More and more of all shopping and business transactions are being done online. Forbes estimates that eCommerce sales will grow by 8,8% this year. Consumer businesses have fully embraced the transition, but B2B companies are still a bit behind in adopting digital sales channels. We had an opportunity to talk about these changes with an eCommerce veteran Søren Borch from Salesforce who was recently in Helsinki hosting a Commerce Campfire workshop together with us.
More about this concept later, but let’s dive into the topic. What is happening in eCommerce? What can Salesforce offer to companies looking to boost their digital sales?
We had a discussion about eCommerce in the B2B business with Daniel Hylton from Salesforce two years ago. What has changed since then?
Phew, a lot of things have changed.
As you know, we have three major (update) releases every year. Those have brought in tons of improvements to our commerce solutions as well.
I’m especially excited about the fact that we’ve been able to eliminate 90 percent of the steps required to set up an eCommerce storefront. That makes eCommerce much more accessible even to smaller businesses.
We’re (commerce side) also much more connected with other Salesforce cloud solutions, whether it’s marketing, sales or customer service.
I also have to mention AI. We’ve had AI at Salesforce for the last 10 years, but now we’ve started to offer powerful gen AI capabilities to companies using our commerce solutions.
What about your customers? Has anything changed in their approach to commerce?
Overall I’d say that we’ve had good traction with customers.
There was a lot of increased awareness and interest towards eCommerce during and after the COVID-19 pandemic – especially with B2B companies.
Companies wanted to make sure that their products and services were available to all customers anywhere at any time. At the same time they wanted to provide better customer experiences and personalized prices. Overall companies were looking to make buying from them easier, faster and more efficient.
We are still seeing the same trend with B2B customers. A lot of buyers nowadays prefer digital sales channels, which increases the demand for high-quality commerce solutions. I’d like to underline that email and phone are still by far the most used sales channels, but we’re seeing more and more of these other channels as well.
Where are we in the Nordics when it comes to eCommerce? Are we coming along nicely or lagging behind?
I’d say that Denmark and Sweden are leading the race in the Nordics, but there is a lot of potential in Finland – especially in the B2B side.
I know it comes down to subjective preferences, but what kind of online store would you consider great? What makes a great online store?
Definitely one that knows me if we’ve ever done business together before. I expect personalization. I only want to see products and services that are available to me. I don’t want to see anything that isn’t available to me.
It also needs to work really well on mobile phones. I need to be able to browse, search and purchase items on all devices without any problems.
If God forbid I need help with something, there has to be someone to talk to. It can be a chatbot, but it needs to work. Unfortunately I see a lot of bad examples out there. Companies have been focusing on case and call deflection for years, which is understandable, but it cannot turn into customer deflection!
Editor’s note: Call deflection refers to techniques used in redirecting at least some of the incoming customer service calls to digital support channels to reduce the burden on call center employees.
What are the biggest challenges at the moment when we’re talking about eCommerce?
It depends on the perspective.
If I approach it from the customer perspective, I’d say that one major challenge is that there are so many commerce vendors out there and they’re mostly talking about the same things. You might think that all commerce options are the same, but honestly not all platforms are equal.
I truly believe that our product is really good, we provide omnichannel out of the box and can be integrated with anything outside of our own ecosystem.
When looking at the challenges from our perspective, we’re faced with two major challenges at the moment.
- Economic uncertainty. Everybody’s at least a little unsure about spending money and making investments at the moment.
- Many customers are executing major ERP overhauls, whether it’s choosing a new system or upgrading the current system.
Many customers have told us that they’re focusing on ERP projects for the next 5-10 years. ERP projects are obviously complex, but I believe that at the same time some focus should be placed on improving customer engagements and customer processes.
I do have to say that while companies seem hesitant to make investments, they do want to save money. Improving the commerce and order management side of business can help them do that.
Going back to looking at this from the customer perspective, they’re not that interested in storefronts per se. They are much more interested in their own customers and how to serve them better. So instead of simply focusing on eCommerce as a single solution, we should be looking at whole customer journeys and customer experiences.
How can we help customers deliver personalized experiences to their own customers and also help them deliver what they promise? As we know from our own personal experiences, one bad experience with a company can make us turn towards a competitor.
So the main challenges with eCommerce boil down to charging the right prices, driving the whole process seamlessly from receiving an order to invoicing and actually delivering the goods or services and then making sure your customers come back.
I have to ask. Has AI changed anything yet? What kind of changes are we going to see in commerce?
AI has indeed changed times. We haven’t really seen any major changes with generative AI yet, but we’ve already grown accustomed to seeing personalized product recommendations for example.
Now with the help of AI we can spin up a new storefront in 30 minutes. That’s pretty amazing, isn’t it?
By leveraging AI you can use your CRM data to enrich your eCommerce data. You can maybe even create personalized products based on your customer data. And have everything in different languages without much manual work.
We’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg. With all the changes that are happening right now, it’s even hard for me to stay on top of things.
Agentforce is our newest offering. I’ve already seen it do some amazing things. It even understands industry specific lingo and is super easy to use.
I can already think of a number of interesting applications for agents created with Agentforce. Many buyers are struggling because there are so many options available. Sometimes it’s really hard to even find what you’re looking for.
Imagine if you visited an online store and you had an assistant that could help you with everything. You’re not sure which spare part you need? You can’t find what you’re looking for? You can’t tell the difference between two products? No worries, you need only ask.
There has been some talk about composable commerce and composable storefronts. What does it mean in plain terms and is it worth mentioning? What are the benefits?
I love the term composable, because it means extreme flexibility.
It might be easy to understand the logic behind composable commerce when you consider building a house. You can order a prefab house or you can build your own house by choosing all the elements based on your preferences.
Same logic can be applied to commerce.
You can go with one solution like Salesforce’s Commerce Cloud or you can choose different elements from different service providers. Maybe you want to build your storefront on one platform, but then use another tool for product recommendations and a third one for searches. It can be done.
We at Salesforce haven’t been emphasizing it, but we do fully support it. We have customers that use a sort of default product in some markets and something very different in other markets. That can be done as well.
Options are endless, but as the saying goes “with great power comes great responsibility”. Combining different platforms, tools and services require integrations and if not done properly, you might end up regretting not going with a simpler execution.
Can you tell us a little bit about Salesforce’s Commerce Cloud. What is it?
Very short version: It is a smart, scalable and reliable solution that is available to all of our customers, whether it’s a global company or a one-man company.
It’s also really easy to get started with. You can spin up storefronts in 30 minutes and use a trial period to try things out. Of course if you’ve been running a storefront with some other technology before, you probably need to spend a bit more than 30 minutes to get started to cover all existing processes in your business.
Commerce Cloud is also fully integrated with our other cloud solutions, so it works seamlessly with for example Sales Cloud, Service Cloud or Marketing Cloud.
What about Revenue Cloud? Where does it fit in?
In short, Revenue Cloud is a solution that helps manage everything related to generating revenue. It helps you manage contracts, multiple revenue streams and different types of revenue.
It is often the foundation for the whole business, because it can help with pricing, quote-to-cash process, contract lifecycle management, orders and billing. It helps automating and streamlining revenue operations.
Commerce Cloud excels in dealing with self service and order capture, while Revenue Cloud is excellent in supercharging sellers and back office functions.
Is it still worth separating B2C and B2B businesses when it comes to eCommerce? What are the main differences?
What is common for both businesses is that customers expect the same level of experience.
But there are some key differences that should be mentioned. In B2B business you need to be able to negotiate the prices and charge different prices from different types of customers.
It means that the right customer has to see the right price at the right time when interacting with you. It is also important that the price remains the same regardless of the channel.
Also in B2B we might have some massive transactions with a lot of complexity. Delivering the end product might require split shipping, other intermediaries and so on. You might even have to split one order into multiple different shipments. These are not typical B2C cases.
Why choose Salesforce? What are the benefits over the competition?
A lot of vendors are saying the same things about their platforms, but some of them are struggling to meet their promises.
We offer a unified solution that can be tailored and scaled to any requirements. We also support the composable commerce approach, as I said earlier.
A lot of people are talking about outstanding customer experiences, but it’s really hard to actually provide those across all channels. We can help our customers do it consistently and in an easier way.
If you’re already using Salesforce technologies, it should almost be a no-brainer if you’re considering building your eCommerce business.
I also have to mention the costs, because customers are always interested in that. We can offer very reasonable TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) for companies choosing our commerce solutions.
I bet some of our customers are interested, but might not know how to get started. Any suggestions?
We have a concept called Commerce Campfire where we give our customers access to our platform and show them exactly what it is.
The idea is that you can build your own prototype commerce storefront from scratch during the Campfire session and it doesn’t cost you anything or force you to commit to anything.
The feedback I’ve gotten so far has been really positive. People seem genuinely surprised that they’ve been able to build a working prototype in a couple of hours.
Are you interested in seeing how eCommerce works? Do you want to participate in a Commerce Campfire session where you can build your own eCommerce site? Fill out a contact request below or reach out to Mikko Cavenius and we’ll get you started!