If you analyze the core reasons behind the ecommerce boom, then you would know that it is not just the products or the servicing. The biggest two reasons are customer convenience and the technology that empowers the whole ecosystem. The convenience is also because of the technology. If you have ever wondered how these mega companies manage their inventories, customer engagement, and logistics, then you are going to love what we have for you today.
The Salesforce Commerce Cloud is a cloud based solution that transforms the buying experience across all channels. It covers all leading aspects of your ecommerce business like campaigning, merchandising, content management, promotions management, customer support management, etc. All this is done with the help of modern day AI tools and eliminates the need to have in-house data scientists and other tech resources.
Ways in which the Salesforce Commerce Cloud Helps Ecommerce Industry
To maximize user trends, your business needs an agile and scalable system that unifies the entire customer journey. Salesforce’s Commerce Cloud helps you automate many complex processes and allow you to unlock multiple channels of revenue.
But before getting to know the ways in which Salesforce ecommerce solutions help the industry, let us take a look at some key features of it first.
Key Features
Here are some key features that help you transform your online business.
Customer Experience: optimize abandoned carts, checkout flows, and accelerated payments. Extend social sharing. Journey management for subsequent tracking and support.
Marketing & Merchandising: Drag and drop page designer with reusable components to create custom pages. A/B testing is based on consumer behavior, channel or location for your campaigns. AI enabled personalized merchandising.
Artificial Intelligence: Tailor made recommendations using strong AI powered APIs. AI powered cart/basket analysis and smart behavioral analytics. Chatbots for instant customer support.
Innovation: Explore endless possibilities with the help of an API-first approach. Integrate third party apps to innovate customer centric ideas.
Scalability: Enjoy the borderless infrastructure to go global within no time. Multi-lingual architectures and translation APIs to approach global regions.
With the help of these tools, a certified salesforce consultant guides you to stay ahead of the herd. Let us now look at how exactly that happens.
How Salesforce Helps Transformation?
The ecommerce industry faces roadblocks at multiple junctions in the customer journey. With years of experience in managing enterprise solutions across a plethora of industries, Salesforce is able to carve out solutions for all small and big roadblocks. These are solutions from Salesforce for retail as well as B2B businesses with the help of the Commerce Cloud.
Track and Manage Products at Every Stage
The journey of a product is as important as the journey of a customer. With right product management and forecasting tools, you can place your product at a page where it is most likely to attract sales. These tools offer real time progress reports, demand forecasting, inventory management, trend studies etc.
It also provides the obvious part of tracking the product which is its logistical journey. Tracking the journey from one end to the other is a difficult task. Imagine if it was doubled. Salesforce Commerce Cloud offers transparent and real time tracking of a product across various channels of the vendor to your inventory and then finally to the consumer.
All this while, both your support team and the consumer get automated updates about the progress. This helps your support team to brief the customers about their queries. Detailed tracking and progress reports also help build the trust factor.
Unified Customer Experience
Ecommerce is a team effort. This team includes multiple stakeholders. The array of vendors, logistics partners and sponsored partners are all brought under the same roof with the help of smart solutions from Salesforce Commerce Cloud. This helps you offer a unified experience throughout the funnel to your customers.
It unifies the point of contact for the user no matter which aspect of the sales they approach. Moreover, this unified experience is shared across different devices and channels like text messages, instant messaging apps, social media apps, emails and automated calls.
With the help of the unified and single view of customer data, you are able to offer customized products and services to them. It helps you form better communication and offer personalized support all throughout. These practices help you retain your customers and serve them even better the next time they shop with you.
Improved Inventory Management
Managing the inventory could become quite a task especially if it involves multiple vendors and storage locations. With tools that help you forecast demands, you can schedule your logistics and make the most of the freight.
Empty miles and scattered deliveries are huge issues for online businesses. Salesforce ecommerce solutions help you to plan your inventory in a way that your delivery schedules are optimized and you save a lot of freight costs.
Another smart solution from the Commerce Cloud is to offer similar or superior products in case of a sold out situation. This prevents the customers to abandon the session and inspires them to buy explore similar or better products. The personalized recommendations help you manage your inventories both in case of an overwhelming stock and a stock shortage situation.
Enhanced Omni-channel Strategies
To extend customer engagement, it is very important for ecommerce platforms to have consistent offerings across channels. Everyone from the sales, marketing and operations teams should be a part of a united strategy. For instance, the process of billing, methods of payments and sales conversion statistics may not appeal to the marketing or operations team. But these insights help you understand the customers and their frequency of purchases which further helps you draw out marketing campaigns.
All this is only possible if all the channels in your business run on parallel tracks at equal speeds. The exchange of information, availability of intelligent reports, and ability to send files across the teams make the strategy formation better.
Many online businesses are either venturing into physical presence now or already have one. It becomes very important for your brand to have a unified customer experience at all touchpoints. With Salesforce Commerce Cloud, you are able to provide custom authentication based on the roles of teams and team members to have cross-departmental inputs from them.
Continuous Innovation
One of the perks of working with industry leading tech providers is that you get round the clock support and continuous upgrades. Salesforce keeps adding features and keeps improving its solutions to cater to the ever-evolving nature of ecommerce. Their impeccable development team is always a step ahead of the trends. They are able to give you the tools before you need them.
The integration of AR/VR modules, for instance, helps you convert your platform into storefronts for immersive shopping experiences for your customers. With the help of top Salesforce consulting services, you can leverage these sophisticated tools and integrate modern day technology into your online business.
Innovative strategies like these take a large number of resources and expertise to be implemented. With Salesforce, you get the best tech, round the clock support, and a robust platform at your disposal without having to form a team to maintain all of that.
Smarter Supply Chain Management
The supply chain becomes a headache, especially between multi vendors and locations. Aspects like planning, sourcing, manufacturing, deliveries and returns are challenging to maintain even for the top businesses. Each stage produces data and information that can impact other stages. To stop the delays and prevent damage, you need a central system that gives you an insight into all departments with just a few clicks.
The availability of this vital data on a central system allows the internal and external teams to resolve problems faster. The smart solutions go from the top all the way to the bottom. The delivery workforce can also input real-time locations and issues along the way. This helps your teams to help the delivery people in case of a vehicle breakdown or an unwanted delay.
Moreover, with a centralized cloud system and omnichannel communication, you can prevent traffic jams and divert routes through the prediction of poor weather conditions with the integration of smart navigation and weather APIs.
Automated Analysis
Generating relevant reports is the key to customer satisfaction. Without analyzing your own processes, you cannot serve your customers with the best of your abilities. This analysis depends on accurate data gathering, storage and entries into relevant fields. All this takes hours or sometimes days to perform manually.
With Salesforce Commerce Cloud, all the internal and customer data is stored automatically in a synchronous way. This helps you generate custom reports instantly. The automation of this whole process eliminates any human intervention as the process has a laser sharp accuracy.
It also allows you to cut down on the unnecessary costs of hiring people for mundane clerical tasks. The speed, accuracy and efficiency of these automated analysis paves way for you to strategize for the future.
Enhancing the Mobile Experience
Mobile devices account for more than 60% of the total visits on ecommerce platforms. But leveraging this trend needs more than just fancy graphics. With solutions from Salesforce Commerce Cloud, you get reference architecture to build mobile friendly websites. Features like easy checkouts and integration of e-wallets in your business enhance the mobile shopping experience.
The built-in SEO optimization tools of Commerce Cloud help your website rank better and garner more engagement. Use the social integration tools that allow your users to share the products from your page directly to their social media pages or on instant messaging.
These are some aspects that the Commerce Cloud helps you with your online business. But that is not it. There are many intangible benefits of partnering with a Salesforce consulting company. For instance, it frees you from being occupied in doing boring repetitive chores with the help of automation. This eventually improves your efficiency and helps you grow your business faster.
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Conclusion
You need to be highly resourceful if you wish to prosper in a more significant industry. The ecommerce industry is probably one of the biggest in the world at the moment. Convenience and connectivity have boosted shopping trends. This is the right opportunity for any budding ecommerce company to scale up.
AIMDek is the perfect partner to help you grow without having to commit the resources required to deploy Salesforce Commerce Cloud at your workplace. Our subject matter experts, trainers, and support team help you excel in your industry. By partnering with us, you can avoid forming teams and minimize maintenance worries for good.
