You may be just starting your digital transformation journey and unsure where to begin. You may have started your digital transformation journey but are not getting the desired results. Your solution may be functional, but it is not helping those who interact with it daily. It may not be able to keep up with your changing IT landscape. Or, your IT and marketing groups might have a falling out. Navigating the complicated landscape of commerce and content platforms can be difficult.
Integrating commerce and content solutions
What do the analysts think? report entitled, "Content-and-commerce technology. Traditional marriage dynamics no longer apply. Discusses the evolution of commerce and content systems in the report, as a thought leader in digital for our clients, has seen and driven this evolution. These solutions are evolving. Acquisitions and mergers have become common connection types, with their capabilities expanding to new areas. Architectures from yesterday are no longer relevant. Report highlights seven ways to integrate commerce and content to meet enterprise-grade needs. These patterns have advantages and disadvantages and may work best for certain niches.
First, there is a solution that only focuses on e-commerce. E-commerce has evolved and is now a sophisticated and capable class. Second, headless commerce. The second pattern is headless commerce. Organizations want to compete with their rivals and have agility in their business processing. They combine an ecommerce solution with a CMS to get the best of both worlds. It is today's gold standard in digital architecture. Which platforms are most appropriate for this setup? you can also hire sitecore developers.
Why SAP Commerce Cloud? Why Sitecore?
Few others agreed that SAP commerce cloud Commerce is the best-of-breed platform. That can be seen in both graphics upper right corner. Let's now look at the top CMS solutions. Both analyst reports reflect well on Adobe Experience Manager Acquia and Sitecore. Our extensive global content platform experience has led us to detect a market trend pointing to Sitecore becoming the most popular platform. What will happen when the best commerce platform is combined with the best platform for content? Take a look at the platforms.
Sitecore and SAP Commerce Cloud
SAP commerce cloud commerce is a flexible, modern, and modular solution for online solution business:
- Can provide an omnichannel solution for web, mobile, and point-of-push sale while unifying commerce data management and commerce-focused processes.
- Can provide and host a unified view of orders, customer accounts, and products
- It can easily be integrated with ERP, CRM, OMS, and other systems.
- The platform is capable of handling complex solutions. Still, it strives for simplicity and to reduce adoption and training efforts by providing a consistent experience on the back-office data end in all its modules.
- Connectors are available from various third-party providers, including leading digital product developers.
- SAP's world-leading enterprise backend software is natively integrated into this product (reducing the implementation cost).
Sitecore Experience is an omnichannel digital experience platform with web, mobile, social channels, email, commerce, and other features:
- Most often, it is used in systems that are aimed at end users.
- Sitecore was originally a system for managing liquid web content. That is still an important feature in Sitecore.
- Sitecore Experience Management allows you to collect, combine and analyze information on how customers have interacted with brands.
- The Experience Database, a Sitecore database that tracks all user interactions and professional insight in real-time and over the years, powers this.
- Sitecore can also be integrated with other digital systems.
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Let's compare these two leading platforms.
- SAP commerce cloud can manage various product types, including complex hierarchical variations like color and size. It can also handle bundling product categories and configure them. Sitecore is also capable of handling products. The capabilities, however, are less robust. Sitecore and SAP commerce cloud can both be used as standalone PIM systems if required. However, like its classification engine, SAP commerce cloud has some extra bells and whistles, giving it the edge.
- Pricing: SAP commerce cloud handles pricing, as does Sitecore. However, SAP commerce cloud offers more options and flexibility in terms of pricing tables. For example, SAP commerce cloud can offer bulk of account-based tiered pricing or time-based pricing. In terms of the promotion engines on both platforms, they are similar. They offer a variety of promotional bidding types, coupons, and rule-based engines. However, their technology is different.
- Checkout: SAP commerce cloud is a winner because of its origins as an ecommerce engine. It has a nearly fully-functional checkout that only requires a payment provider to be connected. Sitecore offers similar API hooks but no ready-to-go functionality.
- Order Management: SAP commerce cloud OMS has seen several recent investments to the extent that its order splitting, pick-and-pack warehouse assignment, and consignment features can replace many standalone OMS products. Sitecore offers some order management features, but not these comprehensive ones.
- Content Management: Sitecore is a real star in web content management, offering an intuitive interface that better suits the needs of curators and merchandisers. Sitecore was originally a content management system. Sitecore is more intuitive for non-technical people to create complex workflows. SAP commerce cloud requires a technical person to do the work.
- Web Analytics: Sitecore offers a robust out-of-the-box offering, including data export and reporting capabilities on top of its proprietary analytics engine.
- Personalization: SAP commerce cloud Commerce has the behavioral target group functionality to segment and personalize. Recent report found that the subsystem causes a large performance hit on this platform. SAP recommends SAP commerce cloud Marketing for its current personalization engine. Conversely, Sitecore has comprehensive personalization features that are more flexible and efficient. Sitecore is renowned for its personalization capabilities, which rival web content management's importance.
- Customer Service center: Sitecore doesn't support customer service out of the box. On the other hand, SAP commerce cloud has invested in this rack space, re-launching its customer service dashboard and introducing an assisted service module, allowing customer service agents to leverage the storefront for a client. Recently enhanced APIs improve the support of headless commerce scenarios.
- Integrations: Both platforms have flexible typical integrations that are well-suited to the fragmented digital landscape. SAP commerce cloud wins out with native SAP support, including ERP, S/4HANA, and CRM, and access to sitecore development services in the oracle commerce cloud and Data Hub, which provides "ESB-light" capabilities.
- Third-party modules: The B2B marketplaces of both platforms are replete with third-party connectors and adding. Sitecore's marketplace project is heavily focused on digital marketing. SAP commerce cloud has a more mature marketplace that includes more extensions for e-commerce.
We can see the popularity of this combination in the marketplace when we combine SAP commerce cloud with Sitecore in a "headless commerce" architecture. Sitecore's content-centric capabilities allow it to meet the demands of business users, such as content curators, merchandisers, and other people who interact with the system daily. SAP commerce cloud, which has advanced commerce capabilities, can handle the heavy lifting in the background, providing a more nuanced, complex, and richer representation of today's complex business world. It is a better fit for the IT department of an organization.
We have the best from both platforms. What does it take for these popular platforms to be connected? In response to the market's demand, it has created the first Sitecore + SAP commerce cloud Connector. By leveraging Sitecore Commerce Connect's framework, we can tap into Sitecore's commerce tendencies and power them with SAP commerce cloud Omni-channel Connect RESTful API layer. The interpretive layer translates SAP commerce cloud Commerce into Sitecore's language. This solution will remain stable even if either platform is upgraded. It does not need extensive customization or long set-up times because it integrates with both platforms.
Read More: Reasons Why Most of the Businesses Have Preferred Sitecore CMS Development
The Sitecore Virtual Summit and the Festival of Marketing have recently shown how this connector is the best way to connect these two platforms. See how Sitecore, SAP commerce cloud, and this connector work in real life. That is the solution that General Electric Healthcare has envisioned. It's now available to the public. Refer to the webinar recording to watch General Electric Healthcare, present their solution.
There are Some Drawbacks to be Aware Of
There are some downsides that you should be aware of:
- Complexity Increases: Digital solutions are, by their nature, complex. SAP commerce cloud, as well as Sitecore, have platforms that are capable of solving complex problems. The complexity of combining the two platforms is increased by bringing them together. There are two main platforms and all their minor players to deal with. It means that there are more integrations. There are also more points of failure. The data is exchanged more and cached more. That makes it more difficult to diagnose if anything goes wrong.
- Steeper Learning Curve: Adopting these platforms for people who need to use them in their daily activities is always an educational journey. Although a Sitecore + SAP commerce cloud design will separate key functions and roles of employees to either one or the other platform, the learning curve for the entire organization will be steeper.
- Distinct Technology Stack: SAP commerce cloud and Sitecore don't share the same stack of technology. SAP commerce cloud uses Java, while Sitecore relies on the Net. The IT department will either need to add additional skills to support or build the sitecore development company, or they will be forced to use a system integrator that is specialized in both.
- Upgrades Require a Heavier Lift: Platform upgrades are a key combo factor to consider when evaluating the evolution of Sitecore + SAP commerce cloud. The overall effort to upgrade your Sitecore + SAP commerce cloud solution is greater when you have two platforms.
- But Increased Agility: This extra boost is countered by the ability only to upgrade one part of the system, increasing the agility and the focus on the derived value.
- Both Require Expensive Licensing: While a headless solution is more powerful than a traditional commerce system, it's also costlier to build, license, and maintain. The ROI will only be realized by those committed to implementing a true digital transformation in their organization.
Add Sitecore to SAP Commerce Cloud
You're convinced of the advantages SAP commerce cloud and Sitecore can offer. What are you going to do? Say you have an SAP commerce cloud Commerce installation. You may have an existing transactional website that uses SAP commerce cloud CMS and wants to replace it with Sitecore. To achieve this, you must configure the Omni-channel connect RESTful Web Service Layer on SAP commerce cloud and ensure access is enabled using OAuth. Sitecore Commerce Connect will also need to be installed. Sitecore packages, including Sitecore + hybrids connector, will be required to deploy.
The two must be customized and configured to reflect the SAP commerce cloud model customizations, etc. Sitecore is now responsible for serving pages to consumer ecommerce. A 401 redirect map should be created to convert former SAP commerce cloud web pages into their Sitecore equivalents. That will help to maintain search engine rankings after the switch. SAP commerce cloud should be hosted on the same cloud-based servers as Sitecore to reduce latency.
Advises against "boiling an ocean" by introducing new requirements for the business during the first release. Fast follow-up releases can add bells and whistles after SAP commerce cloud + Sitecore goes live. For those willing to take a risk, this new evolution in your digital solution allows you to run Sitecore and SAP commerce cloud simultaneously for a time. SAP commerce cloud retains the ownership of transactional data in both cases. You can A/B test your old and new sites. That is especially useful if you also want to redesign the user profile experience when implementing Sitecore.
Read More: Sitecore Is The Best CMS And Here Are Some Of The Platform's Key Benefits To Help You See Why?
Add SAP Commerce Cloud to Sitecore
If you already have a Sitecore offering, you will likely start with a non transactional solution. In such a case, suggests implementing SAP commerce cloud over several smaller releases. Each release will bring you closer to your end goal, e-commerce with purely transactional functionality. The first thing to do is to install Sitecore + SAP commerce cloud Connector and link SAP commerce cloud Commerce with the current Sitecore solution. Using the connector, you can then migrate existing data from SAP commerce cloud to SAP commerce cloud, and Sitecore will retrieve the information through the connector. Then you can start building the rest of the transactional components of your final solution, bringing value to each stage. Does Sitecore have no products? No products in Sitecore? No pricing? Sitecore will display the two SAP commerce clouds. Next, inventory data and so forth. The checkout process often has the greatest number of integration points. That can make it the most difficult but rewarding to implement. This part can be launched faster if you keep it simple. A single payment option, anonymous checkouts, and other simplified features will make this easier. After basic capabilities have been implemented, complexity can be added until an omnichannel experience is achieved.
Review Best of Breed
What we've discussed today, in a nutshell, There are only two dominant patterns in digital architecture: e-commerce-only and headless commerce. Out of the two patterns, headless commerce is considered the best digital architecture. Gartner, and others agree that SAP commerce cloud is the Best of Breed for its respective domain. Combining SAP commerce cloud with Sitecore can unleash the full power of each, satisfying both the creative businesspeople and scrupulous technical personnel. Sitecore + SAP commerce cloud Connector can then accelerate this digital solution. General Electric Healthcare has proven this through its demo. There is a clear path to achieving this powerful solution if you already have one platform. expertise on both platforms can greatly help if neither platform is in place or you can hire sitecore developers.
Reality Check Benefits
Amazing results using SAP commerce cloud with Sitecore. We've already mentioned some benefits we have seen within a very short time frame. Some are internally focused. We've benefited from simplifying the workflows for product data and moving away from multiple ecommerce applications to just one. That has been an important win. Our content managers and developers can now easily monitor the data flow to the SAP commerce cloud Connector. As we track the interaction of this new platform, we've seen some initial customer data showing an increase in order values and a decrease in abandonment. We're also looking ahead and working on setting up product rules and recommendations based on SAP commerce cloud default rules and Sitecore personalization. The SAP commerce cloud & Sitecore Integration allows us to integrate information management with the front-end publishing layer and take full advantage of product recommendations and personalization.
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Conclusion
Applications with well-defined, robust APIs can be integrated more easily and for less money. Simple integrations (i.e., Integrations with multiple workflows, dozens of calls to endpoints, and complex processes can cost up to approx $100,000 for several ticketing applications). The integration time depends on sitecore development, how many applications are being used, whether they can be easily integrated, and the complexity and number of business workflows that need to be built. CISIN can help you integrate your types of applications in weeks or months. CISIN, over the past decade, has completed more than 3,000 integrations.
