio, pipelets, and Demandware Scripts. In case of customizations, vendors will have to look to industry experts with relevant experience and expertise.
Continuous Integration	SFRA provides modern CI/CD support via automation testing. It includes the integration, unit, and functional testing functionalities for controllers, models and views. This means SFRA goes well with the modern agile and microservices methodologies.	While SiteGenesis does support continuous integration, it lacks the examples included in SFRA, automation testing, and does not contain command line tooling. This means, developers have to create a custom solution if they want to implement CI/CD support in SiteGenesis
Total cost of ownership	The mobile-first extensible MVC architecture along with other architectural improvements are positioned in a way to offer superior mobile experiences at a reduced TCO.	While SiteGenesis is still an productive option for businesses currently, managing and maintaining this legacy architecture will be highly costly as compared to SFRA in the future.

Why Storefront Reference Architecture (SFRA)?

Statistics suggest more customers prefer shopping from their smartphones and tablets than their laptops or desktops. Undeniably, it is easier and more comfortable to shop via on-the-go solutions. This growing trend around mobile commerce has sparked interest in technologies that empower merchants and retailers to offer such seamless and effective shopping experiences on mobile devices and webstores. And this is exactly what Salesforce had in mind while designing the Storefront Reference Architecture (SFRA).

The open, standard-based SFRA architecture was designed with a mobile-first perspective and optimized for mobile shoppers.
It employs the ‘Bootstrap Mobile Framework’ which is the most popular HTML, CSS, and JS framework for developing responsive, mobile-first sites.
Modular separation of core features, merchant customization and integration cartridges make implementing new features and maintenance smooth and seamless. Ultimately, it allows merchants to deliver customer-driven experiences, which boosts conversion rates.
Collectively, the mobile-first MVC approach and architectural improvements are designed to reduce TCO as compared to SiteGenesis.

Move from SiteGenesis to SFRA with certified Salesforce experts

With superior customer experiences becoming a critical demand, the first step to achieving this goal is laying a concrete technical foundation that achieves current demands and promises future agility, scalability, and responsiveness. An eCommerce store built on Salesforce Commerce Cloud with a SFRA architecture delivers unparalleled performance at an accelerated speed across the growing number of touchpoints, including smartphones, tablets, and so on.

Phoenix, an innovative eCommerce accelerator built on top of the Salesforce Commerce Cloud platform leverages the SFRA model with custom integrations to rapidly and iteratively develop new features and meet the evolving market demands. The best part- it allows merchants to launch their online stores within 6 weeks, reducing time to market by 60%. Its pre-coded themes and templates fulfills 80% of the retail needs at a reduced TCO while allowing easy customizations for the rest. With Phoenix, merchants can now accelerate the launch of their eCommerce solutions while flexibly and seamlessly adapting for the future.

Need help implementing the SFRA Architecture?

Sneha Khode

System Analyst

Sneha is a System Analyst at Ranosys and has 10+ years of experience in the IT industry. In her previous role as Salesforce Certified B2C Commerce Developer, she has worked on various enterprises and leading brands in the market. She has been part of the team receiving the 2021 Salesforce Partner Innovation Award in the Communications industry category. She is well-versed with Agile methodologies and Agile delivery model.

Shivendra Singh Rathore

Senior System Analyst

Shivendra is a Senior System Analyst at Ranosys and possesses over 12+ years of experience in IT industry with enterprise eCommerce as his primary area of expertise. In his previous role as a Technical Architect, he has seen several Salesforce Commerce Cloud projects for various brands to its successful completion. Apart from work, Shivendra is a fitness enthusiast and has an zeal for exploring new things and places.

The most awaited conference in Singapore is back with the Meet Magento Singapore (MM22SG) on 25 Aug 2022 at Marina Bay Sands, Singapore. Like every year, Meet Magento Singapore is organized by Ranosys.

The powerful growth of eCommerce in Singapore and other APAC countries

Singapore has become a hub of customer-driven innovation and leveraging leading-edge technologies to create, launch, and expand IT solutions. With the extensive and continuous support of the Singaporean government in growing eCommerce operations, several home-led and global brands have been exploring the region to boost online sales and productivity. In fact, initiatives and incentives such as the eCommerce Booster Package and SMEs Go Digital Programs have invoked a higher interest amongst local and global organizations to launch similar solutions and boost customer confidence.

There has been a radical growth of the eCommerce market in Singapore, assisted by the high-speed internet connectivity, tech-savvy population, a transformative ICT infrastructure, and the government’s efforts toward becoming a digital-first nation. As a result, reports suggest that the eCommerce industry in Singapore will be worth S$7.5 billion (US$5.4 billion) by 2025. That is 5x the industry’s value in 2016, and with the expected CAGR of 9.9% during the period (2021-2025), these numbers seem easily achievable.

Meet Magento Singapore – A global event at the convergence of innovation and technology

The global Meet Magento Association is known for empowering enterprises, practitioners, solution providers, and merchants of the community with the much-needed industry knowledge and insights to create the next in the digital ecosystem. Worldwide, it organizes meetups, conferences, and events to cultivate ideas about Magento’s future and build endless relations with business persons and developers.

Meet Magento Singapore is a global convention centered around digital commerce and transformation, along with how leading-edge tools, applications, and platforms can help deliver the WOW experience to our customers and help them excel. The global event brings together the entire Magento community – merchants, customers, industry leaders, and Adobe stalwarts – under one roof to discuss the recent developments, market trends, and possibilities in the space.

Known for its impressive line-up of speakers, thought-provoking topics, must-attend after parties, and impeccable hospitality, Meet Magento Singapore is an event that binds the Magento ecosystem together and celebrates its milestones with full fervor and vigor.

Why should you join Meet Magento Singapore?

Now coming to the only question in your mind, ‘Why should I attend Meet Magento Singapore?’
Here are 5 reasons as to why you should attend the Meet Magento Singapore conference this year.

#1: Exploring the opportunistic hub of eCommerce in Singapore

Statistics suggest that the e-commerce market in Singapore is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 16.2% from S$7.8bn (US$5.9bn) in 2021 to S$14.2bn (US$10.7bn) in 2025. In fact, it is one of the fastest growing digital economies in Southeast Asia.

Set up in a growth-driven ecosystem, Meet Magento Singapore explores the opportunities and possibilities around eCommerce innovation and development in the region and how merchants and retailers can benefit from this forward-thinking economy. The purpose of this conference is to bring together the dynamic e-commerce network and be able to share success stories, case studies, the way forward for eCommerce, and much more!

#2: Trends, insights, and knowledge related to the growth of eCommerce in the SEA region

At present, there are approximately 260 million users in the SEA region, making it the 4th largest market in the world and the region’s B2C e-commerce market is estimated to be valued at US$770 billion. The maturation and rapid progress of SEA’s leading eCommerce companies continue to play a critical role in the rise of digitization and commerce.

Meet Magento gives you the opportunity to learn about the latest eCommerce developments and trends in the SEA. These insights will positively influence your business growth and expansion strategies in the region and help you garner maximum online traction and traffic.

#3: Listen to the success stories of growing brands in the APAC region

The success of digital commerce in the SEA region is attributed to the two pillars of enablement:

The immense trust of consumers in online shopping
The policies and initiatives that has cultivated an environment of digital growth, innovation, and sustainability in the region

The strategic location of Singapore in the heart of South Asia makes it a popular hub for world trade and logistics. This has further fueled the expansion of several local brands overseas and of global brands in the country. Moreover, Singapore lies in the middle of several shipping routes, which makes it easy to export and import products.

Singapore aims to become an eCommerce hub of Asia, which is why it empowers its workforce with the digital skills and capabilities required in the digital-first economy. This has supplemented the growth and success of several brands in the region. Meet Magento Singapore provides you the opportunity to meet the faces behind these success stories and listen to their inspirational sessions.

#4: Network with the leading enterprises, merchants, developers, & agencies in the region

Meet Magento Singapore 2022 will be an excellent opportunity for Magento Community members to establish new contacts and build business networks with over hundreds of leading enterprises, merchants, developers, and agencies in the SEA region. This global event gives you an opportunity to network with the biggest pioneers of the eCommerce industry, Magento experts, Magento developers, Magento Partners, and service providers.

Of course, as you grow your network in the community, you explore better business prospects, improve the lead generation process, and get invited to luncheons and similar events in the future.

#5: Explore more about customer experience and success in the SEA

CX is the most exciting opportunity for any organization in the SEA region and many companies are increasing their efforts and focusing on customer experience as a way to stand out from competitors and improve marketing performance.

At MMSG, we understand how superior experiences can be a critical asset and a key differentiator for a brand, which is why we’ve divided our tracks to suit the best interests of our attendees. The COMMERCE TRACK will cover details around how innovation and transformation in the digital commerce ecosystem can help deliver excellent and next-gen features and capabilities to customers. It includes the latest eCommerce and market trends and is suitable for eCommerce managers, merchants, retailers, sales, and partner managers.

On the contrary, the EXPERIENCE TRACK discusses the importance of a digital-first experience. It will provide you with insights into forging successful consumer journeys to improve the personalized customer experiences for your consumers.

We’ll be waiting for you at Meet Magento Singapore!

If you are passionate about Magento and want to be well-versed with the latest trends, you can’t miss the Meet Magento Singapore 2022 event.

Register Today: https://meetmagento.sg/meet-magento-sg-2022-tickets/ & get ready to have a fun and insightful day at Marina Bay Sands, Singapore on 25 August 2022.

Book Your Tickets for MM22SG Now

Ranosys, a CMMI Level 3 Global Digital Consulting Company is excited to welcome Neal Weinstein as Vice-President – Enterprise Sales in the US. With the addition of such a strategic and renowned leader in business development and growth, Ranosys looks forward to expanding its client base in the US, forging new customer relationships, and nurturing the existing ones.

With immense hands-on experience in assisting B2B and B2C brands in accelerating their growth journeys and improving customer experiences, Neal brings along 11+ years of promising expertise in business development and sales strategies across digital commerce, product innovation, and digital transformation space. His rich corporate experience comprises prominent names such as Corra, where he served as a Regional Sales Director and Blackridge Software (based in Ukraine) as a Sales Director based in Ukraine where he was tasked with introducing the company to a new market.

As a thought leader, Neal has worked at the intersection of leading-edge commerce technologies and customer experience strategy for user conversion and retention. At a time when Ranosys is vastly expanding in the Americas, Neal and his technical acumen and expertise will assist Ranosys in its aggressive corporate goals and vision and lay the foundation for success in the region.

“Ranosys has built a strong rapport with its industry-leading solutions and eye for innovation in the APAC, UK and the MEA region. I’m excited to be a part of the team at a stage where they wish to replicate this success in the US region and reach newer heights. I’m very much looking forward to creating new relationships and expanding existing ones in the ecosystem,” adds Neal Weinstein, Vice President – Enterprise Sales at Ranosys.

In this new capacity, Neal will assist Ranosys with his strategic leadership as the team continues to navigate the waters in the US region and expand upon their current service offerings.

Talking about this addition to our global team, Anand Ramdeo, CRO – Ranosys, stated, “Neal is a fantastic addition to the Ranosys team. Throughout the enterprise market, this is a time of change and transformation. Neal’s experience will assist in capitalizing on the new opportunities, forging valuable relationships with prospects and clients, and adapting for future growth.”

About Ranosys

For more information, visit https://www.ranosys.com/
Or, fill the form and shoot us an email at sales@ranosys.com

The intensive competitive e-commerce market statistics show B2B eCommerce expanding its market share at a CAGR of 18.7% from 2021 to 2028 with a vision to touch USD 25.65 trillion market valuation by 2028. This valuation is over five times higher than the B2C eCommerce market. These statistics show a paradigm shift in market dynamics and the necessity of a robust Salesforce B2B Commerce Data Model.

The Salesforce B2B Commerce solution emphasizes a unique buyer experience with specific buyer configurations and ease of customization. It uses Lightning Web Components to enable over-the-top configuration and customize what is preloaded. Various permissions and access level configurations ensure the security of user data. But, with these added advantages, one may ask, ‘why is this solution the best?’ ‘Why should one prefer this?’ The answer is simple. It is effective due to its robust data model that acts as the backbone of the Salesforce B2B Commerce solutions.

With the above precise answer, let us start by understanding and exploring the Salesforce B2B eCommerce Data Model.

What is a Data Model?

In our context, we may define a data model as a relation or mapping between the Salesforce commerce cloud data model standard objects and their properties.

What is the Salesforce B2B Commerce Cloud Data Model?

Before exploring data models, we need to understand that, Salesforce consists of standard objects and these objects are nothing but tables in the Salesforce database. Apart from the Standard Objects available with all Salesforce solutions, few are specific to B2B eCommerce solutions.

Let us concentrate on each of the B2B Commerce solution entities and explore the relationship among them.

Store: All commerce data reside in a unique entity called a store. Stores allows the admin/manager to manage the commerce data like Catalog, Categories, and Products. This commerce data enhances the buyer experience via Experience Cloud sites. The Salesforce Experience Cloud is the best way to create a frontend digital experience.
Catalog: A Catalog envelopes the ordered structure of categories within a Store. Products in a store can be associated with the various Categories. A Catalog is a must to view products within a Store.
Category: Products available in-store are available in different Categories. Each Category can have subcategories- up to five category levels.
Products: Products are the entities available in B2B Commerce stores as items or services to be sold to the buyer.
Product Media: Pictorial data, documents, or URLs related to the product are associated with Product Media. Product Media helps in providing enriched data about the product.
Product Variation: A parent product with different variations from a child product is called product variation. Consider a mobile handset with different colors and different specifications. A parent product is categorized as a Simple Product when it has no other variation to offer. When a child product exists, the parent product is just the representation of the category product. Parent products are not available to be sold to the buyers.
Price Books: The price of each product is available in Price Books.
Price Book Entries: The listed product in a price book with a price is a Price Book entry.
Price Adjustment Schedule: It provides discounts based on bulk orders to buyers. It allows different discount levels on different quantities ordered.
CMS Workspace: With the help of the channel, CMS Workspace maps to different stores. A CMS Workspace allows admin to create, share, and organize content to meet particular goals.
Orders: These are the organized list of items or services purchased by the buyer.
Buyer Account: A buyer account is responsible for the buyer purchasing access. When enabled as a Buyer, it adds to the buyer group.
Buyer Group: Collection of buyer accounts enjoying the same access and entitlement.
Profile/Permission Set: Profile/Permission Set defines the access level to the Store.
Search: It enables users to search for products available in the Store.
Search Index: It is mandatory to build the search index when the store administrator configures changes to the Store. The search index is responsible for making the changes active.
Entitlement Policies: Based on the Buyer Group policies, product, and product-related information are available to the buyer. These policies are called Entitlement Policies.
Checkout: Checkout is responsible for bringing all external integrations and internal store information together.
Cart: The cart holds the list of products that the buyer will proceed to checkout.
Order Summary: It is available on the order confirmation page that contains a summary of the buyer’s recent purchase.

Let’s understand the mapping amongst the Business-to-Business Commerce objects.

A Store is related to a Catalog in a one-to-one relationship. A Store can have only one Catalog.
A Catalog is related to a Store in a one-to-many relationship. A Catalog can be a map to many stores.
A Catalog is related to Categories in one-to-many relationships. A Catalog can be related to many Categories.
A Category is related to Catalogs in one-to-one relationships. A Category can be related to one Catalog.
A Store can contain many Buyer Groups. These Buyer Groups can be related to multiple Price Books. A Buyer Group consists of many Buyers, and a Buyer can relate to many Buyer Groups.
A Buyer Group can be associated with different Entitlement Policies and Stores.
Entitlement Policies can be associated with multiple Buyer Groups and Products.
Products can be associated with many Price Books, Entitlement Policies, and Categories.
Price books can contain multiple products.

These robust mapping on the Salesforce Lightning Platform ensures modernized goods and service purchasing. Hence, Lightning Salesforce B2B eCommerce Solution powered by data models enables admin to build, manage and configure advanced experiences for their business clients and buyers. With different levels of Salesforce B2B Commerce Licenses, administrators can enhance the scalability of the business.

Configuring your B2B Commerce store the right way.

Our experts can help you explore it the ‘Classic’ and ‘Lightning’ way.

Vaibhav Mishra

Software Engineer

Vaibhav Mishra is a seasoned professional with an IT experience of 3 years currently serving as a Software Engineer at Ranosys Technologies. He has played a pivotal role in Salesforce business-to-business eCommerce practice development at Ranosys Technologies. Vaibhav is Salesforce Certified Developer and Administrator. He also possesses Lightning business-to-business Developer & Administrator Professional Accreditation.

Ranosys, a CMMI Level 3 Global Digital Consulting Company is excited to announce the 5th edition of Meet Magento Singapore 2022 – a global digital event where industry leaders, experienced developers, iconic online merchants and technology partners come together to discuss the future and scope of the experience era.

To be held for 25 Aug 2022 at Marina Bay Sands, Meet Magento Singapore 2022 will bring together the community for a day-long event filled with expert discussions, the latest industry trends, and meaningful conversations around digital commerce and transformation. For the past two years, MMSG was either a virtual or invite-only event. However, this year, it will be an in-person event with multiple tracks.

“With things normalizing, we’re glad to be able to bring back Meet Magento Singapore 2022 in-person. This is an opportunity for us to get the community together, listen to the most influential change-makers in the industry, exchange ideas, and uncover the key industry trends. This year, our focus is on the experience era that lies ahead of us and the roles we play in it. With experience becoming a critical differentiator and asset for every industry, now is the time to unfold its true meaning and brainstorm around the tools and solutions that will help us all achieve this goal. And that is the primary objective of Meet Magento Singapore 2022,” said Rameshwar Vyas, CEO- Ranosys.

He continued, “And of course, it’s been a while since we’ve had the community together and we can’t wait to see all those happy faces again.”

Because of the wealth of knowledge and insights covered, Meet Magento Singapore attracts a large audience from all fields of digital commerce and digital transformation each year, and they plan on continuing with the same. Held at the spectacular hotel resort, Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, the conference will be filled with industry insights and latest developments in the field of digital innovation and transformation.

About Ranosys

Ranosys is a CMMI Level 3 Global Digital Consulting Company founded in 2008 in Singapore with offices in the USA, UK, Middle East, and APAC regions. It leverages the power of platform partnerships, experience design, and cutting-edge software technologies to drive digital transformation, eCommerce, and product engineering initiatives. Ranosys addresses the various milestones in a company’s digital transformation roadmap, identifying, designing, developing, deploying, and measuring their digital skills. In addition, their experienced and expert workforce renders solutions that secure their client’s lead in the digital community.

For more information, visit https://www.ranosys.com/
Or, fill out the form and shoot us an email at sales@ranosys.com.

About Adobe Commerce

Adobe, and the Adobe Commerce platform, is a leading provider of cloud commerce innovation to merchants and brands across B2C and B2B industries and was named a leader in the 2018 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce. In addition to its flagship digital commerce platform, Adobe Commerce boasts a strong portfolio of cloud-based omnichannel solutions that successfully empower merchants to integrate digital and physical shopping experiences.

About Meet Magento Singapore

Meet Magento Singapore, a global eCommerce event, welcomes all companies, individuals, retailers, and merchants active in digital commerce, with a curious interest in how Magento helps disrupt the eCommerce industry, achieve the inconceivable, and assist businesses in registering massive and surmounting growth. Join seasoned Magento professionals, experienced developers, ambitious merchants, and other technology partners in an insightful and reimagine future of digital commerce.

Register for Meet Magento Singapore now

Released in October 2020, Google Analytics 4 is Google’s newest generation of analytics and tracking software. Standard Universal Analytics properties will no longer process data on July 1, 2023. After July 1, 2023, you’ll be able to read your Universal Analytics reports for a period of time; however, new data will only be sent to Google Analytics 4 properties.

Google’s latest iteration of Analytics, referring to GA4, is a “new sort of property” that enables more tracking and reporting options. It gives you a complete view of how users interact with your brand across platforms and devices. One of the significant differences between GA4 and its predecessor UA (Universal Analytics) is the ability to utilize it not only for a website but also for an app, or both at the same time, allowing for tracking possibilities that have never been seen before.

What is the difference between Google Analytics 4 vs Universal Analytics?

While GA Universal focuses on pages, GA4 is very different. Instead of focusing on page views, GA4 employs an entirely new sort of event-based measurement. It keeps track of individual page elements’ performance and relative contribution, including variants. GA4 allows you to assess a user’s experience rather than a proxy, giving you a complete view of their behavior and removing blind spots as you track them across your entire website.

All traffic sources are now tracked in one location, without the need for additional solutions like App + Web, whether your visitor engages with your business through a mobile app, software, or your website. There are numerous changes, including a new user interface. GA4 additionally utilizes new Google Tags, and you will need a new Google Analytics property for storing data.

Can we use both Google Analytics 4 and Universal Analytics?

Starting from July 1, 2023, the standard Universal Analytics properties will stop processing data. However, you will still have access to your previously processed data in your Universal Analytics property for a minimum of six months. Consequently, it will not be possible to simultaneously utilize both Google Analytics 4 and Universal Analytics after this date.

What are the features of Google Analytics 4?

Google Analytics 4 brings new and advanced features to better support businesses. Here are some of the platform’s benefits:

GA4 allows a complete understanding of the customer journey across multiple devices, platforms, and domains
Cross-platform tracking (web and apps) using the same Google Analytics property
New AI-powered insights and predictions
Customer-centric measurements to streamline data collection
Customer lifecycle-framed reporting
New interface and navigation
GA4 allows you to get access to a lot more custom metrics and domains
Real-time event tracking without adding code on your website
Improved visualizations to make data control more granular
Future-proof tracking without cookies
Deeper integrations with Google Ads and BigQuery

The relationship between Google Analytics 4 and eCommerce

As Google Analytics 4 is still in its early stage, you can expect a lot more competitive features in the future. Anyone switching from Universal Analytics to a GA4 property type will probably experience some growing pains.

eCommerce reports and features differ from Universal Analytics in a number of ways, as they do in many other areas of GA4. eCommerce tracking has been modified within GA4; however, it still lacks some functionalities that are accessible in Universal Analytics. For example, the “Monetization” report in GA4 now includes the “Overview, eCommerce Purchases, In-App Purchases, and Publisher Ads” reports, which track eCommerce statistics.

Google Analytics 4 use cases for eCommerce

Use Case #1: Google Analytics eCommerce tracking

You can compare real sales data with other website metrics like traffic source or medium using GA4Google Analytics eCommerce tracking. So you can understand how well your web pages are performing and your average return on investment (ROI) from marketing campaigns. In addition, it provides you with a whole eCommerce report. This report gives you a detailed overview of user behavior on your website or app. You’ll be able to utilize the information later to improve your business.

Here are some use cases of GA4 eCommerce tracking:

eCommerce conversion rate: Find out what percentage of your visitors made a purchase. Conversions could be someone filling out your contact form, signing up for your newsletter, or purchasing anything.

Shopping cart abandonment: With Google Analytics enhanced eCommerce tracking, you can now track your shop cart abandonment rate. It shows you the percentage of customers who abandon their shopping cart before making a transaction.

Use Case #2: Customer retention rate

The retention report can help you understand how often and how long users return to your website or mobile app after their first visit. It also helps determine the value of users based on the additional revenue generated after their first visit.

Use Case #3: Custom funnels

GA4 allows you to create funnels to track each step of the customer journey. As a result, it will be easier to track the traffic to your website and the behavior of potential customers. With GA4, you can easily create a funnel using a combination of events or pageviews, filtered by any event property and intelligent features like elapsed time measurement.

Use Case #4: Optimize content based on user engagement

The average engagement time indicator in Google Analytics 4 calculates the amount of time (in seconds) consumers spent interacting with your website (scrolling, clicking, browsing, etc.).

Use Case #5: Effectively retarget high-intent customers

With GA4, you can use predictive remarketing to target your customers in a smart and simple way. Furthermore, based on user behavior, you can establish custom audiences. Use predictive audiences like ‘Users who are likely to buy in the next 7 days or ‘Users who are likely to buy for the first time in the next 7 days, and so on. GA4’s machine learning capabilities automatically build predictive audiences.

Tracking online sales with Google Analytics 4

As technology evolves, businesses must consider their users and the future of analytics in new ways. Google Analytics 4 is a fantastic tool for generating actionable customer insights. As a result, retailers and marketers employ them to enhance the customer experience.

At different stages of their journey, users view a brand’s website and app on multiple devices and platforms. In addition, shifting privacy regulations are changing how companies track, collect and use analytics data.

Fortunately, Google Analytics 4 considers these significant changes in customer behavior and privacy concerns. It has a flexible design, enhanced insights, and efficient means to act on those insights.

Better analytics insights = better marketing decisions!

Make the most of GA4 for your eCommerce store.

People today are looking for novel ways to buy a product online just by using hand-held gadgets. And brands are complying with these expectations by embracing the latest technologies such as AR (Augmented Reality) to offer a transparent and user-friendly shopping experience to their customers. Augmented Reality in eCommerce is revolutionizing the online shopping model and paving the way for a competitive digital commerce ecosystem.

Augmented reality allows consumers to visualize and interact with the products listed on the eCommerce website and get a holistic view of the products before buying. According to a survey, 71%
consumers said they would shop more often if they used AR.

What is Augmented Reality?

Augmented Reality or AR is a technology that provides a comprehensive view of objects by projecting digital visual elements such as images, videos, audios, and more onto real-world objects. AR enables customers to look and feel a product in the real world via virtual information such as 3D images, 3D models, and other computer-generated data sets.

With augmented reality integration, brands can help their customers make better buying decisions by letting them see, evaluate, and perceive the actual placement of a product in a specific context from different angles. Augmented reality implementation is an emerging eCommerce trend that will undeniably replace traditional 2D images and videos when shopping online.

How to implement augmented reality in eCommerce?

AR in eCommerce bridges the gap between traditional physical retail shops and modern eCommerce stores. To achieve augmented reality implementation in eCommerce, brands should adopt technologies such as 3D visualization, 3D product imaging, and AI analytics tools to offer a customer engaging shopping experience.

Here’re 5 ways to apply augmented reality integration into eCommerce business.

#1: Virtual try-ons

The virtual try-on feature of AR helps shoppers purchase an item from an online store after trying it for the best fit just by using their electronic devices. E-tailers selling a variety of products such as fashion accessories, clothing, eyewear, cosmetics, shoes, and more offer to demonstrate the look and feel of their products virtually to the customers using augmented reality. The realistic representation of merchandise enables buyers to make an informed decision while purchasing a product from an eCommerce store.

Eyewear retail chain Lenskart offers their customers an option to try on different frames using 3D technology. The 3D try-on option allows Lenskart customers to experiment with different looks with various frames and find a perfect fit without going through the trouble of visiting an actual store.

#2: AR-enabled manuals

One of the aspects that customers focus on while shopping online is reading the product manuals and reviews carefully to avoid the hassle of returning and replacing the products. An AR-enabled interactive user manual can educate shoppers about products’ features and the correct way to use them with the help of a comprehensive virtual guide. This approach enables buyers to have a better product understanding that facilitates them to take a quick and well-informed decision while shopping online.

A classic example of AR manuals is the AR app launched by Mercedes Benz that guides users through the features of their luxurious car.

#3: Virtual product aisles

Walking through product aisles in a brick-and-mortar store gives customers a certain level of satisfaction while shopping. It is also a great opportunity for retailers to cross-sell and upsell their products and services and increase revenue. Augmented reality implementation in eCommerce presents similar opportunities to merchants, as they can offer their customers the convenience of exploring various products in the virtual product aisles using AR-enabled 3D projection technology. Buyers only need to click on a product placed on the virtual shelf to know more about it or purchase it.

The image above displays an in-store shopping environment developed by the Schlesinger Group. Their virtual aisle concept facilitates their customers to have a next-gen online shopping experience.

#4: AR mirrors

AR mirrors are smart mirrors that use RFID and augmented reality to create a life-like virtual reflection of a person standing in front of it with virtually selected clothes, hairstyles, make-up, hair color, accessories, and more. AR mirrors or digital mirrors introduce the concept of virtual fitting rooms and also limit the physical contact between customers and products.

FXMirror is a virtual fitting solution launched by FXGear Inc. that enables customers to generate their 3D avatar in real time and try dynamic looks with clothes, accessories, hair, and makeup.

#5: Product preview and placement

Augmented reality allows buyers to visualize how a product would look when placed in their homes or offices. This AR trend is set to disrupt the furniture and home decor industry, as it lets customers have a real-time envision of a product and a 360-degree view of the same in a simulated environment, thus enabling higher customer satisfaction and lower return rates.

IKEA Place is an AR app that allows customers to preview their products in their surroundings and then shop for the products virtually, without having to visit a physical store.

Benefits of augmented reality in eCommerce

Augmented reality integration with eCommerce helps businesses boost their sales, revenue, and profit margins by offering customers an interactive and user-generated shopping experience. AR in eCommerce can take online businesses to the next level and help them stay ahead in the competitive market.

#1: Improved customer engagement

AR facilitates customers to engage with products, giving them a 360-degree view of the objects and their placement in real-life environments using their mobile devices. The 3D technology is a great marketing strategy that gives eCommerce customers a better idea about how the product will look once it is delivered to them, which results in higher customer satisfaction, enriching customer engagement, and better lead conversion rates.

#2: Increased brand awareness

Keeping up with the emerging trends in the eCommerce industry is the best way to improve the customer shopping experience and build brand presence. Augmented reality implementation for eCommerce businesses significantly increases the brand visibility and affinity as it successfully develops and holds customers’ interest with its gripping visualization capabilities.

#3: Better cross-selling opportunities

Augmented reality combined with AI presents cross-selling opportunities to retailers. Online business owners can use these technologies to showcase personalized 3D images of the products to their customers. Users get an interactive experience while shopping from an AR-enabled eCommerce store, and; merchants can enhance this experience by offering customers more similar and relevant products to the ones they are viewing or adding to their cart.

#4: Reduced product return rates

The true-to-scale 3D models created using AR technology enable customers to make informed decisions while buying a product from an online store. It ensures that customers know all the precise details about products in advance and, thus, it is less likely that they would return the purchased items. The use of AR in eCommerce also reduces the cart abandonment rate significantly.

Creating interactive and customer-driven shopping model with AR

The benefits of augmented reality in business are unlimited. With the adoption of the latest technologies like AR, eCommerce businesses can deal with the constantly changing customer behavior and transform the face of online shopping. Augmented reality integration with eCommerce bridges the gap between customer demands and retail supplies, fueling the growth of customer-centric online shopping solutions and building personal brand experiences.

Get expert insights on building an AR-enabled eCommerce store.

Let’s reimagine the future of online shopping.

B2B commerce platforms are transitioning from exclusive physical presence to online and offline selling. While most businesses have already established their brand name in the autonomous retail market, their online counterparts are gaining significant traction and expanding exponentially. Thus, it has become inevitable for pre-existing B2B brick-and-mortar business owners and beginners to adapt to the changing trends and implement a suitable eCommerce platform to grow their business. With Salesforce B2B Commerce Cloud, B2B businesses can now effortlessly achieve their digital goals easily and effortlessly.

According to a report, the business-to-business market size is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18.7% from 2021 to 2028. And this growth rate can be seamlessly achieved with Salesforce B2B Commerce Cloud, which is one of the best solutions that can be easily put into practice to establish a friction-free digital platform for B2B businesses.

8 competitive Salesforce B2B Commerce platform features

Wholesale businesses differ from B2C businesses immensely in terms of their end customers, the complexity of their buying and selling models, operational and administrative processes, and number of new and repeat customers. Secondly, B2B businesses going digital is comparatively a modern trend and most enterprise owners are still exploring the various eCommerce solutions that can best suit their B2B business model and help them grow profit margins.

Here’re the top 8 B2B Commerce Salesforce platform features for B2B businesses that can help them boost their sales and revenue and ensure a smooth transition to the eCommerce ecosystem.

#1: Authoritative purchase process

Salesforce features allow B2B business owners to have complete control over the purchases made from their eCommerce site. This authoritative management enables them to offer self-service tools to their customers. B2B clients are often repetitive customers; however, they might want to modify some of the order details before placing the same order again. With Salesforce B2B eCommerce, businesses can provide their customers with an opportunity to change specific details of the order, negotiate current rates of products, alter shipping details, and more.

The Salesforce B2B commerce features that facilitate their customers with these services are an AI-powered search bar, order tracking facility, placing and citing requests, product request status monitoring, efficient re-ordering, and viewing order history.

#2: Precise and descriptive product catalogs

The Salesforce commerce cloud features allow B2B business owners to place illustrative pictures and explanatory descriptions of their products on the eCommerce site that interests their customers and improves customer engagement rates. Wholesalers can integrate product catalogs with client contracts and their order details seamlessly with the Salesforce platform features, giving them the liberty to view complete customer details in a unified view. A well-structured and precise product catalog ensures better conversion rates and; also provides customers with a good understanding of the business offerings so that they can make an informed buying decision within no time.

#3: Customized pricing

Salesforce B2B implementation enables businesses to offer customized pricing for their products for a different set of clients. Offering discounts to esteemed customers or legacy clients is a common practice in the case of physical stores. But, with Salesforce commerce cloud features, businesses can provide the same functionality to their online customers and create an exceptional online buying experience for them. Salesforce platform features enable enterprises to update the prices of their specific products for a particular group of customers.

#4: Optimized inventory management

Inventory management is a crucial task in the eCommerce industry that can streamline the business flow and help businesses offer an omnichannel shopping experience to their customers without disruptions and delays. With the Salesforce B2B eCommerce platform, wholesalers can achieve a seamless order fulfillment process and have a clear and unified view of their inventory for their online and offline stores. Additionally, they can track and place orders for inventory stock based on the product order history, the product availability in the inventory, the sales generated by a product, and its shelf life.

#5: Omnichannel shopping experience

An omnichannel shopping experience is an added advantage not only for B2C buyers but also B2B customers. The convenience of browsing a product on a device, adding it to the cart, and viewing the updated cart on a third device offers a consistent shopping experience across touchpoints. An omnichannel shopping platform also allows them to add more products to the cart before the final checkout process. With Salesforce platform features, B2B businesses can offer mobile responsive websites, flexible ordering, an organized checkout process, and a seamless shopping experience to their customers.

#6: Integrated CRM

A CRM software integrated with an eCommerce platform strengthens customer relationships and builds a trust that helps B2B businesses register a significant increase in their sales and brand affinity. Salesforce B2B Commerce implementation provides an integrated CRM that allows B2B business owners to connect with their customers speedily on a personal level rather than delaying the answers to their queries. The Salesforce B2B eCommerce platform comes with an automated CRM solution to enhance the productivity of the sales team and helps them avoid mundane tasks. The Salesforce B2B features a sales cloud tool called CPQ (Configure, Price, and Quote) that helps salespeople reduce their sales cycle and negotiate the pricing and discounts effectively using online channels.

#7: Out-of-the-box product requests

While B2B companies list specific products on their website, a few of their customers might want some more products or products with some modifications. These out-of-the-box product requests can be easily met with a Salesforce B2B Commerce platform. A Salesforce platform features a configurable product panel and enables B2B businesses to showcase personalized store design based on the customer visiting their eCommerce store. A Salesforce B2B eCommerce solution that fulfills customers’ customized product requests can excel in digital sales channels and earn customer loyalty.

#8: Customer satisfaction

The Salesforce B2B Commerce Cloud features enable B2B merchants to offer the following benefits to their clients:

Automated order renewals
Personalized product recommendations
Single-click bulk order placement
Multi-language and currency support
Orderly shipment details
Unified view of order history
Support for multiple payment options
Multi-channel buying options
Splitting product delivery to many addresses and dates

With these and many more functionalities that Salesforce offers to B2B businesses and clients, the customer satisfaction rate enhances tremendously, which benefits the company and its reputation in the long run.

Salesforce B2B eCommerce implementation examples

Here’re a few examples of B2B companies that used Salesforce commerce solutions and expanded their online business.

#1: Ex-Guard Industries

Ex-Guard Industries, a manufacturer of the patented Ex-Guard® bumper protection system based in Des Moines, IA, adopted Salesforce B2B Commerce and improved their customer relationships while shrinking the sales cycle.

#2: USG Boral

USG Boral, a company manufacturing innovative wall and ceiling products, implemented Salesforce B2B Commerce to achieve a highly efficient sales team and develop as a strategic and proactive company.

#3: VariDesk

VariDesk is a company that creates workspaces that elevate people and manufactures a full suite of office furniture. VariDesk aimed to reach a new B2B audience base, and they turned to Salesforce to achieve this. With the Salesforce solution, they were able to offer their buyers a seamless experience.

Is your B2B business ready for Salesforce B2B Commerce?

B2B brands are beginning to adopt eCommerce, slowly but steadily. Going digital has become essential to survive in the retail industry and have accurate control over business processes. The Salesforce platform features enable companies to create client-centric B2B commerce platforms and boosts ROI. Whether it is handling customers or managing internal products and sales records, having a digitized mechanism proves to be beneficial, and B2B companies are quickly embracing this new trend to scale their business aggressively.

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The digital era of online shopping and electronic transactions is a delightful way to fulfill the demands and requirements of customers all over the world. However, a threat that looms over this digital merchandising is one related to unforeseen hacking and cyber attack incidents. Business owners should implement the best eCommerce fraud prevention techniques to provide a secure online buying experience to their customers. And one of the best ways to ensure a safe and secure checkout experience is employing eCommerce cloud security for business websites and mobile applications.

Cloud services are gaining popularity in the digital commerce ecosystem as they offer useful analytics and reporting capabilities that help businesses provide a safe shopping environment for their customers. In fact, cloud security is the fastest and cloud-based delivery model, representing 48% of all cyber security deployments in the eCommerce industry.

What is cloud security in eCommerce?

Cloud security is a cyber-security practice that enables organizations to protect their digital assets, especially data related to customers, business operations, suppliers, clients, and more, using cloud computing platforms or through cloud service providers. The implementation of eCommerce cloud security can help business owners build a safe environment for their customers, stakeholders, and staff. Today, data is the most valuable and crucial asset for businesses and it is also the target point for cybercriminals. Thus, eCommerce brands should adopt cutting-edge technologies such as cloud computing to protect their sensitive information from hackers.

Cloud security implementation focusses on cloud-based data storage that allows enterprises to save their data remotely, on the cloud, so that it is not vulnerable to cyber-attacks. Cloud computing or cloud hosting enables businesses to protect their data from threats such as DDoS attacks, unauthorized access attacks, malware attacks, payment frauds, and identity thefts.

How to implement eCommerce cloud security?

The eCommerce industry heavily relies on data to offer personalized products and services to its customers. For example, Salesforce Einstein, the first comprehensive AI tool for CRM, enables retailers to offer one-on-one shopping experiences across multiple platforms and personalized product recommendations to their customers. Besides the customer information, enterprises have to handle tedious amounts of resources such as inventory status, financial records, supply chain details, and client particulars. Cloud security, thus, becomes critical as data holds a differentiating power for an organization and can directly impact its reputation and revenue if not managed carefully.

For strengthening eCommerce security using cloud services, businesses should have a clear understanding of the different types of cloud platforms.

#1: Public clouds

The public cloud environment, managed by third-parties, serves multiple users by providing them with their own isolated spaces. Multiple tenants use cloud services over the internet via web browsers based on either a pay-as-you-use billing model or for free. A few examples of public cloud providers are Amazon Web Services (AWS), IBM Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud.

#2: Private clouds

Private clouds are owned by an organization and dedicated to a specific group of users. Private cloud environments are isolated and hence more secure than public clouds. However, scalability and handling peak-loads becomes a challenge as the business grows when using a private cloud environment.

#3: Hybrid clouds

Hybrid clouds provide enhanced eCommerce security as they use the best of both worlds – public and private clouds. In short, hybrid cloud environments provide the scalability as that of a public cloud while incorporating the heterogeneity of private clouds. These are usually connected via LAN, WAN, VPNs, and APIs.

#4: Multi clouds

The multi-cloud strategy focuses on using the cloud services provided by more than one cloud provider. This approach might have a combination of private and public clouds or can utilize only private or only public clouds. Deploying multiple clouds reduces the risk of downtime and data loss while increasing the computing power and data storage capacity.

Following tips can help enterprises achieve cloud security implementation in eCommerce:

Choose a cloud service provider that works in compliance with PCI guidelines.
Prioritize the data that needs to be stored on the cloud and define the rules for accessing that data.
Use SSL certified websites and data encryption algorithms to secure transactional data of the customers and suppliers.
Setup network scans and notification alerts to avert any data breach and DDoS attacks.
Deploy eCommerce security framework that can help companies decide the access privileges to specific users.
Implement cloud identity management to authenticate users to login to cloud servers and implement cloud access management to allow only authorized users to access sensitive information stored on the clouds.
Plan security audits in advance, monitor all the data and resources stored on the cloud, and automate policy enforcement.

Benefits of eCommerce cloud security

Top 5 cloud security benefits for eCommerce are:

#1: Increased ROI

Cloud security helps businesses scale during peak traffic times and handle load efficiently. Enterprises can provide seamless products and services to customers with eCommerce cloud security and register significant growth in their sales and revenue almost instantaneously.

#2: Improved business continuity

Cloud computing enables businesses to operate smoothly by speeding up their supply chain processes, managing congestion spikes, ensuring secure and fast transactions, increasing business agility, providing better disaster recovery management, helping them stay competitive, and reinforcing marketing campaigns.

#3: Reduced administrative costs

The eCommerce cloud security minimizes the use of dedicated hardware for storing data, thus reducing the expenses related to on-site data storage and management. Additionally, the security configurations and infrastructure management is carried out by cloud service providers, thus lowering the operational and administrative costs for business owners.

#4: Centralized data protection

Clouds enable eCommerce websites to mitigate the risk of DDoS attacks that can affect customer satisfaction and business performance. Businesses can store their critical data on cloud servers, as eCommerce cloud security is advanced and relies on centralized infrastructure and data storage.

#5: Enhanced speed

Companies can securely and easily access their data stored on the cloud using the internet. The immediate availability of data and applications to authorized users helps merchants speed up the online shopping experience of their customers, improve website performance, and help them scale their business to new heights.

Achieve enhanced eCommerce cloud security with disruptive technologies

Cloud security offers businesses a robust cloud architecture, excellent backup functionality, online data access, reduced financial risks, and freedom from hardware failures. It strengthens data security and cloud technology in eCommerce enables data leakage prevention, authorized data access using MFA (Multi Factor Authentication), data encryption, unified user activity logs and a friction-free experience for customers and employees.

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The digitally-active users of the modern world require digital payment systems to complete a transaction from an eCommerce website and app. Additionally, it is crucial to manage cash flow when running an eCommerce business while fulfilling customers’ demands. Thus, having an efficient and secure payment gateway helps business owners to increase their revenue and build brand awareness in the online market.

According to Statista, the total transaction value in the Digital Payments segment is projected to cross 8 million in 2022. These figures give a clear indication to online shop owners that a secure online payment method is pivotal in building a successful eCommerce business and establishing brand loyalty.

How does payment gateway work?

Payment gateways are online services integrated with eCommerce platforms for making and accepting payments for the purchase of goods and services. Payment gateway solutions are usually third-party systems that facilitate merchants to receive payments from their customers by authorizing the online transactions. The important aspect that needs to be addressed here is the security, as customers enter their sensitive information like bank and card details to complete the purchase process.

The four main entities involved in the online transaction process are the customer, the retailer, the issuing bank, and the acquiring bank. And here’s how the money transfer happens from customers’ financial accounts to a merchant’s bank account, via an eCommerce payment gateway.

Customer places an order on an eCommerce site and proceeds to the checkout page to confirm the order details and make the payment.
The customer enters the card details or other details based on the selected mode of online payment, securely via the SSL (Secure Socket Layer) encryption.
The online platform forwards this payment request to the designated eCommerce payment gateway via an encrypted connection to its hosted payment server.
This transaction request is then passed to the payment processor of the retailer’s acquiring bank.
This request is then forwarded to the issuing bank for authorization of the customer details and the received response is reverted to the processor with an approval or denial response code.
The response received by the processor is passed to the payment gateway, and the order fulfillment begins if the transaction is approved.
Once the order is processed, these steps are repeated to clear the authorization from the acquiring bank.
All such authorizations are submitted in a batch to the acquiring bank at the end-of-day, and the bank makes a batch settlement request, which is processed in 24 hours, and the money is deposited in the merchant’s bank account.

Types of payment gateways

The choice of payment gateways depends on the convenience of customers visiting the eCommerce store and buying products by doing online transactions. It is important to study the customer buying behavior and understand the Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance and Data Security Standards (DSS) before selecting the best payment gateway for eCommerce platforms.

Following are the two types of payment gateway solutions that can be used by online merchants to accept payments from their customers.

#1: Externally hosted payment gateway

External payment gateway solutions redirect customers from the merchant’s site to a payment processor platform, where customers can enter their transaction-related information for processing their orders. The external payment gateway provider is responsible for PCI DSS compliance and all the security measures that have to be taken care of while handling online transactions. These payment gateways need no customizations and are fairly easy to set up.

A classic example of an external payment gateway is PayPal. When customers want to place an order on an eCommerce site using PayPal, they are directed to the PayPal site to process the payment. Once the payment is authorized, the customers return to the eCommerce site and complete the checkout process.

Hosted payment gateways are usually suitable for small and local businesses as it helps them focus on retailing rather than performing additional activities such as compliance checks, security checks, and data encryption. The most popular payment gateways in this category are Kalrna, Payza, and Worldpay.

#2: Integrated payment gateway

Having an integrated payment gateway allows merchants to have complete control over the checkout process of their customers. However, they are also responsible for maintaining PCI DSS compliance and securing all the transaction information. With these payment gateway solutions, customers are not directed to a third-party website; to complete their payments. They can accomplish an end-to-end order fulfillment on the merchant’s site only.

The integrated eCommerce payment gateway solutions give an enriching, friction-free, pleasant, and seamless shopping experience to the customers as they never leave the online shopping platform. The most popular payment gateways in this category are Stripe, Authorize.net CIM, and WePay that seamlessly integrate with eCommerce platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, and more.

How to choose the best payment gateway for an eCommerce store?

Choosing the right payment gateway is crucial for online businesses to provide an enjoyable shopping experience to their customers and increase their revenue and sales in return.

Below are 8 parameters to consider when selecting a payment gateway for an eCommerce store.

#1: Pricing

Merchants should choose the best payment gateway for their online store, but they should also consider the cost associated with various payment platforms. Payment gateway solutions have predefined charges, such as setup fees, annual maintenance charges, integration fees, commissions, transaction fees, and subscription fees amongst a few. Thus, while choosing a payment gateway for an eCommerce store, merchants should carefully look for any hidden charges that might be levied upon them and avoid selecting an expensive eCommerce payment gateway.

#2: Security

Transaction details entered by customers on hosted or integrated payment gateways is sensitive information, thus, digital security must top the priority list of business owners when choosing a payment gateway solution. Selecting a secure payment gateway is essential for reducing cart abandonment rates and building trusted relationships with customers. Online businesses should opt for PCI DSS compliant and GDPR compliant payment gateways to protect their customers from eCommerce frauds such as identity theft, phishing, and credit card frauds.

#3: Multiple currency support

Businesses that cater to customers worldwide must ensure that the payment gateway supports multiple currency transactions. Offering global payment solutions helps brands scale their customer reach and generate brand awareness on a large scale. An international payment gateway empowers eCommerce stores to fulfill orders from different countries. It also enables their customers to pay in their local currency and help them avoid foreign currency transaction fees.

#4: Multi-device payment support

An omnichannel shopping experience allows customers to buy a product anywhere using any digital device. So, it is important to select a payment gateway that supports multi-device payments and enhances the online purchasing experience of customers by giving them the flexibility to carry out online transactions and easy checkouts on all devices and network types.

#5: Ease of integration

The payment gateways should have a plugin to integrate with CMS and SDK libraries to start the payment acceptance process. Business owners should consult a technical team to understand the limitations and capabilities of the integration process. Also, the integration of a payment gateway should not hinder the UX of the website or make the payment process slower. Payment gateways should be easily configurable with an eCommerce platform and provide integration assistance with top-notch security.

#6: Recurring payment option

A recurring payment model like Amazon Prime enables retailers to set up an automated payment cycle for their customers. Payment gateway solutions should come with an option to facilitate retailers to offer periodic payment plans (subscription-based business model). Payment gateways should be able to save and reuse the transaction details of eCommerce customers for automatic debit as per their subscription plan.

#7: Customer support

A payment gateway should provide 24×7 customer support via various channels such as raising tickets, call support, emails, automated chatbots, and live technical support. Customer support is an important part of eCommerce customer engagement that builds brand loyalty among customers. Quality customer support reduces the average response/resolution time and increases customer satisfaction. Online business platforms should choose payment gateway solutions that offer secure and convenient customer support services.

#8: Product specifics

Some payment gateways have limitations when it comes to selling specific products and services. Also, there are a few high-risk business models that are not supported by some payment gateway solutions. Business owners should check this list on the payment gateway’s site before going through the hassle of incorporating a payment gateway for their eCommerce business. Some businesses considered as high-risk include:

Tobacco
Gambling
Forex
Dating
Gaming

Exploring the best payment gateway for eCommerce

The best payment gateway for eCommerce stores is the one that offers a secure shopping experience to customers and seamless integration with the online business platform. Payment gateways should enable customers to do online transactions with ease and empower retailers to accept digital payments globally. After all, a good checkout and payment gateway experience is crucial for customer retention. Our competitive partnerships with leading payment providers like Atome,

Explore the best payment gateway solution for your online store.

App development is an integral part of building a transformative platform. An eCommerce website with a mobile app helps organizations connect with their customers on multiple touchpoints and stay consistent with their offerings. Businesses must use reusable components in the development environment to enhance the application building process and deliver a scalable and smooth-functioning application. OutSystems is one such platform that helps enterprises achieve this goal with its distinctive features like component-based architecture, low-code development, and code reusability.

Code reusability is one of the most useful features of Outsystems that allows developers to build mobile applications with lightning speed by reusing code blocks previously developed or deployed. Also, it helps them to work on different modules independently, thus avoiding the chances of conflicts.

What is code reusability?

Code reusability in OutSystems refers to building a new app (mobile and web) using pre-existing components. It is an intuitive approach to use the already developed pieces of code to design a new functionality and help developers deliver consistent, scalable, and easily maintainable enterprise and mobile applications.

The component-based architecture of OutSystems makes it very convenient for developers to build a new application with a modular approach. It also helps them reuse existing elements or modules multiple times on all layers of application development – UI, business logic, and database. The reusability of OutSystems modules is often compared to legos, where the same building blocks can be used several times for creating new structures.

Benefits of Code reusability

Here’re 6 major benefits of code reusability that enhance the application development process:

#1: Simplified code modification

The reusable and modular application building process allows developers to accommodate the constantly changing needs of business owners. Reusing the already built components also eliminates the need to change the code in all applications where they are used. Code reusability enables developers to make modifications in a module at the base level and reflect the changes on all the apps using it. Additionally, OutSystems allows developers to conduct impact analysis through a dependency analysis graph that can help them understand the impact of changes made in any reusable code.

#2: Rapid application development

OutSystems component-based application development allows coders to reuse the components from a pre-existing repository directly by dragging and dropping the required modules as and when needed. The use of pre-designed elements also reduces the app debugging time and saves additional development efforts. Code reuse speeds up application building, updating, adding new features, and delivery time.

#3: Robust application architecture

Reusing the existing code allows you to automatically release a single update for all apps using the same component solely by changing a single module. This strategy helps developers in simplifying all their business processes. It also allows the customization of apps by creating configuration components that can guide the reusable modules on how to function for a specific app, giving all the applications a robust architecture. Code reusability also enables developers to focus on the details of the customizing app instead of building basic modules right from scratch.

#4: Consistent applications

Since code reusability enables developers to work with already simplified, tested, and debugged modules, it reduces the complexity of the end application and helps them maintain consistency while creating new apps or updating the existing ones. It also eliminates the possibility of redundancy across various teams using a shared component repository.

#5: Cost-effectiveness

Creating an enterprise application by reusing code requires only a few developers. They can build reusable components and develop applications based on business users’ requirements in less time. Maintaining fewer resources and delivering apps faster results in improved productivity, better sales, increased revenue, and reduced investment costs. Thus, creating mobile and web applications using reusable components is a cost-effective solution for enterprises.

#6: Time-saving

One of the key benefits of code reuse is that it enables application developers to save ample time by not creating the same things over and over again. Instead, they can put their efforts into creating something new to be placed in the component repository for reuse. Time-saving is the most beneficial aspect of code reusability as it allows developers to create an entirely novel, functional, and secure application within a small amount of time.

How can developers incorporate code reusability with OutSystems?

Developers can use the following tips to incorporate code reuse into their application development process via low-code development platform.

Developers should create two types of modules while creating reusable components – producer module and consumer module. Producer modules have the logic to be implemented, and the consumer modules use the logic provided by producer modules to develop a mobile and web application.
The elements that can qualify to be reusable should have their Public Property set to ‘Yes’ in order to be discovered and used to create multiple applications.
Code reuse can also consist of numerous UI elements such as web blocks, CSS style sheets, and web screens.
As per OutSystems evaluation guide, exposing web services is also a way to share functions not only with multiple OutSystems applications, but also with external applications, which can consume these services in a decoupled fashion.
Database sharing is another way to incorporate the process of reusing code. Data between application modules can be shared in either read mode or read/write mode.
Data schemas can be shared externally also, as OutSystems uses standard database structures like Microsoft SQL server and Oracle.
Developers should set permissions on the reusable components so that it is possible to enable governance of shared modules.
Data tables should be consistent and placed in a separate module at all times as they are shared amongst web and mobile applications.
Developers should make maximum use of the component library – Forge, provided by OutSystems to reuse the existing components.

Accelerating application development using OutSystems code reusability

Code reusability with OutSystems is a hybrid approach that provides low-code developers with a platform to build mobile and web applications in the blink of an eye. The benefits of code reuse include ample innovation opportunities for coders, a streamlined application development process, creating scalable applications, and enhanced component adaptability. Code reusability increases the productivity of the application development team and helps businesses achieve organizational digital transformation goals.

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The omnichannel shopping strategies have played a vital role in increasing the number of digital buyers in recent years, as they can now browse and buy a product using mobile devices, laptops, desktops, tablets, smartwatches, and several other touchpoints. Additionally, top eCommerce trends like social commerce, BOPIS, and BNPL amongst a few have fueled the growth of online shopping models. The boost in the digital commerce ecosystem further increases when merchants meet customers’ requirements and fulfill their orders with quality products within a stipulated time, which can be achieved by implementing immaculate inventory management strategies.

Amazon, the biggest online retailer, operates more than 175 fulfillment centers to maintain sufficient product stock. It also offers its FBA sellers a machine learning-based inventory management system that helps them have control of their inventory levels.

What is inventory management?

Inventory management is the process of keeping track of all the products (raw and finished goods) that businesses intend to sell to their existing and prospective customers. Keeping track of stock includes ordering, storing, outlining, listing, and delivering the inventory items to the customers. Inventory management is a critical aspect of supply chain management that helps businesses make well-informed order decisions.

An inventory management system enables business owners to know the precise quantities of stock in their warehouse or storage facilities that are physically distributed and optimize the process of buying and selling commodities.

How inventory management strategies benefit eCommerce businesses?

Inventory management facilitates retailers to automate the business management process and reduce wastage, disruptions, and delays while offering a seamless customer shopping experience. While there are numerous benefits of inventory management systems, here’re a few advantages of implementing effective inventory management strategies in a digital commerce ecosystem:

#1: Cost savings

Buying commodities in bulk and storing them for a long time is detrimental to a business. Investing money in something that does not provide returns; is a waste of resources. With an effective inventory management system in place, retailers can have a clear picture of their inventory and thus save significant business margins by only ordering what they need.

#2: Greater inventory visibility

Inventory management strategies enable retailers to have a greater inventory visibility that gives them accurate information about out-of-stock products, emerging sales trends, customer buying behavior, and excess inventory. Having a consolidated view of their inventory helps merchants accelerate their supply chain and order fulfillment processes.

#3: Increased productivity

Replacing manual inventory management processes with an automated system saves time and adds to the productivity of the eCommerce business. The latest and technologically advanced solutions, such as Salesforce Order Management (SOM), improvises the customer shopping experience and help brands achieve their commerce goals when integrated with efficient eCommerce platforms. Digital commerce platforms like Shopify Plus, SFCC, and Magento have their own customized inventory management systems that can further help organizations to reduce their overhead cost and ensure the economic growth of the online shopping platform.

#4: Enhanced customer satisfaction

Inventory management techniques empower businesses to deliver superior customer satisfaction by studying their purchasing habits and understanding their requirements. It also increases their customer retention rates and helps them build a rapport in the eCommerce industry.

#5: Better supplier and vendor relationships

Inventory management software gives deep insights to retailers with bona fide data that helps them justify their buying and selling decisions. This de facto information helps merchants leverage the opportunity to negotiate better costs for their products and get a good deal with suppliers and vendors.

5 best inventory management strategies for eCommerce industry

Enterprises must adopt effective methods of inventory management to offer multi-channel order fulfillment, reduce stockouts, optimize shipment turnaround time, and minimize oversells and undersells. Deploying efficient tools and techniques of inventory management helps enterprises meet customers’ demands and run a cost-effective business.

The following types of inventory management techniques can help eCommerce businesses to be productive and stay competitive.

#1: Six sigma implementation

Six sigma is a teaching methodology that comprises business process improvement tools and techniques. Lean six sigma approach follows DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Implement, Control) problem-solving techniques that help businesses reach the root cause of the problems like excess and obsolete inventory write-offs.

#2: Adoption of FIFO/LIFO system

Depending on the type of business, retailers can adopt FIFO (First In, First Out) or LIFO (Last In, First Out) inventory management systems. Usually, inventory for non-perishable items can use the FIFO process, and the LIFO strategy is best suited for products that can go bad quickly. So, food items or packaged goods should essentially follow the Last In, First Out process to avoid wastage. And to keep the inventory filled with the latest stock, it is advisable to use the First In, First Out method.

#3: ABC analysis

ABC analysis is one of the best inventory management techniques that helps merchants categorize their inventory items into three categories – A, B, and C; A being the most profitable and C being the least profitable products. The inventory stock categorization based on products’ revenue generation capability helps retailers organize the buying and selling process and avoid delays and disruptions.

#4: Just-in-time inventory management techniques

JIT or Just-In-Time is one of the inventory management strategies that lets merchants keep the lowest inventory levels and still manage to meet their customers’ demands by refilling the inventory before the last of the product goes out of stock. JIT allows retailers to place orders for products as and when needed to reduce inventory costs and mitigate the risk of dead stock.

#5: Practicing dropshipping

One of the inventory management strategies is implementing dropshipping, an order fulfillment method that enables eCommerce stores to sell a product, even when it is not in stock. With this approach, online stores pass buyers’ requests for a product to the supplier, who in turn delivers it to customers. Dropshipping simplifies the supply chain by streamlining the business process flow and refines the order fulfillment process.

Inventory management strategies empowering business longevity

The success of a global retail framework heavily relies on fulfilling customers’ needs without disruptions and delays. An eCommerce business must fill the gap between demand and supply to earn their customers’ trust and have a large customer base with more returning customers. To achieve a seamless product delivery and a high level of customer satisfaction, employing a leading inventory management system and reaping the benefits of inventory management solution is a must for online retail businesses. Practicing the best inventory management strategies can also help eCommerce businesses gain longevity, brand loyalty, and brand affinity.

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Managing business processes and maintaining customer data is essential for enterprises to streamline their overall operations. And, the integration of an eCommerce platform with a top-notch ERP system is exactly what businesses need to achieve this goal. Sometimes, it might also compel them to take the challenging decision of implementing an ERP system migration.

Statistics show that an effective ERP system reduces operational costs by 23% and administrative costs by 22%. ERP solutions help businesses to handle their business operations such as supply chain management, warehousing, inventory management, finances, human resources activities, and customer-related operations such as marketing and sales through a unified system.

SAP, one of the major ERP software companies, recently announced that it will end support and maintenance services for its ERP system by 2030. This announcement has led many businesses using the SAP ERP system, to chalk out a strategic move to upgrade or migrate to another competitive ERP software.

Checklist for ERP system migration

With a clear agenda and a comprehensive list of current and future requirements, a company can make informed, cost-effective, and customer-focused decisions as a part of their ERP system migration process. Here’s a checklist that eCommerce platforms can use while deciding on a substitute for their existing SAP ERP software application or while adopting a new one.

#1: Data consolidation

The new ERP system should consolidate clients, customers, partners, suppliers, and products data efficiently to help gain a unified view of all business operations. Also, there should be no duplicates, redundancies, and inconsistencies in the data. The obsolete and non-essential data should be identified and removed during the data migration process so that the digital transformation journey of an enterprise can be frictionless.

#2: ERP training

Even if the new ERP system is automated, enterprises should train their staff to understand the various operations associated with the new ERP software. They must empower employees with enablement training and knowledge-based resources that they might need while working with the new enterprise resource planning solution.

#3: Defining user access

Enterprise data related to intrinsic processes and stakeholders is crucial and it should be handled carefully. Companies should clearly define user roles and the access that all the users have to a particular data set. Apart from the ERP vendor team, an in-house team should work meticulously to ensure a successful data migration from the legacy system to a new ERP system.

#4: Time management

Updating to a new environment is a time-critical process and companies should not be in haste to complete it negligently. Businesses should make sure that the data migration process follows a well-defined timeline and should also develop a contingency plan to handle any accidental problems during this high-priority phase.

#5: Choosing cost-effective ERP software

ERP system migration requires adequate financial resources for buying, implementing, and maintaining the ERP software. However, eCommerce platforms should not go overboard with the budget and instead opt for an efficient, versatile, and customizable ERP solution to enable smooth and hassle-free data transfer from legacy systems to next-generation business management systems.

#6: Analyzing ERP system architecture

ERP upgrade or replacement can be from a traditional database to a cloud-based ERP solution or an on-premise ERP system. eCommerce platforms should choose an ERP solution based on their budget constraints and data that needs to be migrated. However, the latest trend suggests that 62.7% of organizations go with cloud-based ERP systems over on-premise software.

#7: Enabling enterprise mobility solutions

Enterprise mobility solutions should come as a part of the new ERP system migration strategy, so that it lets businesses achieve operational efficiency, improved data management, and enhanced customer experience. Leveraging mobility as a significant component of ERP software solutions is the best way to facilitate the modern way of working remotely and gathering valuable information anytime and anywhere.

Top 4 ERP software that can replace SAP ERP system

ERP solutions enable businesses to handle their customer, client, and supply chain data effectively and stay competitive. Here’re top 4 alternatives to SAP ERP system that can help eCommerce businesses increase their back-office productivity by simplifying the process of data management.

#1: Microsoft Business Central

Microsoft Dynamics NAV is now Microsoft Dynamic 365 Business Central, an ERP software solution that adopts cloud technology to help companies achieve overall unification of their business processes. We, at Ranosys, have integrated our Adobe Commerce Accelerator – Falcon with Microsoft Business Central to offer optimized inventory management, accurate performance metrics, task automation, and data analytics.

#2: Oracle NetSuite

Netsuite is one of the top cloud ERP business software solutions that enables companies to automate their core business processes and gain visibility into their financial and transactional data. Oracle NetSuite ERP solutions accelerate digital transformation by empowering enterprises to have real-time reporting with all-in-one cloud-based data management tools.

#3: Odoo ERP

Odoo ERP is an open-source enterprise resource planning software that helps businesses boost their sales, integrate various employee-specific and customer-centric services, streamline eCommerce business operations, and manage finances. Odoo also offers a unique ecosystem of fully integrated business applications that helps eCommerce platforms scale to new heights.

#4: SAP S/4HANA as replacement of SAP

SAP is offering the SAP S/4HANA system as a replacement to its previous ERP system. SAP S/4HANA uses HANA database to provide seamless ERP system migration to its clients. This cloud-based enterprise resource planning software comes with built-in BI technology, machine learning, and embedded AI. SAP S/4HANA ERP helps eCommerce platforms grow their digital business, automate internal and external processes, provide actionable insights, define new standards, increase throughput, and innovate supply chain operations.

Taking the right steps towards ERP system migration

The digital commerce platforms function smoothly only when they have a seamless customer-centric eCommerce space integrated with an automated ERP software. In fact, data reporting and analysis is one of the most important factors that decides the success of eCommerce platforms, which is facilitated by an efficient ERP system. Thus, employing a customized and an automated ERP system can help businesses stay ahead of the digital curve.

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Is D2C the right eCommerce model for your B2B business?

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A recent trend that is revolutionizing the digital commerce industry is a shift from traditional business models like B2B (Business-to-Business) and B2C (Business-to-Consumer) to more customer-centric models such as B2B2C (Business-to-Business-to-Consumer), D2C (Direct-to-Consumer), and B2E (Business-to-Employee). With so many business models ruling the eCommerce market, brands must proactively decide on which strategy best suits their business expansion and customer satisfaction goal. If companies are focussed towards building their brand image and catering to individuals directly, then the D2C business model can help them scale their business in the right direction. In the UK alone, it is estimated that D2C sales by British manufacturers will reach 120 billion pounds by 2023.

What is D2C business model?

D2C eCommerce or direct to consumer selling is a business model that lets manufacturers sell their products directly to end consumers eliminating intermediaries such as wholesalers, distributors, and retailers. D2C brands produce, market, conclude a sale, and ship their products autonomously.

Recent research shows that more than 55% of shoppers prefer to shop directly from manufacturers instead of retailers to avoid paying marked up prices. Businesses can leverage this opportunity to move from the traditional shopping models to the D2C business model while offering seamless online shopping experience to their customers.

What is B2B business model?

B2B or business-to-business model is where manufacturers sell their products and services to other businesses. The target audience of B2B companies are limited and often very specific. A few examples of B2B eCommerce platforms are BigCommerce, Contalog, Amazon, Salesforce, etc.

B2B manufacturers or other legacy business models usually sell their products in bulk, whereas D2C eCommerce requires manufacturers to sell a single item or a couple of them directly to end consumers.

Why do B2B businesses need to go D2C?

Catering to more customers and maintaining a nurturing relationship with them is a must for making profits, staying on top in the competitive market, expanding business operations, and boosting sales opportunities. And, direct to consumer selling strategy helps businesses achieve this goal and help them work towards becoming one of the top D2C brands in the buyer’s market.

Following are 5 major reasons why eCommerce businesses should make a transition from B2B to D2C.

#1: Increase revenue

Dealing directly with customers allows D2C sellers to offer fair-priced products, as they save on costs related to packaging, shipping, and retailers’ commission. Modestly priced products attract more customers to the eCommerce store, and the number of repeat customers also increases. With more users visiting eCommerce websites and making a purchase, brands can increase their revenue and profit margins.

#2: Build brand visibility

D2C business owners have a dedicated website, an app, and in some cases even a physical store, where customers can visit and buy preferred and brand specific products. This way, a D2C business model gives complete control of the supply chain to the business owners, which allows them to run marketing campaigns and target potential leads that will eventually convert to lifelong customers and strengthen their brand affinity.

#3: Boost customer engagement

Dealing with end users directly gives businesses valuable insights about the users interacting with their products across multiple channels. Having structured and high-volume data at their disposal, D2C brands can improve their conversion rate and customer retention rate by offering personalized products to their consumers. Direct interaction with customers helps businesses understand their requirements and deliver what they are precisely looking for in a product.

#4: Offer customer-centric shopping experience

B2B enterprises usually offer pre-designed products to other businesses. They follow a set procedure to produce a standardized commodity for their clients. However, with a D2C business model, manufacturers get an opportunity to introduce omnichannel shopping channels, enhance customer touchpoints (online and physical presence), track consumer behavior, analyze the shopping trends, collect direct feedback, and offer tailor-made products to the end customers.

#5: Expand business operations

Expanding business operations becomes easy with D2C eCommerce, as enterprise owners can leverage the latest technologies to gather customer insights and modify marketing strategies. With this approach, they can improve user experience, invest in product innovation, and work towards providing shorter turnaround times using direct to consumer selling strategies.

Best practices around D2C business model

Transitioning to a new business model can be a little daunting. But, with the following best practices, brands can get the most out of their D2C business model.

Market research is the key that drives the D2C eCommerce business. Sellers should learn about the demographics, purchasing habits, prevailing market conditions, and understand the gap in the demand and supply chain to strengthen the market value of their products.
Businesses should stand out from their competitors by visually appealing to their prospective leads. An engaging brand logo, responsive website design, and an interactive app can distinguish businesses from other players in the direct to consumer selling market and help them emerge as one of the top D2C brands in the marketplace.
Every brand has a story that connects it to its buyers. Manufacturers should make themselves approachable and tell their brand story explicitly to build a lifelong relationship with their customers.
One of the best practices around D2C eCommerce is having a cyber-safe website. Business owners should ensure that their eCommerce site is SSL certified, has pre-integrated and secure payment processing, and is scalable enough to prevent eCommerce frauds.
D2C businesses should implement an effective customer support service to answer customer queries promptly. It is important to address customers’ concerns so that brands get positive feedback from them and gain word of mouth publicity, which can help them emerge as the fastest growing D2C brands.
DTC business owners should make sure to include a variety of content about their products and services, such as videos, blogs, social media posts, and infographics to describe them in detail to their customers.
Using the modern technological solutions and adopting latest eCommerce trends such as augmented reality, artificial intelligence, 3D rendering, virtual reality, and more can make the D2C brands uniquely recognizable.

The 3 fastest growing brands using D2C business model

Here’re 3 examples of B2B brands that adopted D2C eCommerce and are now one of the top businesses in their respective fields.

#1: Maven Clinic

Maven Clinic is a telemedicine startup that switched from B2B business model to D2C. They shifted from selling their products and services from healthcare providers to individuals and have recorded a significant increase in their sales and revenue.

#2: Hyphen Sleep

Hyphen Sleep, a mattress selling company based out of the USA implemented a D2C business model using the BigCommerce platform to sell quality mattresses online, directly to their customers.

#2: True North Gear

True North Gear, is a Seattle based company that manufactures fire gear for crews working in life-risking environments every day. They integrated their B2B and D2C channels into a unified platform to expand their capabilities using BigCommerce.

Paving way for a D2C business model

Transitioning from B2B manufacturers to D2C business models isn’t simple, but it is a necessity if businesses wish to survive in the competitive ecosystem. Also, the D2C business model allows enterprises to personally connect with customers, outreach globally, offer customized and innovative products, and build a profitable revenue stream.

Explore the right platform that supports your B2B and D2C goals.

Redefine the way you connect with your customers.

These are indeed unpredictable times where a successful brand, in the eCommerce ecosystem, is not defined by how qualified or feature-driven their product/service is but by the rapidity with which it evolves, the seamlessness with which it integrates the ongoing market trends, and the level of personalization it has achieved in terms of customer experiences.

Of course, you can’t achieve desired KPIs by staying married to old marketing strategies, which is why you need to implement new models that study your customers, their interests, their desires, and then help you fulfill all your business goals. And it all starts with Salesforce Commerce and Salesforce Marketing Cloud integration.

What is Salesforce Marketing Cloud?

An offering from world’s #1 CRM platform, Salesforce Marketing Cloud allows you to personalize customer engagement throughout a customer’s journey- email, web, social, app, chat, and so on. Along with its several individual products such as several marketing products like audience studio, data studio, datorama, Google Analytics, Journey Builder, interaction studio, email Studio, mobile studio, advertising studio, and social studio, it empowers you with:

Gaining a holistic 360-degree view of your customers
Leverage Salesforce Einstein AI to drive product searches, recommendations, and suggestions
Measure, manage, and optimize your marketing campaigns to boost growth and customer loyalty

All in all, it adds the smart to your marketing efforts so that you can make every interaction count. From cross-channel to personalized marketing, you can connect with your customers throughout the customer journey with automation and AI-powered capabilities.

Why Salesforce Marketing Cloud for your SFCC store?

The modern buyer expectations can be summarized in this one phrase, ‘buy anywhere, from anywhere, and fulfill everywhere’. Shoppers today want connected and customized experiences. Regardless of the channel they choose, the device they shop from, and the area code they’re getting it shipped- customers expect an engaging and consistent experience everywhere- mobile, social, online, app, and in-store.

To offer such an experience across the customer journey, you need to connect your sales, commerce, service, and marketing departments. And not just that, you also need to capture the data about your business and customers across every device, channel, medium, etc.

Customer journeys can be built and personalized experience can be provided by engaging them and sending notifications on important milestones or promotions which we want to offer to our customers.

Most legacy commerce platforms fail to offer a desirable experience or this level of integration because they were not designed for such an inter-connected and innovative market. However, with omnichannel customer experience in the picture, you cannot do without a unified view of your customers and business. And this is why Salesforce Marketing Cloud makes all the sense for your SFCC store.

What challenges can Commerce Cloud and Salesforce Marketing Cloud integration solve?

If you run your online retail business on the Salesforce Commerce Cloud platform, you’re already aware of seamless shopping experiences and the omnichannel capabilities it creates for your customers. So, why must you integrate it with Salesforce Marketing Cloud? The following are some challenges that a Salesforce Commerce and Marketing Cloud integration can solve for your eCommerce system.

#1: Reduce cart abandonment rates

SFCC and SFMC integration helps in setting up triggers throughout the customer journey, especially when a customer abandons their cart. You can even execute behavioral-influenced emails to boost conversion numbers and reduce cart abandonment rate.

#2: Drive personalized marketing recommendations

Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Marketing Cloud integrations allow you to gain insights into the customer behavior throughout their journey. You can use available details to drive personalized marketing recommendations based on a customer’s interest, geographical location, previous purchases, wishlisted products, etc. This way, you send your customers with marketing materials that they are interested in.

#3: Boost customer loyalty and retention

SFCC and SFMC integration allows you to set up trigger points throughout the entire journey at specific points in response to the commerce activities. With your Commerce Cloud and Marketing Cloud integrated you can send our behavioral-influenced emails, for example, when a customer concludes a purchase or leaves their cart during checkout.

#4: Pushing shipping and order confirmation emails

Customers like to receive real-time information of their orders, right from when they are processed till they are delivered. Integrating SFCC and SFMC allows you to give a complete insight about order updates and delivery. This includes follow-up emails about order confirmation, processing, shipping, and out for delivery.

#5: Offer connected customer experiences

With Marketing Cloud and Commerce Cloud integrated, you can leverage customer data to tailor every interaction and deliver customized messages across devices and channels. As Marketing Cloud listens to customer interests and actions, it uses that information to assist a customer through their commerce journey. You can even measure, optimize, and realign marketing performance as per business goals.

And as both platforms are an offering from Salesforce, you get to build a complete Salesforce ecosystem to fuel customer experiences and business growth.

How to integrate Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Marketing Cloud?

This section covers integrating SFMC to SFCC. The business use cases that Commerce Cloud and Salesforce Marketing Cloud integration can be implemented to include abandoned carts, coupon redemption, order on behalf, transactional emails, order history or cancel order, personalized marketing solutions, and so on. There are several ways to achieve any of the above-mentioned use cases:

#1: Integrating Salesforce Marketing Cloud & Commerce Cloud via REST APIs & web services SOAP APIs

REST APIs allow you to gain an expansive access to Marketing Cloud capabilities and can be used to implement functionality for contacts, content builder, journey builder, mobile connect, mobilepush, triggered sends, and campaigns.

You can also implement SFMC API integration to SFCC leveraging APIs and effectively manage authentication, endpoints, credentials, and circuit breakers. You need to create ‘API credentials’ for Salesforce Marketing Cloud and create ‘Service’ in Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Read more about Marketing Cloud API integration here.

#2: Generating TXT or CSV files and uploading them to Marketing Cloud FTP

You can import data into Email Studio. You can either choose to be emailed the log file in a .TXT or .CSV format or simply download it. Follow these steps to upload a file to the Marketing Cloud FTP.

#3: Using a Marketing Cloud Connector

You can always use a Marketing Cloud Connector to integrate SFCC and SFMC; however, you need to do so via GitHub repositories. Also, it is better to get integration experts on board if you choose Commerce Cloud and Salesforce Marketing Cloud integration practice since they can assist you with any setup and configuration requirements.

#4: Using Salesforce Marketing Cloud Connect to integrate SFCC and SFMC

Marketing Cloud Connect allows you to integrate SFMC with SFCC. It allows you to bring your marketing data and customer details from all touchpoints in one place, gain a single view of your customers, and leverage personalized marketing strategies. However, as a prerequisite, it is essential to have two users for Commerce Cloud and Salesforce Marketing Cloud integration:

Marketing cloud API user
Salesforce tracking user

While Commerce Cloud tracks user data, the SFTP setup in the Marketing Cloud automatically imports the data file at regular intervals. You can implement code to segment the target audience based on their interests and buying behavior. Depending on their actions, your integrated system will automatically send trigger emails to customers.

#5: Integrating SFCC and SFMC with integration reference implementations

Reference implementations execute actions in one cloud based on the activity in the another to-be-integrated cloud. All you have to do is employ the contact record ID for cross-cloud integrations. The contact key (or the cross-channel customer ID) for Marketing Cloud is in the Contact Builder. As for Commerce Cloud, this customer ID is system-generated for a customer. Read more about this methodology here.

Ensuring a successful Salesforce Commerce Cloud & Salesforce Marketing Cloud integration

This is just a brief overview of how you can integrate SFCC and SFMC. As a Salesforce Ridge Partner, we can help you seamlessly integrate the two most powerful offerings from Salesforce. There are chances that this might be a cost and time investment, especially if you’re dependent on other external systems. Our certified experts can help you with any questions regarding this, including post-integration assistance. Of course, the robustness, security, and operational caliber of the integrated platform will not be compromised at all.

Looking to integrate Salesforce Marketing Cloud & Commerce Cloud?

A successful eCommerce business offers quality products and services, has high customer satisfaction and retention rates, seamless payment and checkout experiences, and low cart abandonment rates. PWAs fit right here and the benefits of PWA facilitate website and mobile application developers to build and deploy an eCommerce store that assures a seamless and omnichannel customer shopping experience.

PWAs or Progressive Web Apps are the fastest-growing and rapidly evolving technologies; that bring together the desktop and mobile versions of an online store. The look and feel is an important aspect in the digital world of portable and non-portable devices.

And, PWAs play a vital role in enhancing the display experience for eCommerce users and boosting retail sales for eCommerce merchants. With mobile commerce retail sales estimated to reach £105 billion by 2024, retailers cannot miss the opportunity of closing big sales and fueling e-retail experiences in today’s competitive eCommerce landscape.

What is PWA?

PWA meaning Progressive Web Application is a web application that functions as a native mobile application, but users are not required to download it from an app store. A progressive web application is an emerging headless commerce technology that facilitates developers to build a user-friendly and customized frontend and connect it to an independent decoupled backend via APIs.

In the current digital shopping scenario, the number of smartphone users is much higher than the number of people using laptops or desktops. And brands can leverage this opportunity to offer mobile-first shopping experiences by adopting improved and competitive solutions such as PWAs.

PWAs enable brands to offer a responsive, time-saving, and seamlessly navigating online shopping platform to their customers. Of the many benefits PWA offers, its intuitive approach can help improve sales, revenue, conversion rates, customer retention rates, add-to-cart rates, and brand visibility.

Why PWAs in the eCommerce industry?

As the number of brand-customer touchpoints increase, the traditional eCommerce platforms have to pave the way for advanced and leading enterprise development platforms like PWA eCommerce mobile app. By implementing the best progressive web apps for building an eCommerce store, retailers can improve their customers’ buying journey and build brand loyalty.

While native apps are a great way of customer engagement, they have certain drawbacks with their legacy architecture, which are eliminated by progressive web application development. In fact, according to a survey report, PWAs have 36% higher conversion rates than native apps.

Also, the response time of PWA is much faster, as once the service workers are installed in the browser, all data related to web page information is cached within the device of customers. So, whenever a customer loads a pre-cached page, requests do not go out of customers’ browsers, and all the data is available within the device. Whereas, in the case of CDN, service requests need to go out from customers’ devices to the edge cache server, but PWA removes that latency as well.

Here’s a small comparison to understand the pros and cons of native app development and progressive web app development.

#1: Programming languages

Native mobile apps are built for specific platforms to run on mobile devices and developed using platform-specific programming languages like Java for the Android platform and Swift and Objective-C for the iOS platform. PWAs, on the other hand, are web applications that run on web browsers and are developed using HTML, JavaScript and CSS.

#2: Accessibility

A progressive web application is easy to share amongst users with a simple URL. A native mobile application needs to be downloaded from a dedicated app store based on the type of operating system of the mobile device.

#3: App development cost

The development and maintenance cost of native apps is higher than PWAs, as it involves a complex process and requires multiple resources to work on varied platforms. However, as PWAs work on headless commerce technology, signifying that the same source code can be deployed faster on diverse platforms with minimal cost. Statistics suggest that PWAs require 33% less maintenance cost than native mobile apps. Also, PWAs can use core operating system features of the devices, which makes it simple and cost-effective to deploy on electronic devices.

#4: Ease of updates

Headless PWA makes it easy for retailers to implement changes on the frontend without disturbing the backend, reducing the total time and cost required to implement changes significantly. However, the same is not possible with native apps that are tedious to maintain and update. PWAs are microservices, while native apps have monolithic architecture, making it compulsory to update the backend and frontend for every small change in any one of the layers.

#5: Security

Native mobile applications are more secure to use as they implement cybersecurity measures like multi-factor authentication, certificate pinning, data encryption, and managing OS vulnerabilities. PWAs are also equally safe as they rely on updated SSL certificates to use HTTPS protocol.

The benefits of PWA fueling eCommerce growth

Progressive web applications are emerging as game-changers in the digital commerce ecosystem. PWA benefits online businesses by offering them a great chance to improve their clicks, present to them better cross-selling and upselling opportunities and enable them to provide consistent user experience across multiple touchpoints such as various hand-held devices, websites and smartwatches.

Following are some of the prominent features of a progressive web application that makes it stand out from the competition when it comes to delivering smooth-functioning and customer-friendly eCommerce services.

#1: Offline mode usage

One of the most distinguished benefits of PWA is that it can be used on your device even when there is no or limited internet connection. All the data and app features are stored in the workers cache, which are made available to the user in offline mode.

#2: Optimizing storage space

Native apps take up much of the storage space on a mobile device. So, downloading many apps is often not feasible, as it also slows down the smartphone or might even cause overheating issues. A PWA eCommerce mobile app is almost 90% light in weight compared to a native app, and it gets added to the home screen of a mobile device, saving a significant amount of disk space and accessibility time.

#3: Improved performance

Faster page loading time is one of the most remarkable benefits of PWA. This PWA feature significantly improves the customer browsing experience, reduces bounce rates, increases conversion rates, and builds a smooth omnichannel shopping experience for customers. Most of the best progressive web apps have a page-load time of less than 3 seconds, enabling them to gain more traffic on the eCommerce site due to faster browsing speed.

#4: Push notifications

PWAs enhance customer engagement by allowing brands to send push notifications to the users. Push notifications can inform customers about ongoing promotions, available discounts, the launch of new products, availability of previously searched products or announcements of any other kind. Brands must have the right marketing strategy to gain customer traction with the push notification feature of PWA.

#5: Automatic updates

A PWA is committed to providing friction-free customer experiences. The auto-update feature of PWAs is another attribute that works towards enabling the brands’ goal of delivering a fully functional app without gaining users’ unnecessary attention. A progressive web application installs the new updates when users open it on their mobile device.

The 5 best examples illustrating the benefits of PWA in digital retail

Here are a few examples of top PWA eCommerce apps.

#1: Starbucks

Starbucks, the most loved coffee serving business, uses progressive web applications to deliver seamless coffee ordering experiences to its customers globally. Starbucks’ PWAs allow them to customize their products list and payment options, just like their native app based on customers’ location.

#2: Flipkart Lite

Flipkart Lite is a mobile web app launched by the eCommerce giant to enable effortless product navigation and offline browsing on mobile devices.

#3: Eleganza

Eleganza is an online shopping platform where users can purchase high-end luxury products such as clothing and shoes created by international designers. The PWA of this online store is built on the Magento 2 platform that has helped scale its business to new heights with faster page loading, increased average order value, decreased server load, and improved customer shopping experiences.

#4: Burrow

Burrow, a leading D2C furniture retailer, used headless commerce to increase their conversion rate and work with scalable backend and offer customized frontend to their eCommerce customers.

#5: ROECKL

ROECKL, a German manual leather processing company, implemented PWA based on the Magento platform to achieve advanced, high-performance, and responsive online shops for their customers while making the backend and frontend mutually exclusive.

Offering the benefits of PWA to scale online businesses

eCommerce brands can leverage the benefits of PWA extensively to drive traffic to their website and plummet their sales and revenue. Progressive web applications are emerging as the future of the mobile app world by solving the challenges related to customer engagement, conversion rates, omnichannel shopping experiences, cart abandonment rates, dissociated backend and frontend designs, brand visibility and more.

Ready to embrace the progressive frontend?

Explore the right technology stack for your headless solutions.

Accessibility to uninterrupted internet services has fueled the growth of the eCommerce industry. However, like two sides of the coin, along with numerous advantages, there are some risks that the eCommerce industry has to encounter such as eCommerce fraud and the ways to prevent eCommerce frauds. Such illicit and illegal activities on digital shopping platforms result in heavy financial losses. But more importantly, it leads to loss of customer trust and loyalty, leading to far-reaching effects on your business and must be tackled at the earliest.

According to research, global eCommerce fraud losses in 2021 were estimated to be around $20 Billion. These losses further indicate that there was 18% growth in the global eCommerce fraud losses from 2020 to 2021. Such glaring numbers suggest the immediate need of best-in-class eCommerce fraud prevention techniques to offer safe shopping experiences to their customers.

What is eCommerce fraud?

Also known as purchase fraud, eCommerce fraud constitutes deceitful online transactions performed by cybercriminals. Victims of these kinds of frauds can be merchants and customers, often leading to discontentment, financial loss, reputation loss, resource loss, and unwanted stress. Some common eCommerce frauds are:

Apart from the above-mentioned eCommerce frauds, there are many other ways cybercriminals try to inhibit business revenue and make unlawful use of customers’ sensitive information. It is why retailers need to be agile and active in their preventative measures to identify, abstain, and implement Commerce fraud prevention best practices.

What is eCommerce fraud detection?
eCommerce fraud protection is a high-priority task that all eCommerce businesses must perform to ensure that their customers have a secure shopping experience. And, it begins with eCommerce fraud detection. Such measures involve applying specialized techniques to detect vulnerabilities on the eCommerce website and strategically preventing them. The challenge is to determine fraudulent activities before they cause severe damage to retailers and consumers.

eCommerce fraud detection is also necessary because it increases the chances of higher ROI for eCommerce businesses. Statistics show that companies that implemented fraud prevention programs reduced their fraud attack response expenses by 42% and their remedy expenses by 17% compared to companies that did not have an eCommerce fraud prevention strategy in place.

How to detect eCommerce fraud online?

eCommerce frauds are not unconventional; however, the number of malicious actions and their intensity has recently soared, reinforcing the need to implement solution-centric eCommerce fraud prevention techniques. Brands worldwide compete to provide an omnichannel shopping experience to their customers, but such diverse shopping solutions also increase the number of entry points for online fraudsters.

State-of-the-art eCommerce fraud detection tools present retailers with solutions that help them detect potential risks related to possible transaction fraud. Here’re the most effective eCommerce fraud solutions that can expedite online fraud detection and mitigate vulnerabilities within the digital transaction process.

#1: Preventing eCommerce frauds with Machine Learning

Machine Learning (ML) is a subset of artificial intelligence, where computer algorithms use training data to learn decision making. This technique can be instrumental in eCommerce fraud detection, as ML algorithms can effortlessly distinguish felonious transactions from legitimate ones. They can successfully study numerous transaction patterns on several eCommerce platforms and remember them for detecting any fraudulent transaction. Additionally, it can comprehensively and cost-effectively handle data overloads via trained algorithms without any human intervention.

#2: Predictive analytics

While machine learning utilizes real-time information and training data sets to detect eCommerce frauds, predictive analytics uses past trends, data and other functional variables to devise powerful eCommerce fraud protection and detection techniques. Predictive analytics is a versatile solution that can be integrated seamlessly into eCommerce platforms, effectively reducing shopping cart abandonment rates, increasing customer loyalty and lead conversion rates. By studying customer behavior, buying patterns, browsing habits, transaction history, etc., predictive analytics helps curb online frauds and build a resilient eCommerce platform.

#3 Graph technology

Graph technology is a connected analysis approach that presents different data sets such as consumer behavior, transaction data, channel related data in graphical format. The nodes in these graphs are connected via edges, and data analysts can fire a query on these data points to gather information related to eCommerce frauds and suspicious transactions.

This intuitive approach provides insights into multiple layers of data breaching. Data scientists can use graph technology to get notification alerts in case of fraud detection, analyze real-time data to prevent eCommerce fraud and work on visual representations to provide advanced eCommerce fraud prevention techniques.

Steps to prevent eCommerce fraud

With the outset of online shopping channels, there is a tremendous surge in global payments fraud and other cybercrimes. Thus, the foremost task that a retailer of an eCommerce store must carry out is implementing superlative eCommerce fraud prevention techniques.

#1: Regular eCommerce website audits

Online merchants should chalk out a detailed plan for conducting regular site security audits and thoroughly check the eCommerce website for the following parameters:

Presence of malware
Current status of SSL certificate
PCI (Payment Card Industry) compliance
Password protection
Encryption algorithms
Updated versions of all the software and plugins used by the eCommerce site

Adobe Commerce platform uses intelligent monitoring and machine learning to minimize the impact of fraud on their customers and businesses. Adobe Commerce also imparts fraud education and awareness to its clients and customers to detect and prevent eCommerce fraud.

#2: Implement multi-layered security

One of the best practices to prevent eCommerce fraud is implementing multi-layered security by incorporating the latest software and technology tools to strengthen the security of your eCommerce store. Multi-layered fraud prevention solutions can be implemented by combining two or more eCommerce fraud solutions such as biometric identification, tracking geolocation of the consumer, address verification service (AVS), 2FA using OTPs or verification codes, and more.

Salesforce Commerce Cloud uses Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) to provide secure access to user accounts and protect eCommerce sites built on the SFCC platform from cyber attacks such as phishing and credential stuffing.

#3: Maintain detailed order records

Retailers can prevent chargeback frauds by keeping the record of every order that they have received, shipped, and accepted return. Keeping track of all the customer touchpoints during their buying journey is an excellent way to prevent fraudulent activities in your eCommerce store. It is recommended to have digital copies of all the documents involved in the purchasing process for easy and quick access when required, such as in case of an ATO attack.

Shopify Plus helps brands deal with chargeback fraud with its fraud protection technology called Fraud Protect. Fraud Protect charges a reasonable fee to the merchants to protect their orders and, if there is a chargeback as a result of fraud, then Shopify Plus will reimburse the order amount and the fee to the merchants.

#4: Carry out CVV checks

Card Verification Value, commonly known as CVV, is a three or four-digit code; which is present on the credit and debit card of a customer. Merchants should always ask for CVV while accepting credit or debit card payments to ensure an authorized transaction. CVV identification code is never stored by merchants in their customer database, which makes this a very secure way of doing online transactions and preventing eCommerce frauds.

#5: Set limits on the number of declined transactions

Hit and trial is one of the many ways in which fraudsters execute unauthorized transactions. They try different combinations of identification codes, verification codes, and CVV to initiate a fraudulent transaction. eCommerce store owners should limit the number of attempts a customer makes to complete a legitimate transaction, thus reducing the chances of eCommerce fraud.

#6: Check for anonymous addresses

It is often observed that defrauders use PO Box or other anonymous addresses to receive orders. Retailers should treat this as a red flag and cancel the order immediately if the physical shipping address is suspicious or untraceable.

#7: Arrange anti-fraud training

Customers usually interact with an eCommerce business through their website, app or customer service. While there are a number of ways to prevent frauds on digital mediums, it is equally important to arrange for anti-fraud training for customer service representatives. Brands should ensure that their customer service representatives are well-trained to identify different types of fraud indicators and escalate any suspicious cyber activity immediately.

Prevent eCommerce frauds with these best practices

Adding security measures to prevent eCommerce fraud might introduce some friction in the customer shopping experience, but, in the long run, it will be beneficial to eCommerce businesses and their customers. Implementing eCommerce fraud prevention techniques secures the online buying process, boosts sales, revenue generation, and online business growth, and increases customer loyalty and retention rates.

Optimize your digital stores for better security.

Contact our experts for reliable maintenance & support solutions.

As an OutSystems developer or an enterprise that has leveraged the OutSystems platform, you’re probably aware of the fully-integrated Silk UI framework. However, now OutSystems has decided to deprecate Silk UI and replace it with the OutSystems UI framework. Although it will be available for download, there will be no ongoing support and maintenance solutions available for the same.

With this latest update, there is much to think for enterprises and developers in terms of the impact it will have on the already developed enterprise applications and if you must migrate to the OutSystems UI framework.

In this resource, we answer all these questions and more. Read on!

What is the Silk UI framework from OutSystems?

In case you’re not familiar with the Silk UI framework, it allows low-code developers to build amazing web and mobile user interfaces with great UI all with drag-and-drop movements, without any coding. It consists of pre-built templates, samples, and designs that simplifies and accelerates application UI development. These pre-built templates cater to different screen sizes- Dublin for wider screen, Tokyo for mobile devices, Lisbon for smaller desktops, and Liverpool for simpler apps.

In today’s fast-paced industrial landscape when customer and market requirements are constantly evolving at a breakneck pace, OutSystems’ Silk UI framework empowered citizen developers to effortlessly add, delete, modify, and update code blocks as per the trends. Overall, Silk UI enabled superior performances, boosted developer productivity, and offered impeccable UX/UI experiences.

So, here comes the question. Why did OutSystems feel that they needed to change their competitive Silk UI framework with the OutSystems UI?
To answer this, we need to first dive into Reactive Web applications and its recent update.Building next-gen web apps with Reactive Web
Miles ahead of traditional web, Reactive Web helps you create data-rich and responsive interfaces that offer a seamless and consistent experience across mobile and web. Leveraging client-side logic and a single codebase, this model doesn’t require skilled frontend developers or a multitude of code frameworks to create the best of mobile apps with singular development experience.
As your team only needs to invest time and resources in developing the frontend first, you can accelerate your time-to-market and deliver unmatched multi-channel experiences across web and mobile. The best part, you can reuse logic and UI patterns between channels. Here are other things that the Reactive Web update offers.
#1: Unrivalled performance
After studying developer behavior, OutSystems allowed the asynchronous fetching and attaching of data to the UI to fix latency issues. This means that all the UI elements are instantly changed in the user interface when the data bound to it changes, negating the need to Ajax Refresh. Other changes include optimizing the data being exchanged between server and client to reduce payload during data fetching.
#2: Visually modeled client-side logic
As the client-side logic is visually modeled in reactive web, you no longer need JavaScript and can flexibly reuse the same logic for client and server actions. Additionally, OutSystems secure REST APIs for data transfer between the browser and server on a limited network bandwidth.
#3: State-of-the-art architecture
The modern Reactive Web caches code and resources in the browser to remove communication overheads. Unlike traditional web development, where a developer needs to learn several frameworks in the JavaScript ecosystem as per the project, Reactive Web generates code based on the innovative frontend architecture. This eliminates the complexity of selecting and learning the latest JavaScript framework.
#4: Unparalleled responsiveness
Reactive Web maintains asynchronous server communication to ensure consistent responsiveness. This means when an app is running a server-side logic, it will continue to respond to user requests in the browser.
#5: Data fetching
Screen data like aggregates will be viewable below the screen in Reactive Web. Aggregates provide easy access to object data and for advanced usage, you can easily execute data action asynchronously and in parallel. This improves your app’s performance significantly since you no longer need to wait for fetching data before displaying it.
Reactive Web and OutSystems UI to offer a single development experience
To complete the app experience that Reactive Web was to offer and accelerate the user interface development, there was an urgent need of new UI elements, patterns, and layouts that could reflect the new design system. Of course, this new system must be compatible with web and mobile without causing any issues in the existing mobile apps and keeping the transition process as smooth and seamless as possible.

OutSystems UI is a modern and robust architecture that empowers even non-developers to build engaging and interactive experiences for native mobile and reactive web apps. Along with drag-and-drop UI patterns, ready-to-use layouts, and screen templates, you develop web and mobile apps adaptable across several screens and devices.

Should I migrate from the Silk UI framework to OutSystems UI?

Now comes the section you’ve been waiting for, what does OutSystems UI offer that Silk UI framework did not and should I migrate to OutSystems UI?

For starters, the Silk UI framework did an excellent job at simplifying and accelerating UI development. However, as time passed by, trends changed, demands evolved, and as experiences became a differentiating asset, there was a need to grow and innovate in a way that placed enterprises leveraging OutSystems ahead in the competition.

OutSystems UI is the perfect successor to Silk UI framework as it embodies all the features that the latter offers and empowers developers with new functionalities and features that would help them develop mobile and web apps in parallel while reducing the development cost to a minimum. Of course, it has been built keeping the future of development in mind, which is why OutSystems will offer ongoing support and updates for the same.

As an enterprise, if you wish to leverage the low-code single UI framework to develop mobile and web apps and implement all the new capabilities of OutSystems UI, you must migrate to it.

However, since this is a cost investment, if you feel that you’re not ready to expend that much of time and money into the process, you can easily develop, manage, run, and maintain competitive app solutions on your Silk UI framework. But keep in mind that OutSystems will not release any updates for new features and functionalities for the Silk UI framework and you will have to make do with the existing ones.

Migrating Silk UI web applications to OutSystems UI framework

There are a few paths you can undertake for migrating the UI of Silk web apps to OutSystems UI:

Removing each UI pattern in Silk and replacing it with an OutSystems UI pattern
Migrating screen-after-screen by changing the ‘source web block’ in each
Renaming workflows and updating patterns from OutSystems UI so that the ‘source web block’ is same

In case you want to migrate to the OutSystems UI framework, our experts at Ranosys can help you do so. Our OutSystems developers possess advanced knowledge of the OutSystems UI framework and can assist you with UI, reference tables, structure, and pattern migration. To know more about the migration prospects, read this article.

Everything comes down to what kind of experience you want to create for your users. And OutSystems UI helps you to develop a delightful web and mobile app experience with faster response time. Of course, your developers also benefit from the OutSystems UI framework with its drag-and-drop features, easy-to-change visual interface, and responsive development capabilities. All in all, OutSystems UI is a revolutionary framework one that helps you build applications fast, right and for the future

Curious about OutSystems UI and its capabilities?

Unlike traditional times, the modern customers are looking for seamless payment options to improve their checkout experiences. These days, several digital payment options like e-wallets, debit card and credit card payments, EMI payments, cash on delivery using digital payment apps, and more; allow customers to indulge in their preferred payment mode. And one such option is buy now, pay later (BNPL).

Amongst the top eCommerce trends, BNPL or Buy Now Pay Later is emerging as one of the popular financing services for the ease it offers to customers while shopping online. As customers don’t have to pay for products/services straight away, it ensures a hassle-free checkout experience for a customer and guaranteed revenue generation for a retailer.

What is BNPL?

BNPL or Buy Now Pay Later is a modern payment method where customers can purchase a product and pay for it in installments, often interest-free, over a set period of time, which is generally a few weeks or months. Also known as Point Of Sale (POS) installment loans, BNPL lets customers borrow money for a short term to order online and pay later in future installments.

The buy now pay later services are usually facilitated by third parties. Customers fill out a basic form with their details and register themselves with digital lenders like Hoolah (using Salesforce Commerce Cloud), Seedly, Rely, EarlySalary, ZestMoney, Atome, and more. These payment providers have a tie-up with the retailers and can make the payment to the merchant on customers’ behalf.

Subsequently, stores that offer buy now pay later options enable their customers to shop for products in advance and pay for them later via third party apps.

How is buy now pay later different from credit cards?

Quite honestly, the buy now pay later eCommerce solution does resemble credit card payments, but only in the type of service being offered. They are, however, quite different, as explained below:

Attribute	BNPL Service	Credit Card Payment
Bill Payment	Customers pay the billing amount in a fixed number of installments	The credit card bill needs to be settled monthly in one go
Interest Charged	Usually, no interest is charged if the customer avails the BNPL financing and pays the balance within the stipulated time	Credit card companies levy heavy interest to the customers
Rewards	Does not support offering reward points	Credit card companies offer purchase points, cash backs and other lucrative rewards
Credit agreement	No set credit limit	Credit limit is set
Approval	Completely digital and instant approval	Hard credit check is must to qualify for using a credit card

How does buy now pay later work?

Small-scale businesses and even large retail chains worldwide are tying up with digital payment providers to render a seamless customer shopping experience. All customers have to do is select the BNPL service at the time of checkout and benefit from the ‘order online pay later’ financing scheme.

Our payment partner, Atome simplifies the buy now pay later process by dividing it in three easy steps.

Select Atome on the checkout page of the retailer.
Make payment by splitting the bill.
Keep a track of the installments on the Atome app.

Let’s understand the BNPL service in detail with a simple example.

Suppose a customer purchases a product worth $200 and chooses to pay for it using a BNPL payment option provided by the retailer in four installments. Then, the customer can buy the product readily and pay $50 monthly or weekly as maintained by the payment provider. This approach benefits customers as it decreases the financial burden on them and allows them to experience frictionless customer service.

5 ways how BNPL fuels customer’s payment and checkout journeys

Brands offering BNPL have high regard for enhancing their customers’ buying journey. While attaining the goal of providing a seamless shopping experience to their customers, businesses also gain something valuable in return. Many of the best buy now pay later stores have recorded a surge in their sales after successfully implementing this strategy for their business. Furthermore, a survey by Finder suggests that online purchases using buy now pay later services are growing at a rate of 39% per year. Here’s how BNPL fuels customer’s payment and checkout journeys.

#1: Faster and secure payment gateways

Buy now pay later options empower customers to use one-tap payment and make their purchases convenient and fast. Also, the customer’s details are encrypted and safe with the BNPL payment provider. Thus the online payments done using the BNPL services are secure and trustworthy. According to Finder, 44% of buyers use BNPL for its ease and convenience.

#2: Increases buying power

When merchants provide the BNPL service, more and more customers make online purchases more frequently because they get an option to pay for a product in future while embracing it in their hands today. BNPL significantly reduces the financial burden on customers, which in turn increases their buying power. BNPL service has resulted in a tremendous increase in the number of active users worldwide. As of June 2021, BNPL service provider Klarna reported approximately 90 million active users.

#3: Simple approval process

BNPL has emerged as one of the best and most convenient methods to make payments in the digital commerce ecosystem. One of the factors contributing to this rise is the simple approval process facilitated by minimal documentation, digital KYC, no hard credit history check, and instant approval. Klarna, Affirm and PayPal are some emerging payment providers that offer fast sanctioning for availing BNPL service.

#4: Offers no-cost EMI payment

Buy now pay later options give customers the freedom to spread out their payments while shopping online with short-term small loans. Additionally, customers can take advantage of the no-cost EMI payment and pay the billing amount in interest-free installments. However, there might be a penalty that customers have to pay if they do not repay the loan in the fixed number of installments and the agreed time period.

#5: Transparent pricing model

BNPL provides a transparent pricing model with no hidden costs from the customers. Customers can use the buy now pay later sites to check the status of their payment and their outstanding balance. There are no additional fees that BNPL imposes on customers, which adds to the trustworthiness and more involvement with the eCommerce business. The transparency offered by the BNPL service allows retailers to boost customer engagement and loyalty. For example, Atome allows its customers to check the status of their payments on the app and also receive notifications about their payment cycles.

Improving customer experience with BNPL

Buy now pay later is one of the fastest-growing eCommerce trends as it empowers customers to enjoy a seamless experience while shopping online and benefits merchants by boosting customer engagement and sales numbers. As an eCommerce business model is all about offering the customers a frictionless and smooth buying experience, buy now pay later options not only allows retailers achieve this goal efficiently and effectively but helps them reduce cart abandonment rates and boost customer retention figures.

Looking for such integrations to boost online conversions?

Our experts can help you with competitive solutions.

Ranosys is excited to announce that it has achieved the Salesforce Ridge Partner distinction. This recognition attests to our high delivery quality, consistent dedication, and outstanding accomplishments in the field of customer success, innovation, digitization, and sustainable business development.

The Salesforce Partner Program has a very strict and stringent evaluation bar for quality. To achieve the Ridge partnership level, Salesforce consulting partners must showcase a proven understanding of the Salesforce ecosystem, in-depth knowledge of the Salesforce Clouds, a high customer satisfaction (CSAT) score average, and a consistently thriving team of certified Salesforce professionals.

With 5/5 rating on Salesforce AppExchange, multiple dedicated Salesforce delivery centers across the globe, and 37+ active Salesforce Program certifications across multiple practices such as development, consulting, marketing, commerce, sales, service cloud, admin, and multi cloud, Ranosys has been striving hard to scale real-world results and accomplish partner score requirements, the result of which, they are now a Salesforce Ridge Partner.

Talking about this significant achievement, Rameshwar Vyas, CEO-Ranosys, said, “We are proud of being elevated in our partnership status with Salesforce. Salesforce has completely revamped the enterprise ecosystem and its associated interactions. Its tools and services not only solve critical industry challenges, but adds efficiency and effectiveness to business operations. Salesforce and Ranosys has had an exciting haul till now and our achieving this elevated status will strengthen our brand positioning and attest to the dedication and commitment towards the Salesforce Practice. A big congratulations to the entire Salesforce Team at Ranosys.”

As a Salesforce Consulting Firm, Ranosys is known for its differentiating and customer-centric end-to-end consulting, development, integration, analytics, and support solutions along with proven expertise in Salesforce Clouds and innovative accelerators programs like Phoenix, Business 360 and Harrier. Moreover, Ranosys’ intranet system, Pulse, built on the Salesforce platform with 35+ licenses has been featured on the official Salesforce website as a success story.

As a Salesforce Talent Alliance Partner, Ranosys has been educating and empowering professionals from diverse domains and backgrounds with skills they need to build careers and thrive in the digital future. Ranosys has also been associated with Pledge 1%, contributing and sharing 1% of our profit, time, and products/services to the society.

With this elevated status, Ranosys is more than equipped to solve business challenges, meet growth and expansion goals, and help businesses to stand apart from the competition with quality Salesforce-led solutions.

About Ranosys

For more information, visit https://www.ranosys.com/

Or, shoot us an email at sales@ranosys.com

Buy online, pickup in-store or BOPIS is one of the upcoming trends in the eCommerce industry. It is a fulfillment strategy that offers the customers an omnichannel shopping experience, meaning it brings together the best of the both worlds – offline and online shopping. While eCommerce has become the very backbone of product purchasing, the BOPIS retail model gives it a surprising twist.

When customers find it difficult to decide between online and physical shopping, then buy online, pickup in-store process comes to the rescue. As the name suggests, customers can shop for a product using an eCommerce website or a mobile app and pick it up from the physical store at their convenience.

Some of the major eCommerce platforms that offer the ease of BOPIS implementation are Salesforce Commerce Cloud storefront, Shopify Plus, Adobe Commerce, commercetools, and BigCommerce platform. These platforms enable uncomplicated adoption of BOPIS for any existing and new eCommerce business.

This amalgamation of online and offline shopping in BOPIS strategy has undeniably blurred the line between the two different purchasing models. Retailers are always looking to please their customers by offering them the best products, services, discounts, and shopping experiences. And, BOPIS has made this task easy for them, as they can now offer the advantages of online and offline shopping at the same time to their customers.

What is BOPIS Retail?

BOPIS retail is quite a simple idea that allows the customers to buy a product via a digital shopping channel and collect the ordered products from their nearest retail store outlet and even pay for it physically. This shopping model defies the traditional eCommerce model, wherein the customers had to place the order through a digital platform and wait for the deliveries to arrive at their homes. BOPIS retail strategy has slowly gained momentum in the past couple of years, as it allows customers to browse for products at their comfort and pay for it in-store only if they like it. As for retailers, this model increases the footfall, which translates to more product and better sales.

However, when adopting BOPIS in retail, merchants must maintain inventories in real-time. They have to ensure that the products for which they have received orders online are available in the physical store at the same price and discount rates (if any).Retailers should also facilitate customers with dedicated checkout counters for collecting their orders. While placing orders ‘online’ is the primary objective of a BOPIS retail model, it should also enable the customers to make on-the-fly purchases when they reach the physical retail outlet for picking up their orders.

Why does a BOPIS strategy make sense in today’s ecommerce ecosystem?

BOPIS fits perfectly in today’s retail environment because of the flexibility it offers to customers. When a customer selects BOPIS, they don’t have to pay for the product until they’ve tried it out in-store. Then for retailers, it offers an opportunity to get customers to visit their physical stores, browse through the additional product catalogue and purchase more products than a customer intended to.

According to a survey conducted by Adobe, out of 1000 customers, 30% of the online shoppers would prefer the BOPIS commerce over the traditional home delivery system. In yet another survey, stats suggest that 40% of retailers have started offering BOPIS services. These numbers affirm that BOPIS retail is one of the important trends in today’s eCommerce economy.

What does a BOPIS strategy consist of?

For BOPIS retail to work smoothly, retailers should have a digital channel in collaboration with a functional physical retail store. If a retailer already has an online store, then she needs to provide an additional checkout option – pickup in-store. And, the physical store needs to create dedicated checkout counters or allow curbside pickup in order to provide a seamless shopping experience to their customers.

Ordering: Customers can browse the products across the several brand touchpoints. They can then proceed to the checkout section, where they get the option to pick up their ordered products from their nearest retail outlet. All they have to do is select this option. Customers are also not required to pay the billing amount while placing the order and can do so when they come to get the products from the physical store.
Fulfillment: Retailers have to maintain a unified inventory in real-time of all the products listed across the different sales channels. They need to fulfill the order placed by the customers by keeping track of all the available products that are displayed online and are present in the store.
Physical checkout: Customers can go to the nearest retail store, pay the billing amount and collect their online orders. They can also browse through the shopping aisles and get some more products before the final checkout.

The benefits of Buy Online Pickup In-Store (BOPIS) retail

BOPIS retail is an entirely customer-centric eCommerce strategy. Customers have their reasons for choosing the Buy Online, Pickup In-Store option. Here’re some of the benefits they enjoy with this hybrid shopping scheme:

No shipping cost: Customers can pick up their orders from the store, thus eliminating the shipping costs (if any) involved in the home delivery system.
Time-saving: Typically, customers have to wait for at least a day for receiving their online orders. However, with BOPIS, they can avail same-day delivery option.
Easy returns: Customers can check the quality, size, and colour of their products when they are in the store for collecting their orders. If they are not satisfied with the product, they can initiate the return process immediately.
No theft risk: If the delivery person leaves the package on the doorstep, it might get stolen or lost. However, when customers pick up their orders, they remove this risk considerably.

It is not just the customers who are the beneficiaries of this eCommerce strategy retailers also have their share of advantages. BOPIS retail is one of the few schemes benefiting both – sellers and buyers.

#1: Increased eCommerce sales

With the adoption of a BOPIS strategy, retailers have seen a gradual but steady increase in the number of customers (online and offline), which has resulted in an exponential growth in their sales record. In the US alone, click-and-collect sales more than doubled in 2020. It is also estimated that sales will likely continue double-digit growth through 2024.

Kohls.com since offering BOPIS retail services, have reported huge profits year-by-year. Another great example is Petco, the pet retailers, which increased their revenue and the number of net new customers by more than 5% by adopting the BOPIS strategy.

#2: Better selling prospects

The fusion of digital and brick-and-mortar shopping presents retailers with excellent upselling and cross-selling opportunities. There’s a high possibility that the customers who have placed online orders might peruse other products while collecting their orders and initiate an unintended purchase. Also, the retail staff can persuade customers to buy some more products based on the order placed.

According to a survey on BOPIS, around 80% of customers who use this eCommerce trend are likely to shop for other products while they are in the store to collect their orders. Walmart and Target use BOPIS retail to sell their products on multiple platforms and make the most of upsell and cross-sell opportunities.

#3: Cutting out on shipping costs

The delivery charges can stride away many potential customers from placing their orders. But, BOPIS facilitates customers to experience modern shopping – browse online and collect in-person. This eCommerce approach enables customers to shop without worrying about shipping costs. Retailers can increase their revenue by offering BOPIS – an omnichannel retail solution as it reduces the shipping cost and manages to convert a potential lead to a life-long customer.

#4: Decreased cart abandonment rates

Many customers abandon the online carts after realizing the unwanted shipping costs that they have to incur to get their products home-delivered. Since BOPIS cuts the shipping cost to zero, the cart abandonment rate also reduces to a great extent. The low cart abandonment rate helps retailers create brand loyalty and maintain a high customer retention rate.

Home Depot and Nordstrom have also started offering their customers BOPIS services and have successfully implemented the order fulfillment process to retain more and more customers.

#5: Customer satisfaction

By adopting BOPIS in retail, merchants present customers with a convenient, personalized, and frictionless shopping experience. BOPIS retail enables customers to avail features like real-time notifications, same-day order fulfillment, contactless deliveries, uncomplicated checkout process, and simplified management of return orders. With just a slight modification in offering a seamless online buying experience, retailers can grow their customer base along with an exceptional sales record.

Conclusion

With BOPIS retail, e-retailers ensure that their customers get what they want quickly without compromising their safety. This hybrid approach where digital shopping websites meet offline stores is undoubtedly the future of eCommerce. Bridging the gap between online and offline shopping is what a BOPIS strategy is achieving efficiently and proving to be one of the major game-changers in the eCommerce industry.

Are you taking note of your customer’s interests?

Our commerce solutions can help you stay ahead of the curve, always!

If you’re an digital commerce merchant, you must be familiar with shopping cart abandonment and its adverse impact on your business. Before exploring the reasons for online shopping cart abandonment solutions and ways to reduce it, it is essential to track it accurately for your business. In this article, we explore how you can measure this rate using Google Analytics cart abandonment solutions without depending upon any third-party tools.

So, without further ado, let’s dig in.

How can I use Google Analytics cart abandonment solutions?

There are two ways of tracking online shopping cart abandonment rate Google Analytics – by setting up a goal manually or installing ‘Enhanced eCommerce’. Don’t worry, we’ll be briefing you about both of these and to effectively use but let’s go over the steps of manual goal setting first. Here is how you can set up a Google Analytics shopping cart tracking goal.

#1: Create a goal

Log into your Google Analytics account and scroll down to the bottom of the page where you will find the Admin tab.

After clicking the admin tab, you will have to choose the Account, Property, and View tabs before you reach the Goal tab on the far right where you will find the “New Goal” button.

In Google Analytics, Goals help in measuring whether customers are performing certain actions or not. And if yes, then how often? To track Google Analytics cart abandonment rate, choose Checkout Complete as a Goal.

#2: Set the details of the Goal

It’s time now to name the goal for Google Analytics shopping cart tracking and enter the right URL for the Destination tab under Type. Ideally, the URL should belong to the page that indicates that the transaction is completed, i.e., the ‘transaction is successful’ or ‘payment completed’ page. For example – www.onlinestore.com/success/checkout/12345.

Now when you enter the URL, make sure that you only enter the constant part. For instance, if you’re going to enter the above URL in shopping cart abandonment Google Analytics, you will only track the checkout numbers related to a particular product number as the numbers keep changing with each transaction.

#3: Setting up a funnel for Google Analytics cart abandonment tracking

A funnel helps you find out the exact step where your customers usually reach. A simple checkout funnel Google Analytics shopping cart abandonment rate would include a payment page, a checkout page, and a successful transaction page

Every online store has a unique funnel and you can easily add URLs as per your commerce requirements.

#4: Get reports

After setting up a funnel, you can start getting the reports within 24 hours. All you need to do is go to the homepage of Google Analytics, head to Conversion and then click on Goals. Under Goals, you will find Funnel Visualization where you will get all your reports.

With these Google Analytics cart abandonment reports, you can find out how many visitors added items on their carts and how many actually purchased them. In fact, you can also track if the abandoned carts are more on mobile devices or otherwise.

Installing enhanced eCommerce plug-in

The second way of tracking shopping cart abandonment Google Analytics is by enabling the ‘Enhanced eCommerce’ plugin in your console. With ‘Enhanced eCommerce’ in Google Analytics, you can dive deeper into consumer behavior with a combination of detailed reports and smart insights covering impressions at every stage of the sales funnel, average number of orders in a cart, buy-to-detail ratio etc.

In fact, you can even track the performance of individual products and promotional strategies as well as engagement on each product page with Google Analytics shopping cart tracking option, Enhanced eCommerce!

However, installing this plug-in is a little trickier than the usual eCommerce setting. You will need basic coding knowledge and it would be better to delegate this Google Analytics cart abandonment assignment to an experienced digital consulting firm.

Alternatively, you could also either choose or migrate your online store to platforms like Adobe Commerce or Shopify Plus as they now include a built-in integration for ‘Enhanced eCommerce’. But if you don’t want to go for either option, we can help you install the plug-in manually.

Let us take you through the steps of installing it:

Don’t use the ‘Enhanced eCommerce’ plug-in with standard eCommerce tracker. If you’re already working on it, either create a new property or migrate your existing property to the Enhanced eCommerce plug-in.
Please ensure that you have updated universal analytics to classic analytics as ec.js or Enhanced eCommerce plug-in would only work with that.
Install the ec.js tracking code on every single page you intend to monitor.
Once everything is done, enable Enhanced eCommerce setting by following this sequence – Admin-> View -> Enhanced eCommerce.

Conclusion

Shopping cart abandonment is a bigger metric than you think! As per statistics, eCommerce brands lost $18 billion annually due to abandoned carts. Contrary to popular belief, customers often end up changing their decisions even after finding their favorite product and the need of the hour is to get to the root cause of this problem. With Google Analytics cart abandonment feature, you can not only track this parameter but find ways to tackle it well!

Shoppers still abandoning their carts?

Our experts can optimize your store for maximum sales.

Building a customer-first experience is a complex and time-consuming process. It extends far beyond the ‘Buy’ action to include post-purchase servicing and is handled by several different business systems with limited to no communication.

Even with an Order Management System in place, merchants find it difficult to establish seamless coordination between the different systems and processes involved in various stages of the order lifecycle for timely delivery and easy order fulfillment. Such isolated silos create friction and delays in order processing and ultimately, lead to unsatisfactory customer experiences.

An offering from the world’s #1 CRM platform, Salesforce Order Management (SOM) promises a seamless, omnichannel commerce experience from the time customers place their orders till their products are delivered at their doorstep and more.

Utilizing the Lightning interface, SOM can be easily customized as per merchant requests and integrated to the existing Commerce Cloud platform. With Salesforce Lightning Order Management, merchants bring together people, processes, and systems on a centralized system to streamline and automate order processing, fulfillment, and delivery.

Integrating SOM to your Salesforce Commerce Cloud platform enhances the competitive flexibility of Salesforce in driving undifferentiated customer experiences across the proliferating intersection points.

The business value of Salesforce Order Management for your SFCC store

Just like all other Salesforce products, the order management system in Salesforce is built on a tried-and-tested Salesforce platform, which offers a slew of benefits. From consistent uptime and timely updates to the extensive ‘App Store’ availability for different purposes and functionalities in AppExchange, Salesforce Order Management offers elevated performances and a 360-degree view of an order from when it is placed until it is delivered and post-delivery experience. The best part: you can easily customize experiences, thanks to the tools, settings, Apex code, and lightning web components.

Customer-first approach: With Salesforce Lightning Order Management handling your digital retail’s ‘behind the scenes’, shoppers can place their orders from any channel, and track and manage their orders from any other touchpoint throughout the order lifecycle.

Flexible order fulfillment: Merchants gain a single and easy-to-manage view of the orders, its fulfillment, payment, invoicing, shipping, and post-purchase services by integrating with pre-built connector apps to resolve omnichannel challenges and fulfill unique business needs.

Robust and out-of-the-box integrations: Other than the available features and functionalities, Salesforce Order Management system can fully integrate with B2C Commerce (Salesforce Commerce Cloud) to accomplish commerce goals and natively supports Service Cloud and B2B Commerce, offering a full view of order data and history. Apart from this, you can easily look for other integrations related to payment providers, ERP, accounting software, etc., leveraging Salesforce APIs or the middleware tool.

Centralized data management: You can create rich experiences using two powerful products from Salesforce- Commerce Cloud and SOM. This allows you to gain a centralized view of your order data, customer history, recent purchases, most purchased products, and more. You can use this data to build campaigns and journeys that personalize every communication you have with your customers across several intersection points.

Affordability in time and costs: Unlike other order management systems that require a tedious number of hours and a good investment for an integration with your SFCC store, using the Salesforce Lightning Order Management system for your SFCC platform is a speedy approach being part of the Salesforce ecosystem. All you have to do is connect with the Salesforce experts and they can integrate your store with SOM in just a few clicks.

The competitive benefits of Salesforce Order Management System

There is so much happening even after a customer clicks on the ‘Buy Now’ button. It is a tedious process, one that involves connecting with people in different departments, warehouses, time zones, and locations just to get an order delivered. Browsing details on different systems is excessively time consuming, especially if you have a shopper on hold during customer support.

If your eCommerce store runs on the Salesforce Commerce Cloud platform, you need an order management system like Salesforce Order Management to sync order statuses, billing, shipping, delivery, and invoicing information. It is worth mentioning that SOM does not come with SFCC as a free offering, but it does offer loads of benefits that boost its ROI function. These include:

#1: Order Management Console

Order Management Console is a centralized hub containing all the information about every order across every touchpoint. You can easily glance at key order details, review additional info, and manage service requests via Order Management Console in Salesforce Order Management. The best part: it keeps all your data together.

You can customize it as per your needs- name, description, branding elements, easy-to-navigate items, etc. via App Builder. Moreover, you can create custom pages, add custom fields, change layouts, or modify the components.

#2: A single source of truth for order summaries

Unlike order details that include products, prices, fees, and taxes, order summaries include information from capturing, fulfillment, payment, shipping, delivery, and post-service queries, all of which the Salesforce Order Management system displays on a single interface. Order summaries are where you can find answers to:

Who placed the order and when?
The attributes of an order (color, quantities, prices)
What items are canceled or returned?
Where and how are these items being shipped?
The payment captured from the orders shipped
The payment that is refunded to the customer and more

#3: Automating order fulfillment process via Flow Builder

The ultimate goal of an order management system is to ensure accurate and timely order fulfillment. It is a make or break aspect for your business. You need to consistently deliver what you promised, at the exact price, in the exact timeline. If it doesn’t happen, you need to track every order and delivery. When using disparate systems for capturing orders, collecting payments, shipping orders, etc., it makes your system vulnerable to errors and mishaps, ultimately driving down customer satisfaction.

However, with Salesforce Lightning Order Management, you can use Flow Builder to efficiently and quickly move products from one location to another. It allows you to create visual representation of the entire order from start to finish.

Of course, SOM helps you with pre-built flows, which you can modify as per your processes and requirements. These automated flows are easily customizable in a drag-and-drop manner. The order management process in Salesforce via the Flow Builder, allows you to keep track of where you order is in the fulfillment process, even add commands for creating separate fulfillment orders for when products can’t be shipped together, dynamically update order summaries using details from each fulfillment order, etc.

As for the payment processing methods, you can configure providers, processes, and options for your eCommerce site and integrate them to your fulfillment flow. Salesforce Lightning Order Management system also creates a payment summary for each order, uses invoices and credit memos to reconcile payment transactions, and captures all data exchange between your payment platform and external gateways.

#4: Distributed Order Management (DOM)

While order fulfillment is essential for business success and growth, brands today need to do more than the usual. You need to offer a seamless order experience both online and offline, which you can accomplish with distributed order management (DOM).

Salesforce Order Management’s DOM optimizes order fulfillment to ensure faster and cost-effective deliveries throughout the service locations. You can use its automation capabilities to identify fulfillment locations that can easily handle order requirements and then reserve those routes. This improves order efficiency and boosts customer satisfaction by expediting order delivery in a reduced number of shipments.

Salesforce Order Management already contains a pre-built DOM package that includes all the custom objects, apex classes and custom fields for both physical and online stores. Of course, you can modify the package components depending on your requirements and business logic and even implement fulfillment options like BOPIS. This customization of distributed order management along with functionalities like ‘find routes with fewest splits’ and ‘proximity-based routing’ in Salesforce Lightning Order Management makes all the difference to your order fulfillment process.

#5: Integrated Salesforce B2C Commerce, B2B Commerce & Service Cloud

As mentioned before, Salesforce Order Management system is seamlessly integrated with B2C Commerce and natively supports B2B Commerce and Service Cloud. But what does it mean for your business?

For example, a customer connects with your customer support about an order query. Now, because critical order information is stored in different systems, it takes some time before your service agent can pull up the required details and help the customer. The more time a service agent takes, the more frustrated a customer becomes. However, your agents can speedily close customer requests if they have the Salesforce Order Management system is in place along with Service Cloud providing a holistic view to the support agents.

As SOM natively supports Service Cloud, your agents can gain a complete view of order information, customer details alike to your order management team. It means, agents no longer have to dive into external disparate systems to access order records since they can now do so from the Service Console. This approach not only is time efficient but saves your agents from unnecessary hassle.

But that’s not it, your service agents can now easily and speedily process returns, cancellations, discounts, refunds, reshipments, and similar order actions in the ‘Actions & Recommendations’ section of the Order Summary page. Of course, all such actions performed by your agents are simultaneously updated in the order summary tab.

For example, when an agent processes a return and immediately issues a refund, SOM automatically creates a change order, updates product status in the inventory, and creates a credit memo to match the refund with your financial system. That’s how fast Salesforce Order Management is!

Better order experiences leads to personalized customer experiences

With millions of online stores running globally, the modern eCommerce ecosystem is more competitive than ever. It is why, if you run a Salesforce Commerce Cloud-led online business, the Salesforce Order Management system is how you can cut through this clutter and boost your business value. Not to mention, you don’t have to spend time and money in integrating Salesforce Order Management to your SFCC store when compared to other order management systems being part of the Salesforce ecosystem, it will be the implementation of SOM that will be done per your business needs.

Gain a 360 degree view of your customers via SOM

Our certified Salesforce professionals can tell you how.

Embracing the changing retail landscape, Ranosys, a global Digital Consulting Firm, is set to redefine the traditional go-to-market strategy and reduce it by a significant margin with its innovative eCommerce accelerator, Phoenix, built ground-up on the leading-edge commerce solution, Salesforce Commerce Cloud.

Salesforce Commerce Cloud (SFCC), a Leader in Gartner 2021 Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce, places consumers at the heart of the eCommerce ecosystem, spectacularly personalises every customer engagement, offers a connected digital experiences across all touchpoints. Commerce Cloud from Salesforce leverages a headless commerce approach to grow sales, revenues and relationships with automation and AI, forging a single source of truth. From a customer’s and market’s perspective, Commerce Cloud leverages competitive features and functionalities and helps online retailers to conquer the digital vortex.

Digital retail is at the precipice of an exciting new adventure. There is a paradigm shift in how consumers used to shop a few years back vs now. This, combined with the ever-changing market dynamics, the launch of new tech every other day, and the rapidly evolving customer expectations make it tedious for online retailers and merchants to extend personalised shopping experiences to consumers that are quick, scalable, flexible, and agile.

“Phoenix is a retail-friendly solution that addresses all these pain points. It reduces time-to-market from Months to weeks, decreases operational costs, leverages several competitive integrations, and lowers total cost of ownership (TCO) monumentally. And, it does all this in just 4-6 weeks, while offering unrivalled performances, agility, and scalability. And then, Phoenix leverages all the competitive cloud-based SaaS features of Salesforce Commerce Cloud (SFCC), which places it at the forefront of retail disruption,” says Rameshwar Vyas, CEO of Ranosys.

In an omnichannel economy where brand experiences across channels have overpowered product features to become the real currency, a deal-breaker, several compelling features make Phoenix worthy of the gold status. Phoenix’s SFCC-led modular enterprise-grade architecture empowers digital retail to create new services across channels quickly and flexibly.

The confluence of functionalities like pre-coded design templates, mobile-first approach, multiple geography-specific payment and shipping integrations, AI-based product recommendations, active customer support services, and easy-to-customise UX themes allows retailers to address the blind spots in a customer’s omnichannel digital journeys and offer a consistent experience across multiple touchpoints.

The Salesforce Commerce Cloud accelerator, Phoenix, also provides ample room for customisation to empower eCommerce business owners with an ability to differentiate their offerings and stand apart from the competition. With SFCC-empowered Phoenix, a business can carve a niche for itself and advance on the path of enterprise-led growth.

About Ranosys

For more information, visit https://www.ranosys.com/

Or, fill the form and shoot us an email at sales@ranosys.com

At this point, you already know that the modern digital commerce ecosystem is driven by product experiences and not product quality. Your digital commerce system is a work in progress. It changes every second as per the market trends, consumer demands, and competitive scale. The actual administration of eCommerce requires constant attention and efforts. From online catalogs, product pricing, availability to order fulfillment, picking, packing, shipping, billing and collection, even follow-up to ensure customer satisfaction, all these steps, when properly implemented form a well-oiled fully-integrated eCommerce system.

And let’s not forget that today’s digital ecosystem is data-empowered. It is why it has become increasingly imperative to capture insights from customer interactions and learn the most you can about your customers, their perspective about your products, and the experiences they wish to receive. All this data will help you optimize your product design, promotional campaigns, customer experiences to improve sales, conversions and stay on top of the competition.

True that the entire digital experience encompasses many different touchpoints, but there are few must-have areas that customers want to access: product information and training, transaction history, product issues, order tracking and management, personalized product pricing, and inventory status. Optimizing these areas adds efficiency to your business processes, leads to higher customer satisfaction, and decreases time-to-purchase. And this is where integrated Commerce technology comes into play.

What is integrated commerce?

When an online merchant or retailer connects their eCommerce store to other third-party systems like ERP, POS, or CRM, it is called integrated commerce technology. Such integration with backend information system in eCommerce leads to a bidirectional flow of data and eliminates the need to enter the same information into each system individually.

To explain the integration in eCommerce, let’s consider an example. A business might have a physical store, an online retail website, a social store, a mobile store, etc., and an standalone ERP system to manage their orders and inventory. When you sell a product online or offline, the inventory has to be updated within the back-end ERP system to maintain order quantities. Without a fully-integrated eCommerce system, you would have to update the inventory count twice, first in the ERP system and then in the eCommerce platform to maintain the right count.

This system unification is one primary reason why complex businesses opt for efficient and seamless integrated commerce solutions in real-time.

Why does integrated commerce technology matter?

So, why should you invest time and money in fully-integrated eCommerce technology?

Because the seamless integration with backend information system in eCommerce fuels the customer journey and improves omnichannel sales numbers and experience. It is how you ensure that all your sales channels- browser websites, mobile apps, social stores, and brick and mortar stores provide a consistent, relatable, and connected shopping, purchasing, and integrated commerce experience to a customer.

In today’s competitive ecosystem, you don’t know where your customers could shop for your products. They might come to your online store via social ads or through Google listing or via some other eCommerce platform. It is why you need to be omnipresent. Your eCommerce store, regardless of its platform, cannot function alone. It must be merged with other supporting channels to effectively combine customer engagement, browsing, shopping, shipping, and return expeditions. In order to go truly omnichannel, you need a strong, fierce, and fully-integrated eCommerce solution that treats all your channels with equal efficiency.

And remember, the most successful eCommerce sites do more than simply offering impeccable physical and online shopping and buying experience. They deliver additional information, convenience, and choices to make it more pleasant and unique. Your eCommerce store is only the welcome sign for your business. To keep pace with customer satisfaction, you need a connected and combined integrated Commerce system.

The most common omnichannel commerce integrations

There are several integrated eCommerce technology types, the most popular ones being:

CRM: Customer Relationship Management

These integrations handle marketing and sales systems. It also includes tools for managing storefront activities and order and shipping systems. Integration with backend information system in eCommerce like CRM helps with:

Automatic data entry to eliminate manual errors
A 360-degree view of your customers across all breakpoints
Customer segmentation based on profile
Automated sales, revenue, and conversion tracking and reporting

ERP: Enterprise Resource Planning

ERP systems like SAP and NetSuite help with accounting, inventory, customer and order data management. Commerce integration with ERP platforms help with:

Automatic data entry that removes the need of manual data entry
Updating inventory and order details real-time
Personalized promotional activities based on a customer’s behavior and user profile
Order fulfillment and management made transparent
Automatic handling of increased demands on selling channels

PIM: Product Information Management

Such omnichannel commerce integrations help with marketing, sales, and data management. A fully-integrated eCommerce stack offers multitude of benefits like:

Easy management of all digital assets at one place
Connect dots between products and upselling
Organize data for different product types and demands

Other popular commerce integrations include eCommerce shipping integration, punch-out integrations, business intelligent systems, tax compliance systems, accounting systems, warehouse management systems, payment gateways, and marketing platforms.

Know more about the best integrations for your eCommerce store

The top 7 benefits of fully-integrated eCommerce system

Integration with backend information system in eCommerce offers a wealth of benefits that connects your physical and online stores and dramatically streamlines your online business for higher value. Integrated commerce technology not only supports your customer’s needs and market goals, but significantly boosts business growth.

The following are some benefits of integrated commerce solutions:

Benefit #1: Integrated commerce automates manual data entry

An fully-integrated eCommerce platform allows retailers and merchants to eliminate the manual and duplicated data entries. Since there is no need to input the same data into two different systems manually, the speed of data exchange increases astronomically. With data entered in a single integrated commerce system, any user can access and read this information, anywhere, any time, and from any device. Therefore, integration with backend information system in eCommerce reduces human involvement, manual errors, and redundant data entries.

Benefit #2: A fully-integrated eCommerce system streamlines operational processes

Cost-saving and efficiency has become critical for business sustainability. With commerce integration, you can easily automate back-end processes like online sales, inventory management, and order fulfillment. Moreover you empower customers to self-service their needs like order tracking, available inventory, delivery tracking, returns, etc. through omnichannel commerce integration. All such activities reduce operational costs and elevate customer satisfaction levels.

A seamless integration between your eCommerce platform (like Adobe Commerce, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, etc.) and an ERP system (like SAP and NetSuite) facilitates connection between the frontend and backend of your digital store, synchronizing every process- accounting, inventory, payment, shipping, and logistics to a single fully-integrated eCommerce system. It allows users to track every step of the process from any touchpoint and device, reducing order delays and ensuring timely deliveries.

Benefit #3: Easy inventory control with synchronized and speedy updates

When changes to an un-integrated eCommerce store are to be made manually, it becomes a time-consuming and tedious process. A rapid sync between every part of your integrated commerce system allows for timely updates and inventory control through bi-directional flow of information. Customer records can be updated instantly, which means if a customer cancels an order before its processed, the inventory data can be adjusted immediately, and the logistics team can be informed before the order is dispatched.

Benefit #4: Enhance omnichannel customer experience

A happy customer is an asset for a business, which is why omnichannel eCommerce integration becomes imperative. An integrated commerce system maintains up-to-date information of product inventory, price, quantity across several warehouses, available variations, etc. It also allows real-time order tracking, boosting customer satisfaction standards and fulfilling expectations speedily and seamlessly.

A fully-Integrated eCommerce system, especially when using an AI-personalized platform like SFCC, can provide real-time suggestions and recommendations based on a customer’s order history throughout their journeys. Even with marketing campaigns like online ads, emails, etc., with integrated commerce technology, you can adjust activities based on user location and profile.

Benefit #5: Improved after-sales customer service

With a single unified, easily accessible, and fully-integrated eCommerce system, you can handle and solve issues that might arise during a customer’s journey. With an integrated commerce-CRM unit, you can manage RMA requests and other after-sales services. All in all, omnichannel eCommerce integration allows you to service customer needs quickly and efficiently while reducing the stress that comes from the need of ensuring positive post-sales customer engagement.

Benefit #6: The power of data-driven business functions

Undeniably, customer data is a goldmine for commerce brands. However, to gain insights from this raw data, you need to ensure its safety, easy mining through multiple applications, and seamless implementation to existing operations. With a fully-integrated eCommerce system, you can easily study all kinds of data- financial data, consumer data, product data, inventory data and make intelligent and future-driven business decisions faster. Integrated commerce technology boosts your business’ productivity more than you can imagine via data adoption and automation.

Benefit #7: Resolve product and order-based issues via a fully-integrated eCommerce system

Another added advantage of a fully-integrated eCommerce platform is its ability to add issues cases to the order. This saves the customer service reps from the hassle and time associated with having to call the customer in case of service request. Instead, they can view the case in a minute by logging in their account and connecting the use case to the right order. This helps them gain a holistic 360-degree view of all your relevant customer and product information, increasing process efficiency and saving time.

Challenges to an fully-integrated commerce network

Your website functions as a conduit between your brand and your customers. Products, services, and solutions that add value to your customers’ online journey and omnichannel experience always grab the front seat. And a fully-integrated eCommerce platform is one way to ensure that all your actions point to the right direction, the right customers, across the right breakpoints and devices, at the right time.

However, the urgent necessity of an integrated commerce platform prefaces in its successful implementation. Oftentimes, stakeholders overlook the need to integrate their eCommerce platforms with ERP/CRM/PIM/etc. systems because of the cost or the concern that altering their existing legacy systems might disrupt current productivity and performance.

To create a well-oiled commerce integration network, there are a few obstacles that retailers must overcome. These include:

Challenge #1: Understanding the omnichannel commerce integration requirements

A big obstacle that companies encounter when trying to centralize their commerce integration platform is being unsure about how to begin. The process can become overwhelming when you don’t understand the requirements for a fully-integrated eCommerce system. The concern also lies with data migration that might result in errors, security threats, or the risk of losing valuable data.

Therefore, to counter such problems, companies must create an internal strategy on what they’re trying to achieve with this commerce integration, what challenges they wish an integrated commerce technology to address, and which systems they are planning on integrating. They also must figure out the data synchronization procedures between the integrated commerce systems.

Challenge #2: The modernizing of legacy systems

Companies are concerned with updating their legacy systems because it might make them miss a few orders or customer requests. However, you forget that the current legacy technology does not provide holistic visibility of every order due to lack of an end-to-end commerce integration.

It is why you need a modern and fully-integrated eCommerce platform that consists of all the necessary tools and technologies to meet today’s demands and that of the foreseeable future. With a well-connected eCommerce integration network, you can migrate apps to the cloud, use data to drive meaningful insights, bring new partners and merchants on board, and keep a keen eye on every order initiated across any touchpoint.

Challenge #3: Lack of visibility and real-time business decisions

To make better business decisions faster, you need a transparent and unified integrated commerce system that takes into account customer behavior and purchase histories. By consolidating legacy eCommerce platforms, you can establish a centralized control over every data byte and gain end-to-end visibility about every single order. In terms of omnichannel commerce integrated, this unified view of all your orders across all touchpoints lead to enhanced business processes and higher profit margins.

Unlock digital transformation with a fully-integrated eCommerce system

Utilizing our years of experience and expertise, we’ve helped several clients integrate their eCommerce platforms like Adobe Commerce and Salesforce Commerce Cloud with ERP, CRM, & OMS, PIM systems through our eCommerce integration services. Our unique and award-winning approach removes data silos and manual data synchronization, helping our clients to deliver better results, spend less time managing their disparate systems, and gain a holistic view of all their orders across multiple intersection points.

Looking for eCommerce integration services?

We can help you integrate your digital store with any system

Retailers and merchants, not to their fault, are ingrained to treat every channel separately- web store, social store, retail outlet, mobile store, etc. In doing so, they implement procedures to delight customers one channel at a time. But that is not how today’s omnichannel ecosystem functions.

Customers today enjoy multiple ways to engage with brands ranging from traditional channels to the proliferating digital modes. And in doing so, they don’t necessarily care about the channel of their communication. All they want is a single, unified, cohesive and omnichannel customer experience that feels the same, irrespective of the channel. Your customers want the luxury to pick from anywhere, shop anywhere, buy from any channel, and return anywhere. In addition, they want the same product experience from information and images to reviews, shipping information and ‘See Similar’ tabs. They also want information about their orders at all times, accessible through all interaction points.

From product pages to shipping and return experience, brands failing to accomplish these customer expectations and offering omnichannel customer experience will have disastrous consequences. Research reveals that unsupportive omnichannel journeys and customer experiences result in 51% brand abandonment post one or two visits. 80% won’t ever place an order with you post a poor product experience. And 84% won’t initiate any more purchases after a poor delivery experience. That is the rage behind omnichannel customer experience and its necessity in today’s competitive digital ecosystem.

Long story short, the only way you can delight your customers, engage them in a memorable experience that leads to purchases in the near future, address rising market complexities and manage operational costs is via an omnichannel customer experience transformation.

But first, what is an omnichannel customer experience?

When a customer can interact with a brand through a set of a seamlessly integrated channels that caters to their buying journeys, and syncs up marketing, in-store, and customer support so that a customer can go from one channel to the other to complete their purchase or return and truly feel channel-less, it is called an omnichannel customer experience.

Regardless of the number of channels your brand employs to attract, engage, delight and retain customers, every touchpoint should be seamlessly connected to the next throughout the sales funnel and a buyer’s journey, from awareness to purchase, in perfect unison. It means customers can browse products in one store, buy them in the other, purchase them in the third and return them using the other channel, yet, feel no difference in the website, product, checkout, shipping and return experience.

Why does omnichannel customer experience matter?

With more than half of customers switching between 3-5 channels before making a purchase or resolving a request, brands need to be consistent to truly deliver omnichannel customer experiences. However, the truth is, companies, while trying to unify and improve customer experience, are unable to build a comprehensive omnichannel commerce platform.

In the absence of an omnichannel digital commerce system, your customers are fragmented and inconsistent. They are hesitant to close purchases as they believe that they can find a better deal online, maybe in-store or via a different distributor. All of such factors lead to more carts being abandoned, depleting profit margins, and decreasing customer loyalty. Therefore, to succeed, you need a fully integrated omnichannel customer experience that is clear, consistent, scalable and greater than the sum of its parts.

5 ways to improve your omnichannel customer experience

Now that you’re well-oiled as to the imperativeness and necessity of an omnichannel customer experience, the next step is delivering it across every interaction point. But how can you know whether your customers love your current omnichannel commerce platform or if you need to improve customer experience?

In order to truly go channel-less and deliver a consistent, cohesive, and consolidated experience, you need to evaluate your current omnichannel customer experience and prioritize opportunities to make it more memorable.

#1: Actively manage your inventory and product availability

Your products should be available at every interaction point, including both physical and digital touchpoints. However, when you’re selling on multiple platforms, managing a centralized inventory can be tedious more so if you store order and inventory data in multiple systems. Not only will that lead to conflicting datasets in different systems but an unsynchronized inventory data might lead to overselling or underselling.

To counter the situation, ensure that you display accurate product availability information across all channels- web, app, mobile, and in-store. Manage your platforms in such a way that a customer can browse a product on the social store, find the same on the website, browse consistent product information on the mobile store, and if need be, try it out in a local store.

Blur the lines between digital and physical storefronts by connecting all your platforms to a cohesive inventory management system that gives you a unified 360-view of your inventory, provides insights on best-selling products and top-performing channels, and makes product pages localized for customers from different regions.

#2: Ensure clear, consistent and accurate content across all channels

Today’s customers don’t just check your products at one channel, but several, which is why inconsistent product descriptions, prices, policies, and imagery might confuse them. Customers find it highly frustrating when the return policies are different on digital and physical channels. Or when they find something different when visiting one of the physical stores than on the digital platforms.

Therefore, delight your customers with the same product descriptions, high-quality images, price and discounts available, applicable checkout codes, shipping and return policies on all the channels. Moreover, regularly audit your channels to see if you’re offering a consistent omnichannel customer experience.

#3: Add flexibility across all your platforms

Customers don’t just want to wait around, they want an experience that is flexible, seamless, and well-integrated across multiple channels. Remember, you don’t sell products, you sell experiences, which is why you need to make them as flexible, reliable and engaging as possible. Flexibility in an omnichannel commerce platform include:

Flexibility in payment solutions: The more payment options, the better. You want to include credit cards, debit cards, e-wallets, PayPal and other preferred payment models to your customers. Moreover, you might want to offer localized payment solutions, depending on a customer’s behavior and preferences and a specific geography or region. But that is not it. Customers also want checkout experiences that combine promo codes, discounts, coupons, gift cards, payment installments, and credit/debit cards for a single order.
Flexibility in shipping & delivery: There is a sharp rise in BOPIS solutions where customers want to buy products online, but pick up in stores or warehouses. They want the luxury to choose between fast and free shipping while demanding the delivery of certain items in a single order earlier or at different addresses. Customers also don’t want to pay for shipping, which is a big contributor to cart abandonment rates.
Flexibility in product returns: A positive omnichannel customer experience is incomplete without flexible return policies. Over 66% of customers read the return policies of brands before placing an order. It is why customers comfortably buy multiple items since they can return a few. Moreover, customers also want the ability to buy products online and return them in store (this is a benefit for online retailers since they might browse through the store while on a trip to return products). Even in cases of free shipping, customers don’t want to pay charges for returns.

#4: Personalize brand-customer relationships

Personalization is another imperative wheel to your omnichannel customer experience with over 63% of customers demanding more personalized recommendations. Therefore, personalization should be a part of your entire digital commerce strategy. From sales emails to promotions, all activities must be based on your customer’s behavior, preferences, interests and demographics. Every stage of a buyer’s journey must be personalized so that it feels unique and distinctive. Even while creating ultra-personalized campaigns, it should only cater to a customer and not the entire population.

Before you feel overwhelmed, remember personalized omnichannel journeys and customer experiences are 10 times more appealing and valuable than generic ones.

#5: Clear, transparent and universally visible

Your customers are no longer satisfied with half-cooked information. They want clear and unambiguous product and order details before and after checkout. Empowering your customers with a 360-degree view allows them to view and track their orders, buying history, personal details, buying trends, overall spend, etc., at all times, across all touchpoints. They also want transparent and immediately available customer service to update them regarding their deliveries on mobile and desktop systems. In terms of data, they need details as to what you’re doing to keep their payment, order, shipping, etc., information secure. And they want all of this now.

Such a holistic product view across all channels assists customers to visualize their interactions with your brand, improving loyalty and trust quotients.

Omnichannel customer experience is the future

As an online retailer, you don’t prepare for short-term goals, you prepare for long-term successes. And the trick to achieving it is by taking the omnichannel way. Omnichannel customer experience is what your customers desire. It is the only way you can connect with your customers throughout their buying journeys, unify all your channels for consistency, and a lifetime’s worth of value to your customer’s purchases.

Our experts have vast experience in connecting the disjointed experiences of iconic brands and they can check the health of your eCommerce platform to evaluate whether you’re truly omnichannel or not. Book a free consultation and get ready to provide experiences that your customers will surely love.

Want a free checkup of your digital commerce channels?

We’re living in an era where everything around us is digital, nothing is too far away in virtual reality, and anything is achievable with a simple click. The world around us is as digital as it could get and we’re only bracing ourselves for more digital transformation in the future.

In the middle of it all, developers are bridging the gap between technology and users by building the right application at the right time. However, are the current application development practices enough? How can businesses meet the continuously evolving customer needs? Are our development platforms scalable enough to tackle the challenges of a growing customer base?

In this article, we discuss various essential features of modern applications and how a business can build the same with appropriate low-code development platforms like OutSystems and its latest proposition – Project Neo.

What makes scalability essential for modern applications?

The number of internet users is growing every day; it was reported that there are 4.9 billion internet users across the globe in January 2021. Easier access to smartphones and an influx in life-simplifying mobile applications have led an entire generation to depend upon digital technology for their everyday needs. This is what makes scalability so important- it enables applications to remain high-performing even when there’s unprecedented growth in their user base.

A sustainable business needs future-ready applications that can provide great user experiences at all times to as many users as possible. Scalability ensures the same! If an application is not built with scalability, it runs the risk of frequent downtime, slow speed, unsatisfactory customer experience, and delayed response to changing market trends. To sum it up, any business idea that has the potential to grow exponentially needs a highly scalable app to meet future needs.

This is where OutSystems comes in, building applications fast, right, and for the future. Let’s dive deeper into how OutSystems leverages low-code development technology to support modern application development at its best.

Why is OutSystems the preferred choice for modern application development?

Hailed as the world’s leading low-code development platform, OutSystems accelerates digital transformation, develops enterprise-grade applications, and enables legacy modernization at 3X speed. Powered by AI tools and a visually-driven development model, it drastically lowers the development time, enables automated deployment with a single click, and is designed to scale with evolving requirements. Here’s a quick look at how OutSystems has managed to revolutionize the digital ecosystem and boost modern application development with its one-of-a-kind features

High Agility: Modern business landscape is fast-moving and organizations must evolve rapidly or face the consequences. OutSystems helps businesses stay agile and up-to-date with rapid development, faster integration, and improved developer productivity.
Easy-to-train: OutSystems prevents project discontinuity due to employee churn as it’s an easy-to-learn platform with fully-evolved self-learning paths and a collaborative environment. As a result, your development teams can maintain continuity of the code without depending upon only certain developers.
Enterprise-grade security: OutSystems ensures that each upgrade is backed by the latest security features, every release is assessed for security vulnerabilities, and team members have role-based access to prevent security breaches.

But, is OutSystems enough?

Presently, over 14 million people use applications built on OutSystems and it continues to scale new heights with better features and upgrades. From building applications and websites to workplace modernization, OutSystems has its footprints in every aspect related to the digital economy.

However, does OutSystems encompass every characteristic to build modern applications? Can there be a better platform that could redefine the productivity and capabilities of development teams?

The answer is both yes and no. While OutSystems fulfills every requirement to speed up and enhance the application development process, there’s always room for a modern platform that could improve the overall productivity even more. Ironically, nobody understands this fact more than OutSystems and its team and this is why they have unveiled a next-generation platform that promises to be better and bigger.

To find out what it is, put on your reading glasses.

What is Project Neo?

“We are envisioning a world where 100 million developers are creating apps used by a billion people every day” – This is how Paulo Rosado, CEO at OutSystems, introduced Project Neo, the most ambitious technology platform launched in our history, at Next Step 2021.

A cloud-native platform that is all set to redefine developer experience and empower them with massive productivity, Project Neo will prove to be a game-changer in the world of low-code development technology. With Project Neo, organizations will be empowered to build cloud-native, internet-scale applications meant for millions of users without compromising on expressiveness and capability.

What are the fundamental goals of Project Neo by OutSystems?

In his keynote speech at Next Step 2021, Paulo mentioned that Project Neo reflects everything that Team OutSystems learned while working with its developer community and has been designed to fulfill three fundamental goals. These are –

#1: Achieve unrivalled performance

When you launch a cloud-native app in the market, you’re in direct competition with elite tech companies that are backed by teams bigger in both size and capabilities. Thus, they’re able to evolve faster and better. With Project Neo’s high productivity development and modern CI/CD practices, you will now be able to “deliver significant changes in hours, multiple times a day”. As a result, you will now be in the same league as the global tech giants without having to invest in huge teams, complex codes, and expensive platforms.

#2: Reduce cost associated with building scalable cloud applications

Building cloud applications that serve millions of users around the globe involve a considerable amount of risk and expense. Project Neo aims to reduce this cost and help you build scalable, enterprise-grade cloud applications with a simple-to-use low-code development platform that encourages citizen developers while providing best-in-class security and functionalities.

#3: Automate cloud application updates with minimal impact

Project Neo is an evergreen platform where you won’t have to pause your development process or tie your development team in cloud application upgrades just to deploy updates. Due to its state-of-the-art infrastructure, all the upgrades will be automated without having any impact on the performance or the speed of development.

What are the benefits of Project Neo by OutSystems?

“On average, teams today have to deal with 10 times more code and complexity than just 10 years ago”, said Gonçalo Gaiolas, VP of Product Management at OutSystems, as he discussed Project Neo at length in the keynote speech. The core of OutSystems has always been about simplifying software development and accelerating its speed without increasing any technical debt.

Project Neo, too, is an extension of this purpose with next-gen tech to combat the challenges of our future digital landscape. Here’s a glance at how Project Neo aims to benefit development teams –

#1: 100X developer productivity

As per experts at OutSystems, working with Project Neo will make you feel as if you’ve added 1000 talented developers to your team! Needless to say, it mainly aims to strengthen development teams with massive productivity irrespective of their size and skill set. With automated updates and applications that auto-scale to millions, developers are free to innovate and respond to changes without having to worry about routine aspects of application development.

Be it managing an advanced cloud application runtime and resolving code dependencies to performing regression tests, Project Neo executes every critical but undifferentiated activity so that your developers can focus on innovation and productivity.

#2: State-of-the-art CI/CD practices

Continuous integration, development, and deployment are an integral part of the modern application development process and are often what makes or breaks the delivery quality.

Project Neo takes care of these with a state-of-the-art architecture that automates DevOps and CI/CD practices so that your cloud-first applications are highly secure and always up-to-date. Consequently, the apps already in production have a smooth sailing and those that have been launched register absolutely no impact on their performance.

#3: Modern cloud-first architecture

As we mentioned earlier, Project Neo puts every development team in the list of elite cloud-native companies barring the expense and expertise involved. The platform is built on a sophisticated architecture that is massively scalable, highly secure, and always up-to-date with cloud upgrades.

Where to from here?

In today’s digital economy, ideas are the real assets; and, if technology cannot help the right ideas flourish at the right time with the right scale, then, how does it serve its purpose?

Project Neo was conceived with this aforementioned thought of empowering digital disruptors to innovate freely and without the constraints of complex development practices. With Project Neo by OutSystems, even citizen developers can bring their idea alive and compete with elite cloud-first development teams. It not only leverages low-code development technology efficiently but goes one step further by incorporating cloud-native technology and automated DevOps practices.

Already in use by its first set of users, it is ready to be launched in 2022 and revamp the way low-code development platforms operate. Until then, let’s wait and prepare for delivering serious productivity for serious apps!

Digital innovation is NOW.

Ranosys, a global digital agency, known for its client-centric and competitive digital commerce solutions, has launched Osprey, the MACH-based, commercetools accelerator for global retailers.

According to its release, the value proposition of Osprey by Ranosys is to accelerate the go-to-market process from months to 6-8 weeks, minimize the risks and challenges involved, and launch a robust, open, flexible eCommerce architecture for the future.

“Today’s digital economy is more driven towards product experiences than product features. More than ever before, online retailers desire commerce solutions that reduce their time-to-market, leverage the new-age technologies such as microservices, APIs, the cloud, and headless architecture to create differentiated omnichannel experiences, and lower the total cost of ownership. And Osprey triumphantly accomplishes all such propositions and more,” says Rameshwar Vyas, CEO, Ranosys.

Undeniably, the modern digital economy is governed by brand experiences as a true differentiator. Built exclusively by Ranosys’ experts on top of the world’s leading MACH-led experience-first platform, commercetools, Osprey is a quick-to-market solution that covers 90% of B2B and B2C retail needs with its ready-to-use functionalities and ensures seamless, agile, scalable, and flexible customizations for the rest. Its pre-coded cartridges, multiple third-party backend integrations, and several pre-built customized storefront themes empower retailers to launch personalized eCommerce shops in 6-8 weeks with rich features, on a low budget, all without sacrificing on quality.

Loaded with features such as smart analytics to gain intelligent business insights about consumer behaviour, pre-packed integrations with ERP, CMS, MarTech, PIM, and more, standardized APIs, business vertical optimization, popular region-specific payment and shipping integrations, pre-embedded customer support, mobile-first approach amongst a few, Osprey is powered with all the rich and in-demand digital commerce functionalities desired by retailers to design world-class and cost-effective digital experiences to their shoppers. Furthermore, Osprey leverages all the best-of-the-breed technologies like microservices, APIs, the cloud-native and headless infrastructure of commercetools, which further iterates its promising potential.

As a Global commercetools Implementation Partner, Ranosys continuously strives for cutting-edge innovation that addresses the prevalent market challenges, lowers operational risks, and offers rich, affordable, and retail-ready solutions that ensure business growth and success.

The addition of Osprey built ground-up on the commercetools platform validates their commitment towards their clients and the global digital commerce community to develop a unified business model, ensure peak retail performance at all times, and enhance digital experiences. In a time when continuous retail disruption is the new retail apocalypse, Osprey helps online retailers, old and new, to stay ahead of the curve and catapult immersive brand experiences for the future.

About Ranosys

For more information, visit https://www.ranosys.com/

Or, fill the form and shoot us an email at sales@ranosys.com

About commercetools

commercetools is the world’s leading enterprise feature-rich eCommerce platform based on the MACH (Microservices, API, Cloud, and Headless) approach that empowers brands to create omnichannel, scalable, and engaging commerce experiences across all touchpoints. Named as Leader in 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce, commercetools leverages all the modern and much-needed functionalities to truly build immersive experiences scaled to the future. Know more about our commercetools offerings here.

Ranosys, a global digital consulting agency, has decided to migrate its corporate website to Adobe Experience Manager, a breakthrough platform that combines digital asset management with the power of a content management system in a single place.

“In today’s experience-driven digital landscape, it is imperative to consistently create multichannel user experiences that are responsive, automated, and personalized. Adobe Experience Manager assures all of these with its AI-backed, content-led mechanism,”, says Rameshwar Vyas, CEO of Ranosys. “We have been leveraging Adobe and its capabilities to deliver futuristic solutions for our clients since the beginning. This step of adopting Adobe Experience Manager, both as a platform for our website and as a service offering, further adds to our growing Adobe practice”, he continued.

Having been recognized as the “Delivery Quality Solution Partner of the Year” in 2020, Ranosys has constantly been making waves in the industry as a specialized Adobe agency. Over the years, Ranosys has successfully leveraged Adobe Commerce and Marketo in curating customer-centric solutions that help brands differentiate their propositions in the competitive digital-first world. With Adobe Experience Manager as a major delivery capability, it now aims to strengthen its resolve to provide comprehensive digital asset and content management service to its clients across the globe.

During a time when Ranosys is aggressively expanding global-wide, moving its own corporate online network to Adobe Experience Manager will help them build brand-differentiating solutions and deliver experiences that focus on quality and value throughout the customer journey.

About Ranosys

For more information, visit https://www.ranosys.com/

Or, fill the form and shoot us an email at sales@ranosys.com

About Adobe Experience Manager

Adobe Experience Manager is a comprehensive enterprise content management solution for building websites, mobile apps, and forms. A product of Adobe Experience Cloud, it includes the nuances of the content management system and digital asset management. Its rich features and seamless integration have made it one of the most popular CMS platforms globally.

In the era of digital workplaces, SharePoint intranet continues to persist, evolve, and be beneficial for the modern employees. Described usually as a team collaboration and document management platform, Microsoft SharePoint has gone through many updates to become the AI-powered intranet of today.

At present, the global work culture depends entirely on digital tools, seamless communication, and collaboration methodologies. SharePoint intranet not only lives up to these expectations but also creates a unified portal for your employees – almost like a social network for your internal purpose.

However, the functionalities of SharePoint are not limited to that! Over the years, it has also played the role of an enterprise content management system (ECM), workflow automation tool, and knowledge management platform.

In this blog, we discuss its value proposition and how it has evolved to stay relevant and impactful in today’s modern workplaces.

Features of SharePoint intranet that make it click in the digital world

Since it was launched in 2001, SharePoint has managed to win several followers and critiques along its journey. However, the SharePoint intranet portal benefits outweigh the disapproval, and we have facts to support this statement!

A report by Microsoft concluded that over 250,000 organisations and more than 85% of Fortune 500 companies leverage SharePoint in their workplace. Some significant SharePoint intranet examples are its adoption by companies like Nestle Nutrition Institute, Viacom, and Petronas. Moreover, it has more than 100 million active users and continues to grow despite increasing competition every day.

While many collaboration tools have emerged in recent years, no other platform has matched up to the comprehensive functionalities that SharePoint intranet offers. Let’s explore some of its features that set it apart and help it grow amongst changing times and demands.

A perfect fit for any deployment needs:

There are two ways of implementing SharePoint in your organisation – on-premise and SharePoint Online. Both of them offer unique advantages but lately, SharePoint online is getting more popular for obvious reasons.

It’s a known fact that remote work is on the rise; studies suggest that 70% of the US workforce work remotely every week, and this trend will not subside in the future. SharePoint online is lightweight, reasonably priced, and managed by Microsoft – all these qualities make it ideal for remote teams that require top-notch functionality and flexibility at the same time.

In fact, SharePoint hybrid offers organisations the dual advantage of an on-premise environment and online functionality. It came in handy during the pandemic when many organisations had to go remote overnight. And it continues to be useful as more and more firms embrace hybrid work cultures across the globe.

Become a pro at SharePoint Implementation

Here is an exclusive SharePoint Implementation Checklist for you.

SharePoint intranet is adaptable with different teams:

Modern organisations are not monolithic. Several teams work together to chase a single goal, and often, their needs cannot be met with a universal tool. For example – your core project teams might be in greater need of collaboration while the HR department requires a bulletin to make announcements and share updates.

Thankfully, the MS SharePoint intranet can fulfill all these distinct requirements with the ability to create a variety of SharePoint sites. To begin with, a team site helps people collaborate from anywhere in the world, and communication sites work as a one-way portal where a department can share important information with the rest of the organisation.

Not to forget, these are just a few examples of SharePoint sites. Building an intranet site with SharePoint opens up various doors for organisations to collaborate, share, and manage intellectual and human resources.

Mobile-optimized to work on-the-go:

Modern organisational structure is digital – your physical presence is not mandatory at all times as long as your work can reach you via mobile. Hence, it is vital for modern intranet, or any other workplace technology for that matter, to be mobile-optimized.

Providing mobile access to organisational resources and information, however, is not an easy decision. Most tools come with limited mobile functionality, and even if they promise it, data security remains a significant bottleneck in most of them.

On the other hand, with the SharePoint intranet, you can always leverage its ready-to-use Android or iOS apps without having to worry about security breaches or performance issues. As a result, organisations don’t have to develop a separate mobile app and rely on their existing SharePoint intranet to build a truly digital workspace.

Highly secure SharePoint intranet:

There’s no doubt that the digital work culture has ushered in a lot of flexibility and breathing space, but it has also made room for data security breaches and cyberattacks. Especially now that remote work is a norm, personal devices of employees increase the vulnerability manifold.

Sharepoint, luckily, empowers organisations with a multi-level data protection strategy that covers internal communication, user profiles, and organisational content. Backed by powerful security features, it enables creating an intranet site with SharePoint, a collaborative, highly secure, and easily-to-manage experience.

With SharePoint, your team can be in complete control of user activities, content sharing, and deployment without having to depend on third-party security tools.

Powered by AI:

At their core, all modern workplaces are data-driven; thus, it is crucial to work with technology that leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning to turn data into actionable insights. SharePoint not only comes equipped with built-in AI functionality but also allows seamless integration with third-party AI solutions of your choice.

With SharePoint, organisations can dig deeper into distributed content in a few minutes, segregate essential information with metadata, and rely on intelligent algorithms to match them with the information they need.

Multi-functionality and scalability:

Today, an organisation needs much more than collaboration and communication tools. And SharePoint has evolved with these requirements – with its built-in workflows that cover hundreds of business scenarios; you can introduce process automation with a few clicks. Similarly, you can leverage separate libraries for knowledge management, allow co-editing and user control of documents, and share information effortlessly.

What makes SharePoint intranet even more dependable is its high scalability. For example, if you’re planning to scale up, you can subscribe to an advanced level or move to the basic version if scaling down is on your mind.

Empowering digital workplaces with SharePoint intranet

Introduced as a tool to support internal communication and collaboration, SharePoint intranet has literally grown up to be a fully functional enterprise management system that provides data-driven insights, business automation, task management, and performance monitoring.

On top of it, it is a part of the Office 365 suite, which makes it most compatible with all Microsoft tools along with a plethora of third-party software. All you need to do to derive maximum benefits is understand your business requirements and tailor SharePoint accordingly.

Looking for custom SharePoint implementation?

Our certified experts can help you achieve this feat.

During the initial eCommerce wave, when brands went online for the first time, they adopted a traditional one-size-fits-all commerce platform that accomplished most of their business needs, offered basic capabilities, and could provide standardized experiences. This served them well for a few decades due to lack of competition, fewer online shoppers, and limited internet penetration.

Fast forward to the 21st century, these platforms no longer satiate market demands or offer experiences that modern customers desire. The truth is, traditional eCommerce platforms were not developed to handle the modern digital touchpoints or the ever-changing customer expectations. However, with the steady rise of digital commerce as a primary sales channel, traditional eCommerce platforms crumple under the increasing innovation pressure and the absolute necessity of offering engaging digital experiences in an already saturated online market. So, what must brands, retailers, or merchants do?

Modern digital commerce is driven by innovation and dynamism. Instead of fitting business requirements to a commerce architecture, brands are now focusing on the otherwise. And composable commerce helps explore this avenue.

Composable commerce is the next-gen eCommerce technology gaining tremendous prominence in the online market. It enables brands to bring their unique ideas to life by continuously optimizing eCommerce experiences leveraging modern technologies and approaches like MACH (Microservices, API, Cloud, Headless) and JAMstack (JavaScript, APIs, and Markup). It is not just your answer to ever-changing customer demands and market dynamics but how to become a comprehensive composable enterprise of tomorrow today. In this blog, we discuss if composable commerce is the eCommerce architecture we all need and answer the inevitable question- ‘Is your enterprise ready for a composable solution or not?’

What is composable commerce?

Composable commerce functions on the choose-pick-assemble strategy. It allows online retailers to compose an eCommerce architecture using their preferred best-of-the-breed commerce solutions. The key strength of composable commerce lies in prioritizing business needs of a retailer before that of the eCommerce platform capabilities, which diverges a retailer’s focus on things that truly matters: product experiences over product quality. The basic tenets of composable commerce include:

Open, Scalable & Flexible: Retailers no longer have to rely on one technology architecture. Instead, they can break down those barriers, assemble only those features and functionalities that suit their business needs, and enhance its adaptability to suit the market trends.
Experience-driven: Deliver shopping experiences that your customers desire with strategies and business models that don’t rely heavily on IT.
Modular architecture: Compose an eCommerce store that supports faster time-to-market, seamless team collaboration, agile delivery, and better experiences across all breakpoints.

Why do you need a composable architecture?

Gartner predicts that by 2023, organizations that have adopted a composable approach will outpace competition by 80%. The future of commerce lies in the experiences created. Of course, you understand this, but why take the composable approach? Why must you consider composable commerce when you’re fine with your current eCommerce platform? Is a composable architecture that big of a differentiator for retailers in the near future?

Reason#1: Take a step towards digital transformation to ensure future relevance

The new-age of commerce solutions don’t just cater to shoppers on laptops and smartphones, but smart devices like car displays, smart watches, AR/VR headsets, smart home appliances, etc. Retailers cannot offer connected experiences to a whole slew of new devices while being stuck on their legacy eCommerce platforms from the dot-com time that were never created to support all the modern breakpoints.

With composable commerce’s decoupled frontend and backend, you can manage and maintain eCommerce experiences that take all sales channels into consideration. They support your modern customers needs and in case you want to upgrade your eCommerce suite, you can simply deploy a new suitable frontend across the new breakpoint. You can easily shift blocks around, add, change, or modify blocks as per the customer demands and market trends.

Reason #2: Maintain a steady pace with the evolving customer demands

Customers today experience the best of technology there is to offer. It is why their expectations have been raised to an unbelievable level. They want to have a consistent, engaging, and memorable experience across all the touchpoints. They want to be able to browse products across different sales points, track their orders from any device, and update their information from any breakpoint.

Composable commerce allows you to create your unique brand experience from scratch one that quickly and flexibly responds to new customer expectations and is easily integrated to popular third-party systems to offer elevated commerce solutions. Instead of waiting months and weeks to update your eCommerce stores as per the customer requirements, you can do so in days and weeks, which helps you keep pace with your market.

Reason #3: Customized and easily modified digital commerce interfaces

Monoliths, at the time of their inception, were designed to help businesses simply go online. They were not designed to help you customize your commerce solutions to the specifics of your business. Retailers were to rely on a pre-set assortment of components that could fulfill most but not all of their business requirements. Flexibility was a far-fetched idea and scalability was never in the books. But today’s modern era cannot suffice to such limited functionalities.

And this is where composable commerce fits right in. Unlike the restricted monoliths solutions, composable architectures allow you to customize your eCommerce systems to the exact needs of your business. You can tailor it to include all the features you want, modify blocks that don’t work for you anymore, or change the frontend template of any sales touchpoint you want. This experience-driven solution not only allows you to transform faster, but without compromising on either your business’ USP or your consumer numbers.

Reason #4: Better ROIs from your commerce stack

With composable commerce, you can calculate ROIs in three different areas:

Total cost of ownership (TCO): Unlike monoliths that charge for the full package including even those features that you don’t use or make no sense for your business, composable systems employ the pay-per-use pricing norms. It means you only have to pay for commerce solutions that you use, which you can easily change as per your requirements. It allows businesses to deliver impressive experiences at substantially lower costs.
Higher revenues: With lower cost-to-market, faster time-to-market, and better flexibility, composable commerce allows businesses to easily modify, add, or scale their commerce system based on the ongoing events, trends or new business models. It includes attributes like GMV (gross market value), conversion rates, and launching stores in new markets or on new channels.
Reduced maintenance costs: A composable architecture is easy to launch, upgrade, maintain and modify. It means you spend less time solving fixes in deployments and more time on figuring out the right features and functionalities for your store. Moreover, the composable approach allows you to pinpoint the root cause of problems more quickly by testing attributes in isolation, for instance, testing shipping experiences for optimal results. So, instead of testing the entire end-to-end eCommerce solution, you can simply test a specific feature in isolation and fix it within no time.

Is my brand ready to build a composable commerce stack?

As a retailer, all you want is an digital commerce stack that:

Serves your customers the way they want to be served
Ensure the future-readiness of your eCommerce infrastructure
Scales up and down easily as per demands

And it is possible that your eCommerce stack in use right now is able to deliver all these propositions to you. But, when you consider things from a future-driven perspective, everything changes. In the future, you don’t need a one-for-all your needs commerce solutions to pick all those solutions that work for your business and assemble them into one unified commerce suite. If you’re brainstorming whether a composable architecture is the right fit for your business, here are key quantifiers to focus on:

Migration complexity:

When thinking of implementing any new business mode, time-to-market is the key. Forming the right strategy makes all the difference between endless cycles of optimization and quick and effortless migration. Expert advice from companies who partner with companies like commercetools that offer such solutions can help set your business up for success.

Price:

You need to identify the cost-to-market for a full-replatforming of your eCommerce architecture. Although composable commerce isn’t as expensive as your legacy commerce suites, you need to account for the efforts needed and your business’ affordability into consideration. Obviously, the right eCommerce partner like our experts can help you minimize these costs and do all the legwork for you.

Omnichannel or multichannel selling capabilities:

A composable architecture is most profitable for brands that sell on multiple platforms (in-store, mobile, online, social media, upselling via customer support, etc). As a modern brand, you of course target the maximum sales channels you can get your hands on, which is why composable commerce is definitely worth the consideration.

Digital Maturity:

Tech-by-tech: where you replace individual systems like the CMS or any section of your commerce system
Rip-and-replace: where you rip apart your old monolithic platform entirely and replace it with composable elements
Regional or vertical: where you can change a few sections and test these new features in test markets before launching them across your entire system
Composable commerce allows you the flexibility to choose the approach that works best for your business. But, before you implement any such approach, you must consider your team’s capabilities and your business’ plans for the future. You can always approach leading digital commerce companies that have successful partnerships with futuristic platforms.

Composing unique brand experiences scaled for the future

The best part about composable commerce is that you can easily begin with it and scale it to anywhere you want. Or, you can quickly migrate from your existing eCommerce suite to a composable architecture within no time. A composable architecture gives you the freedom to choose the best for your business and invest in only those limited solutions that you know will work for you. And if something doesn’t work, you can simply remove and replace it with a better feature/functionality.

And if you’re not sure whether or not you need a composable build, our trusted experts can help you with this confusion. They have assisted several brands to transition to a composable system, customized to their specific needs and can do the same for you.

Experience-led composable commerce is the future.

As an Adobe, SFCC, & commercetools Partner, we can help you make the right move.

Salesforce Einstein has proven to be one of the most beneficial AI-powered tools in recent times. As a part of Salesforce Commerce Cloud, it has empowered many eCommerce retailers with intelligent insights and hyper-personalization.

Thus, in this blog, we explore its implementation and impact on creating a personal shopping experience for your customers across the board.

What is Salesforce Einstein?

As part of the Salesforce 2017 spring release, Einstein is Salesforce’s homegrown AI tool available with its core cloud products. It uses predictive analytics, natural language processing(NLP), and machine learning to extract actionable insights from data.

According to Salesforce, Einstein stands apart from other tools because of these features –

- It’s a data-ready model that doesn’t require any prior data preparation.
- It comprises the power of automated machine learning that fits every unique business model on its own.
- Einstein is production-ready, which means that it comes embedded with your chosen Salesforce product. As a result, you don’t have to worry about hiring heavy-duty AI scientists.

Salesforce can transform every aspect of your business!

From the time it was released, Salesforce Einstein’s implementation has transformed the business of its users’ with the amalgamation of deep learning and AI-powered analytics into their business.

Naturally, Salesforce Commerce Cloud is no different.

Combined with the power of AI and deep analytics, it has introduced eCommerce personalization and personal shopping experiences across its client base.

In fact, it has gone ahead and simplified the implementation of AI into commerce with ease.

So, without further ado, let’s have a look at how Salesforce Einstein has reinvented the way Salesforce eCommerce works.

Creating personalised shopping experiences with Salesforce Einstein

Stonewall Kitchen is a well-known specialty food company in the United States. In addition to its strong network of 10 retail stores and over 6,000 wholesale accounts in 42 countries, it also has a flourishing eCommerce business.

As a result of including Commerce Cloud and Salesforce Einstein in its global eCommerce strategy, it has also delivered a consistent, personalised experience to its customers.

In fact, its exclusive data suggests that 78% of shoppers added the personally recommended items to their cart, and 41% of them purchased them.

In other words, Salesforce Einstein implementation, along with Commerce Cloud, can turn around digital commerce experiences with AI-powered strategies.

Let’s find out how you can implement them into your business.

Introduce hyper-personalization with Salesforce Einstein product recommendation

Don’t we all love the way our Netflix account seems like a projection of our personalities? Every recommended show is from the exact genres we enjoy.

Moreover, even the search bar seems to know what shows we might be looking for!

This is the power of AI and personalised journeys. With Einstein’s product recommendation, you can introduce the same level of personalization to your site visitors.

Salesforce Einstein ensures that all your site visitors encounter a personalised customer experience – be it a guest or a signed-in user.

Furthermore, it collects customer data through order histories and live customer clickstream to only offer those product suggestions that a customer is more likely to buy.

In addition to it, your merchandisers, too, end up saving time by eliminating the need for manual merchandising of every individual page.

Let your customer find their desired products quicker with Einstein predictive sort

Amazon is a treasure trove of all kinds of products. And, it always understands what you’re looking for even if you’ve typed it out wrong.

What we don’t realize, however, is that it is also a classic example of how AI-backed predictive sorting can boost conversion and revenue.

When you don’t have to dig for your desired products, you end up purchasing them quicker than ever.

Thankfully, Salesforce Einstein empowers Commerce Cloud merchants to embed similar mechanisms in their business.

With Einstein’s predictive sort, you can stop the guessing game and enable customers to find what they want at a faster speed.

Fun fact: Einstein predictive sort is known to have resulted in 3.8X conversion and 9.1X revenue.

Make data-driven merchandising decisions with Salesforce Einstein commerce insights

Online eCommerce can not sustain on a hit-and-trial basis. After a point, your team needs to determine what products are selling and what categories need an overhaul.

While figuring this out manually may take weeks or months, Einstein commerce insights can make it simple and AI-powered.

More importantly, it empowers merchandisers to deep dive into the purchasing behaviour of customers with easy visual tools and an intuitive dashboard.

Consequently, it helps in better planning of merchandising activities; your team would know what product is popular, what can be put under “co-product” categories to promote cross-selling, etc.

In fact, this knowledge also helps in enhancing the online shopping experience with targeted recommendations and relevant suggestions.

Improve products each with Einstein Search Dictionaries and Search Recommendation

So, your online clothing store is ready, and you’ve put in all your efforts to enhance the user experience. Except one of your visitors wants to check out a “fuchsia” dress, and your algorithm doesn’t understand it.

Enter Einstein Search Dictionaries – this AI-enabled tool will look onto the entire web, add “fuchsia” as a synonym for “pink,” and help customers reach their desired product.

Similarly, Einstein Search Recommendation leverages machine learning to enable a type-ahead search mechanism based on users’ past behaviour. Furthermore, it also takes care of trending searches, phrase suggestions, and personalised searches.

Wield the power of Salesforce Einstein to boost eCommerce sales

In the last few years, eCommerce personalization has become a synonym for attention in the online industry.

Your customers want to be seen, heard, and cared for. Above all, they want to be the center of your universe.

And, what’s fun is that you can make it happen for each of them with the help of AI and ML.

However, many online retailers shy away from incorporating these technologies because of the heavy tech involved.

Salesforce Einstein, on the contrary, entirely does away with manual integration and complex coding.

Moreover, it comes embedded with the fabric of every Salesforce product – including Commerce Cloud. You don’t need an expert or a specialized team; Salesforce Commerce Cloud can turn your customer data into AI-backed insights in no time.

So, if you have been looking for ways to include AI in your eCommerce business, we recommend Commerce Cloud infused with the power of Salesforce Einstein.

Wondering what else Salesforce Commerce Cloud can offer?

Researchers tell us that the logistics and transportation industry has always lagged behind the curve when it comes to transport and logistics digitization and innovation as compared to other industrial genres. The $300 billion and counting industry has experienced challenges related to agility, visibility and sustainability. These combined with the pandemic-driven digital transformation has made it important for logistics companies to respond to the change, fast via digitization in transport, supply chain management and logistics.

If they need to exist in business, they need to digitize their operations, adopt digital technologies in logistics, explore the digital trends in logistics, and offer seamless and well-connected digital solutions for logistics to their customers.

The challenges faced by the transport and logistics market

Over the past year and so, the transport and logistics industry took a heavy blow, just like all its peers. With stalled product movement, fewer invoices to raise, and the increasing pressure to move online, the industry suddenly found itself surrounded by changes, challenges, and expectations. Most of these challenges were related to the lack of a reliable and modern logistics digital platform, which made it difficult for leaders to time and cost effectiveness of their operations. These challenges were:

Challenge #1: Siloed and unintegrated transport and logistics operations

With the digitally-driven buy-and-sell ecosystem comes the increasing dependence on supply chain, transportation and logistics industry to fulfill the order demands, move product quickly across boundaries, and do so at affordable costs. This poses a challenge for professionals who, without digital solutions for logistics, were already finding it hard to consolidate and centralize the logistics and transportation industry. Now with the global trade into picture, the already siloed and manually-led operations present a competitive threat to the companies who aren’t dedicating efforts to break them down, opt for transport and logistics digitization of operations, and add flexibility to their models.

Challenge #2: Too much data, too little knowledge to effectively use it

The industry generates and maintains surmounting amounts of data and information, especially with current trade expansion in picture. However, accessing this information becomes challenging, especially when it’s segmented and stored at different locations. This along with manual data entry and handling leads to erroneous outputs that hamper the goal of bettering customer experiences. Logistics digital solutions not only effectively track and manage this data, but connect all the disparate sources on a single integrated digital logistics system. Moreover, digitization in supply chain management and logistics helps enterprise leaders to adhere to the new data management standards and fulfills customer expectations too.

Challenge #3: The lack of resiliency and process automation

The labor-intensive human-led internal transport and logistics operations are not only time consuming but error-prone and inefficient. And the pandemic was the final bolt for the L&T industry. To gain a 360-degree view of business processes, and facilitate omnichannel customer interactions, process automation via transport and logistics digitization becomes imperative. Therefore, the embracing of digital solutions for logistics and automation capabilities will lead to a more agile, flexible, and resilient business model.

Challenge #4: Too much dependence on legacy systems

Aging systems not only delay process operation but hamper productivity and elevate technical debts. To scale without risk, ensure business continuity, and future-proof your model, the L&T industry needs to adopt a modern approach to conducting business. It is now time to replace paper with a transformative digital logistics platform that integrates well with legacy systems.

Challenge #5: The lack of mobility management plan

Mobility is the heart of any digital transformation strategy. However, as the number of devices demanding a connected experience increases, so does process complexity, IT pain points, and competitive risks. And with the lack of a mobility management plan, logistics digital solutions, especially with the increasing number of devices, not only fuels data silos but makes it unable to deliver expected ROI and competitive differentiation.

How transport and logistics digitization can fill in the gaps?

Digital transformation is referred to by industry peers as disruptive and it is quite true. The transport and logistics industry is not the same it was a few years back. Technological evolution, business expansion, complex supply chains, and rising competitive gaps have compelled logistics leaders to elevate operational standards to stand apart from their peers and succeed in the market. The World Economic Forum states over $1.5 trillion is at stake as a result of that digitization in supply chain management and logistics up until 2025.

transport and logistics digitization can efficiently and timely solve these challenges. Digital solutions for logistics enhance collaboration and sharing, increase the flexibility of internal operations, and reduce efforts spent on otherwise complex tasks. Logistics digital solutions address the key challenges faced by the vertical- globalization, the need for more flexible operations, improved security and compliance.

The below-stated points shine light on how a digital logistics platform can be a guiding beacon for the supply chain, transport and logistics industry.

Advanced analytics for data-driven decisions:

Integrated digital logistics platforms implement powerful data-driven insights to optimize operations, solve internal inefficiencies and better customer interactions. Logistics digitalization enables data analytics that further improves operational visibility and connectivity between systems, allowing products to move seamlessly through the value chain.

Automate back office processes for higher accuracy and fewer errors:

High operational costs have always been an issue for the transport and logistics industry. Operational costs such as salaries, capital expenditure, property costs, etc., all contribute to the high costs that must be priced into the overall shipping quotes. Manual and human-led solutions occupy a major chunk of these operational costs, which is why moving to a centralized digital logistics platform seems to be the best solution. It offers better integration, flexibility, visibility and connectivity than the traditional systems and helps accomplish the much-talked-about goal- the supply chain, transport and logistics digitization.

Logistics digital solutions automates more of the mundane tasks, freeing up your workforce’s time to work on more valuable and revenue-generating processes. Then, you gain complete visibility into integrated digital logistics operations like order management, warehouse management, fleet management, financing, customer service, customized pricing, etc., with all these operations benefiting from digitization.

Such a connected, resilient and agile digital logistics platform provides a more customer-oriented, efficient and proactive approach to managing internal operations and costs.

Efficient management of the transport and logistics operations:

Digital solutions for logistics allow vendors to store, analyze, and manage shipping documents and link the critical documents with the related business processes. A centralized digital logistics platform also allows customers to gain greater insights and control into supply chain management. They can easily track products and order movement in real-time. Such transparency is the basics to customer-centric transport and logistics management.

Incorporate leading digital technologies in logistics:

The top digital trends in logistics say that AI and machine learning are there to increase the competency of the transport and logistics industry. These technologies not only accelerate transport and logistics digitization but allow vendors to service customers in a focused, fast, and flexible manner.

These digital solutions for logistics instantly share data between all parties and systems to ensure transparency and visibility
Provide optimized results to improve operational efficiency and lower costs, for instance, the fastest and most cost-effective routes to destinations
Allow real-time tracking of goods and vehicles through GPS-enabled services

Such a versatile combination of digital technologies in logistics offer fastest shipping, reduces order delays, and reduces delivery costs, broadening the gap between you and your competitors.

Better customer engagement and retention:

A centralized digital logistics platform enables a single view of your customers across enterprises and third-party service providers so that you can quickly respond to inquiries and behavior changes and expedite issue resolution.

Logistics digital solutions, after enhancing core business processes like customer engagement, billing, and account management, enhance the overall customer service experience throughout their journeys. Digitization in transport, supply chain management and logistics also helps in predicting future demands and market forecasts.

Expediting invoicing and payment solutions:

Integrated digital logistics solutions eliminate the need to chase down buyers and manually update the freight payment processors and shippers. Automated digital solutions for logistics send out reminders for pending invoices, therefore, maintaining a steady flow of cash throughout.

Transport and logistics: Digitization is the future

Moving to a centralized digital logistics platform doesn’t have to be daunting. It can be simple, efficient and straightforward. As a partner of some of the leading digital transformation platforms like OutSystems, Microsoft SharePoint and Salesforce, our experts have assisted several transport and logistics service providers unlock the greater value of digital technologies in logistics, gain valuable insights, and win over the customers. Our integrated digital logistics solutions can help you achieve a competitive advantage over other freight providers as you grow and evolve your logistics business.

Transform your operations with digital capabilities

Discover how we can help your organization navigate the NEXT.

Ranosys, a global digital consulting firm, has been chosen as one amongst the 10 Most Promising Low-Code Solutions Providers-2021 by CIOReviewIndia for consistently promoting innovation and delivering experience-driven digital solutions leveraging complete capabilities of low-code technology and leading enterprise platforms like OutSystems.

“We’re glad to have received this recognition from CIOReviewIndia. Being one of the early adopters of the OutSystems’s low-code platform, we’ve spent a lot of time perfecting our knowledge about the technology and its associated parameters. We strive hard to make productivity gain and agility a key differentiator for our clients and OutSystems helps us achieve that”, says Rameshwar Vyas, CEO of Ranosys.

“Ranosys is where innovative ideas are turned into reality, which eventually puts our clients ahead in the league against the competition. We don’t believe in an uncertain tomorrow. Instead, we like to prepare for it,” he continued.

Designed to help organizations build scalable, secure, and reliable enterprise-grade applications, OutSystems enables rapid development and quick response to evolving market dynamics. Ranosys leverages these differentiating features of OutSystems and couples them with its unique customer-centric, design-driven approach in supporting global clients across their entire application development lifecycle.

Established with a humble workforce in 2008, Ranosys has built a niche for itself with the continued development of human capital and investment in relationships within the platform ecosystem. They’ve even established a strategic Centre of Excellence (CoE) for the purpose of encouraging research and development as well as promoting collaboration across industries. Their OutSystems Champions have strategized, delivered, built, and continuously supported mission-critical applications for renowned Indian and global enterprises. Moreover, Ranosys has also joined hands with universities to introduce low-code as a subject in the educational curriculum.

Read more about our feature in the CIOReviewIndia here.

About Ranosys

Ranosys is a CMMI Level 3 Digital Consulting company founded in 2008 in Singapore with offices in the US, UK, Middle East, and APAC regions. It leverages the power of platform partnerships, experience design, and cutting-edge software technologies to drive digital transformation, eCommerce, and product engineering initiatives. Ranosys addresses the various milestones in a company’s digital transformation roadmap, identifying, designing, developing, deploying, and measuring their digital skills. Their experienced and expert workforce renders solutions that secure their client’s lead in the digital community.

For more information, visit https://www.ranosys.com/

Or, fill the form and shoot us an email at sales@ranosys.com

About CIOReview

CIOReviewIndia is an Enterprise IT magazine that serves as a platform for CIOs and equivalents to share their views on new technology trends and learn from each other’s experiences. Being a neutral knowledge hub for technology decision-makers, we take pride in providing a trustworthy and knowledgeable media platform for CIOs and other technology buyers to share their insights, which in turn helps technology and business leaders with analysis of information technology trends and provides them with an in-depth understanding of the challenges and opportunities in adoption of new technologies.

The modern digital commerce ecosystem is quite different from what it was a decade earlier. Where once product quality and free delivery was an impressive factor, today they are categorized as secondary.

So, what matters the most to your customers, if it’s not quality products and services? The answer is product experiences. Unless your online store offers a differentiating and immersive experience to your customers, right from first interaction to support, it won’t be long before your competitors submerge you under water and take over.

A unified experience across all touchpoints is what your customers admire and desire. However, several online merchants and retailers struggle to realize the omnichannel eCommerce vision. Quite frankly, managing an online store is an arduous practice, mostly because several retailers don’t invest or own an integrated eCommerce platform that supports their front-end and back-end and facilitates an efficient connection between them.

The retailers struggle to provide consistent inventory and pricing information to both staff and customers in real-time leading to overselling or underselling.
They raise the already exorbitant operational costs by getting additional staff to handle transactions.
And, they fail to maintain a steady and consistent flow of data such as shipping, tracking, order fulfillment, customer, product and inventory to their independent system.

All such inefficiencies and more result in a mismanaged, broken, and segmented eCommerce system that isn’t able to handle the dynamic customer and market demands.

To break this circle and to achieve complete unification and transparency in eCommerce operations both immediate and long term, while delivering impeccable end-to-end customer experiences across all breakpoints, eCommerce integrations is a must. In fact, Gartner predicts, by 2022, a digital commerce experience will contain over 30 integrated applications. It further states, over 50% of costs and efforts in eCommerce platform programs will be spent on integrations with internal and external systems alone.

In this blog, we discuss one such powerful integration between the world’s #1 CRM platform, Salesforce’s eCommerce offering, Commerce Cloud, and a market-leading ERP platform, SAP. Commerce Cloud Salesforce integration with SAP is particularly attractive to B2C and B2B businesses since it encapsulates everything from customer information to product specifications under one umbrella.

So, without further ado, let’s delve into the specifics of Salesforce Commerce Cloud and SAP integration.

Why Commerce Cloud Salesforce integration with SAP?

A lot of times, businesses ask this question from our experts, ‘Why should I integrate my Salesforce Commerce Cloud platform with SAP’? Or better, ‘What difference can a Salesforce Commerce Cloud SAP integration make to my online business?’

Here we discuss the top reasons why you must go for Commerce Cloud Salesforce integration with SAP.

#1: A single source of truth about your business’ data

When you have a separate Salesforce Commerce Cloud and SAP system, all data entries have to be made twice. Often, these systems have data entries that the other one needs. It means that data related to finance, inventory, order, shipping, or accounting is being stored at two places at once. Not only does this hassle complicate your workflow, but someone from your team must take out the time to manually perform data sync.

When you integrate SFCC with SAP, you eliminate the part of operations where you have to re-sync data manually. Suddenly, order details, customer information, or shipping details are sent from your SFCC solution to SAP ERP and vice versa. There is no data duplication, no batch updates between systems, and no more finding errors in data entries. This real-time bidirectional data flow offers a multitude of other benefits, all of which eventually improve your day-to-day operations.

#2: Personalized product pricing and catalogs on a customer-to-customer basis

Personalization is all the rage in digital commerce. In fact, it is a crucial differentiator between any two businesses. Salesforce integration with SAP becomes vital for businesses that offer customized pricing based on order quantity, product combinations, customer or company login and previous order frequencies. Personalized pricing norms in an SAP Salesforce integrated system prevents price misquotes, enhances sales productivity and profitability.

Similarly, Commerce Cloud Salesforce integration with SAP assists with personalized catalogs as well. For instance, suppose a customer owns machinery for which you sell the replacement parts. As a business owner, you obviously want to show them your personalized catalog consisting of the parts relevant to their machines when someone from their company logs in. A seamless Salesforce Commerce Cloud and SAP integration will provide that information by porting that customer’s details and purchase history stored in the SAP to the SFCC solution.

#3: Simplified and transparent inventory management

It is no secret that the online retail space is a dynamic and competitive ecosystem. There are millions of transactions conducted everyday and almost the same number of products are sold. So, if you aren’t better than your competitors’ pricing or if you don’t follow the market trends, or if your products aren’t able to satisfy your customers, then you aren’t making the full use of your eCommerce platform.

Commerce Cloud Salesforce integration with SAP takes a step into this direction. SFCC SAP integration streamlines order processing, allowing customers to manage their orders in real-time. It means that as soon as a customer places an order on the front-end, the integrated system updates the same in the back office inventory and accounts. Since your inventory is maintained as soon as an order is placed, it helps you forecast accurate product demand and volumes and prevent popular material shortages, overselling and underselling based on historical data utilized from SAP.

#4: Simplified order management for customers

When customers are able to track their order and your inventory in real-time, they can and rest assured that the order will be placed without a hitch. With Salesforce Commerce Cloud’s customer-friendly order management, you can even assign orders automatically to a relevant sales rep and they can work to resolve the query as soon as possible. It also allows customers to give special instructions regarding their order, which will be easily carried to the ERP for faster and reliable processing.

Even when occasionally problems arise, customers can easily reach out for support and your integrated SFCC SAP system will make quicker query resolution possible. Even if an order is placed by a customer non-existent in your system, Salesforce Commerce Cloud SAP integration will automatically create one for you. As customers handle their accounts online, your support staff can handle and resolve issues online accurately and quickly.

#5: Reduced operational costs

Automated data entry can drive more sales and reduce operational costs than you can imagine. As orders, when placed, are updated simultaneously on the SFCC and SAP platform, warehouses receive the information right when they need it, reducing time-spent on processing orders to a customer’s doorstep. It also means that your eCommerce website is updated with out-of-stock information, which will also save you the hassle of back-ordering in cases when a customer purchases goods that they shouldn’t be allowed to in the first place due to non-availability and poorly synchronized inventory systems.

Another way to reduce operational costs lies in not needing IT staff to build or maintain the solution. A real-time Salesforce integration with SAP allows you to handle inventory, order and distribution easily on a unified system without needing any additional staff.

Power up your digital commerce offerings with Commerce Cloud Salesforce SAP integration

The idea of Commerce Cloud Salesforce integration with SAP is to create a system that works for your digital commerce business and can easily scale as you grow. Your eCommerce business needs a more real-time solution that makes data management easy, reduces labor costs that otherwise would be spent on maintenance and review, and indulge in an error-free automated workflow that supports your customers. It is where Salesforce Commerce Cloud SAP integration can help you.

However, to reap its full benefits, you need someone who will work hard to understand your needs and set it up in a manner that maximizes profits. Our experts are all-ready to offer you a free consultation to discuss how Salesforce Commerce Cloud integration with SAP can fit your needs and what it can do for your business.

Integrate Commerce Cloud and SAP to meet your business goals.

Are you looking for a solution that works out for your employees’ real-time problems? Are your IT personnel overburdened with large amounts of requests? Are you looking for a standard way to collect requests from your team?

Well, you’re in luck because the emerging low-code platform has a rapid solution with its Workflow Builder which is an amazing tool. Workflow Builder can reduce your increasing backlog load and provide your cross-functional teams with tools to easily build their Workflow Apps.

The best part about Workflow Builder: anyone, including enthusiasts with no prior application building experience, can build the first version of a workflow app in a small amount of time.

What is a Workflow Builder?

The Workflow Builder provides a visual tool to build internal productivity apps to automate routine functions by creating workflows. Workflow Builder is a low-code tool for the business process technology available inside the OutSystems platform for creating, displaying and processing workflow definitions & streamline routine processes. It creates a scope for cross-functional teams to work together within the same common platform, from process design to app development to deployment. The tool enables the incorporation teams to build workflow apps and effectively overcome their productivity challenges.

Why do you need a workflow builder?

To help you understand the immediate need of a workflow builder, let’s review the following statistics:

By 2024, Forrester reports that the US economy will suffer a deficit of 500,000 developers.
There are long backlogs in the IT department and the organization is unable to deliver IT services according to business expectations with less complex/internal apps being prioritized over more business-critical apps.
There are few business experts who are capable of becoming low-code developers and delivering apps following IT processes.

See where we are going with this?

To effectively solve your IT backlogs, adopt a scalable, agile and flexible enterprise system, pace ahead of the competition, and accomplish your digital transformation goals, low-code tools like workflow builder can prove to be instrumental.

Is the workflow builder tool suitable for my organization?

If your organization executes daily processes manually or through conventional channels like emails, or if your cross-functional teams need a simpler, fast or convenient method to manage those processes, then definitely yes, workflow builder is the right tool for your organization.

Potential workflow builder offers to create, test and publish the workflow apps to fit specific workflow needs.

Nowadays, IT teams are engulfed with a lot of requests & processes, companies are moving to online digitization over head-on interactions, and seeking IT to develop an app that sometimes takes too long or does not suit budget, priorities and manpower.

OutSystems provides a rapid tool for the IT managers who can easily register, set up the Workflow Builder and leverage their teams. For instance, the business experts can have privileges (privileges to access workflow builder as defined by the IT team) to build apps that are suitable for their organization’s needs. Different organizations have their identical processes and way to manage henceforth that needs tensible solutions. Using Workflow Builder anyone from process owners to developers can design, build, monitor internal productivity apps like expenses approval, employee onboarding, employee performance, vacation approval, timesheet management, and different kinds of case management apps.

Pre-Built Templates collections to accelerate the creation of your workflow app

Workflow Builder consists of several templates that enable you to cater the workflow apps at a higher pace. The templates include form fields and workflow logic that suits a type of workflow app, like data collecting or issue reporting. You can also build your workflow app with the blank canvas. The Project Request, Approval Request, Issue Report workflow app templates are available within the tool.

How can I configure & set up Workflow Builder?

Workflow Builder is a tool governed by IT teams. IT managers encompass full control of the administration of IT assets & firmly manage the complete application lifecycle; they will register in the workflow builder with their development environment; will set up the governance model and end-user management, then grant access to the people who design and own processes, so they can build workflow apps to fulfil their specific needs. Cross-functional teams work together within the same common platform, from process design to app development to deployment.

Building Automated Approval Process using Workflow Builder

In today’s working procedures, there are a multitude of approval processes that can be digitized according to specific user & business needs.

Custom Request Form

Users will get started with creating custom forms for requesters to enter the desired information and trigger the start of the workflow app. Let’s start with an example of the expense approval app that is created & published through it. This app took approx 2-3 hrs to be developed & published from scratch with the simplest logic.

With the rich set of capabilities, not only does Workflow Builder expedite the development of a workflow app, but it also lays the groundwork of a scalable, performant application that can be extended and customized like any other application that you’ve developed from scratch. It is possible through its rich framework that allows extending the business process technology, by providing actions and entities that let you add the following capabilities to your case management apps, such:

Keep tracking of process transactions while the entire lifecycle of a case
Trigger email notifications for specific events
Enable to define different types of rules to be used in case and process decisions
Managing delegation activities
Provide configuration facility for specific SLA for processes and activities
Associate events to a specific case
Allow managing access control
Allow performing operations (takeover, pick up, release, block, unblock and add comments) to activities

Why should you opt for this?

Being a seamless business process technology, it helps to transform the ideas into workflow apps through the easy to use inbuilt wizard; that abstracts the development process. The accompanying pointers explain why it ought to be your first choice.

Lighten up the increasing IT backlog of internal business application requests
Provide collaborative approach for app development
Build and publish internal productivity apps within a small amount of time without writing a single line of code
Auto-generates professionally-created, compatible and intuitive user experiences
Deliver simple-to-complex workflow applications in minutes
Business experts and developers can further expand the workflow builder-generated apps in Service Studio

Converting a Workflow App to Service Studio

If you want to enhance your workflow app by adding features unavailable in workflow builder, you can convert the app to the Service Studio app. The option such as “convert to edit in Service Studio” helps to make the application compatible to edit in Service Studio. Developers can add more functionalities to enhance the workflow app capabilities through this. Please remember, once you convert your app to Service Studio, you can no longer use workflow builder to edit it.

Conclusion

Creating low-code reactive web apps with the workflow builder makes the workflow related application creation process efficient, intuitive, faster, and more collaborative. As it is not only limited to the workflow apps feature, if you want to add more functionalities to the app, you can convert it for Service Studio and do further customization. With this feature, more than half of the application development work can be done with exponential speed and robustness. In short, the workflow builder feature is too facile to use from developers to business experts. Potentially, it promotes collaboration within modern and cross-functional teams while ensuring IT remains in full control.

Lalit Nama

Senior Business Analyst

Lalit Nama is technology agnostic having worked on many technologies, programming languages and tools, assisting clients worldwide. With his passion to learn the latest technologies, he got into OutSystems and fell in love with it. Currently, he leads the OutSystems practice as Practice Lead and Solution Architect at Ranosys where he helps enterprises to utilize the full potential of the OutSystems platform in solving their business problems.

Surya Sharma

Business Analyst

Surya Sharma is a Business Analyst & Product Owner at Ranosys. She currently dedicates her time to learning the OutSystems platform and understanding the nuances of low-code development. She is also a certified OutSystems Traditional Web App Developer and Certified Product Owner.

Today, every IT business aspires for and even promises innovation in its organisation. But do you think it is as achievable as the company handbook makes it sound? Are IT companies honestly able to innovate as much as they claim to?

Studies, unfortunately, tell a different story!

According to a report by OutSystems, around 65% of app development practice is about maintaining old technology, and only 35% focuses on innovation. In a similar survey, only 21 senior IT professionals agreed that they were better equipped than their competitors to adapt to changes. Clearly, IT innovation is on all our minds, but leaders are lagging far behind when it comes to implementing it.

What are the internal challenges that are holding back IT innovation?

As the demand for better and more robust digital information technology grows, so does the need to innovate at a faster rate. In this race of delivering quicker and better, these are the bottlenecks that hamper IT innovation –

Increasing backlogs
IT companies are dealing with more work than their teams can handle, and it’s not just because of the increase in demand for new products. We all know that customer expectations change overnight, and IT teams struggle to keep pace. As a result, there’s always a massive backlog to take care of. In fact, technical backlogs were considered a problem by 65% of the respondents in a survey conducted with over 3,500 IT professionals.
Silos between business and technical users
The responsibility of a business user is to understand customer expectations and deliver the best possible solution to them, and IT teams are to take care of incorporating their needs in the projects. As customer needs and market trends change rapidly, business users expect IT teams to develop at the same speed. This pace is difficult to achieve with the traditional development process. As a result, business and technical teams get frustrated with each other and fall into a cycle of non-communication.
Growing technical debt
In a bid to reduce quick time to market, IT teams tend to focus on speed and compromise on quality leading to underwhelming digital solutions. They disappoint the end-user and add to the technical debt of an organisation, which ultimately puts more strain on the IT teams.
Lack of resources
Despite the growing number of developers globally, it isn’t easy to find, train, and retain the right people in an IT company. Yet, organisations always seem to be on a hiring spree. Not to forget, training resources, too, take up a lot of time from a skilled IT professional’s plate.
Uncertain market
As we have mentioned before, the market trends are forever dynamic and have the power to deem a perfectly developed application outdated. As a consequence, IT teams focus more on meeting expectations than innovation.

All of these IT industry challenges combined leave no space for innovation. When an organisation is busy delivering products and catering to market factors, they have no time to introspect and innovate.

How do external factors affect IT innovation?

Our world is growing every day, and so is its complexity. The current challenges in the IT industry go beyond their four walls; in fact, they often stem from external environments that shape their work culture, project lifecycle, and finally, form a team that struggles to innovate. Here’s a brief look at some external factors that add to the dilemma of IT innovation –

Increasing demand for more apps

“There’s an app for that” – when Apple coined this phrase in 2009, they didn’t foresee what was coming. Fast forward to today, and there’s really an app for everything you need, think, or do. However, this puts massive pressure on the IT industry.

According to research by OutSystems, 65% of IT organisations with more than 500 employees have 10 apps in the development process, and 15% of them are trying to get 100 or more in their pipeline. Now, these statistics look great for the customer but add to the work pressure that IT companies are facing:

Increasing technical complexities

App development is no fun and games – no matter what the popular media propagates. It involves different coding languages and frameworks in addition to the need to innovate. As a result, the app development process is long, complex, or not up to quality standards.

Increasing need for customisation

Just like customers, enterprises, too, run on applications these days. Although there are many standard ERP and CRM packages available off the shelf, the growing need for customisation again adds to the work pressure of IT teams.

Increasing change in the digital economy

Gone are the days when application updates used to be an annual affair. Nowadays, organisations expect monthly and even weekly updates. These expectations again put IT in work mode and block their schedule.

The factors mentioned above are just the beginning; there are many unsolved problems in information technology that make innovation tricky and only a figment of many CEO’s imagination.

However, modern IT leaders have been brainstorming to end these scenarios and build a culture of IT innovative technology at all levels. IT organisations have been experimenting with many feasible solutions, from sticking to mobile-only development to adopting low-code technology and citizen developers. Still, none of them have turned out to be as fruitful.

Of course, many of these ideas, like embracing low-code platforms can help but they are only a first step in the right direction. IT companies need a modern application platform that helps build solutions faster, better, and for the future. Luckily, OutSystems fits the bill perfectly! Let’s look at how OutSystems can help IT companies excel at deliverables and innovate at the same time.

OutSystems – the modern application platform that helps IT companies innovate

Yes! OutSystems is a low-code platform, but it has certain features that make it more comprehensive and futuristic than any other low code tool. Powered by AI capabilities and application modernisation techniques, it simplifies the development process while maintaining the quality usually delivered through traditional development processes.

OutSystems does not follow a linear approach to deal with the problems faced by the IT industry; instead, it transforms every stage of the development process. Be it development, deployment, or support, OutSystems reinvents every phase to sync with the changing demands of the digital landscape. With OutSystems, an IT company can involve business and technical users in the development process and eliminate shadow IT.

Let’s have a brief look at how OutSystems helps struggling IT companies embrace innovation –

# Build it fast

As we have discussed already, speedy development and delivery are the topmost demand of the market. And these are also the factors that keep developers under pressure. Here’s how OutSystems deals with this issue –

It’s a model-driven visual tool that comes with pre-set templates and patterns and works with drag-and-drop methodology. Developers can always customize them with minimal coding and in a period.
It is based on a collaborative, AI-assisted, team-based environment that facilitates the smooth working of both technical and business users without any additional back-and-forth.
It enables streamlined deployment, which makes applications highly responsive. They can run on any device or get delivered to any app store.
OutSystems allow seamless integration with all kinds of third-party applications so that you have a flexible environment to build solutions on time.

# Build it right

While time to market remains crucial, a competitive application would never compromise on quality either. However, it is not easy to find a balance between speed and quality, where OutSystems enter. Let’s find out how it builds applications with superior quality –

OutSystems enables regular monitoring during design, build, and run time with analytics, AI, and automation.
It allows a multi-developer environment where developers can visualize the changes made to every version and choose which version to publish.
It automates the debugging process, relieving developers of this responsibility and instead focusing on accelerating market time.
OutSystems further automates runtime analysis so that errors can be found out early in the development stage and can be resolved with AI-recommended solutions.

# Build it for the future

No matter how good your app is, there’s always a chance for it to become obsolete in a few days. Thus, you need a technology that supports quick updates and revisions. Let us show you how OutSystems can help –

It enables single-click deployment and rollbacks while making provisions for continuous integration and delivery.
It improves business adaptability with automated workflows, visually-modeled business processes, and trigger-based events.
OutSystems has a rich repository of emerging technologies, including AI, IoT, RPA, access to available modules, and UI components.
OutSystems has a portable deployment system that is compatible with all kinds of devices.

In conclusion

Legacy modernization, workplace innovation, CX transformation, and business automation – our supposedly seamless world requires sleepless nights and countless hours on the part of IT professionals. Yet, they’re left with no time to invest in that single ethos that makes them stand apart – innovation.

OutSystems, fortunately, makes digital transformation possible at a faster rate and with lesser efforts. Moreover, it helps organisations meet their targets, keep customers happy, and keeps traditional excellence intact.

If your team is constantly busy in the hustle of delivering solutions, it’s time you consider OutSystems. Give them a chance to make efforts for what is necessary for the future – innovation.

Need more information on OutSystems and its potential?

Over the years, Microsoft Power Platform and Microsoft Dynamics 365 have achieved breakthrough prominence in lieu of these modern tools improving team productivity, embarking digital innovation, breaking down organizational barriers, and helping organizations stay on top of the rapidly evolving market dynamics. It’s notable benefits like these that have made Microsoft Power Platform and Microsoft Dynamics 365 must-have tools for business process automation, productivity gains for domain workers, data analysis, or setting up a virtual agent.

With enterprises pacing speedily towards digital transformation, these tools will play a monumental role in

automating mundane and tedious business operations to improve productivity
addressing the challenges that enterprises face while on their road to business transformation
supporting the growing needs of an organisation as they evolve
designing an industry-focussed and time-relevant enterprise system scaled to the future

This article explores how Microsoft Power Platform and Microsoft Dynamics 365 portal assist businesses to achieve optimal efficiency and secure future growth- known collectively as digital transformation.

What is business transformation and is it the same as digital transformation?

Change is the only constant and the IT ecosystem swears by it.

As new tools and technologies make their way into the global IT market, traditional business processes powered by outdated methodologies become obsolete. It then becomes imperative for enterprises to take the necessary steps to ensure survival. And this is what business or digital transformation means, in a nutshell.

Business transformation comprises of the steps, cycles, processes or methodologies implemented to upgrade the existing enterprise system with the sole purpose of driving efficiency, improving productivity, outpacing competition, boosting ROIs, and innovating as per the market trends. However, to execute this change management drill successfully, enterprises require a perfect alignment between teams, technology and tactics, and that is when they achieve complete digital transformation.

But don’t worry because Microsoft has made this entire process easy for enterprises.

The Microsoft tools, specially, Dynamics 365 and Power Platform assist you to realize and achieve this business proposition. With Dynamic 365’s predictive and AI-driven insightful and productive business outcomes and Power Platform’s low-code approach to building multi-faceted business apps, enterprises can empower their employees, customers and clients with solutions that are flexible to deploy, easy to understand, and simple to maintain.

Their robust features combined serve as a comprehensive solution to manage your complete business operations, implement a digital transformation strategy without hampering your current solutions or team productivity, and take it to the next level. This in true sense is what people call a Microsoft-led digital transformation.

Accelerating business potential with Microsoft Power Platform and Microsoft Dynamics 365

Integrating Microsoft Power Platform and Microsoft Dynamics 365 portal showcases how to harness the power of data and use it to develop better and more productive enterprise apps- all of which compose an effective digital transformation strategy. This powerful integration helps with:

Merging business intelligent data on a single platform to improve transparency, boost productivity, and gain better insights about operational performance
A close-knit Microsoft Office integration to improve information access to other platforms
Plan, implement, manage and execute cross-channel sales and marketing campaigns to boost internal productivity
Derive meaningful insights from the data collected and implement them to respond to changing market demands quickly and efficiently
Customize operational workflows using the data derived to meet business goals, scale processes as per the requirements and improve solution quality

How Microsoft Power Platform and Microsoft Dynamics 365 drive digital transformation

When you talk of business transformation, it also covers digital transformation. No business transformation can be complete without implementing a digital transformation strategy. It goes hand-in-hand. For enterprises seeking business and digital transformation, Microsoft Power Platform and Microsoft Dynamics 365 are the right tools. Together, these tools deliver a customized and tight-end suite to better team collaboration, business productivity, and accelerate digital transformation.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 portal helps businesses to use the AI-driven insights to streamline operations and achieve greater efficiency. Similarly, Microsoft Power Platform includes Power BI, Power Automate, Power Virtual Agents and PowerApps all of which are developed to enable enterprises to automate mundane tasks, analyse data, and develop multi-faceted enterprise apps. But that’s not the best part, you can integrate these Microsoft platforms with several other third-party apps seamlessly and effortlessly.

In combination, these two tools assist businesses on their journey to achieve digital transformation by:

#1: Saving time devoted to digital transformation strategy

Digital transformation is a tricky process, with every stage consisting of several steps and substeps. And then, it’s procedural approach changes with an organization, mostly depending on business genre, size and current transformation stage. With Microsoft tools, you access its modules as independent solutions, which means you don’t have to spend hours figuring out which solution is the right fit for your business.

Microsoft 365 comes as Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement- Sales, Marketing, Customer service, and Service, Dynamics 365 Customer Insights and Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations. All of these offerings already have a well-defined module and are clear about their business purpose. So, if you want to streamline your enterprise CRM, you need to work with Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement- Sales, Marketing, Customer service, and Service. In case you can transform your financial face, then there is Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations for you.

The same goes with Power Platform. All its offerings have its predefined roles that assist you in developing business-friendly apps. The point is, you don’t have to spend time exploring the right tool for your business, speeding up the digital transformation consulting process while saving precious hours.

#2: Delivering a unified experience across all touchpoints

With Power Platform and Microsoft Dynamics 365 integrated, you don’t have to worry about business uniformity. With customized and high-end suite functionalities, all your clients, customers, and teams can have a unified experience across all devices, touchpoints, and locations.

#3: Easing the adaptability to the new interfaces

When businesses think about implementing a digital transformation strategy, they worry whether they can easily gain control over the new or updated system and if it will require extensive training. However, your teams won’t encounter such a problem with the Microsoft tools since regardless of project size and the team competency, both Power Platform and Microsoft Dynamics 365 are highly intuitive and friendly to use. This saves organizations from allotting precious time for training and enablement to gain control of the new enterprise system.

#4: Unlocking high-end customizations and flexibility

Even with a pre-designed module, it is not easy for organizations to achieve 100% digital transformation and client satisfaction because what might work for one enterprise might not work for the other.

This is where Microsoft Power Platform and Microsoft Dynamics 365 portal change the scene for enterprises. With their high-end customized approach, both these tools allow enterprises to develop an interface that addresses your business challenges, pain points and digital transformation consulting requirements. Its flexible and purpose-driven approach allows enterprises to integrate the new interface with the already existing system so that they can carry all the collaterals as they grow and transform.

Such prospects make Microsoft Power Platform and Microsoft Dynamics 365 a highly relevant tool than the existing ones since it allows you to bring all your tools and solutions together on a single platform.

#5: Improving operational mobility

Enterprises are under extreme pressure to develop flexible, scalable and dynamic solutions that elevate business performance, especially for sales, marketing and customer service. Automation is the key to improved operational approach and Microsoft Dynamics and Microsoft Power Platform together can help achieve this feat. Their robust tools and functionalities combined rapidly meet business, market and customer demands at every location, device, and engagement point. Employing the AI-driven insights, users can map, schedule and manage agreements at their fingertips.

Reimagine a digital transformation strategy with Power Platform and Microsoft Dynamics 365

The Microsoft tools are experiencing a breakthrough reception across industries around the world. Several companies are leveraging the Microsoft Power Platform and Microsoft Dynamics 365 portal to analyze data, develop enterprise apps, automate business processes, and set up a virtual agent. This Microsoft combination sets the building blocks to business and customer transformation, tailored to your specific needs.

Our experts have assisted several enterprises to evaluate their current stand on transformation, develop a roadmap to achieve it, and lay the groundwork to maintain and manage it. Book a call with us and translate your digital transformation vision into reality.

Have questions about Digital transformation with Dynamics 365 and Power Platform

We operate in the modern world where customers impact the terms of the market and are the biggest influencing factor in shaping trends. Lately, with the advent of multiple channels of retail, the focus of customer experience has shifted to omnichannel commerce.

Whether they are indulging in online retail or purchasing on behalf of a B2B business, your customers expect a seamless experience and unified operations across all channels. As per reports, about 73% of retail customers would like to track their order at every point of its journey.

In fact, B2B customers are no different! Around 86% of them have admitted to preferring self-service tools instead of interacting with a sales rep and they expect the CX to be as frictionless as in a B2C environment. The need for omnichannel experience surpasses industries, sectors, and customer profiles alike.

Building an omnichannel eCommerce business, however, requires the support of a powerful ERP system that assures unification, transparency, and cohesiveness. And, this is the major reason that has led to an increased demand for Magento SAP integration.

By integrating SAP, the world’s market leader in cloud-based ERP, with Magento, you can align your resources on a central platform and establish a single source of truth for your eCommerce business. This sole decision of implementing Magento SAP integration will affect every aspect of your business and transform the way it operates.

In this blog, we explore the benefits of Magento SAP integration and how you can leverage the most out of this major step.

A brief overview of Magento SAP integration

Recognized as a market leader in digital commerce by Gartner, Magento powers over 250,000 eCommerce websites and handles a gross merchandise value (GMV) of approximately $155 billion annually. In 2018, Adobe acquired Magento and launched it as a part of Adobe Experience Cloud testifying for its best-in-class functionalities, future-ready tools, and an ability to cater to every type and size of business.

SAP, on the other hand, maintains a strong presence in the business world with 94% of the world’s largest 500 companies as its customers. In fact, it is said that 77% of the world’s transaction revenue goes through an SAP system at some point in its life cycle – that is how humongous its network is.

While Magento ensures that your online store has the right tools to scale your eCommerce business, integration with SAP can empower it with data-driven insights, process automation, and seamless communication. Yet, many eCommerce organizations seem to delay Magento SAP integration owing to either lack of time, expertise, or knowledge.

Contrary to popular belief, an online store of any size can leverage the benefits of Magento SAP integration. SAP offers a multitude of avenues to support all kinds of businesses, namely- SAP Business One for small businesses, SAP Business ByDesign for mid-sized companies, and SAP S4/HANA for highly-tailored large conglomerates.

Be it an eCommerce startup or an established marketplace, Magento SAP integration can introduce AI-based analytics, transform mission-critical processes, and improve operational efficiency in any organisation.

What are the benefits of Magento SAP integration?

Joining Magento’s forces with SAP is often considered as an operational decision that reduces the need for manual data entry, and thereby, the chances of human error and delay. What is overlooked, however, is its potential to reinvent customer experiences and business processes.

Today, both retail and business customers expect a certain degree of personalization and consistent brand experience on every channel of their choice. They usually turn to mobile devices for research and often end up making the final purchase at a physical store. On top of it, they expect a familiar experience and seamless flow of data everywhere – you should know about their inquiry and not the other way around.

Carrying out SAP and Magento integration makes this possible! From customer data to product information, you can integrate every detail related to your business on a single platform. And this is not all – there are many other benefits of Magento SAP integration that support an eCommerce business in fulfilling customer expectations and adapting to market trends. Let’s have a look at some of them –

# Real-time visibility of inventory levels to customers

Imagine an out-of-stock product listed on your homepage as available! Or worse, imagine keeping an out-of-stock label for a top-selling product while you still have it in your inventory. By integrating Magento with SAP, you could avoid both these situations with real-time exchange of information.

Generally, an ERP like SAP stores information related to inventory levels, product details, and prices. Meanwhile, eCommerce platforms like Magento depend upon it to learn about the availability of inventory. Hence, it is imperative that these systems communicate with each other in real-time which is difficult in the absence of integration.

As a result, you have to rely on batch uploads or manual data entry to assess inventory levels. This leads to an increased chance of manual, and often horrendous errors as mentioned above. By implementing SAP and Magento integration, you will no longer have to elongate the process and work with ambiguous data. Your customers will get a real-time visibility of inventory levels at every channel and location. Ultimately, you will be able to provide a unified customer experience at all levels!

# Better supply chain management

As soon as a customer places an order on your Magento store, it leads to several actions affecting the shipping, accounting, and supply chain of your business. During this entire process, your ERP, namely SAP, is responsible for ordering, reordering, and in some cases, setting manufacturing targets.

When Magento SAP is not integrated, managing the supply chain becomes more complex than it actually is as the data exchange gets delayed. Thus, it often ends up in order-inventory mismatch and overstocking to ensure a buffer to cover the communication lag.

By ensuring integration of these systems, you can reverse this situation. SAP and Magento integration can enable real-time peek into eCommerce transactions and vice versa leading to smooth supply chain management.

# No more “WISMO” calls

As discussed above, it is SAP that triggers the order fulfillment and shipping process once an order is received at a Magento store. But, if SAP and Magento integration does not exist, your customers will neither get a real-time picture of shipping details nor be able to track their order. As a result, you will find them contacting your customer service rep for order inquiries.

These calls, often known as “where is my order” or WISMO, are time-consuming, unproductive, and frustrating for every party involved as even the customer service team wouldn’t have real-time access to the shipping information. Implementing SAP and Magento integration can, however, solve this problem.

The Magento SAP integration gives customers instant real-time access to shipping and order fulfillment details. Thus, they don’t have to make multiple calls to your organizations. In fact, you can even incorporate features like push notifications and emails for every stage of order fulfillment.

Basically, everyone comes on the same page and WISMO calls become a thing of the past.

# Enable self-service and account management:

Today, a customer wants to be in control of their accounts and wants to manage their bills and orders on their own. Hence, they need to have access to their purchase history, invoices, and shortlisted items. While a Magento store enables account creation, it is SAP that takes care of all of the mentioned data.

A lack of Magento SAP integration prevents customers from having a look at any of this information while a connected organisation ensures that they have a complete view of their accounts. With a self-service account, B2C customers can manage their payments, order, and bills while B2B customers can assess reports and plan their purchases accordingly.

# Better compliance with international and local taxes

Duties, tariffs, and taxes are a part of every eCommerce business, especially if you’re dealing with international commerce. Luckily, a Magento store embodies multi-currency and multi-site features that can help you manage taxes for every location you operate in.

However, the information related to tax rates, more importantly in B2B businesses where differentiated tax slabs are applicable for different customers, is stored in an ERP like SAP. In the absence of SAP and Magento integration, compiling tax-related data may become complex and cumbersome.

Magento SAP integration, fortunately, can turn things around and ensure that all the tax-related laws are not only complied with but are efficiently leveraged for the benefit of the customers. As a result, your team doesn’t have to spend long hours on taxation and can instead focus on other critical aspects of the business.

In conclusion

If you’re still wondering whether you need a Magento SAP integration or not, let us give you a few questions to introspect –

Is order volume constantly on the rise in your business?
Does your team end up spending most of their time on updating products, SKUS, and cataloging?
Have you lately noticed that your order fulfillment process, perhaps, needs a reinvention?
Does your customer service team mostly field “WISMO” calls?
Do you think your competitors are doing a better job at providing customer experience despite all your attempts?

If any of these questions make you think, you should consider integrating your Magento store with a powerful ERP like SAP. And if your business already works with SAP and you’re considering Magento for your online store, integration should top your priority list.

By combining the functionalities of both of them, you will be able to embrace process automation, get your products to market faster, eliminate data redundancy, and ultimately redefine the customer experience at every touchpoint of your customers’ journey.

Looking for the right Magento SAP integration partner?

Ranosys, a leading digital commerce, digital transformation, and product engineering company has been named SEA Commercial Partner of the Year by Adobe. Registering a double win, Ranosys was recently published as a success story by Adobe Marketo Engage on its digital platform.

This Adobe Commerce Commercial Partner award underscores Ranosys’ commitment to customer satisfaction, adding several certifications, including regional and global specializations. It also recognizes Ranosys’ premium standard in the design and development of end-to-end customer experiences using the Adobe Commerce platform, its strong investment in forging technical competence and establishing a sound practice around the Adobe Experience Cloud applications.

As more enterprises continue to adopt the Adobe Commerce and Adobe Marketo Engage platforms to transform their digital experiences, Ranosys is consistently recognized by Adobe for helping clients and customers maximize platform impact and its applications. Recognizing Ranosys’ continued ability to help brands deliver personalized experiences on enterprise platforms and applications, it was previously honored for the Adobe 2020 Delivery Quality Solution Partner of the Year recognition.

“We feel extremely overwhelmed on our double win with Adobe”, says Rameshwar Vyas, CEO-Ranosys.

He continued, “Adobe has been an invaluable partner to us for several years and counting and we’re especially honored by the award and our organization being published as a success story as it highlights our experience and expertise on two of the most significant Adobe Experience Cloud solutions- Adobe Commerce and Adobe Marketo Engage. These recognitions from Adobe reciprocates to our team’s incredible dedication to guiding brands, creating invigorating customer experiences, and helping our clients achieve their digital transformation goals. Our partnership with Adobe and its solutions has always assisted us in driving amazing outcomes for our clients and customers and we wish to continue it for many years to come.”

A year ago, Ranosys adopted Adobe Marketo Engage to expand their delivery capabilities to other solutions with the Adobe Experience Cloud, monitor and boost their email marketing performances and strategies, and assist their B2B clients in driving more traffic to their websites. Undoubtedly, Adobe Marketo Engage has played a game-changing role in Ranosys’ business expansion plans and client work, improvising the ability of their clients to drive more traffic to their online shops and bettering their lead acquisition strategies.

“We want to congratulate the Ranosys team on their remarkable double win. It’s truly well deserved. Winning the Adobe 2021 Adobe Commerce Commercial Partner of the Year Award demonstrates their outstanding commitment and long-standing expertise in creating innovative customer experiences through Adobe Experience Cloud and driving quantifiable impact on the merchants and retailers in the region. Being published as a success story on our Adobe Marketo Engage website is a testament to their fitting platform implementation to solve business challenges and assist their clients with result-driven marketing solutions while growing stronger as an Adobe Partner. Theis win has raised the bar for customer success and collaboration and we look forward to strengthening our fruitful partnership with Ranosys”, -Akshay Bajpaee, Head of Growth Partner Sales at Adobe.

Known for designing future-ready eCommerce solutions, Ranosys readily fuses design-thinking, technical acumen and data insights to constantly innovate and evolve. With an experienced team of certified Adobe Professionals, Ranosys is all set to empower companies to fully understand customers, extract actionable data, implement it to client growth strategies and emerge as a leader in digital transformation solutions.

About Ranosys

Ranosys is a CMMI Level 3 Global Digital Consulting Company founded in 2008 in Singapore with offices in the USA, UK, Middle East, and APAC regions. It leverages the power of platform partnerships, experience design, and cutting-edge software technologies to drive digital transformation, eCommerce, and product engineering initiatives. Ranosys addresses the various milestones in a company’s digital transformation roadmap, identifying, designing, developing, deploying, and measuring their digital skills. Their experienced and expert workforce renders solutions that secure their client’s lead in the digital community.

For more information, visit https://www.ranosys.com/

Or, fill the form and shoot us an email at sales@ranosys.com.

About Adobe Commerce

Adobe, and the Adobe Commerce platform, is a leading provider of cloud commerce innovation to merchants and brands across B2C and B2B industries and was named a leader in the 2018 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce. In addition to its flagship digital commerce platform, Adobe Commerce boasts a strong portfolio of cloud-based omnichannel solutions that empower merchants to successfully integrate digital and physical shopping experiences.

About Adobe Marketo Engage

Adobe Marketo Engage is a software-as-a-serve (SaaS)-based marketing automation software that helps organizations automate and measure marketing engagement, tasks, and workflows. It is a leader in automating customer journeys, orchestrating content for all touchpoints, optimizing customer experiences, and offering end-to-end engagements.

Today’s competitive economy cannot rely on conventional systems due to their obsolete nature. They demand a more flexible, reliable, stable, and revolutionary operating model that supports sourcing customer data to identify opportunities, forging productive customer relationships, generating revenue, following up with clients, and closing business deals.

Enterprises that employ the Salesforce CRM platform on their frontends access multitudes of functionalities that ensure seamless management of critical business functions. On the contrary, businesses that use SAP as their enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform unlock end-to-end automation to manage and maintain business processes and customer data.

However, with Salesforce SAP integration, organizations can now leverage the best of both the worlds. Enterprises using the Salesforce platform can now use the real-time automation features of SAP to transfer customer data to their CRM, improve process efficiency, and derive actionable customer insights.

A robust Salesforce SAP integration improves the coordination between sales, finance, manufacturing, distribution, marketing, and customer support processes and provides a 360-degree view of their customers to better customer service and elevate profit margins.

Why Salesforce integration with SAP?

Salesforce is the #1 CRM platform globally, with millions of subscribers and tens of thousands of companies worldwide. SAP is a leading ERP platform with millions of cloud users. Being prominent names in the IT ecosystem, integrating Salesforce with SAP connects your frontend with your backend and drives true digital transformation. A Salesforce SAP integration drives business efficiency and betters coordination between sales, accounting, manufacturing, distribution, and customer support departments.

Organizations that integrate Salesforce to their SAP platform achieve smooth and seamless data handling and management. On the contrary, enterprises that integrate their Salesforce platform with SAP ERP gain valuable insights about the customers through real-time data automation.

The benefits of Salesforce SAP integration

Enterprises opting for Salesforce integration with the SAP platform can achieve complete automation of business operations. The Salesforce CRM tracks your frontend information like customer and sales data. SAP handles backend information like customer purchase history, inventory data, financial details, and billing and shipping-related info. When synchronized together, an application can share customer-related data like order history, account information like phone number, address, and email id, preventing data duplication and generating new value.

The following are some of the benefits of Salesforce & SAP integration.

#1: Achieves higher business efficiency

With customer sales documents scattered in Salesforce and SAP, processing orders, managing inventory, and creating invoices becomes a slow and tedious task. Synchronizing these platforms removes all order management inefficiencies and bottlenecks in the cash flow workflow, eliminates time delays, and allows seamless management of the order fulfillment, invoicing, and delivery process.

#2: Ensures data consistency

Manual data entry in two different Salesforce and SAP systems is prone to human errors, causes an imbalance in data figures, and leads to data duplication. Salesforce SAP integration enables data consistency. Entering customer information means similar data being automatically utilized for various business processes, eliminating the need for dual data entry and decreasing data redundancies and errors.

#3: Deliver personalized customer experiences

Salesforce integration with SAP ERP provides a 360-degree view of your clients and customers, from purchasing frequencies, expectations, preferences, order history, and account information to transactions all with a single system. When you have deeper insights and intelligence on what your customers’ demands and needs, you can easily create tailored solutions that drive customer loyalty and support.

#4: Increases selling opportunities and allows order processing in real-time

Salesforce integration with SAP allows for instantaneous, effortless and optimized order processing, invoicing, and delivery. When the order is closed in Salesforce CRM, it is updated on the SAP ERP platform automatically. Salesforce SAP integration becomes more important for businesses with customized pricing norms where discounts are based on order quantity and product combinations. Such platform synchronization reduces the risk of price misquoting, increases sales productivity, and boosts profit margins.

#5: Practice an agile business environment

Salesforce SAP integration puts customer data to good use in your company’s value chain. It allows you to get a complete view of your customers, enables you to predict customer demands ahead of time, quickly adjust to the changing market conditions, accelerate the development-to-order process, and communicate with your customers more effectively. All of these actions serve as building blocks for an agile business environment.

#6: Accelerate cash flow

Salesforce SAP integration helps with cash reserves as well. The synchronized system quickly identifies overdue accounts, sends alerts, and helps optimize the cash flow system. It helps financial managers raise invoices immediately, collect cash as per the payment terms after closing a sale, gain insights to recognize cash flow accurately, and helps to meet monthly financial goals.

#7: Boosts ROIs

To earn profits, you need to charge the right price and keep operating costs under control. As enterprises leverage the combined functionalities of Salesforce & SAP integration, it will make business processes effective and efficient, enhance competitive positioning, and serve customers the way they want to be served. Salesforce integration with SAP shortens order processing times, leads to faster fulfillment, and reduces human-made errors. All such efforts contribute directly to increasing sales figures and boosting ROIs.

#8: Improves customer support standards

Customer service agents need complete visibility of the customers’ data, including order history, payments returns, delivery, dispatches, and purchasing behavior, in order to track down and solve their issues. Identifying the correct information from two systems hampers quality customer support. With Salesforce SAP integration, reps can find all related information on one system, improving query processing rates, bringing down the cost of sales and improving competitive positioning.

Salesforce SAP integration best practices

Using our experience and expertise in Salesforce integration with SAP, we’ve compiled the Salesforce SAP integration best practices to allow a seamless, efficient, and flexible integration. These include:

Best Practice #1: Hybrid Connectors

Ensure all the Salesforce & SAP integration data, including all the credentials details, transformation information, etc. is stored at the company premises. However, logical mapping on how to integrate SAP with salesforce should be present on the cloud. It makes it easy for enterprises to adopt this integrated model with added security and flexibility.

Best Practice #2: Governor’s limit

For a single work request, developers perform multiple API calls usually. So, developers need to use the API calls wisely since Salesforce has enforced Governor’s limit on API calls that can be performed on a daily basis. Therefore, developers must use data sync and wherever possible by employing the parent and child records in a single API call to reduce the number of REST API calls conducted.

Best Practice #3: Standard APIs

Try to use standard APIs, instead of custom APIs, wherever possible to eliminate any impact on the existing solution and save time on the implementation and integration.

Best Practice #4: Pre-packed templates

Use pre-built and reusable integrations to save time and money, accelerate the execution of business functions across multiple systems, applications, and platforms and improve integration reliability.

Best Practice #5: Ensure flexible integrations

Salesforce SAP integration should be flexible to scale to the future complexity needs without disrupting the current operations. The integration points should allow bi-directional data sync from Salesforce to SAP and vice-versa.

Best Practice #6: Define the use cases

To do this, you’ll need an experienced Integration Engineer, pre-built templates, and best practices. Once all your use cases are integrated and ready to run, connect them with additional endpoints, data points, workflows, real-time customized integration without any coding.

Best Practice #7: Hire Salesforce integration with SAP specialists

While it might seem like a no-brainer to you, getting an experienced and versatile Salesforce SAP integration expert will help you smoothly integrate the two most powerful platforms, Salesforce and SAP, boost business productivity, and achieve competitive advantage.

Make most of your Salesforce & SAP integration

The individual benefits of Salesforce and SAP combined to form a Salesforce SAP integration helps organizations to use powerful and vital customer data and turn it into actionable insights and solutions. Salesforce integration with SAP gets all the decision-makers under one roof using a single system with multiple functionalities, allowing leads to take crucial business decisions faster while streamlining business processes.

Ready to integrate Salesforce with SAP?

Digital commerce is winning, by a margin so disproportionate that they will be critical to your brand’s success. The global eCommerce market is expected to reach $4.89 trillion in 2021, and will grow in the coming years, thanks to borderless eCommerce. To enlighten you more, two years ago, only 13.6% of sales were made online. Today, that number is expected to reach 19.5% in 2021 and 21.8% by 2024, a solid 8.2% increase in just five years, emphasizing on the need to reduce time-to- market through eCommerce accelerators.

Customers are leaning more towards eCommerce sales than physical outlets. This could be understood by the fact that online retail sales will reach $6.39 trillion, with eCommerce scouting for 21.8% of the total retail sales. Additionally, the pandemic has led digital commerce to transform the position and role of physical stores. So, if you’re leading in digital commerce, it’s not just an indicator of online success, but of omnichannel success and retail longevity for your brand.

As eCommerce leaders, you play a critical role in progressing your company and helping it stand the test of time. With your leadership and winning strategies, you can successfully navigate the dynamic waters of the digital commerce economy. So, if you’re new to accelerate eCommerce ecosystem and are looking to launch your store online, we have a solution for you that is cost effective for budget and time frame. And that is- an eCommerce accelerator program. You can improve your eCommerce website performance through a digital commerce accelerator.

What is an eCommerce accelerator?

Traditionally, launching an online eCommerce store takes several months and runs on +36% over budget. Perhaps, before the pandemic, retailers and merchants had the luxury of time and money to spend on constructing their digital eCommerce platform. However, since the pandemic, there is an urgency to launch such solutions online. An eCommerce platform accelerator program fulfills all such demands.

An eCommerce accelerator software is a quick to implement eCommerce solution that gets your B2B, B2C, and DTC business running online in a record time of 4-6 weeks. Based on popular eCommerce platforms like Magento (Adobe Commerce), Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Shopify Plus and commercetools amongst a few, an eCommerce accelerator reduces the time to launch an online store by 50% and the cost to launch by 80% while improving eCommerce platform performance. These digital commerce accelerators possess key platform capabilities like Adobe Commerce’s AI-powered product recommendations, reward points system, managed cloud services, CMS capabilities, and intuitive admin interface along with its definitive and unique features like mobile-first approach, localized payment solutions, active customer service, and seamless integrations.

See the world the way your customers do

Take a deep dive into consumer wants and desires.

Depending on the platform and the key features of the eCommerce accelerator program, you can reach the market on time, prioritize customer experiences over product quality, fulfill market trends, and take note of customer’s online buying behaviors.

The benefits of eCommerce accelerators

A digital commerce accelerator program offers few added benefits to using it than the traditional eCommerce platform. These include:

Time to Value: Digital commerce accelerators get your business up and running within 4-6 weeks. It allows you to understand the value of your investment, start selling online, and connect with your customers as quickly as possible.

Cost-efficiency: eCommerce accelerators are pre-built with most usual features and integrations relevant to your online store and can be customized for the majority of business operations. Using existing templates, you can start building the store and keep it evolving as per your business requirements.

Scalability: eCommerce accelerators are built on popular platforms like Adobe Commerce, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Shopify Plus and commercetools, trusted by global ambitious brands. From handling peak traffic surges to offering localized customer experiences to customers from different geographies and eCommerce platform performance, these platforms can handle everything and serve thousands of SKUs.

Flexibility to launch: eCommerce accelerators consist of different packages that employ a variety of pre-built features and integrations. The best part of these digital commerce accelerators is that they can be tweaked as per your business needs and requirements, unlike a SaaS-based eCommerce platform. It adds flexibility to the process of launching an online store and saves a lot of time designing and developing things from scratch.

Highly customizable: With its pre-built themes and integrations based on renowned eCommerce platforms, eCommerce accelerators leave space for you to incorporate tailored features and full-store customization. Digital commerce accelerators are designed to grow with your business, meaning you can customize, extend, personalize, and expand into new markets post launch.

Fully optimized and tested: eCommerce accelerators are optimized for marketing and SEO, tested for multiple touchpoints, devices and platforms before launching. It allows you to put your brand forward, optimize it for every device, check before launching it online, and offer incredible customer experiences at every step of the way.

Smart analytics: eCommerce accelerators bring together the power of analytics, smart insights and business intelligence to help you gain data about your customers, market, and ongoing trends and readjust your online store in a similar way.

What are the key features of eCommerce accelerators?

Some of the key characteristics of a digital commerce accelerator program include:

B2B, Retail and DTC eCommerce ready with specific templates and functionalities
Personalized and responsive web designs across every touchpoint to optimize for several devices
Mobile-first solution, meaning the online stores are designed for smartphones first to capture the interest of on-the-go shoppers that can be easily scaled for use on desktops and laptops
Quick and easy deployment of the pre-configured integrations and storefronts with additional sites
Localized payment solutions to offer customers of different geographies with their preferred payment methods
Offer 24/7 customer support to interact with customers, answer their queries, help them find products and provide update regarding items
Optimized for SEO and tested for several touchpoints, devices and screens
Packed with features and also allows for easy integration of the CMS, marketing platform and order management system without losing any accelerate eCommerce functionality
eCommerce sites customized, extended and expanded post launch of the eCommerce store
Deploy on other channels on the same installation
Pre-integrated tools like Google Analytics, multiple payment gateways depending on the region, marketing platform and more
Automated product recommendations based on a shopper’s buying behavior, eventually reducing cart abandonment rates and eCommerce platform performance
Run marketing campaigns to facilitate connection with your shoppers and connect with them even when they aren’t shopping
Easily launch tailored online stores in different regions and geographies with minimal efforts and time requirement
Combine online and offline stores and offer customers with a consistent shopping experience
Easily manage flash sales and other promotional activities with ease and efficiency
A unified accelerate eCommerce solution for web, mobile, and social

Difference between traditional commerce development and eCommerce accelerator

Although digital commerce accelerators and traditional eCommerce platforms might sound like the same thing, it isn’t. eCommerce platforms are of three types: SaaS (software-as-a-service) platform, PaaS (platform-as-a-service) platform, and on-premise platforms. SaaS and PaaS deliver eCommerce solutions through the internet. SaaS platforms like Shopify Plus include software only. Once you add hardware to it as well, it becomes a PaaS platform. On the contrary, on-premise eCommerce solutions are hosted locally by the retailers, managed by their IT staff, and accessed via cloud.

eCommerce accelerators, on the other hand, are responsive eCommerce solutions geared towards particular retail and B2B markets. They are built, ground up, from the most popular eCommerce platforms like Magento, BigCommerce, commercetools, Shopify Plus, and Salesforce Commerce Cloud, support the latest browsers and devices, and are developed via latest frontend technologies. eCommerce accelerators, unlike the eCommerce platforms, are unique, out-of-the-box, and specific solutions developed by organizations working on the eCommerce platform.

The digital commerce accelerators include tailored, enhanced and personalized eCommerce features that allows digital commerce companies to deploy eCommerce solutions at a low cost and in record time. With an eCommerce accelerator, you can quickly launch branded, feature-rich online stores, optimized and tested for various touchpoints and proven to deliver marvelous customer experiences without building them from scratch. As per market studies, an eCommerce accelerator software reduces cost to launch an online store by 80% and operational costs by 50%.

That said, eCommerce accelerators are a reliable solution for small businesses and retailers who don’t want to waste any time in launching their online store and are looking for cost-efficient, time-specific and accelerate eCommerce solutions. Every renowned eCommerce accelerator program like the Falcon, Plover, Harrier, and Phoenix, are designed keeping the future of eCommerce in mind and can be easily and rapidly scaled to match any and all business requirements and support the growing eCommerce channels to refine eCommerce platform performance.

How much time does it take to launch a website through an eCommerce accelerator software?

An eCommerce accelerator software allows retailers and merchants to launch their online stores within days and weeks rather than months and years. Typically, you can jumpstart your online business within 4-6 weeks via an eCommerce accelerator program. It means, a digital commerce accelerator reduces your average time-to-market by 80%. Therefore, an eCommerce accelerator provides ambitious brands with an enterprise-level eCommerce solution quickly and at a lower cost.

How much does it cost to launch an online store with an eCommerce accelerator?

Depending on the eCommerce platform you pick, the total cost of launching an eCommerce website varies. However, the total costs spent to launch an online store includes infrastructure costs, shared hosting, virtual private server, dedicated hosting, cloud hosting, development support costs, and the cost of other third-party services. Typically, the total running costs will be different from platform to platform, but can be somewhere between $12000-$500,000 with an average of $21000.

On the other hand, eCommerce accelerators reduce the operational costs by 60%. Since you don’t have to pay for any platform, it nullifies all the costs associated with it. When you decide to launch an online store through an eCommerce platform, you pay for the custom eCommerce solution sold only by the digital commerce company, it’s hosting and maintenance. This brings down your total online store costs by a considerable margin.

Do websites look different when launched via an eCommerce accelerator?

Since eCommerce accelerators are powered by popular and user-centric eCommerce platforms, the eCommerce websites are similar to the ones designed and developed through an eCommerce platform. The benefit of using digital commerce accelerators lies in its pre-built page templates, third-party integrations, numerous flexible components, improve your eCommerce website performance and several key features that allow websites to be maintained and easily scaled to match business requirements and market needs.

Factors to consider when choosing between eCommerce accelerator and traditional eCommerce development

Depending on your business goals and dynamics, you can choose between an eCommerce accelerator program or an open-source/SaaS-based eCommerce platform. eCommerce platforms allow easy entry into the world of online selling, whereas eCommerce accelerators are a one-time investment on a customized and market relevant online retail store. They are built from the ground up to support your growing eCommerce demands and ensure optimum eCommerce platform performance. Typically, your eCommerce platform accelerator vs eCommerce platform decision depends on the following factors:

Time-to-market
Cost-effectiveness
Future-readiness
Market relevance
Scalability
Customizations
Smart Analytics

eCommerce for retail: A challenge or an opportunity?

eCommerce is driving the change for the retail industry.

Fasttrack your eCommerce journeys with our popular eCommerce accelerators

Ranosys has been supporting its customers’ eCommerce journey and digital transformation goals for the past 13 years. With our expertise and experience in implementing end-to-end eCommerce solutions for our clients, we have identified the gap between the OOTB eCommerce solution features and the changing eCommerce ecosystem needs. We have identified a few types and categories of features common throughout various verticals of industries. We have collected these details and have crafted solutions on top of various eCommerce platforms, including Adobe Commerce, Shopify Plus, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, and commercetools.

Our eCommerce accelerators are customized to suit your business needs, from impeccable user experience interfaces to available features and integrations. After reviewing your eCommerce goals, we customize our eCommerce platform accelerators that are quick-to-launch, within your budget, feature-rich, scalable to the future, flexible to adapt to the changing market needs, and smart and insightful to analyze customer behavior and offer relevant and customer-friendly recommendations.

Falcon: Magento-based eCommerce accelerator

Falcon is a collection of additional extensions, plugins and themes on top of Adobe commerce to enhance eCommerce capabilities and to introduce localisation of eCommerce to support international eCommerce strategy for various geographies. We have already localised Falcon for various countries by introducing local payment gateways, shipping providers, Local POS systems, CRM’s, ERP’s and much more. Falcon also brings industry specific features and has also been tuned for industries like Fashion & apparels, food & beverages, consumer electronics, furniture & medical and has OOTB capabilities to integrate with multiple backend systems to provide end-to-end localized eCommerce solutions for our customer.

Falcon’s limited time-to-market has redefined omnichannel eCommerce.

Our roadmap also includes capabilities like omnichannel experience, AI-powered product recommendations, live search, social commerce and guided selling and we are continuously monitoring changing needs of the eCommerce ecosystem and making it easy for our client to adopt this change.

Want to see Falcon in action

Plover: Shopify Plus-powered eCommerce accelerator

Plover is a eCommerce accelerator software built on top of the Shopify Plus that allows brands to launch their digital commerce store in as little as 6 weeks. With its pre-built templates and pre-configured integrations, the Plover eCommerce accelerator program helps internationalize your online retail store to launch dedicated storefronts as per different geographies and regions. Bundled with automation capabilities, Plover digital commerce accelerator allows brands to autopilot their business, run promotional campaigns and manage inventory reordering. Other characteristics like unified commerce experience, multi-channel selling, full-store customization, localized payment solutions and smart analytics allows personalized customer experiences and revamps eCommerce platform performance in a limited budget and time frame.

Plover accelerate eCommerce transition with its localized experiences, data-driven design theme, guided selling, embedded customer support service, local shipping integration, seamless integrations with varied platforms, SEO and conversion optimized templates, and multiple payment solutions like buy now pay later, cash on delivery, etc.- Plover functions more than a usual online retail store.

See Shopify Plus accelerator in action

Phoenix: A Salesforce Commerce Cloud-based eCommerce accelerator

Phoenix is an eCommerce accelerator program based on Salesforce Commerce Cloud scalable and cloud-based SaaS functionalities. It leverages the unique features of SFCC and gets your store online within 6 weeks. It possesses all the necessary features and characteristics that help you launch your eCommerce business in as little budget and time as possible. From guided selling, mobile-first approach, scaled to fulfill international business expansion goals, offering impeccable AI-based product recommendations, and pre-built eCommerce templates to localized experiences, active customer support service, local shipping integration, multiple payment providers, post ratings and reviews, and support during peak traffic times, Phoenix does it all.

We have built it on top of the Salesforce Commerce Cloud solution to allow retailers and merchants leverage the unique features of the digital commerce platform along with unique features of our Phoenix eCommerce accelerator software. Phoenix is configured in a way that allows you to drive customer loyalty through promotional campaigns, business intelligence, email marketing solutions, loyalty programs, gift certificates, and store credit, thus decorating shopping experiences.

Go live in as little as 4 weeks with Phoenix

Harrier: A Salesforce-led B2B eCommerce accelerator

Harrier is B2B eCommerce accelerator software built from the ground up on the Salesforce platform. An exclusive eCommerce platform accelerator for B2B businesses, Harrier helps you curate a user-friendly journey for your customers, boosting your revenue in the shortest possible time frame. Packed with high-performing and conversion-oriented B2B functionalities developed at an accelerated pace, Harrier lives your online business within 4-6 weeks, reducing time spent on design and development by 50%.

Our experts have brought together Harrier after extensive research of the B2B online market to assist with all business requirements and market demands. Its mobile-first approach caters to the on-the-go generation, simplified order checkout experience reduces the steps to purchase, order management features allows for repeat orders and inventory management, and various eCommerce integrations better customer experience in a limited time frame and budget. Other unique features of Harrier eCommerce accelerator assists with buyer-specific custom catalog and pricing and account management, flexibility scaled for the future. Phoenix accelerator program offers the following benefits:

Quicker time-to-market: Packed with the right functionalities and features, Harrier helps you kickstart your B2B eCommerce business within 4-6 weeks.
Cost-friendly: Even with pre-built templates, self service portal, customer segmentation based on order frequency, and pre-configured integrations, Harrier is the most cost-effective B2B eCommerce retail solution that translates to better conversions, drives customer loyalty, and ensures repeat business.
Omnichannel marketing: Harrier compiles the power of insights, intelligence, and analytics to deliver real-time feedback regarding your B2B online business. This way, Harrier assists you with omnichannel marketing goals and provides end-to-end customer support across varied storefronts to help manage your online B2B retail business efficiently and effectively.
Optimization and scalability: Harrier eCommerce accelerator is developed to simplify B2B commerce for online buyers and sellers. Hence, it is bundled with B2B specific features like easy reorders, account hierarchies, custom catalogs, buyer-specific pricing, and integrating local shipping solution providers for different regions and geographies.
Salesforce Ecosystem: Retailers can easily integrate the features of the Salesforce CRM to deliver personalized product experiences to Harrier. From customized pricing for different buyers to running campaigns to improve customer conversion and engagement, Harrier combines the power of its unique characteristics along with the Salesforce platform.

Want to see Harrier in action?

Seamlessness, simplicity, and self-service – the modern customer considers these three elements to be the most important characteristics of a frictionless customer service applications. Thanks to the influx of digital technologies in every walk of life, they’re more comfortable in navigating customer service applications on their own rather than depending upon your customer care executives. In fact, there are many reports and statistics that support our claim. Let’s have a look at a few of them –

Around 89% of customers in the US expect brands to have a self-service portal.
Almost 86% of B2B executives prefer to use self-service tools rather than dealing with a salesperson.
By 2030, at least a billion tickets will be raised by customer-owned robots due to the deployment of AI in self-service.

Clearly, frictionless customer service applications are winning the battle to better conversion and brands should realize their importance sooner than later. However, ensuring self-service takes streamlined operations, automated processes, and quick response to changes – all of which require a modern low code application development platform like OutSystems.

With its model-driven approach and prebuilt templates, OutSystems combines the speed of modern technology with the excellence of traditional development techniques. In fact, we have wonderful examples of how it has helped organizations achieve a competitive advantage with quick CX transformation. But before we get to them, let’s explore the impact of frictionless customer service applications and the challenges that a business may face in building them.

How do frictionless customer service applications lead to better profitability?

Today, a customer has sufficient purchasing power and multiple options to choose from. What they lack, however, is time and the brands that are successful in accelerating their journey tend to become their favourites. They are no longer impressed with out-of-the-box designs, clever phrases, and long customer service calls – all they want is simplicity, value for time, and as little friction as possible.

And this is where customer service applications come in. They empower customers to find solutions on their own, discourage long phone calls and are responsible for introducing the element of self-service in the entire process. In fact, this inclusion often leads to better engagement, conversion, and retention. Let’s have a look at how frictionless customer service affects the following major phases in the conversion life cycle –

Customer acquisition

Getting your visitors to sign-up is usually the first win towards building a long-standing customer relationship. But what if your potential customer gets annoyed at this very step and retracts back from taking any further action? How do you ensure that their acquisition is simple, timely, and engaging?

Well, your answer lies in frictionless customer service applications that support digital onboarding; especially if you operate in the finance and banking sector. From ensuring top-notch security to reducing time and money spent on customer acquisition, digital onboarding reduces friction at every step of this journey leading to a lesser drop-out rate and better customer retention.

Customer engagement

This is the most crucial factor that determines whether your customers are happy with your offering or not. Are they satisfied with your site design or do they leave the journey in the middle? Do you notice them repeating their purchase or do they face difficulty in completing even one order?

The aforementioned queries give a deeper insight into your site’s customer experience and it turns out that frictionless self-service functionality could enhance the majority of these factors. With a customer service application, you could enable faster checkout, allow quick redressal to queries, and promote personalized interactions. With seamless and fast services, customers have a better browsing experience, spend more time on exploring your offerings, engage happily, and thus, convert more.

Both customer acquisition and engagement are pivotal metrics in determining the effectiveness and profitability of your business. These two experiences alone can make or break your customer satisfaction ratio, word-of-mouth index, and growth rates. If you can manage to delight your customers when they first interact with your app and then keep them hooked, you’ve already won the digital transformation game.

However, what stands between you and your improved profitability is nothing but slow response to changing preferences, complex customer journeys, and a fragmented customer experience. Thankfully, there’s good news- you can still work around these issues by incorporating a low code application development platform like OutSystems.

But before we get into the “hows”, let us show you why your current development methodologies may be harming frictionless customer service.

Wondering how OutSystems can help build a frictionless CX?

What are the challenges that prevent frictionless customer self-service applications?

Speed to change

Once you’ve identified the points of friction in your UX, your first step would be to optimize them as soon as possible. This process, however, takes way more time than expected with manual coding or traditional development practice. As a result, you keep leading your visitors to a less-than-ideal customer experience and may even lose out on engagement and conversion.

Multiple channels

Let’s say the UX of your web solution is frictionless but it turns out that most of your visitors come through a mobile device which causes a lot of friction! In today’s times, it’s not enough to focus on only one channel and it is, in fact, more important to have a mobile responsive solution.

Quickly evolving customer expectations

Every new day brings a fresh development in market trends and thus, in customer expectation. In this scenario, you have to keep up with the changing trends and apply them to your UX to prevent any dissatisfaction or friction. But with multiple channels and quickly changing demands, it’s nearly impossible to keep pace and you end up missing out on big opportunities to engage your customers.

All of these factors are prominent and in fact, inevitable in today’s digital landscape. You cannot ignore them, instead, you need to migrate to a modern application development platform that helps you combat these challenges and make sure that you can curate a contemporary UX at all times which is as frictionless as possible.

Why is OutSystems the right choice for frictionless customer service applications?

To begin with, OutSystems lets you develop with speed while maintaining delivery quality . With OutSystems, you never compromise on performance but you accelerate your time to market and respond to demands quicker than before. Recognized as a leader by Gartner mobile application development platforms magic quadrant, OutSystems ensures the CX transformation takes a centre stage in the process of application development.

Here’s a quick look at why it could help you in building a frictionless customer service application better than any other low code application development platform –

Visually-driven development

OutSystems comes powered with a rich library of pre-built templates and themes. You could build 80-90% of your application with a drag-and-drop methodology which not only accelerates the development speed but also lets your team focus on what truly matters in differentiating your application – CX transformation.

Cross-channel functionality

Thanks to OutSystems’ cross-platform capability and reusable codes, you can build digital solutions meant for both web and mobile platforms as well as PWA with a single code. As a result, you not only reduce the development time but also ensure that every change you make is deployed on all channels at the same time.

DevOps support

Powered by built-in AI and machine learning tools, OutSystems helps in leveraging intelligent insights and data analytics in your business without the need for a huge investment. An OutSystems app could help you bring more personalization and sophistication to customer journeys because of all these factors.

Best-in-class performance and developer expressiveness

If you truly want to build a frictionless customer service application, you need to rely on the expressiveness of the traditional development process. But, you also need speed! Enter OutSystems – it integrates the swiftness of low code applications development with the expressiveness of traditional practices. Thus, you could still develop a powerful application within a lesser period and with much more CX differentiation.

Final take

Since its inception, OutSystems has been successful in tying together the business and technical users. With OutSystems, you can be mindful of your business needs without putting pressure on your development team. A low code application development platform like OutSystems can help you in your CX transformation journey and also in eliminating friction at every step.

Thinking of OutSystems consultation?

So, you’ve had a successful local eCommerce store with positive ROIs, agreeable sales, and yearly increasing revenue figures. Only now, you’re thinking of international business expansion, catching the global glimpse, trying to capture the global consumer attention now that you have mesmerized the local audiences, and grab a large chunk of the 6.54 trillion US dollars of global eCommerce revenues as projected by Statista.

So, here you are now. Thinking of launching your international eCommerce stores into new markets and territories, confused whether you should stick with your traditional eCommerce platform or look for a better one that helps you throughout your international business expansion plan. Undoubtedly, global eCommerce is a significant step for any local retail store, considering that global eCommerce sales will achieve $5 trillion by 2022 and international retail sales will show an increase of 21.8% by 2024.

However, to go global, you need to have a robust and future scaled international business expansion strategy and the right global eCommerce platform to assist you every step of the way. And we have just the right platform you can trust to commence your global eCommerce journey- Salesforce Commerce Cloud.

Built with internalization in mind, Salesforce Commerce Cloud (SFCC) supports enterprise retailers of all sizes and genres. It is the platform that helps you achieve a global eCommerce enterprise distinction.

In this blog, we discuss how Salesforce Commerce Cloud features and capabilities are a perfect choice for your international eCommerce store and how it supports your international business expansion goals.

Reason #1: A platform built with international eCommerce in mind

When you’re brainstorming a business plan for international expansion to your store beyond the local borders of your home country, you need an global eCommerce platform that keeps up with the extra pressure. SFCC or Salesforce Commerce Cloud has been developed to support your international eCommerce needs.

Employing Salesforce Commerce Cloud features, you can seamlessly launch, manage, and maintain multiple storefronts from a single platform tailored to multiple time zones, locations, regions, cultures, and languages. SFCC allows easy implementation and launch of multiple global stores catered to specific target markets with a centralized management so that as your company grows, you can swiftly and quickly introduce new international eCommerce transactions methods to audiences around the world.

With SFCC, you can easily and speedily build personalized eCommerce customer experiences, organized via region, currency, language, state, or city, catering to every specific audience group you are targeting. It stands true to your international eCommerce goals, doesn’t slow down your international business expansion strategies, quickly adapts and scales without batting an eye.

Reason #2: Global eCommerce stores with localized experiences

When planning to go global, language becomes the most critical consideration. Market research shows that most customers don’t like buying from global eCommerce sites that aren’t in their language or don’t offer popular payment methods in their region. Other reasons include addresses in different formats and complicated eCommerce checkout experiences.

SFCC addresses all those issues. Salesforce Commerce Cloud features allows merchants to customize their storefronts in multiple languages, active payment methods and currencies, and optimal content to deliver impeccable localized eCommerce consumer experiences to each and every customer. With SFCC’s centralized management, merchants can easily and quickly handle customer orders and queries like product availability, billing, pricing, region-based discounts, shopper-based offers, etc.

To better online multi-store eCommerce platform experiences, SFCC empowers merchants to deploy local marketing messages and promotions, behavior and region-specific content, custom price lists, multiple priced books to define price tags in different currencies for a product.

Reason #3: Localized payment methods to improve eCommerce checkout experiences

When expanding your online business to various geographies and regions, implementing local payment solutions with location-specific tax tariffs to your global eCommerce site will play a critical role in swifty gaining entrance to a new customer base. For example, consumers in Singapore prefer Stripe for international eCommerce transactions, while Malaysian shoppers want iPay88 as a payment option. The more you offer payment choices popular in a region, the higher is your eCommerce conversion rate and the lower is your cart abandonment rate.

Salesforce Commerce Cloud natively supports region-based payment, currency, and tax plug-ins from leading providers. It makes it easy for international business expansion merchants to quickly launch online storefronts with relevant payment solutions in the location. Customers can pay in their local currency via their preferred payment method and tax will be calculated and deducted automatically based on the tax rules in the region.

Achieve more with international eCommerce

A checklist that assists through your global eCommerce expansion.

Reason #4: International eCommerce with a mobile-first approach

Did you know, in 2019, 67.2% of global eCommerce sales came from mobile devices, equivalent to 2.32 trillion dollars in revenue? And this number keeps on growing. The truth is, if you want to become a popular international eCommerce business, you need to also become a mobile-first brand. Mobile eCommerce sales outpacing traditional desktop sales is a secret to none. Therefore, your international business expansion strategy must always include mobile-friendly websites with responsive designs.

Salesforce Commerce Cloud is one of the platforms that prioritizes mobile-first experiences. It’s responsive mobile-optimized interfaces quickly adapts to multiple screen sizes. Using Salesforce Reference Architecture in the SFCC platform, merchants can easily launch mobile sites along with branded mobile apps, optimized for eCommerce consumer experiences across all mobile devices and sizes in a shorter time frame. Other Salesforce Commerce Cloud features for mobile eCommerce include push notifications, location-relevant offers, optimized checkout flow, auto-completion and one-touch payment solutions.

Reason #5: AI-based customer insights to deliver personalized experiences

When expanding into a new region, merchants find it difficult to know their target market’s needs, wants, preferences and buying behavior. To understand your new customers during this global eCommerce expansion, you need a smart system that studies all the real-time customer data to help you create shopping solutions on an individual level. And SFCC’s AI-based predictive intelligence platform, Einstein AI, helps achieve this feat.

With Salesforce Commerce Cloud’s Einstein baked into its multi-store eCommerce platform, merchants can deliver more one-on-one shopping experiences across multiple platforms, product recommendations, content and smart search results tailored to every customer. In addition, SFCC Einstein AI automates manual tasks, gathers massive data about shoppers to deliver actionable insights, allows retailers to add new product synonyms of related items on the websites, eventually improving eCommerce sales and eCommerce conversion rates, and decreasing cart abandonment rates.

Reason #6: Continuous and comprehensive customer support

As a product of the world’s #1 CRM, Salesforce, Commerce Cloud is known for its consistent 24/7 customer support. If there is ever a hiccup in your SFCC platform like purchasing issues, coding errors, or interface problems, SFCC’s expansive team and resource library are there offering prompt services, day in and out.

Moreover, with the right Salesforce Commerce Cloud Implementation Partner like us assisting with your global eCommerce goals, merchants don’t have to worry about any error or maintenance issues, since our experts will be there to guide and assist you throughout the way. Our Salesforce eCommerce accelerators, Phoenix and Harrier can even launch your international eCommerce sites within 4-6 weeks.

Supercharge your International eCommerce efforts with Salesforce Commerce Cloud

Undoubtedly, in today’s increasingly competitive market, it is tedious to explore the right global eCommerce platform for your business. Of course, there is no one size fits all approach to it. What works best for you may not necessarily fit the requirements of others. However, when it comes to finding the right fit for your international eCommerce goals, Salesforce Commerce Cloud helps you accomplish almost everything. From assisting with international business expansion strategy to adopting a mobile-first approach, Salesforce Commerce Cloud (SFCC) fulfills all your core requirements.

And, if you need help determining how Salesforce Commerce Cloud can help supercharge your global eCommerce efforts, our experts can help. We have more than 13 years of experience in helping brands find the right international eCommerce platform for their online operations at the right budget. Ranosys is a leading Salesforce Implementation Partner with 150+ certified architects and engineers and XX launched SFCC sites.

Want to know more about Salesforce Commerce Cloud?

Ask about SFCC pricing, implementation and everything else.

Although a well-known term in the corridors of the digital world, the rise and impact of technical debt were never expected to be this huge.

According to a survey, 91% of organizations struggle with it. In fact, 40% of the survey participants report that technical debt harms their delivery quality.

But before we discuss technical debt management, we need to understand where it stems from.

In this article, we plan on doing exactly that.

So, stay with us as we decode the meaning, cause, impact, and ways to manage it with OutSystems.

What is technical debt?

Technical debt is exactly what the name suggests – some tasks you ignore or save for later so that you can first finish what is more urgent.

Let us explain with a few technical debt examples –

How many times has your team made an application go live while your backlog had many tasks pending?

Haven’t you ever gone easy with testing because the deadline is around the corner?

More often than not, the answer to the above questions is a “yes”.

In the race of meeting customer expectations and market trends, an organization ends up making short-term decisions to ensure speedy delivery.

While it helps in maintaining business agility, it also leads to potential opportunity costs, heavy maintenance, constant rework, and performance issues.

To put it in simple words, it is the price you have to pay to keep up with evolving demands, meeting timelines, and appropriating resources.

Let’s face it – some technical debt is unavoidable and is a part of the software development process.

Is technical debt bad?

In fact, we often find ourselves wondering – is it an actual threat, or are we overestimating it?

The answer to this question lies in the amount of technical debt accumulated in your business. As long as it is manageable, it works well with the tandem of meeting business needs.

But the problem arises when it reaches a point where it starts to take up a major chunk of your time, resources, and efforts.

According to a report by OutSystems, technical debt will cost around $5 trillion in the next decade. Clearly, it is turning out to be more serious than organisations had anticipated.

Due to its implications, organisations are forced to utilize their critical resources for managing technical debt instead of focusing on innovation and expansion.

Basically, your team spends more time on maintenance and correction. In its absence, the same team could be analyzing competitors, spending more time on innovation, and learning about new developments.

FREE REPORT

Businesses devote 78% of their IT budgets to managing technical debts.

So, the need of the hour is to figure out ways to reduce this scenario. But before we get there, let’s find out what are the different types of technical debt.

What are the types of technical debt?

The best way to understand various types of technical debt is by analyzing the “Technical Debt Quadrant” given by Martin Fowler. Let us explain it to you –

Deliberate and reckless: This particular situation occurs when the software development team is aware of the loopholes but focuses more on speedy delivery than on organized code.

Deliberate and prudent: This generally refers to those times when the debt is small and less impactful; thus, the team decides to prioritize delivery and deal with the consequences later.

Inadvertent and reckless: A classic case of inexperience and lack of expertise – this is the debt you may accrue if your team lacks knowledge and have no idea they are committing mistakes.
Inadvertent and prudent: A lesson learned but a tad bit late. This case is when your team realizes the mistakes but after the delivery.

Here are two things that we learn from this quadrant:

Reckless technical debt needs to be avoided at all costs.
While the prudent part looks friendly and manageable, it is still important to keep measuring technical debt of this kind and keep it under control.

Now that we know more about how technical debt accrues, we must also delve deeper into what causes it.

In the next section, we explore what loopholes result in technical debt in an organization.

What are the causes of technical debt?

Time constraint: We all know that our teams have immense pressure to reduce time to market. Usually, they end up avoiding a few critical steps and accrue technical debt consciously to make it to the clients’ timeline.

Changing demands: A project starts with certain requirements and specifications. But in today’s scenario, they keep evolving with changing trends and customer needs. After a point, it becomes difficult to keep bug-free; as a result, technical debt accumulates.

Complex code: Software development is not a cakewalk! On top of it, technologies become obsolete quicker than ever nowadays. The usage of complex code with several languages is a definite step towards accruing technical debt involuntarily.

When we analyze these causes, it seems like technical debt starts to emerge when we are neck-deep into a project.

Although the truth is far from the reality!

The moment you agree on a project with a tight deadline, you subconsciously choose to ignore a few non-essential steps to deliver it on time.

But the real question is – do you ever get time to look back and pay back the debt you had accrued?

There’s always a new project, more essential tasks, and perhaps another deadline to meet. And whether you take it seriously or not, technical debt does return to haunt you!

How consumer demands accrue debt?

What happened during the pandemic is a classic example of technical debt savagery.

A lot of eCommerce companies did not take into account peak traffic while building them. Of course, they had never expected the world to go into a lockdown and rely on online retail for all its needs!

As a result, a lot of major eCommerce brands crashed under pressure. While those companies that built a scalable platform, like Amazon, eBay, cashed in to the opportunity.

Their single decision of not postponing critical development steps saved them from any debt and helped them thrive during difficult times.

But this is easier said than done!

Living up to customer expectations and dealing with technical debt is often more complicated than expected.

This is where OutSystems plays a major role.

With its low-code capabilities, it brings up an alternative to traditional software development practices. Let’s find out how it can help reduce technical debt.

How to handle technical debt with OutSystems?

Model-driven development: OutSystems is a model-based development tool that requires minimal coding.

Thanks to visually-driven design modules and preempted templates, it manages to deliver mission-critical projects on time without any complex code.

As a result, there’s less chance of missing steps, committing errors or bugs in the codes.

Accelerated development time: One of the main reasons why project managers keep a few technical tasks on the backburner is the lack of time.

OutSystems addresses this problem from its root cause. Studies have shown that low-code has the power to reduce development time by 90%.

By leveraging OutSystems, your team can manage to deliver projects on time (sometimes even before it) without compromising on the features and performance.

Automated deployment process: Using a combination of AI and analytics, OutSystems takes care of the entire deployment process so that there are no architectural errors, faulty logic, or broken code.

Consequently, the deployment process doesn’t get completed unless it’s error-free and debt-less.

Connects business and IT teams: We are well aware that bringing technical and business teams on the same page is not easy.

And often, their difference of opinion ends up in lapses in codes and the deployment process.

However, OutSystems turns this entire scenario around. It has proven to be revolutionary in terms of allowing business users entry to development practices.

As they are involved in the development process, there are lesser demands of unexpected changes and more understanding of technological constraints.

Finally, it becomes a win-win situation for both sides. It allows business users to respond to market trends and allows core developers to focus on more critical tasks.

Not to forget, a relaxed, collaborative approach also leaves a little room for any kind of debt to accumulate.

FREE REPORT

Businesses devote 78% of their IT budgets to managing technical debts.

Want to delve deeper into its methodology?

Final take:

We can’t ignore that rapid development is essential to survive in today’s competitive market. If an organization keeps relying on traditional development technologies, they’re doomed to break at some point or the other.

OutSystems is a breath of fresh air when it comes to tying high-end performance and less complexity in one thread.

It also makes for an ideal technical debt strategy that not only helps in measuring technical debt but managing it too!

Looking for a trusted OutSystems partner?

Accelerate your digital transformation journey

There’s no doubt that Magento eCommerce (Adobe Commerce) is one of the most preferred and trusted eCommerce platforms at present. Developed exclusively for eCommerce in 2008, Magento ticks every box required to make an online business a success.

If you have a keen interest in digital commerce, you must already know about the history, features, and potential of Magento eCommerce.

Yet, there are a few questions that require seasoned opinion. Thus, our experts took up the responsibility of answering all the major FAQs about Magento eCommerce in this blog.

So, put your reading glasses on.

Let’s go on a quick and informative ride about Magento eCommerce!

Magento OpenSource is a good option for small business owners who want to take baby steps into the online market. You can find your own Magento hosting and start your Magento store with ease.

However, for those planning to grow their online business, Magento Commerce Cloud would be an ideal choice with its added functionalities, features like Cloud hosting, and the support of Magento account managers.

There are many examples of merchants who use Magento Commerce now but had started with Magento OpenSource. So, remember, no matter what your business goal is, Magento can be a fit in your eCommerce plan.

I understand Magento eCommerce, but what is Magento hosting?

Let’s start with the basics – web hosting creates space for your website on the internet and makes it live on the World Wide Web with a data center.

Magento has a lot of advanced features – but it doesn’t have a hosting plan. However, there are many hosting plans built exclusively for Magento stores.

You can subscribe to any of them and launch your store. But before that, you need to decide upon a specific type of hosting, which is as follows –

Different types of Magento hosting(H3)

Shared hosting: Where you share a server with multiple sites. It has a low cost of entry and is suitable for beginners.
VPS hosting: You still share a server with multiple sites, but the distribution is well-balanced. No site can exceed its prescribed limits, so it’s more reliable and scalable. Of course, it is costlier than shared hosting.
Dedicated hosting: This is where you get an entire server exclusively for your site. You can customize the server and make decisions about infrastructure like the memory size and operating system. Needless to say, it is the costliest.
Cloud hosting: This is the most popular type right now. It is based on cloud capabilities, and there are no fixed prices – you pay for the resources you use.

After you decide upon the type of Magento hosting, there’s another question that you need to deal with.

How are you going to manage the hosting? Well, there can be two ways to carry out this task, let us explain them to you –

Managed Magento hosting: This is where you outsource the management to a professional hosting provider. From setup and configuration to support and maintenance of the hosting plan, they take care of everything on your behalf.
Unmanaged Magento hosting: In this case, you own the servers and are fully responsible for every aspect. However, you need to have a dedicated team to manage this and ensure that your Magento site is running smoothly all the time.

What is headless commerce, and is Magento eCommerce compatible with it?

In simple words, headless commerce separates the frontend from the backend. This helps businesses be agile, flexible, and quick in customizing customer experience as per the market trends.

Basically, you can revamp the customer-facing presentation of your online store without involving the backend infrastructure. The result is a fast, highly-tailored website that responds to customer needs quickly.

Now, what makes Magento eCommerce an excellent choice for the same is its headless architecture.

Backed by robust Magento APIs and flexible infrastructure that enables swift decoupling of business and logic layers, Adobe Commerce has been helping many brands leverage headless commerce for their businesses.

Given above is an example of Eleganza’s online store built upon PWA as its frontend and Magento 2 as its backend.

Is there a different Magento eCommerce module for B2B and B2C businesses?

Before we delve deeper into the Magento part of this question, let’s figure out B2B and B2C with examples.

When you have a business that sells products/services directly to the customers, you are handling a B2C business.

You could have an online retail business that sells F&B items, clothing, or anything under the sun.

B2B, on the contrary, deals with other businesses or conglomerates. In B2B, you will face differential pricing, bulk orders, and a complex buying process. The following type of business will help in understanding what is b2b with examples.

If you are a manufacturer selling products to a wholesaler, you have a B2B business. In fact, an IT company developing apps for other companies is also an example of B2B commerce.

Here is a quick look at the major differences between the two types of businesses –

When it comes to eCommerce, the principle or presentation remains the same for both enterprises and individuals. You would need your site to be intuitive and customer-centric in both cases.

And this is why Magento eCommerce makes no distinction between the two and offers features that compliment both B2B and B2C business.

Magento features like content staging, smart inventory management, and a quotation system facilitate easy management of B2B eCommerce without compromising on the simplicity and attractiveness of the UI/UX.

Chosen as a B2B commerce suite leader by The Forrester Wave, Magento represents modern businesses with the right amalgamation of B2B features with B2C design.

How to migrate Magento 1.9 to 2.0?

When you decide to migrate to Magento or upgrade Magento 1 to Magento 2, there’re many factors at stake.

The process entails tremendous business potential, but it requires expertise and, more importantly, enough time to carry out a hassle-free migration process.

While you can set up an in-house team to focus on this task, we recommend that you work with an experienced Magento partner for the migration process to eliminate any risks and long turnaround time.

I have been wondering about Magento eCommerce cost. Can you help?

The cost of a Magento solution depends on the type of plan you choose, i.e., Magento open-source, Magento Commerce, Magento Commerce Cloud.

Not just the above details, Adobe Commerce also takes into consideration the gross sales revenue of a firm before deciding upon the final Magento pricing.

Here’s a glance at the Magento eCommerce cost structure below –

Magento OpenSource: Yes, you can download it for free. But the cost of web hosting, extensions, and developers comes around to this price.
Magento Commerce: If your revenue is under $1,000,000, this version will cost you more than $22,000 per year. If the revenue goes above this mark, it can range from $22,000 to over $25,000,000.

Magento Commerce Cloud: For organizations that generate less than $1,000,000 annually, this version costs $40,000 per year. When the revenue crosses this threshold, the subscription price can reach up to $190,000 per year and more.*

Also, don’t forget that the cost also varies according to the pricing of the Magento 2 eCommerce website development agency.

What about Magento eCommerce support services?

Keeping your Magento store safe from cyber attacks and updated is an ongoing task.

And we all know that running an eCommerce business is no child’s play. As a result, maintaining and supporting a Magento store with an in-house team tends to get overbearing after a point.

You would instead leverage your team’s expertise in business development than fixing bugs and upgrading Magento versions.

However, these tasks, no matter how routine, are equally important.

What you need is a Magento support partner that can provide ongoing services to keep your online store healthy.

You could ask your industry peers, or you could look into the official partner directory.

For example, a Google search about the Magento eCommerce London directory could locate your ideal partner in the UK.

Our last word about Magento eCommerce

We would like to end this conversation by sharing a few statistics with you –

The United States has about 73,323 sites powered by Magento, followed by the United Kingdom, which has around 15,748 live Magento websites.
Magento handles over $100 billion in gross merchandise volume every year, which is way more than the total GMV figures reported by Walmart and eBay in the US.
Some of the world’s biggest brands like Coca-Cola and Ford have put their faith in Magento.
In 2018, Adobe took Magento under its wing and made it a part of Adobe Experience Cloud as Adobe Commerce.

All of the above statements prove that Magento eCommerce is here to stay. In fact, it is bound to create waves in the digital landscape.

With its features and capabilities, Adobe Commerce or Magento has the power to put online businesses on the global map.

Our experts have tried to address the most critical questions about Magento in this blog, but if you still have a few more questions in mind, you can always contact us.

Magento on your mind?

Launch your online store within week

All merchants and retailers have always dreamt of is a fast-growing and successful eCommerce business. But, it is easier said than done. There are so many things to consider from inventory management, shipping costs, taxes and delivery management to customer expectations- the list is endless. Attaining high eCommerce sales is a game that requires continuous eCommerce website refurbishing and management along with an eagle’s eye on how to improve eCommerce conversion rate and decrease cart abandonment rates.

Several factors go into running a successful and profit-garnering global eCommerce brand and bad eCommerce practices like complicated checkout process, lack of preferred payment methods, and conventional eCommerce customer experiences can be detrimental for your international eCommerce websites. Therefore, it is important to run regular diagnostics on your eCommerce website to identify what is dropping your eCommerce conversion rate numbers and how to boost your eCommerce sales.

Time and again, our experts have helped several iconic brands improve the performance of their eCommerce store, better their eCommerce sales funnel, improve their customer’s experiences, and remove all the bottlenecks that hamper the profits you could be making. And this article unveils 4 common issues that hamper your eCommerce conversion rate and ways to increase eCommerce sales.

So, without further ado, let’s begin.

Bottleneck #1: Is your mobile eCommerce checkout flow frictionless?

Undoubtedly, today’s customers want consistent and personalized eCommerce experiences. But there is something else they want more than that. It is a frictionless shopping experience with an easy and simple eCommerce checkout flow, especially when they’re shopping on their mobiles.

Over 79% of smartphone users have made an online purchase in the last six months. Moreover, over 60% of online traffic is derived from mobile devices, accumulating $3.56 trillion in global mobile eCommerce sales by the end of 2021. But if you’re not making enough mobile purchases, it is because of the friction in your mobile experience. Here are some eCommerce checkout best practices to improve your consumer’s mobile shopping experience.

Tip 1: Test your mobile sites for positive and negative buyer behaviors

Test for mobile sites for revenue per visitor (RPV), eCommerce conversion rate, cart abandonment rate, and page conversion rate. Optimize your mobile eCommerce sites across every device and screen. This will give you an insight into what works for a buyer and what doesn’t, ultimately improving buyer experiences and eCommerce sales.

Tip 2: Reduce the number of steps in your checkout process

No customer likes to complete several steps to buy a product. eA convoluted eCommerce checkout flow is not only confusing but frustrating. One of the eCommerce checkout best practices is simplifying the checkout experience. The fewer the clicks or steps in an eCommerce checkout process, the more likely customers are to complete it. One-page eCommerce checkout flow is the best. Auto-filling location, automatically adding soon-to-be-collapsing coupons, showing cart total in the header, and adding floating add-to-cart buttons are some ways on how to boost your eCommerce sales.

Tip 3: Offer alternative payment methods

Buy now pay later solutions are becoming increasingly popular with eCommerce consumers and implementing them to your eCommerce store will speed up the checkout process. Moreover, adding other alternative international eCommerce transactions methods like PayPal can have a big impact on your eCommerce sales, delivering 46% higher eCommerce conversion rates versus other payment routes in the global eCommerce marketplace.

Tip 4: Optimize your eCommerce site for mobile devices

A dynamic and responsive mobile eCommerce website that adapts to several screens and devices intrigues every consumer. Design a website with compact fields, less scrolling, and relevant content to better eCommerce consumer experiences.

Tip 5: Offer guest checkouts

eCommerce sales are always more important than logins. So, eliminate friction with guest buyers by not forcing customers to create an account in advance to optimize eCommerce sales funnel.

Bottleneck #2: Does your checkout page offer a smooth and seamless payment process?

Lack of preferred payment options, flexible one-touch payments, or pay over-time solutions are significant drivers to consumer satisfaction, eCommerce conversion rate, eCommerce sales and reduced cart abandonment rates. The following are some ways to increase eCommerce sales via optimizing the payment process.

Tip 1: Offer popular payment solutions as per your audiences

If you run a global eCommerce business, then you need to cater to target audiences in a localized and personalized manner. Therefore, implementing local payment solutions with location-specific tax tariffs will play a critical role in how to boost your eCommerce sales. Research the popular international eCommerce transaction routes in a geography, region, or country and integrate those payment providers to your global eCommerce site.

Tip 2: Automate the payment processing

Automated payments can simplify the eCommerce checkout flow, reduce cart abandonment rates by giving customers a speedy way to buy products across any device, and improve ecommerce conversion rates, closing more eCommerce sales.

Tip 3: Integrate your store with mobile payment apps

When brainstorming how to boost your eCommerce sales, don’t forget integrating your store with mobile payment apps. Several alternative payment solutions like Apple Pay and Amazon Pay are gaining huge popularity due to their frictionless experience on mobile devices, resulting in more eCommerce sales. So, integrate your mobile eCommerce site with popular mobile payment apps to avoid any redirects, account sign-up, interest or late fee, and no credit checks.

Tip 4: Make payment strategy an integral part of your overall marketing strategy

Your eCommerce payment strategy is part of your overarching marketing strategy. To complete the circle and increase your eCommerce sales numbers and return on ad spend (ROAS), feature alternative payment methods in social media campaigns, emails, and retargeting programs.

Bottleneck #3: Do you have a robust international eCommerce strategy in place?

International eCommerce business expansion requires careful consideration. A poorly implemented global eCommerce strategy can easily eat away your profits and decrease eCommerce sales. Narrow profit margins combined with high fulfillment costs, shipping costs and cart abandonment rates can be taxing for your eCommerce sales funnel. When planning to go global, understanding a region’s customer buying behavior, sales tax, language preferences, etc. are paramount. All countries have different local nuances and preferences and making note of it is the secret to cross-border eCommerce success. Employ these tips on how to boost your eCommerce sales numbers for cross-border selling:

Tip 1: Tailor eCommerce checkout flow experiences to suit local preferences

One of the eCommerce checkout best practices is to customize your eCommerce checkout process to multiple languages, active payment methods and currencies, and related content to deliver impeccable localized experiences to each and every customer. It helps your brand expand its global name, swiftly enter the consumer market, maximize your brand acceptance and improve eCommerce conversion rate.

Tip 2: Study the legal entities in the new country

Warehousing costs, operational time, restrictions, and other legal entity options differ from one region to the other. So, consult an expert in the target country about the tax laws and regulations to determine the right international business expansion strategy.

Tip 3: Optimize your checkout experiences for global revenue strategies

Checkout the popular payment methods in different countries to encourage more eCommerce conversions. For example, Stripe is popular in Singapore, iPay88 in Malaysia, AliPay and WeChat in Asia, and Xendit & Midtrans in Indonesia. Offering relevant international eCommerce transactions methods is the best way to improve eCommerce conversion rates and elevate eCommerce sales numbers.

Bottleneck #4: Is your offline and online customer experience siloed?

Consumers today expect personalized and omnichannel eCommerce consumer experiences across all devices, platforms, and channels. This includes both online and offline shopping expeditions. If your online and offline eCommerce customer experience is disjointed, then you cannot offer BOPIS solutions (buy online/pick-up in store), quite popular amongst today’s Gen Z and Millennial buyers, in turn, impacting your eCommerce conversion rates. Use these tips on how to boost your eCommerce sales figures:

Tip 1: Profile your omnichannel customer data

Picturize your customers to enhance your eCommerce sales funnel. Your customer profiles must include their name, address, phone number, email address, buying behaviors (both online and offline), recommended products, preferences and demands. This will give you a 360-degree view of your customers when they’re shopping online or at in-store channels. When you know more about your customers, you can quickly create personalized, omnichannel experiences for them and improve eCommerce conversion rate.

Tip 2: Sync inventory data across all sales channels- offline and online

The biggest challenge you face when delivering personalized omnichannel experiences is unsynchronized inventory data across all the eCommerce sales channels. A strong inventory management system effectively manages all the entries from offline, social, webstore, or mobile store. Remove all the discrepancies in your inventory data for transparent product availability details.

Tip 3: Consolidate your online and in-store payments providers

One of the best ways to increase eCommerce sales is to unify your online payment solutions and point-of-sale systems. Choose a payment processor and a POS system that gives you a holistic and data-driven view of your customers, eCommerce sales conducted and ROIs.

Ready to boost your eCommerce sales?

Change is the only constant and this stays true to the digital commerce ecosystem as well. Today’s unprecedented market environment requires merchants and retailers to identify the existing bottlenecks, explore opportunities and ways to increase eCommerce sales and adopt innovative eCommerce strategies to improve eCommerce conversion rates.

We’re sure our expert-suggested tips will come in handy in solving your existing eCommerce bottlenecks and increase your profit margins. For any other assistance, our dedicated experts can help you launch, manage, and maintain your global eCommerce stores at peak performance. Request our free consultation today.

Lock out your profit-hampering eCommerce sales challenges.

Our experts help you make the most out of your eCommerce platforms.

Ranosys, a global digital consulting company, has partnered with commercetools, a cloud-native, microservices-based, and API-first digital commerce platform, to curate agile solutions, embrace headless commerce, and enable high-end performance based on MACH principles.

In an experienced-driven digital economy like today’s, this partnership between Ranosys and commercetools will empower the retailers and merchants to create one-of-a-kind, customer-centric eCommerce experiences that are highly personalized, scalable, and truly modern. As a commercetools partner, Ranosys aims to transform the digital commerce landscape with solutions that prioritize unique business needs over prevalent industry norms and provide online merchants with the freedom to choose what suits their goals.

“We’re excited to have partnered with commercetools and are ready to serve our clients with a true MACH-led commerce platform which facilitates quick response to changing customer and market demands. commercetools has brought in a fresh perspective in the industry and has empowered businesses to take control of their digital solutions. We hope to leverage our unified synergies into delivering top-notch digital assets and taking quality a step higher ”, says Rameshwar Vyas, CEO of Ranosys.

Trusted by leading brands around the world, Ranosys has been at the forefront of offering disruptive modern commerce solutions across industries and sectors. At this juncture where eCommerce is at the epicenter of international business, the collaboration between Ranosys and commercetools paves way for path-breaking innovation and an experience-first approach in the digital industry.

“We’re thrilled to be partnering with Ranosys and welcome them to the commercetools family”, says Dirk Weckerlei, Global VP Channel & Alliances at commercetools. “Ranosys is known for delivering future-ready digital commerce solutions and has played a pivotal role in shaping the digital presence of renowned brands all over the world. We are excited that we’ll be a part of their expansion plans from now on, and are all set to be at their side in contributing meaningfully to the eCommerce industry”, he concluded.

This partnership entails a powerful combination of seasoned expertise and ambitious functionalities. In the decades to come, Ranosys and commercetools are bound to rewrite the way digital commerce functions in the US, the UK, APAC, and MEA markets. From this moment onwards, Ranosys is well-positioned to develop and deliver unparalleled quality to its clients and help them achieve accelerated growth, enhanced customer experience, and a scalable business model.

About Ranosys

Ranosys is a global CMMI Level 3 Digital Consulting Company founded in 2008 in Singapore with offices in the USA, UK, Middle East, and APAC regions. It leverages the power of platform partnerships, experience design, and cutting-edge software technologies to drive digital transformation, eCommerce, and product engineering initiatives. Ranosys addresses the various milestones in a company’s digital transformation roadmap, identifying, designing, developing, deploying, and measuring their digital skills. Their experienced and expert workforce renders solutions that secure their client’s lead in the digital community.

For more information, visit https://www.ranosys.com/

Or, fill the form and shoot us an email at sales@ranosys.com

About commercetools

commercetools is the world’s leading MACH-based platform for next-generation B2C and B2B commerce. To break the market out of being restrained by legacy suites, commercetools invented a headless, API-first, multi-tenant SaaS commerce platform that is cloud-native and uses flexible microservices. Using modern development building blocks in a true cloud platform provided by commercetools, customers can deliver the best commerce experiences across every touchpoint on a large scale.

There is no denying that customers are inclined towards mobile eCommerce platforms for online shopping now more than ever, thanks to rapid smartphone penetration and improved internet connectivity. In fact, statistics tell us that by the end of 2021, global mobile eCommerce sales will hit $3.56 trillion. Over 79% of smartphone users have made an online purchase in the last six months. And, the most important one, 50% of online traffic is derived from mobile phones.

Statistics apart, as a consumer, there is nothing more comforting and convenient than browsing our preferred stores, adding products to our carts, and closing purchases on our mobiles. Such tremendous growth and recognition place the mobile eCommerce funnel as a leading sales channel for merchants and retailers. Yet, there are still several brands not taking advantage of the promising mobile eCommerce conversion rates.

Undoubtedly, the mobile eCommerce conversion funnel has led to higher sales than desktops ever can. We’ve worked with several eCommerce retailers and merchants, assisted them with mobile eCommerce conversion rate optimization, and helped eCommerce leaders to grow their mobile eCommerce sales. Over the years, our experts have tried and tested several eCommerce strategies to find the ones that boost eCommerce funnel performance and deliver promising results.

With that in mind, the following are our experts-recommended best practices for mobile eCommerce sales funnel optimization that merchants can quickly implement in their mobile eCommerce platform.

But first, what is an eCommerce funnel for conversion?

In simple terms, an eCommerce funnel is a visual representation of a visitor’s online buying journey from first landing on the page to completing a purchase.. A visitor enters an eCommerce conversion funnel from the top, goes through the funnel, stage-by-stage, ultimately exiting the funnel as a customer, repeat customer, or brand loyalist.

The eCommerce funnel for conversion remains the same for mobile and web shoppers, with each visitor moving through an eCommerce website UK and getting closer to being converted into a customer. Every visitor has to move through this eCommerce conversion funnel during their buying journey; however, not necessarily at the same pace. Some might slide through the funnel quickly while others might need more nurturing, taking weeks or months to reach the checkout and purchase process.

When properly planned and executed with the right strategies, an eCommerce conversion funnel helps drive traffic to your site, improves eCommerce conversion rates, expands your customer base, and grows brand awareness in new markets. It doesn’t matter what you call each stage (here we refer to them as landing page, category page, product page, shopping page, and checkout & purchase page) in this eCommerce funnel. Every brand has a unique eCommerce conversion funnel; however, what customers make out of it and how it impacts their buying behavior matters.

Now that you know what an eCommerce conversion funnel is and how it impacts your eCommerce goals, let’s move on to the best mobile eCommerce conversion rate optimization practices.

#1: Optimize your mobile eCommerce conversion funnel for lower shopping stages

During a consumer’s online buying journey, a buyer goes through several stages before completing a purchase, and each of these eCommerce conversion funnel stages is important. It’s not just the product recommendations page, cart page, or the checkout page that matters for eCommerce sales funnel optimization; every shopping stage does. When merchants analyzed their pain points, they found a common need to convert more first-time visitors, browsing visitors, and window shoppers other than shoppers and regular buyers. One of the best mobile eCommerce optimization tips is to focus on the lower eCommerce funnel stages through add-to-cart, pre-checkout, payment, and shipping solutions.

An eCommerce conversion funnel stage consists of:

Strangers: first-time visitors, exploring the homepage.
Browsing shoppers: Have visited the mobile store several times, browsed category pages, but never completed a purchase.
Window shoppers: These have visited the store before, added items to their shopping carts, but never completed a purchase.
Shoppers: These are ready to complete a purchase and are currently on the checkout page
Buyers: They have completed purchases several times before and have passed the checkout stage. They might even be regular customers and loyalists.

The eCommerce conversion optimization strategies for such customers include:

Strangers	digital ads, social media ads, branding & promotions, PPC, etc.
Browsing shoppers	promotions, call-to-actions, running offers, discounts and coupon codes in the header or navigation bar
Window shoppers	pop-up carts, add items from wishlist to carts, simply and remove breadcrumbs, floating add to cart buttons, flash sale, show cart total in the header
Shoppers	Continue shopping button, floating checkout button, hide chat, auto-select shipping option, simplified cart header, reconfigure cart button, coupon collapse notifications
Buyers	Auto-fill ZIP code, auto-select shipping option, saved cards information

The eCommerce conversion funnel looks after the various stages of an online buyer’s journey and optimizes experiences to boost eCommerce conversion rate and drive more revenue.

#2: Add floating add-to-cart buttons to improve eCommerce conversion rate

Product pages include lengths of product information, from product images, price, name, discounted price, relevant offers, size and fit information, product details, shipping and delivery information, product return window, and estimated delivery date to product recommendations. A static add-to-cart button, amidst all these details, can be easily missed on a mobile eCommerce platform.

On the contrary, a floating add-to-cart button catches a customer’s sight, increases the probability of a product added to a cart, and improves revenue per visitor (RPV) metrics. In fact, over 92% of merchants experienced a positive shift in their cart rates, RPV, and mobile eCommerce conversion rates after adding floating add-to-cart buttons.

IMPORTANT METRICS TO NOTE:

To calculate RPV, use the formula:

total revenue earned during a time duration / number of visitors on the mobile eCommerce platform during that time duration

To calculate cart rate, use the formula:

% of visitors to add at least one or more products to your shopping carts

Both cart rate and revenue per visitor are critical metrics for a positive and growing eCommerce funnel conversion rate. They provide smart insights about buyers in different stages of their online journeys, purchasing behavior, preferences, and consumer demands.

#3: Show cart total (in dollars) in the header section of your mobile eCommerce platform to boost revenue

The tradition of displaying the total number of items in the cart in the header or navigation bar is very common. In fact, customers nowadays do not even look at the cart item total and keep on adding products, even if they’ll end up buying only one of those added product items. However, displaying the cart total in dollars would be a visual cue for customers to view the total dollars to be paid and avoid any surprises during the checkout process.

Implementing this feature allows shoppers to add products to their cart and check the total dollar value of the items displayed in the header or below the cart icon in the navigation bar. It leads to positive lifts in the cart value, eCommerce conversion rate, and RPV metrics in mobile-made eCommerce sales.

Visitors are more likely to complete cart purchases when they have the full visibility of what they will have to pay in the header or navigation section.

#4: Hide the live chat icon in the cart and checkout pages

After tedious browsing, adding, and deleting items in the cart, now a customer finally reaches the end of the process- the checkout page of the eCommerce funnel. And, you certainly don’t want them to distract them with a live chat option that can very quickly pull a visitor away from their intended purchase, affecting the eCommerce funnel conversion rate. That is why hiding the live chat function from the cart, and checkout pages can help them focus on purchase completion.

Implementing an automatic function on your mobile eCommerce platform that removes the live chat option from cart and checkout pages can have a significant impact on your mobile eCommerce conversion rate, cart rate, and RPV metric.

#5: Auto selecting the shipping method to streamline the eCommerce funnel checkout process

For global merchants with an eCommerce website in the UK, offering localized experiences to customers of different regions is a priority. Depending on a user’s location, an mobile eCommerce platform must auto-select the right location along with the cheapest shipping option. As most customers mostly pick the most economical shipping option, it removes an additional step in the checkout process. More so, it allows users to change their selection as per their needs manually. In this implementation, mobile eCommerce funnel conversion rate is an important metric to consider since this practice takes place at the buying stage of the eCommerce funnel. Therefore, implementing the auto-shipping method is a way to improve the eCommerce conversion rate.

Ready to champion your mobile eCommerce funnel?

When brainstorming on how to improve the eCommerce funnel for the mobile, these best practices will drive your mobile optimization initiatives, enhance your online presence on the mobile, boost mobile-led eCommerce sales, and connect your brand with the on-the-go shoppers. With better mobile shopping experiences, you secure your eCommerce funnel through the test of time and changing market dynamics and create splashes instead of ripples.

Implement these mobile eCommerce conversion rate optimization strategies and become the best eCommerce website in the UK. For any issues, our experts are ready to assist you every step of the way.

Mobile eCommerce is changing the rules of digital commerce.

The world is changing faster than ever before, and brands must quickly adapt to thrive in the new normal. With shorter customer attention spans and competitors being just a click away, retailers must boost their digital capabilities throughout the B2C, D2C, and B2B models and integrate them with their omnichannel customer experience proposition.

The pandemic popularized several digital commerce platforms that help secure their store’s future and fulfill customer expectations simultaneously. However, do brands really have the privilege to wait several months or years before they can deploy their alternative sales channels? How to start an eCommerce store in a limited time frame and budget?

Moving ahead in the curve, retailers must know a few things about the current digital commerce market dynamics:

To begin with, the digital future is not tomorrow; it’s today. The pandemic accelerated eCommerce’s value proposition by as much as 5-7 years. Retailers can no longer delay launching alternative sales channels to boost sales and recover revenue losses. They need to do it right now. And the sooner brands understand the power of digital sales, the earlier they will relish growth in sales, revenue, and customers.
In addition, with digital in trend and probably the most important sales channel for brands right now, physical stores might experience a decline in active consumers, sales, and profits but will never cease to exist. That means retailers need to repurpose their physical and digital stores together and practice omnichannel marketing.
Furthermore, customer data is a very powerful weapon for eCommerce brands. Taking note of consumer demands, their interests, preferences, and other insights will serve as a goldmine for brands. The more you know about your customers, the easier it is to segment your customer base, the simpler it will be to identify who your customers are, what they want, need, and what they are expecting from you as a brand.

With the value of digital accelerated, brands need a faster solution to step into the digital ecosystem, launch a transactional eCommerce site within weeks, and develop a clear roadmap to evolve the digital experience after they go live. And that ultimate answer to all your digital woes is Falcon- an Magento eCommerce (Adobe Commerce) accelerator.

How to start an eCommerce store? Reinventing the wheel with Falcon

So, how to start an eCommerce store? Typically, launching an online store takes several months and runs +36% over budget. Perhaps brands and retailers had that luxury in time duration and budget spent in structuring their digital channel. However, since the pandemic, they need an eCommerce store rich with commerce capabilities now.

Falcon eCommerce accelerator is a quick to implement eCommerce solution that gets your B2C and D2C business running online in a record time of 4 weeks. Built from the ground up on Magento eCommerce (Adobe Commerce), Falcon eCommerce accelerator gives the flexibility to make strategic decisions about features, automation, and time allowing you to see ROIs and traffic in a short time. Falcon reduces the cost to launch an online store by 50%. The accelerator has been designed keeping the current trends, feature requirements, and customer demands in mind. This expertly crafted storefront places your customers at the center of your business and ensures their satisfaction at launch and for years to come.

With Falcon’s tailored and enhanced commerce capabilities, you can now deploy complete feature-rich eCommerce solutions which have been tested, optimized, and proven to deliver superior user experiences without building them from scratch. In addition, the Falcon eCommerce accelerator solution has been developed keeping your brand’s future in mind and can be easily scaled and extended to match any and all business requirements, ensuring consistent growth of your eCommerce channels.

An exclusive blueprint to eCommerce accelerators

Why and how eCommerce accelerators are the need of the hour?

Launch your online store in as little as 4 weeks with Falcon eCommerce accelerator

Drawing upon an extensive experience of delivering eCommerce sites for some of the world’s most iconic and ambitious brands, Ranosys has built an accelerated solution to get your digital retail business up and running in no time.

The pandemic has resulted in a massive gap between what customers want and what brands deliver. This accelerator has been fabricated for brands looking to address this digital commerce gap with a solution that can launch your Magento eCommerce store to the market at a lightning-fast speed, get fit enough to respond to market changes, and further enhance their existing digital offerings.

A retail-ready and reduced time-to-value digital solution: – Pre-built integrations, localisations and industry standard features reduces development time and allows businesses to fastrack their route to the market.
Quick and low cost of deployment: Most integrations are pre-configured and the code is pre-built, making launching sites online faster, simpler, customizable, feature-rich and more cost-effective.
Optimized and tested: The accelerator has been optimized for SEO and higher conversions. Moreover, it has already been tested across multiple touchpoints and devices.
A personalized offering: While some retailers think launching an online store via an eCommerce accelerator is a compromise, it certainly isn’t the case. If anything, Falcon eCommerce accelerator speeds up your brand’s journey to the digital ecosystem, achieves 80% and more of your retail needs with its pre-built features, and can be easily customized for your remaining requirements.
Limitless eCommerce functionalities: Take advantage of the ERP system, CMS, Marketing platform, order management, inventory management, customer management, multiple payment gateways, etc. and never lose or miss an eCommerce functionality.
Flexible and easily scalable: Designed to grow and expand with your business. Your Magento eCommerce store can be customized, developed, and extended after launch to suit your business growth plans, customer preferences, and market needs.
Mobile-first: Building responsive Magento eCommerce storefronts optimized for superior mobile shopping experiences.
Localized experiences: Attend to the needs of your globally-situated customer base and offer localized experiences always. From changing website tone as per the language requirements of a particular geography to changing product prices as per the region’s duties, taxes, and tariffs- Falcon eCommerce accelerator does it all.
Embedded Customer Support: Empowering marketers with customer insight dashboards for automated research regarding customer behaviors to prioritize future investments.
Easy product launch: Release tens of thousands of products online frequently with a single click.
Smart and Insightful: Falcon eCommerce accelerator offers features like AI-powered product recommendations, live product search, and more to boost customer loyalty and adapt your eCommerce solution to the latest trends.
A scalable solution: Built with the world-class functionalities of Magento eCommerce and over a decade long experience of our experts, Falcon eCommerce accelerator delivers enterprise-level scalability as per your growing needs and market demands.

Create shopping experiences that your customers love: The Falcon Way

While there are other eCommerce accelerators in the market, several distinguishing features place Falcon eCommerce accelerator at the forefront. Apart from its cost-effectiveness and rich commerce capabilities, Falcon possesses several vital components that narrate its prominence in the market. In addition to all the above features, Falcon eCommerce accelerator allows brands to leverage the rich properties of Magento eCommerce (Adobe Commerce), which addresses not just the present needs but the future demands as well.

Mobile-first approach:

There are a staggering number of 5.27 billion mobile phone users worldwide. In fact, in 2019, 67.2% of global eCommerce sales came from mobile devices, which is equivalent to 2.32 trillion dollars. And, this number keeps growing, much accelerated by the pandemic and expected to reach 72.9% of total retail eCommerce worldwide. Due to the increasing number of smartphone users, more and more of us opt for on-the-go shopping solutions, a whopping half of the internet traffic comes from mobile-based shopping to be exact. And that’s why, when brainstorming how to start an eCommerce store, don’t forget mobile commerce.

Falcon eCommerce accelerator is a mobile-first solution, meaning the eCommerce websites are designed for smartphones first and easily scaled up for use on desktops and laptops too. Developers can easily design Magento eCommerce stores by writing the webpages in mobile-first CSS and mobile-first HTML coding languages. This empowers eCommerce sites with functional and impressive mobile sites that offer customer-friendly personalized browsing experience and payment solutions for every customer.

Localized payment solutions:

Cross-border eCommerce is an intriguing try for retailers and merchants. In fact, a significant number of cross-border payments are undertaken by online shoppers. With 4.2 billion eCommerce users browsing eCommerce stores by 2023, retailers and merchants have the perfect timing to truly sell to a global consumer base. And a big part of serving global consumers is offering them localized and preferred payment solutions. If your eCommerce business expands through various geographies and regions, implementing local payments can play a critical role in gaining access to the entire population. The more the payment choices available, the higher is eCommerce conversion rate and the lower is your cart abandonment rate.

Falcon eCommerce accelerator comes embedded with region-specific payment solutions for customers belonging to different geographies. For example, if you have customers shopping in Singapore, Falcon offers Stripe as a local payment option, iPay88 for shoppers in Malaysia and Xendit & Midtrans in Indonesia. Falcon seamlessly integrates every preferred payment option popular in a region to an Magento eCommerce store. In turn, Falcon eCommerce accelerator reduces cart abandonment rates, caters to a wide consumer base, improves customer payment and checkout experience, and elevates brand loyalty.

Customer Service Support

When it comes to how to start an eCommerce store with amazing customer shopping experiences, a significant portion of it must be invested in offering consistent customer service. Suppose, you are looking for a sweater that caught your eye the other day, but you can’t find it. So, you wonder if they are out of stock or not available in your sizes. Since this is all happening on an eCommerce store and not a physical outlet, having no live chat option will not only cost you that sale but also that customer and subsequent ones that they might have referred to your store. It is where live chat can help you retain the customer interested. And that is why we’ve integrated live chat into Falcon eCommerce accelerator.

With a live chat tool in Falcon, your operations/marketing team can interact with shoppers, fulfill their requirements, answer their queries, help them find their preferred products, or update in case they are out of stock. Its endless benefits include saving time in browsing through different products, attending to customer needs promptly, keeping customers engaged, collecting valuable insights about customers’ behaviors, and humanizing your Magento eCommerce store. Ultimately, Falcon eCommerce accelerator improves a customer’s shopping experience tremendously.

Seamless integrations:

The eCommerce accelerator allows for several third-party integrations, including ERP, CRM, martech solutions, and shipping providers (depending on a consumer’s geography). This is tailored for specific business goals and workflows, the perfect solution on how to start an eCommerce store and run it successfully.

Leverage the rich features of Magento eCommerce (Adobe Commerce) in Falcon

Built on the Magento eCommerce (Adobe Commerce) platform, Falcon eCommerce accelerator leverages its several features while fulfilling your goals on how to start an eCommerce store. These include:

Personalised Content to Boost conversions

Take advantage of Adobe Sensei that fuels a collection of algorithms that automatically analyzes shopper behaviors to give them personalized experiences for product recommendation. Adobe live Search creates rich search experiences to help shoppers quickly find what they want and what they didn’t know they needed.

Drive Customer Loyalty:

The reward points in Magento eCommerce allows retailers to drive customer loyalty and engagement. Points and gift cards can be rewarded to customers based on their shopping activities and transaction rates. Developers can set configurations to manage the points allotment, balance, and expiry feature. Moreover, customers can redeem the reward points in their purchases (as per the customer’s currency), boosting conversion rate.

Managed cloud experience:

When thinking on how to start an eCommerce store, give thought to the type of cloud support you want. With Magento eCommerce (Adobe Commerce) Cloud’s fully-managed cloud version of the Magento eCommerce platform, B2B and B2C brands can focus on business growth and marketing without worrying on managing their eCommerce infrastructure. Magento eCommerce Cloud is PCI compliant and comes bundled with built-in security and performance monitoring tools.

Advanced CMS capabilities:

Employing the drag-and-drop functionalities of Magento eCommerce platform, you can flexibly create, design, and launch rich new product pages. With several in-built features and components, developers can populate their pages with sliders, images, blog posts, videos, contact forms, carousels, and more. You can automate promotional landing pages using content staging and preview features.

Intuitive admin interface

With Magento eCommerce platform’s intuitive and touch-friendly admin interface, business users can operate at ease with less dependency on IT support. Ultimately, this speeds up the Magento eCommerce store optimization process, content delivery, and customer satisfaction.

Promotions, merchandising and marketing

Falcon eCommerce accelerator offers an impressive suite of marketing tools that allow brands to fulfill consumer demands and deploy personalized shopping experiences. The eCommerce accelerator comes with its promotion engines, advertising campaigns, recommendation engines, email marketing, event-triggered emails, and personalized messages with targeted content per user.

Smooth & Faster integration with ERP / CRM / WMS

Several merchants have integrated Magento eCommerce platform with a variety of ERP systems, including Microsoft Dynamics, NetSuite, SAP, Oracle, Infor, Epicor, Sage, and more leveraging robust, well-documented Magento APIs and new support for GraphQL.

Falcon eCommerce accelerator addresses the digital commerce gap between brands and their customers

We’re ushering towards a challenging time, one that prioritizes product experiences over product qualities. Since the pandemic, customers have become more careful about their purchases and brand associations. Even for brands with a solid physical presence, if you’re not giving in to the digital revolution or thinking on how to start an eCommerce store, you’re not just losing sales or revenue; you lose the most valuable asset for your business- your customers. As brands try to adjust to this ‘new normal ‘, they’ll require solutions that accelerate their digital launch and get their eCommerce stores up and running in no time.

Falcon eCommerce accelerator enables you to launch a transactional digital commerce site within 4 weeks. With Falcon, you meet your business goals rapidly and deliver to your customers what they have been looking for in a cost-effective way. With Falcon, you bridge the gap between your brand and your customers and deliver personalized shopping experiences consistently. Address your customers’ and brand’s unique demands and challenges with Falcon eCommerce accelerator and conquer the unknown future.

Your online store with Falcon is just 4 weeks away.

Ranosys, a global Digital Consulting firm, has announced its partnership with Gorgias- the world’s leading eCommerce helpdesk for merchants, retailers, and brands, extending its best-in-the-market commerce solutions to increase customer satisfaction and drive consumer loyalty.

Focussing on the US, the UK, APAC, and MEA markets, the partnership leverages both Gorgias and Ranosys’ industry expertise in formulating exceptional omnichannel digital commerce solutions. This association creates a perfect synergy in helping the region’s merchants and retailers to turn their support centers into profit centers by centralizing customer interactions, quickly resolving customer requests, and consistently delivering personalized shopping experiences to drive business growth and enhance brand loyalty.

“We are honored to partner with Gorgias- a leading artificial intelligence-powered eCommerce help desk on a global scale. They’re the foremost leaders in eCommerce customer support services and have designed innovative solutions to help merchants effectively compete in today’s experience-driven economy. We look forward to deepening our relationship with Gorgias and help retailers in the region in bettering their customer support approach, personalizing customer service conversations, and concreting brand-customer relationships,” says Rameshwar Vyas, CEO of Ranosys.

Trusted by iconic eCommerce brands around the world, Ranosys supports eCommerce retailers in every facet necessary to ensure peak operational efficiency and best-in-class customer experiences. At a time when eCommerce is witnessing unprecedented growth, and by extension, the demand for customer support has increased exponentially, underscoring Ranosys’ and Gorgias’ combined capabilities will drive significant business results and deliver world-class experiences that foster lifetime loyalty among shoppers.

“We are extremely excited to welcome Ranosys as our newest partner and are ready to assist their global clients and customers with prompt customer support and phenomenal customer service experiences,” said Rachel Fefer, Director of Enterprise Partnerships at Gorgias. “Ranosys has played an instrumental role in forging some of the most impeccable digital commerce solutions for ambitious brands worldwide and we feel excited to assist them in their next stage of business expansion. Our partnership with Ranosys will help strengthen their merchant growth strategy, boost conversion rates and turn support channels to revenue centers, ” she concluded.

With this partnership, Ranosys and Gorgias are now in a prime position to empower global retailers in a time when extending best-in-the-market customer service experiences across every touchpoint has become the new digital currency. With Gorgias’ incredible platform capabilities, Ranosys is now well-heeled to deliver unmatched service to its merchant clients, strengthen their business model, and turn their customer support channels to sales channels.

About Ranosys

For more information, visit https://www.ranosys.com/

Or, fill the form and shoot us an email at sales@ranosys.com

About Gorgias

Founded in 2015 by Roman Lapeyre and Alex Plugaru, Gorgias is a multi-channel help desk integrated with e-commerce merchants’ (BigCommerce, Shopify Plus, and Magento) back-office. It allows merchants to manage all their customer support from a single platform, deliver outstanding customer service experience by centralizing all customer interactions, and connect all business apps and all communication channels to provide support agents a unified 360-degree view of their customers. Learn more at www.gorgias.com

Imagine that a prospective buyer decides to purchase an item from your eCommerce site, adds it to the cart, and then decides against buying it. Isn’t this phenomenon, known as shopping cart abandonment, a nightmare for any online retailer?

Wouldn’t you want to find out what made these visitors leave behind a product they had already liked?

In this blog, we explore why abandoned carts have become a bane to the eCommerce business and what can you do to reduce the online shopping cart abandonment rate.

But before we move on to discussing strategies for reducing this, let’s find out how experts define it –

What is cart abandonment rate?

As discussed earlier, the online shopping cart abandonment rate is a clear metric that indicates the health of your checkout process. If it is high, then you need to assess the complexity of the checkout page and find out what’s blocking your conversion.

You can calculate the cart abandonment rate by dividing the number of completed transactions by the numbers of carts created by the customers. Then, you need to subtract the derived value by 1 and multiply by 100 to arrive at the right percentage.

Although average cart abandonment rates vary from industry to industry, a study concluded that 69.80% can be considered as a common yardstick and anything beyond that needs immediate attention.

Why do customers abandon shopping carts?

Research by Barclaycard concluded that UK retailers lose out on more than 18 billion pounds of potential sales due to abandoned carts. However, despite these shocking cart abandonment stats, the awareness amongst UK online merchants is at an all-time low.

6 in 10 online retailers in the UK do not know the average buyer drop-out rate on their eCommerce website and 3 in 10 have never analyzed the months when their eCommerce business witnessed the highest number of abandoned carts.

Clearly, the online merchant community needs an intervention to better manage these issues and figure out the following

How to reduce the cart abandonment rate altogether?
And how to convert abandoned carts with the right strategies?

And the first step towards achieving these goals begins with understanding the reason behind its increase. Let’s find out what makes customers abandon the shopping carts they spent so much time browsing for –

Customers often abandon their shopping carts because of extra shipping costs that they were not aware of while browsing the item.
Certain eCommerce sites require visitors to first create an account and then complete their checkout process. Many customers get irked by the absence of a guest checkout and abandon cart instead.
Adding on to the previous point, customers also lose interest in completing a transaction if the checkout process is too lengthy or complex. For example, having to add separate billing and shipping addresses complicates the process unnecessarily and leads to an increased cart abandonment rate.
Website performance too plays an important role in increasing cart abandonment rate. If the site speed is slow or it crashes often, the customer is more likely to leave the transaction incomplete.
If your eCommerce site doesn’t have a secure payment gateway, your metrics will always have a higher rate of abandoned carts. No matter how common online retail becomes, customers will always rely on those businesses that offer trusted payment mechanisms.

If we had to summarize all the reasons for the increased cart abandonment rate, we would ask you to have a look at your checkout process from a customer’s perspective and list down the reasons for not going ahead with the transaction.

This simple exercise will help you pinpoint the exact reason for the increased number of abandoned carts in your business.

Meanwhile, you could always use the following strategies to reduce cart abandonment rate considerably.

5 Strategies to reduce shopping cart abandonment rate in a business

Do not keep any cost hidden: When a customer knows about every charge involved in a transaction, they are less likely to change their mind at the last moment. So, ensure that you are upfront about every cost involved – including the shipping cost and taxes if any.

Pro tip: This becomes crucial in international eCommerce as every country has specific tax regulations. Digital commerce platforms like Magento/Adobe Commerce are great for a global retail business with features that enable multi-store management and tax regulation.

Integrate multiple payment options: The rise in the digital economy has also led to the emergence of multiple payment mechanisms. As a result, a customer expects every possible payment option while making an online purchase. From cash on delivery to EMI options, try to include every possible payment option in your digital commerce solution,

Pro tip: Migrating to Salesforce Commerce Cloud ensures that your digital commerce solutions are well-integrated with all third-party payment options.

Include Guest checkout option: We can’t stress enough about the need to simplify the checkout process and enable the guest checkout option. Your one step towards saving a prospective customer’s time can lead to a better conversion rate.

Pro tip: Instead of asking a visitor to create an account before they complete the transaction, why don’t you try asking them right after the transaction is over?
Once they have had a hassle-free shopping experience with you, they’re more likely to strengthen the association and sign up as a regular customer.

Consider cart abandonment emails: Did you know that when you send an eMail about abandoned carts to a customer, they open almost 44.1% of them and 29.9% of them even result in recovered sales?

The reason for this is simple – if a customer has added an item to her cart, she already likes it! All you need to do is remind her of what she has left behind with probably a discount coupon or an exciting offer to finish the transaction.

Pro tip: Try sending the first cart abandonment eMail within the first hour of abandonment for better results.

Optimize mobile experience: By the time 2021 ends, the share of mobile commerce in total eCommerce sales will reach 72.9%. Naturally, an online shopping portal that is not meant for mobile phones will lead to an increased mobile cart abandonment rate and decreased conversion. Thus, it is important to have mobile-optimized eCommerce solutions.

Final takeaway:

Let’s face it – abandoned carts are a heartbreaking wake-up call. They suggest that your products/services meet customers’ needs but you need to align your eCommerce solution to optimize the customer experience.

However, there’s a brand new opportunity at the end of this tunnel. Since your products are up to the mark, all you need to do is understand the customer journey better and create a holistic online experience for your visitors!

92% of consumers said they would buy again if the product return process is easy.

From return policies to training staff on successfully dealing with in-store returns and exploring opportunities on how to reduce product returns, you can apply a myriad of techniques to increase online sales and plummet your return rates. And all of them revolve around one thing: creating the best eCommerce customer experience.

So, without further ado, let’s dive right into business strategy to increase sales and strike a balance between product returns and eCommerce sales.

Tip #1: Add multiple images to your product descriptions

It might seem like a no-brainer, but there are so many product pages that include only a single product image. B2C eCommerce customers are accustomed to viewing an eCommerce product from multiple angles, in 360-degree view and maybe in real-time (in case of Augmented Reality functionalities) to find hidden features. The difference between imagery and the actual product is one of the significant reasons why customers return products.

When brainstorming how to reduce product returns and increase online sales, follow the following tips:

Add multiple high-quality close-up images of the product. At least add five photos of your product. The more, the merrier.
Optimize all images for multiple devices and touchpoints since most eCommerce traffic comes from mobile devices.
Integrate zoom-in and zoom-out features to allow users to review the product closely.
Match your product description to the images displayed. If the product is available in different colors and patterns, mention that in the description.

Tip #2: Bring your products to life with videos

Videos must be an integral part of your business strategy to increase sales, which is why several eCommerce sites incorporate high-definition product videos to their product descriptions, especially clothing and home electronics brands.

An eCommerce clothing store can add videos to give customers a better idea about their product’s look and feel. And, home electronics brands can demonstrate product usage with detailed videos explaining its features and benefits. In the end, videos help customers make the right decision, reduce product returns, and boost customer engagement, leading to higher eCommerce sales.

Tip #3: Offer real-time support through live chat

In a retail store, when a customer has any question regarding a product, they ask the staff around. So shall be the case when shopping online. When customers get prompt answers to their inquiries, they are more likely to make purchasing decisions that don’t end up being returned. If items don’t meet a customer’s requirement, you can provide them with eCommerce customer service that suggests a more suitable item or an add-on purchase to match product expectations.

Chatting with your customers on live chat provides you an opportunity to educate customers about the products and services that suit their buying behavior. Even so, you can offer AI-based product recommendations on live chat and improve eCommerce sales numbers.

Tip #4: Offer monetary benefits in exchange for reviews and recommendations

Online reviews impact over 93% of online buying decisions. A shopper reads at least 2-3 reviews and feedback before completing a purchase. It is why you need to encourage more online reviews for your products. And, if you’re struggling to get enough reviews, offer monetary incentives like gift cards or discounts on future purchases. With enough reviews, you can learn more about your products and the issues customers face to further improve product quality, which leads to the end goal- increase online sales and decrease product returns.

Moreover, on the returns page, provide checkboxes to all the common issues like color difference, sizing issues, or actual product different from the images to know more about the return and prevent it from happening with the next purchase. In the long run, it significantly reduces product returns and promotes eCommerce sales.

Tip #5: Give product packaging required attention

After closing a sale, your only task is to package the product properly and provide customers with timely updates and live tracking of items. Customers return over 20% of online products in the context of ‘received damaged product.’ And such returns can be easily prevented. So, when thinking of how to reduce product returns, the following tips will help you increase online sales.

Package your items to proof them against water. Make sure you use enough padding and bubble wrap for fragile items and place them in multiple boxes before placing them in a bigger box to secure the product.
Ensure that your box has the correct information about its contents and delivery address. If you’re in the plant business, make sure you include care tips like which temperature does it and how to position it.
To personalize purchases, you can include a note about your brand, its mission, and how content you are about serving them. Personalized messages make your customers feel special and prized.

Tip #6: Crystal clear product return policies to increase online sales

Having a transparency return policy is how you reduce product returns. Easy to read and understand policies are one of the best ways to increase eCommerce sales and answers your question regarding how to reduce product returns. Communicate your return policies across all eCommerce sales channels-mobile, web, social, and others.

That said, a product return policy must encompass:

The validity of the return: Most sites allow product returns for 15-30 days from the date of purchase. Specify the duration of return.
Conditions for return: Define the requirements for return, as the product must be in good condition with tags still on, must be in original packaging, must have the actual bills, etc.
Not valid for returns: Some eCommerce purchases might not be valid for exchange or return like discounted items, books, skincare products, food, flowers, etc. So, mention them in your return policy.
How to get back refunds: How do customers want their money back? Do they want it in their original payment account, e-wallet, or as store credit?
When to receive the refund: Usually, once the product has been tested in the warehouse, the refund is processed and received within 3-5 working days. Give a window as to when customers can expect their refund.

Tip #7: Offer an easy and quick product return experience

Product returns are a part of positive eCommerce customer experiences. Even if something went wrong and a customer had to return the product, offering seamless return experiences further cements your relationship with the customers, resulting in further eCommerce sales. No trick or tip can prevent you from product returns, but you can turn returns into future revenue opportunities by making product returns as breezy as possible, eventually helping to increase online sales. The following are some ways you can improve your product return experience:

Provide return tracking numbers
Keep customers informed about their returns via email
Offer them a refund, exchange, and in-store credits
Provide refunds within 3-5 days of product return

Make the most of your product returns

When you run a digital commerce store, customer returns are a part of the deal. But it doesn’t have to take a chunk out of your sales and revenue figures. The above tips will help you with how to reduce product returns and increase online sales. Remember, customer retention is 4 times cheaper than eCommerce customer acquisition, and practicing a sound product return strategy is a part of the former.

Other than the stated creative ways to increase retail sales, our experts also offer a free consultation to boost eCommerce sales and lower the product return rate on your eCommerce site.

From product returns to revenue opportunities.

Our experts help you make the most of your online store.

Retailers might think that unbeatable product prices is the only way to win the eCommerce race, but the reality is far more drifting than the assumption. The truth is, competing on the basis of low prices is not a sustainable strategy for B2B eCommerce and other retail businesses. Brands are moving from product-as-a-service to experience-as-a-service economy. Today’s consumers, 2.14 billion online shoppers, to be exact, want to buy from companies that acknowledge their preferences and needs and build an emotional connection with them. And, they are ready to take on a rewarding journey of exploring, interacting, and shopping with B2B and B2C eCommerce brands. With marketers around the world baffled with experience-driven commerce crowned as the future of eCommerce and the sudden interest in extending impeccable eCommerce customer experiences across all touchpoints, it’s imperative to know what experience-driven commerce means and encompasses. After all, experience-driven commerce is the foundation of a successful and omnichannel commerce strategy of the future.

What is experience-driven commerce?

In simple words, experience-driven commerce deals with bettering the end-to-end customer experiences both online and offline. Every action, every campaign, and every marketing activity deals with adding value, creating valuable content, improving eCommerce customer journeys, and designing personalized user experiences in eCommerce. As the future of eCommerce, experience-driven commerce brings together the power of content, data, and insights to offer your shoppers a personalized, omnichannel, and memorable eCommerce customer experience during every interaction across all touchpoints.

Why does experience-driven commerce matter?

The eCommerce market has changed dramatically since its inception. There was a decade when product quality and price could do the trick, but today’s customers are different from their predecessors. They have come to expect an elevated eCommerce customer experience and impressive eCommerce customer service across the web, mobile, social, and all the other online stores.

Having an easy-to-use eCommerce website functionality along with a good product at an unbeatable price is good to have, but not a must-to-have. Rather, it has been replaced by eCommerce customer experiences.

Today, not only are there an increased number of online shoppers trusting online B2C and B2B eCommerce channels to purchase products, but there is an ever-increasing number of breakpoints and channels to do so. Be it in-store, webstore, social store, smartwatch app, or any other platform, customers desire consistent and unique eCommerce customer experiences everywhere.

From video tutorials, landing pages, installation guides, product images, warranties, return policy, shipping details, and reviews, everything besides the catalog-based data helps you improve customer experience eCommerce and transition towards the experience-driven economy.

What customers want in an eCommerce site is a plethora of product information and personalized solutions that help them make a buying decision. Experience-driven commerce helps in designing personalized user experiences in eCommerce, one that addresses their needs and wants.

Regardless of whether you are a B2B or B2C eCommerce company, your buyers demand a smooth, pleasant, and easy eCommerce customer experience. And remember, if you aren’t able to satisfy your customers, your competitors are more likely to carve them out of your eCommerce customer acquisition base. It is precisely why experience-driven commerce matters, and is the future of eCommerce- because it helps brands to understand their customers on digital and physical touchpoints and then deliver critical eCommerce customer service and experience at the right time and touchpoint.

Experience is the new product

Walk the path towards the experience-driven economy with this eBook

The 5-step transitioning to future of eCommerce

Now that you know what experience-driven commerce is and why it is the future of eCommerce let’s unveil the 5-step process to achieve it.

Step #1: Focus on your customers, not your products

The first step to delivering personalized eCommerce customer service and experiences is knowing and focussing on your customers.

What customers want in an eCommerce site?
How do they interact with your brand?
What products do they seem most interested in?
Do you have a better B2B/B2C eCommerce conversion rate online or offline?
Which touchpoint do your customers engage the most with- webstore, social store, physical store, mobile store, etc.?
What products are abandoned the most by your customers?
Are your customers able to interact with you throughout their eCommerce customer journey?
Do your customers interact with you post-sales? What is your customer return rate?
Are you shoppers happy with their overall eCommerce customer experience?

You’ll get the answers to all these questions once you start understanding your customers, keeping a keen eye on them, and attending to their needs. True, they want product images in high-quality with zoom-in features, clear messaging, and sufficient product information, but you have to package it in a way that appeals to your customers and resembles what they are looking for. When you know what your customers want, when they want it, and at what breakpoints do they want it, that will help you explore the various ways to improve eCommerce customer experience and become one of the best user experience eCommerce websites in the market.

One point to note over here is that B2B eCommerce customers have a different approach to B2B eCommerce shoppers, so you have to follow a distinct eCommerce customer acquisition and retention strategy. B2C eCommerce users prefer user-generated personalized content such as text, videos, reviews, blogs, product stories, and more. On the contrary, B2B eCommerce shoppers desire more product-based information like its characteristics, capabilities, specifications, availability, and delivery status. The information about your customers as an eCommerce customer service guide.

Step #2: Invest in your eCommerce website for your customers

Once you know what your customers want in an eCommerce site, now it’s time to put all that knowledge to good use. A B2C or B2B eCommerce site functions as an online brick-and-mortar store for your business, which is why you must include everything that you would in a physical store.

As per eCommerce customer experience analysis, high-quality product images, ample product information, details about shipping and returns, live tracking, promotional campaigns for sales/deals, reviews & testimonials, wishlist feature, stores profiles, local payment solutions, product recommendations & suggestions, filter search, and voice search are amongst a few of the most requested features. When designing personalized user experiences in eCommerce, indulge in localized eCommerce customer experiences and optimize your online store for mobile and social channels.

Step #3: Improve customer experience across all digital channels

Omnichannel eCommerce customer experience is the future of eCommerce, and there is no denying that. And experience-driven commerce aims to provide that. You need to consider all the present touchpoints- desktop, tablet, mobile, in-store, and social and the future ones as well. As a part of your eCommerce customer experience analysis, identify which channels are performing well, average, and below average.

Look where the conversions happen and where your customers buy your services, and weigh your best selling and least sold products. Evaluate your eCommerce customer service throughout the research, purchase, and maintenance & support process. Opt for a consistent eCommerce customer experience approach for all your touchpoints. Practice the mobile-first approach, improve in-store digital experiences, design interactive online pages, and hit all digital commerce channels simultaneously. Focus on designing personalized user experiences in eCommerce to create the most impact on all your brand breakpoints.

Step #4: Go beyond sales

Several B2C and B2B eCommerce view a purchase as a one-time action. However, experts suggest that most business is earned from repeat customers and not new ones. Your customers’ eCommerce journey doesn’t end at a sale; it simply starts there. So, don’t become one of those brands that don’t take care of their customers after purchase because that won’t drive customer loyalty or referral traffic. Show your customers you’re committed to helping them use the product/service by offering them post-purchase support. Sharing order history, live tracking, delivery information, easy returns, user documents, video tutorials, and product recommendation emails are all a part of experience-driven commerce.

Another part of showing your dedication towards your customers is by being empathetic towards them. Reply to your customers’ reviews, both positive and negative. Dive deep into the negative testimonials and ask them what went wrong. Engage and support them throughout their eCommerce customer journey.

PS: The better your offline and eCommerce customer experience is, the lower your eCommerce customer acquisition cost. After all, customer retention is four times cheaper than customer acquisition.

Step #5: Monitor customer behavior at all times

Your customers are changing, and the only way you can be aware of it is by eCommerce customer experience analysis. Once you understand their eCommerce customer journey and implement initiatives that ensure personalized eCommerce customer experiences at all costs, you’ll forge a deeper connection with them. Keep updating your customers’ personas, track their data, analyze their shopping behavior- their likes, dislikes, and preferences, evaluate their geographical information, and then find ways to improve eCommerce customer experience.

Evaluate why your customers do not complete their purchases and abandon their carts.

Are the shipping costs too high?
Did they find the same product at a lower price on another eCommerce site?
Do they have issues with delivery?
Are they unsatisfied with the warranty and return policies?
Is it because of the negative reviews?
Are they able to find what they are looking for quickly?
Is there a virtual assistant available to help them close their online purchases?

The more you know about your customers, the easier it is to market and sell your products or services to them, and the better is the conversion rates, not to mention a drastic reduction in the cart abandonment rates.

Keep your ears to the ground

To achieve long-term success, you need to understand how well your delivered eCommerce customer experiences are performing and how you can improve them. Your customers are everywhere, and you need to target every eCommerce customer acquisition touchpoint. Resonate with your customers, keep them close, and focus more on building impressive eCommerce customer service experiences.

Remember, experience-driven commerce is the future of eCommerce, and the sooner you give in and start exploring ways to improve eCommerce customer experience, the easier will be the transition to the experience-led economy. And if you need help, our eCommerce experts are ready to help anytime.

Turn experiences into transactions.

Make a steady move towards experience-driven commerce with us.

So, you have a Magento website up and running? What should be your next step towards website maintenance and optimization? This blog explores different ways to keep your Magento website running smoothly and even improve your site’s eCommerce conversion rate.

Let’s start by understanding why you need website maintenance for your Magento website in the first place and how it can drive eCommerce sales.

Why do you need a plan for Magento website maintenance?

Do you know that, as of June 8, 2021, there are over 1.86 billion websites on the internet?

And if you were wondering where Magento stands in this picture, we have the statistics for it as well – in June 2021, Adobe Commerce/Magento powered 250,000 active eCommerce sites.

You must know these details to understand that there are millions of fish in the ocean. So, the only way to make your starfish (Magento website) shine is through consistent Magento website support and maintenance.

When you have a new website, it’s equivalent to buying a shiny, new car. It works well for a few months, and afterward, it demands care and service to keep running smoothly. The same theory applies to eCommerce websites.

With the right eCommerce maintenance plan for your Magento webstore, you can ensure Magento performance optimization and increase eCommerce sales conversion.

An ideal eCommerce maintenance plan includes regular testing of the entire website, software updates, scheduled backups, SEO review, and security maintenance.

By carrying out these tasks regularly, you can protect your Magento website from cyber attacks, optimize its performance, and if you’ve been wondering about how to boost your eCommerce sales, you have found your answer in maintenance activities.

In fact, specific steps and initiatives can lead your eCommerce business to better reach and profitability. We spoke to several website maintenance London developers and brainstormed with our Magento experts to compile a list of some foolproof tips that can transform your Magento store for maximum potential.

Read on to find out more –

5 Magento website maintenance tips for performance optimization

Tip #1:Create a website maintenance plan

From sourcing the right products to maintaining customer relationships – an eCommerce business has multiple activities to look after. In such a situation, the task of eCommerce website maintenance often takes a backseat.

But suppose you have a well-drafted maintenance plan in place along with timely reminders and notifications. In that case, you will know exactly what to do and at what intervals to keep your Magento website running and healthy.

You can divide maintenance tasks into weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual activities. Activities like site speed tests, security patches, link testing, and performance monitoring should be included in your weekly or monthly website maintenance activities.

Pro tip: Nowadays, you can leverage many advanced tools to monitor site performance. However, you can easily take your first step with something as simple as Google Analytics and get a picture of how your Magento website is doing at the moment. Or, you can also check out Site Wide Analysis Tool by Magento 2.4 that supports website maintenance with smart insights, reports, and a dashboard.

Tip #2: Regularly update your Magento website

Adobe Commerce or Magento comes up with new system updates and security patches at regular intervals to keep its platform up-to-the-mark with current market trends.

If you don’t install these patches and update your system, you will not only lose a chance of performance optimization but also expose your website to malware and probable cyber threats.

Don’t worry; you get enough time to prepare for the integration process. Magento generally informs users about upcoming updates and launches at least a year before they’re scheduled.

All you need to do is stay alert and follow upcoming Magneto releases regularly.

Tip #3: Assess your existing Magento website before installing a patch

Every new release has an extraordinary impact on the existing functionality of your Magento website. Before installation, you need to understand how it will affect your site and what kind of customizations are required to make it more beneficial for your business.

Yes, you read that right! Your Magento website maintenance checklist should have ample room for customization, and that is what Magento is famous for.

In fact, experts suggest that optimized eCommerce websites are tailored as per consumers’ convenience and ease of operations. Installing only what is necessary will also make website maintenance simpler in the future.

Tip #4: Do not go easy on testing your Magento website

Right before you make your final Magento website go live, don’t you schedule multiple tests to assure quality and avoid any hiccups?

You must treat every security update and patch installations in a similar manner. Before deploying, do ensure that you conduct user testing on all the updates, find out if they work well with existing third-party integrations and how they impact site content like the checkout pages and the product description pages.

Also, do not forget to educate all the stakeholders about the updates and keep them in the loop; especially, if you’re navigating through international eCommerce.

Tip #5: Stay alert during the peak sales period

It’s Christmas time, and you have a holiday sale going on; yet, your eCommerce conversion rate is not as good as you had expected.

What do you think could be the reason? We think you need to go back to your eCommerce website maintenance checklist. Delaying Magento updates, lapses in security, slow site speed, poor customer experience, or even broken links can adversely impact conversion rates of eCommerce sites.

Believe it or not, website maintenance is one of the most helpful eCommerce conversion tips.

Final take

As we have discussed before, launching your Magento website is just the beginning of building a successful online business. It is equally important to spend time and effort on website maintenance and support.

You could dedicate an in-house team solely for this task or connect with expert Magento partners who can support you in keeping your eCommerce website up and running.

And if you’re wondering what kind of website maintenance London can offer? We are waiting for your call. Let’s take this discussion to the next level.

Salesforce commerce cloud is known to be one of the leading digital commerce platforms
to have emerged in the last decade.

Powered by the world’s leader in cloud technology, it brings the unmatched capabilities of Salesforce to the eCommerce arena.If you are looking to launch your online business, SFCC can shape your eCommerce solution exactly the way you had imagined. Be it B2B or B2C commerce, its functionalities can be customized to suit
businesses of any scale or industry.But before you make a final decision regarding this, we would like you to check out the following FAQs so that you have a clear picture of SFCC’s features and benefitsLet’s begin with the basics first –

What is Salesforce commerce cloud?

In 2016, the overall global eCommerce sales were 1.84 trillion USD and they were poised to show steady growth in the coming years.

That is when Salesforce decided to take a plunge into the eCommerce sector and acquired Demandware and modified it as SFCC – a unique digital commerce platform that creates a seamless unified commerce experience for the customers and simplifies eCommerce operation to assist the backend team.

What companies/brands use SFCC?

SFCC has gained a lot of popularity over the years and a lot of renowned brands use it
for their online stores. Some of them are Uniqlo, Benetton, PUMA, Bare Essentials, and American Red Cross.

Is SFCC for B2B or B2C businesses?

We have good news for you – SFCC comprises two products meant for both B2B and B2C businesses. Salesforce understands that every business has unique needs and a generic platform might not be able to cater to them specifically.

So, it created a separate eCommerce platform for each. Find out more about them in our next sections

What is Salesforce B2C commerce cloud?

Curated specifically for B2C business, Salesforce B2C commerce cloud enriches online shopping experiences with a rich set of capabilities that find users on every step of their journey and help merchants manage their online retail stores effectively.

With its mobile-first design, you can reduce abandoned cart rates, optimise your sales funnel, create an intelligent shopping experience, launch and create promotional campaigns, and boost organic traffic on your online B2C retail store.

What is Salesforce B2B commerce cloud?

Tailored for the needs of B2B buyers, Salesforce B2B commerce cloud combines the ease of online shopping with the sophistication of B2B business dynamics.

What makes it different from the B2C cloud is the fact that its features are built exclusively to support B2B businesses. From automatic reordering of replacement parts, custom catalogs, contract pricing, and process automation, Salesforce B2B commerce cloud simplest the complexity of B2B commerce.

What are the main Salesforce commerce cloud features?

Here’s a quick look at some of the differentiating features that SFCC has to offer
–

One of the main features of SFCC is Commerce cloud digital – a functionality that helps in designing mobile-first online shopping experiences and integrate social media channels. This feature helps in building a cohesive mobile-friendly eCommerce solution.
Storefront Reference Architecture accelerates the development of eCommerce solutions with prebuilt storefront designs, fully-functional homepages, product pages, checkouts, and shopping carts.
SFCC also offers omnichannel order management that automates the entire order fulfillment lifecycle. It also provides an accurate picture of multi-site inventory at one single portal.
SFCC cloud empowers businesses to sell their products online direct to consumers. It also has solutions built specifically for different industries.
SFCC empowers online merchants with Einstein AI – a tool backed by the power of artificial intelligence and machine language that assist in CX personalization, deep insights, and build headless commerce.

What are the main Salesforce Commerce Cloud benefits?

Salesforce commerce cloud implementation can transform your online business. Let us tell
you how –

It is built on the world’s leading cloud platform and streamlines your business with a single source of truth.
It makes multichannel selling simpler with features like multi-stores, catalogs, localized SE, and search settings handled on a single admin
panel.
Did you know that 57% of internet users admit that they won’t recommend mobile-friendly businesses? This is where SFCC helps – It enables mobile-first design and ensures that your eCommerce is responsive.
If you plan on entering the online fashion and apparel industry, then you should look no further than SFCC. It empowers merchants with advanced visual merchandising tools, simplified catalog management, and the ability to launch advanced promotional campaigns.

Want to learn about Salesforce Commerce Cloud in detail?

Check out our introductory guide here!

How do I begin Salesforce Commerce Cloud implementation?

Launching your online store with a SFCC is quick and simple. Yet, it requires the expertise of professionals who can leverage its capabilities and customize it perfectly to your needs.

Have questions about Salesforce implementation?

Learn how we can help you.

What about SFCC pricing?

This depends entirely on your requirement and the level of customization needed for your business. Any queries regarding the process of its implementation or how much does SFCC cost should be directed to
our experts here.

By the way, did you know that we featured on the official Salesforce website as a success story? Check it out here.

As the world came under the quarantine blanket and consumers went on an online shopping rampage, retailers struggled to adapt. They might not appreciate the timing and manner that led to this digital revolution, but they did agree upon the pandemic having a significant impact on their business. From a surge in online orders to disrupted supply chains, changing customer behavior, closed retail quarters, and increasing reliance on alternative digital channels- the COVID-19 shook the retail industry to its core. Merchants and online retail stores leaders understand that the situation is changing rapidly, and they have little time to respond.

If there is something that eCommerce retailers must do to survive and thrive in the ‘new normal’, it is to understand their customers and their wants, deliver them relevant solutions and scale and evolve with time. While it might sound easy to read, it’s challenging to practice and achieve.

Pandemic-driven recession: A major blow for the apparel and beverage & food retail industry

After governments worldwide announced a state of emergency, only essential retail sectors that handled food and daily necessities received business continuity requests. Other retail businesses like apparel houses, electronics, and luxury goods were forced to close. As a result, the retail industry faced substantial shifts; however, the truth is that annual growth in retail sales had already dropped throughout 2019 and 2020, much before the pandemic, which undoubtedly led to further ramifications. For example, the clothing retailers in the US experienced a drop of 89.3% in April 2020 year-on-year, whereas the sales of groceries increased by 13.2%. A similar effect was felt everywhere worldwide, including the US, Asian, and MEA markets.

It won’t be an overstatement to say that online shopping acted as a cloud with a silver lining during such challenging times. The digital economy grew enormously and at unprecedented levels. With retail outlets shut, lockdowns imposed, online retail stores were the only means for consumers to buy essential products like medicines, groceries, food, etc. Even the hardest-hit nations worldwide achieved record-breaking online sales and a double-digit increase in eCommerce transactions (81% in Italy), with consumers spending hundreds of billions while shopping online.

The impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the retail industry was of heterogeneous nature leading to three derivative conclusions:

Only physical retail stores that dealt with essential daily needs stayed neutral or were moderately impacted. Groceries won, but at higher operating costs, and are now pacing fast to convince and keep serving omnichannel consumers and remain responsive to demand shifts.
Lockdowns and social distancing measures accelerate the ongoing shift from brick-and-mortar to online retailing. In the years to come, merchants will increasingly invest in digital transformation efforts and reserve capital for retail technology by reducing physical store expansion, operation, and maintenance.
Retailers with different abilities but linked via liquidity positions will coexist together to weather the pandemic crisis and reverse their losses in revenue. That means B2C merchants, logistics services, and manufacturing factories will adopt digital commerce to streamline operations and armor for any similar events in the future.

Consumer spending will continue to decline and may take time to recover

Not just the retail industry, but the pandemic has had a profound impact on consumer lives too. Consumer behavior now seems to be driven by new circumstances- reconsidered product priorities, panic buying, restricted spending on non-essential items, and so on. Such instances have caused a significant deviation in consumer attitudes, behaviors, and habits as they adapt to the new normal. For example, 33% of consumers are shopping more consciously than before due to lesser disposable income, whereas 26% enjoy richer and more leisurely pursuits due to an increase in disposable income and time.

Even after the pandemic, consumers will remain uncomfortable or scared of visiting public places with pharmacies and grocery shops excluded from this distinction. An Accenture report says that eCommerce purchases will increase by 160% for new and low-frequency users in the near future. With consumers indulging more with omnichannel services like home delivery, live chat, virtual consultation, in-app ordering, and buy online- pick up in-store (BOPIS) solutions, undoubtedly, online shopping practices will thrive and stay relevant for a long time. In fact, 58% of consumers say that they intend to use BOPIS services even more after the pandemic.

Reduced footfall: A trend likely to continue even in a post-Covid era

With physical retail outlets, globally, going from serving customers to shut doors, offline retail was unable to hold its fort. However, lost sales were not the only damage they sustained- continued overheads like rent, wages, and inventory pushed them over the edge. However, that’s not the only scary part. With shoppers enjoying the convenience and price comparison while shopping online, they will be more likely to continue to graze less of physical outlets and more of online retail stores.

Supply Chain Chaos: The desperate requirement for a technology-friendly model

The pandemic was the biggest shock that the supply chains have faced since the advent of globalization. This shock wasn’t only in terms of the limited ability to get supply from your suppliers with governments halting all vehicular movement and imposing lockdowns, but what happened with the end-consumers as well. Suddenly, consumers started panic buying some products in a lot more quantity than they needed while the demand for other products was negligible to none. This further put a strain on the supply chain to readily make products available, which ultimately pressured suppliers, distributors, and manufacturing units.

Promotional offers did more harm than good:

Retailers both renowned and new, heavily discounted their 2020 inventory online and offline to facilitate sales and interest customers in conducting mass purchases. Although this trick mostly has a positive impact on sales and revenue, the conclusion; however, differed this time.

The apparel, department, and other online retail stores reached their peak promotional frequency. In addition, since every other brand was discounting their collection, it became difficult for retailers to differentiate their offers and stand out to the customers. Promotional campaigns like flash sales, buy-one-get-one, or 60% off did not drive expected conversions, eroded profit margins, and eventually became expensive to manage.

Navigating the New Normal: What are the retail industry’s immediate prerogatives?

Retail is always centered around the customers. With customer experiences taking the spotlight, it will soon overtake price and product quality as key differentiating factors. Over 81% of retailers will be competing for customer experiences even after the pandemic, just a different kind, which retailers will have to adapt to.

In a nutshell, retailers with a good street presence need to devise ways to get customers back to the physical stores. It obviously means to take a different approach than before the pandemic, but it should still complement or implement an omnichannel model. That includes providing a more personalized in-store experience with AR and VR while employing digital commerce solutions to launch alternative sales channels, including online retail stores. These online retail stores can give customers a more personalized experience via customizing their orders, receive product recommendations based on their browsing history, send automated emails of products they might be interested in, and predict customer demands better than before.

That said, retailers now have to stay abreast of their priorities and implement them without hesitation.

Repurpose both physical and digital stores:

A true multi-channel strategy isn’t about having multiple stores but managing them via a single platform. For many retailers, the pandemic served as a correction process of attaining the right balance between physical and online presence. It has forced retailers to identify the purpose of physical stores amidst more digitally-focused customers, fulfilling more digital-centric customer journeys. For brands, physical stores should function more as experiential stores and marketing exercises where a store’s turnover is not necessarily a primary objective. As customer journeys become more frictionless in the coming times, and consumers will merge more of physical and online retail stores purchases. At the same time, physical stores need to move beyond the traditional sales and distribution process but repurpose them for customer discovery, interaction and building long-term relationships.

Stores can target consumer preferences to penetrate the market where hyper-personalized marketing campaigns can engage customers to visit stores for lifestyle consultation adding value to their buying journeys. Moreover, services like buy-online-pickup-in-store (similar to walk-in fulfillment) further improve the profitability of the online channel and make handling returns significantly less costly.

In the current scenario, a store’s performance will depend on the new performance metrics, how well they fulfill their customer-contact role and their customer acquisition ratio. In addition, commerce retailers need to clarify their cost-attribution models, revenue models, omnichannel ROIs, digital spend, and street presence. With advanced customer insights, data analytics, and artificial intelligence, retailers can improve their cross-channel selling power and take data-powered investment decisions. All these factors will play a critical role in resurrecting a brand post-pandemic.

Practice the DTC approach:

Initially, brands relied on retailers to act as intermediaries for product distribution; however, it led to inconsistent shopping experiences, eventually asking brands to gain deeper insights into their end customers and their shopping patterns. Today, this data can play a competitive role in discovering customer preferences, fostering relationships via digital channels, and conducting more meaningful interactions. Social channels like Instagram and Facebook have made it easy for brands to convert their stores into social spaces, integrating an easy checkout process on their social networks.

In fact, established brands have the opportunity to further capitalize on this idyllic customer purchasing behavior and elevate browsing times by increasing marketing budgets on product pages and launching mobile apps to act as a direct route for shoppers to engage with a brand on-the-go.

That said, DTC models have further thrived as eCommerce penetration achieves new heights. Established brands like Nike with over 250 million application users, and assisted customers with their purchases sold 30% of their goods via online retail stores. Using its real-time data analytics, it noticed a traffic spike on its app and swiftly initiated marketing campaigns to serve the growing customer base with their product range. Along with free shipping, loyalty programs, coupons, and massive discounts, Nike was able to accomplish its 2023 sales target in 2021 only. In the long run, a DTC model will ensure brand survival, satisfy customer needs, and offer competitive services while scaling as per the online demand.

Forge a digital data strategy:

Today, everything is about consumer data: the more you know about your customers, the more intelligence and insights you gain, and easier it becomes to devise a marketing strategy to close the data gaps. In a digital process, consider the role of each touchpoint in the customer journey. For instance, a website informs customers about the store’s open hours, running promotional campaigns, hygiene measures, social distancing measures, customer service support, product portfolio, and buying options. On the other hand, the application plays a different role with its personalized content, offers, customer reviews, product launch details, order history, and live tracking. Other additions to consider are email newsletters, social media, SMS, self-service kiosks, social stores, etc.

Quickly launch eCommerce stores:

After experiencing severe revenue and sales losses in the previous quarters, retailers are in no position to wait months before launching their eCommerce stores. Therefore, this leaves no choice but to explore opportunities that accelerate eCommerce development and reach-to-market in a matter of days and weeks and not months.

Reinvigorating retail via digital commerce accelerators

The pandemic made one thing clear for brands-they need a digital storefront, and they need it now. However, brands now need to figure out the right eCommerce platform to be the best alternative sales channel for your business that solves the challenges and opportunities to retail industry. And luckily for you, we have an answer- eCommerce accelerators.

With quick time-to-market, easy scalability during peak traffic times, personalized integrations, in-built data analytics to accelerate digital growth- the right digital commerce accelerator speeds your journey into today’s digital future. It empowers retailers to harness the power of digital technologies and shape next-gen shopping experiences right now.

Undoubtedly, eCommerce accelerators help you reach the market faster, in a limited time-frame and budget. However, with so many accelerator programs in action, here comes an inevitable question, ‘which eCommerce accelerator to choose?’

Want to go online in 4 weeks?

Our Magento eCommerce accelerator gets you online in a limited time and budget.

When you launch an online business, the first thing anybody expects is a good eCommerce conversion rate. After all, it indicates if the customers who are turning up at your online store are buying something or not.

If your conversion rate is low, you need to sit back and introspect about what is putting your prospective buyers off and what are the different ways of conversion rate optimization.

We work with a multitude of eCommerce businesses and have shaped a lot of successful online businesses across industries. Over the years, our experts have learned a few proven conversion rate optimization techniques that have shown measurable results.

In this blog, we give you a sneak peek into their expertise to help you improve the eCommerce conversion rate of your online store.

Let’s have a quick look at the basics first –

So, what exactly is the eCommerce conversion rate?

Imagine you have a physical store and it has great footfall. But, most of these people take a stroll around the store, check out a few items, and leave without purchasing anything.

This means that your store is attractive enough to attract leads but not “convert” them into happy customers. That is what conversion rate is all about.

To put it in the context of online business, the eCommerce conversion rate is the percentage of eCommerce website visitors who completed a transaction or made a final purchase during a defined period.

If an eCommerce store had 100,000 visitors in August and out of them, 2,000 visitors purchased an item, then the eCommerce conversion rate would be – 2,000/100,000 = 2%.

The lower the conversion rate, the more alarming it is for your eCommerce business. It indicates that there’s something about your online store that puts off buyers who probably found your products interesting but decided against it – usually due to poor user experience.

Thus, it is important to have a plan for eCommerce conversion tracking so that you know when to reinvent your strategy and induce some fresh blood in your online store.

Quick Fact: The average eCommerce conversion rate falls between 1% to 4%. It usually differs based on industry, country, and products; but, anything above 2% is considered good.

5 proven eCommerce conversion rate optimization tips to transform your business

Let pictures do the talking: The images and videos that you upload are the first impression of your business. They should be high-quality and eye-catching.
In addition to that, they must also give the customer an idea about how a product would look in reality without professional styling.
Thus, try getting them clicked in natural light and against a neutral background so that the details are clear. Having a good quality video along with a clear product description would be a cherry on the top!
Make mobile optimization your priority: By the time 2021 ends, worldwide sales of mobile commerce is likely to reach 72.9% of the total eCommerce market. So, if your eCommerce site is not optimized for mobile, you will lose out on eCommerce conversion and sales.
If you have not launched your online store yet, it would be better to ask your app development team to develop a mobile-responsive solution. If you already have an online store, you can always contact experts to get it optimized.

Pro tip: Migrate to Magento or explore Salesforce Commerce Cloud – these two platforms enable responsiveness and have other powerful features that have a positive impact on eCommerce sales conversion.

Get to know your eCommerce conversion funnel: An eCommerce conversion funnel shows a user’s journey from first discovering your products to finally making a final purchase.

Today, customer journeys are complex and unpredictable. It is essential to understand them for eCommerce conversion rate optimization. If you know the touchpoints that attract customers and those that they bounce from, you have won half the battle!

Now, you only have to leverage the favorable points in your funnel and optimize the weaker ones!
For example – if you notice that customers reach upto your checkout page and leave the transaction from then on, you have to reassess that page. Maybe the checkout process is too lengthy or complex, or there’re not enough payment options. All you need to do is find out the loopholes and optimize the page for better conversion.

eCommerce landing page conversion: As we stress time and again, first impressions are important, and hence, landing pages play a vital role in eCommerce conversion optimization.

Before you go “but why do I need a separate landing page when I have proper product description pages?” and roll your eyes, we have an interesting eCommerce conversion rate statistics to share with you.

Those who land on a product page are 72% more likely to bounce than those who stumble upon a landing page. This happens because landing pages have clear CTAs, no additional information or intruding pop-ups, and address a customer’s need in a direct manner.

eCommerce landing pages are especially useful when you have ads or promotional campaigns running for a certain period. Creating a landing page for offers an not only improve but also accelerate conversion rate.

Simplify your return/exchange policy: We know that product returns do not ring a happy bell in your head but they matter a lot to the customers. Research even concluded that 68% of online shoppers read the return policy before making a purchase.

What this means is that you need a customer-friendly return policy – don’t make big promises here but let them know that if they want to return the product, the process will be hassle-free.

Final Take:

Monitoring conversion rate optimization can do wonders for your eCommerce solution. Just like any other form of business, market trends and customer preferences change over time in eCommerce too. Hence, it is important to keep revisiting your online store and optimizing it so that it remains relevant to visitors and can convert them.

If you are thinking about what type of conversion rate optimization UK can offer, we suggest you check out our digital commerce services.

If you are thinking, how online stores manage conversion rate optimization in the UK, we suggest you connect with our expert.

Ranosys today announced that it has been appraised at Level 3 of the CMMI Institute’s Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI). This appraisal was performed by Maverick Quality Advisory Services (MQAS).

CMMI is a capability improvement framework that provides organizations with the essential elements of effective processes that ultimately improves their performance. An appraisal at Maturity Level 3 indicates that Ranosys is performing at a ‘Defined’ Level. At this level, processes are well-characterized and understood, and are described in standards, procedures, tools, and methods. Ranosys’ set of standard processes, which is the basis of maturity level 3, is established and improved over time.

In late 2019, Ranosys initiated a CMMI appraisal to evaluate how closely its development processes relate to CMMI best practices; hence, prioritizing business improvement efforts. Led by Sushma Vyas, COO-Ranosys, implemented and overseen by Internal ATMs Ashish Vyas, Mala Lahiri, and Akshay Paliwal, the appraisal saw 30+ team members from different departments working together to get this distinction. The CMMI Institute accepted the SCAMPI appraisal for Ranosys Technologies, awarding them with the CMMI Level 3 certification.

Talking about this achievement, Sushma Vyas, COO, Ranosys, commented, “We are proud to have earned the CMMI Maturity Level 3 benchmark recognizing our organizational standards and demonstrating our focus and commitment to deliver high-end and process-oriented software solutions.”

She continued, “At Ranosys, we focus on nothing more than customer satisfaction. And this certification is a stamp of validation that our software development practices operate at peak efficiency and efficacy. Our quality initiatives are not merely an exercise in compliance but a way to affirm our organizational commitment to continually improving our solutions. At a stage where we are aggressively expanding, this certification will help us connect with global enterprises with mandatory CMMI Level 3 certification, service our clients with an increased sense of ownership and reaffirm their trust in us.”

Ranosys is continuously working to increase productivity and efficiency for its global software clients. It has over 13 years of experience in software development, consulting, maintenance, and support while serving several high-end brands with its digital transformation, digital commerce, and product engineering solutions. This certification from an internationally recognized body like CMMI Institute has reinforced the value Ranosys offers to its customers-quality, uniformity, and contentment above all.

“I am proud of our teams who worked very hard to earn this certification level in record time. The CMMI Level 3 appraisal resonates with our innovative process-driven approach. For our clients, this certification will improve quality consistency, strategic guidance, feedback analysis, and security. At the core, the achievement will increase profitability, turn-around times, predictability, and consistency, eventually leading to mature and standardized processes, “said Umashankar Arora, VP-Engineering, Ranosys.

He continued, “We now eye on achieving the CMMI L5 certification in the next two years as a part of our vision, which will firmly establish ourselves as an organization that focuses on continuous improvement, agility, stability, and innovation. From here on, we will work harder, and smarter to offer digital transformation services at lowered costs.”

Known for its associations with the world’s leading technologies like OutSystems, Salesforce, Adobe, and Microsoft, Ranosys believes in achieving tomorrow, today. Its unique approach and tailor-made software solutions have built the firm a global clientele across the UK, US, MEA, Europe, Singapore, and India. On an aggressive growth path, Ranosys is all set to ramp up its technical capabilities and workforce to serve its growing customer base with this CMMI Level 3 certification.

About CMMI

CMMI Institute offers market-driven solutions that provide insights for baselining and optimizing organizational capabilities, cyber maturity, and data assets to elevate business performance. For over 25 years, thousands of high-performing organizations in a variety of industries, including aerospace, finance, healthcare, information technology, software, defense, transportation, and telecommunications, have achieved sustainable business success through adopting the CMMI and proved they are capable business partners and suppliers. To learn more about how CMMI can help your organization elevate performance, visit CMMIinstitute.com.

About Ranosys

Ranosys is a CMMI Level 3 global digital consulting company founded in 2008 in Singapore with 8 offices in the US, UK, Middle East, and APAC regions. It leverages the power of platform partnerships, experience design, and cutting-edge software technologies to drive digital transformation, eCommerce, and product engineering initiatives. Ranosys addresses the various milestones in a company’s digital transformation roadmap, identifying, designing, developing, deploying, and measuring their digital skills. Their experienced and expert workforce renders solutions that secure their client’s lead in the digital community.

For more information, visit https://www.ranosys.com/

Or, fill the form and shoot us an email at sales@ranosys.com

Event Overview

Event Agenda

About Ranosys

About Salesforce

About Ranosys

Before we dive into Salesforce Agentforce, let’s understand what AI agents are.

How is Salesforce Agentforce different?

#1: The power of the Salesforce Platform

#3 Humans and AI working together to achieve higher productivity

#3: The right data is paramount here

How can enterprises leverage Salesforce Agentforce?

#1: 24/7 support with Agentforce Service Agents

#2: Maximizing pipeline with Salesforce Agentforce Sales Agents

#3: Optimizing campaigns with Agentforce Marketing Agents

#4: Giving shoppers a concierge experience with Commerce Agents

#5: Launching custom agents with Agentforce Platform agents

Technologies used in Salesforce Agentforce

#1: Atlas Reasoning Engine

#2: Agent Builder

#3: Prompt Builder

#4: Model Builder

#5: Trust & Guardrails

Transforming Industries with Use Cases

#1: Retail and eCommerce

#2: Health Care

#3: Financial Services

#4: Manufacturing

#5: Telecommunication

#6: Travel and Hospitality

#7: Education

#8: Real Estate

How Salesforce Agentforce is different from Einstein AI?

Here is the table with the differences between Salesforce Agentforce and Salesforce Einstein AI.

Your trusted partner for Agentforce implementation

What is Adobe Experience Manager (AEM)?

What does Adobe Experience Manager do?

#1: Open and extensible content creation

#2: Omnichannel content delivery

#3: Experience intelligence

#4: AI-powered scalability in Adobe Experience Manager Sites

#5: Accelerated time-to-value

The six modules of Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) CMS

#1: Adobe AEM Sites:

#2: Digital Asset Management (AEM DAM)

#3: Adobe AEM Mobile

#4: Adobe AEM Forms

#5: Adobe AEM Community

#6: Adobe AEM Cloud service

How to select the right content management system?

How does Adobe Experience Manager CMS work?

#1: Content Management System (CMS) through Adobe Experience Manager Sites

#2: Digital Asset Management (DAM) through Adobe Experience Manager Assets

#3: Digital Enrollment and Forms

#4: Digital Screens

#5: Digital Guides

#6: Adobe Learning Manager

How Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) matches against popular CMS characteristics

Is Adobe Experience Manager CMS the right CMS tool for my business?

Key features of Adobe Experience Manager

#1: Project Dashboard

#2: Out-of-the-Box Features

#3: Custom Add-ons

#4: Cloud Services

#5: Visual Media Conversion

#6: Omnichannel Content Delivery

What are the benefits of Adobe Experience Manager (AEM)?

#1: Simplified managed of assets with Adobe AEM DAM

#2: Easy-to-navigate and creative Adobe AEM dashboard

#3: Integration with other Adobe Marketing Cloud and Experience Cloud tools

#4: Enhance SEO and user experiences

#5: Easy and quick content updating and editing

#6: Access the out-of-the-box (OTB) components in Adobe Experience Manager

#7: Media conversion and video management in Adobe AEM

#8: Content personalization at scale

#9: Headless CMS capabilities

#10: Accelerate speed-to-market

#11: Flexibility and scalability

#12: Personalized content

#13: Ability to target customers wherever they are

#14: Better task management

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