Dear Omnichannel, Retail and Commerce Communities,
I am happy to announce the out-of-the-box integration of SAP Customer Order Sourcing with SAP Commerce Cloud (SAP Commerce 1905).
Today, consumers expect more from a brand than simply an efficient shopping experience or high quality products.
Especially when shopping online they expect reliable, real-time information about the desired products and to reserve their product for the shopping time, as well as full support from the retailer in case of problems.
With SAP Commerce Cloud, you as a retailer already have the perfect basis to fulfill your consumers' needs.
However, providing best customer experience not only involves streamlining the shopping process in the web shop, but also requires perfect orchestration of back end processes.
There is nothing worse than not being able to deliver a product as promised to the customer due to inefficient process or lack of information.
The new integration enhances the processes Click & Collect and Click & Ship with functionality in the areas Available to Sell, Sourcing and Reservations.
The Available to Sell functionality collects product availability information from all sources for all products into one single source of truth and makes it available to the web shop.
This means that consumers see availability information based on the real time stock. The product availability is automatically adjusted as consumers reserve products or place orders.
Reservations secure products placed in the shopping cart for consumers and therefore improve the overall shopping experience. Learn more: Use Case: Temporary Reservations.
The main benefit of SAP Customer Order Sourcing is its Sourcing capability. It enables you to create personalized sourcing strategies according to your specific business need.
Sourcing uses a powerful optimization algorithm that can be adjusted to improve either towards cost saving during the delivery process or customer experience, which could mean shipping the products as fast as possible to the customers desired location.
SAP Customer Order Sourcing acts as an integrating component between the front office and back office.
SAP Commerce Cloud as your front office will be connected to various back office systems like SAP ECC, or SAP S/4HANA, but also third party systems or cash registers.
The integration enables the SAP Commerce web shop to enrich the customer experience for:
While searching for products, consumers can now see availability information for all products.
In the Click & Ship scenario this can be used to show whether a specific product is available for sale or not. This information can be used to:
In the Click & Collect scenario, the so called Store Locator is used. SAP Customer Order Sourcing verifies whether the desired product is available to sell, based on the location of the consumer and where the product is available for pickup. Sourcing is not being used in the ongoing checkout and order process.
As soon as a consumer places products in their shopping cart, the availability is checked and the product is temporarily reserved for the consumer.
During checkout the Sourcing functionality of SAP Customer Order Sourcing is executed. You can predefine different sourcing strategies in the Strategy Builder app.
Sourcing optimizes the selection of the source by applying the right strategy.
When the order is placed, sourcing is triggered again to make sure every product is delivered to the consumer according to the predefined strategy. Want to learn how to build strategies? - Learn it here: https://developers.sap.com/tutorials/cos-getting-started-trial.html.
After the order was placed, the information is passed onto the Back Office and availability and stock information is updated.
The benefits of SAP Customer Order Sourcing integrated with SAP Commerce Cloud are clear. The only thing left for you, is to try it out yourself!
Any questions, comments or additional information wanted? Feel free to reach out to me directly or via the comment section!
I am happy to announce the out-of-the-box integration of SAP Customer Order Sourcing with SAP Commerce Cloud (SAP Commerce 1905).
Business Need
Today, consumers expect more from a brand than simply an efficient shopping experience or high quality products.
Especially when shopping online they expect reliable, real-time information about the desired products and to reserve their product for the shopping time, as well as full support from the retailer in case of problems.
With SAP Commerce Cloud, you as a retailer already have the perfect basis to fulfill your consumers' needs.
However, providing best customer experience not only involves streamlining the shopping process in the web shop, but also requires perfect orchestration of back end processes.
There is nothing worse than not being able to deliver a product as promised to the customer due to inefficient process or lack of information.
How can SAP Customer Order Sourcing address the business need?
The new integration enhances the processes Click & Collect and Click & Ship with functionality in the areas Available to Sell, Sourcing and Reservations.
Available to Sell
The Available to Sell functionality collects product availability information from all sources for all products into one single source of truth and makes it available to the web shop.
This means that consumers see availability information based on the real time stock. The product availability is automatically adjusted as consumers reserve products or place orders.
Reservations
Reservations secure products placed in the shopping cart for consumers and therefore improve the overall shopping experience. Learn more: Use Case: Temporary Reservations.
Sourcing
The main benefit of SAP Customer Order Sourcing is its Sourcing capability. It enables you to create personalized sourcing strategies according to your specific business need.
Sourcing uses a powerful optimization algorithm that can be adjusted to improve either towards cost saving during the delivery process or customer experience, which could mean shipping the products as fast as possible to the customers desired location.
How does it work?
SAP Customer Order Sourcing acts as an integrating component between the front office and back office.
SAP Commerce Cloud as your front office will be connected to various back office systems like SAP ECC, or SAP S/4HANA, but also third party systems or cash registers.
The integration enables the SAP Commerce web shop to enrich the customer experience for:
Search and Browse
While searching for products, consumers can now see availability information for all products.
In the Click & Ship scenario this can be used to show whether a specific product is available for sale or not. This information can be used to:
- either place the products in the shopping cart
- or guide the consumer through an additional process to get notified when the product becomes available again.
In the Click & Collect scenario, the so called Store Locator is used. SAP Customer Order Sourcing verifies whether the desired product is available to sell, based on the location of the consumer and where the product is available for pickup. Sourcing is not being used in the ongoing checkout and order process.
Shopping Cart
As soon as a consumer places products in their shopping cart, the availability is checked and the product is temporarily reserved for the consumer.
Checkout
During checkout the Sourcing functionality of SAP Customer Order Sourcing is executed. You can predefine different sourcing strategies in the Strategy Builder app.
Sourcing optimizes the selection of the source by applying the right strategy.
Place Order
When the order is placed, sourcing is triggered again to make sure every product is delivered to the consumer according to the predefined strategy. Want to learn how to build strategies? - Learn it here: https://developers.sap.com/tutorials/cos-getting-started-trial.html.
After the order was placed, the information is passed onto the Back Office and availability and stock information is updated.
The benefits of SAP Customer Order Sourcing integrated with SAP Commerce Cloud are clear. The only thing left for you, is to try it out yourself!
Any questions, comments or additional information wanted? Feel free to reach out to me directly or via the comment section!
You want to learn more?
- SAP Customer Order Sourcing on the SAP Discovery Center
- SAP Customer Order Sourcing Solution Brief
- SAP Customer Order Sourcing in SAP Store
- Documentation: SAP Customer Order Sourcing on SAP Help Portal
- Trial documentation: Getting Started With SAP Customer Order Sourcing Trial
- API Documentation on SAP Help Portal and SAP API Business Hub and its Documentation on how to Configure Environments
- SAP Commerce Cloud documentation: SAP Retail Integration Module
- Blog Post: SAP Customer Order Sourcing – New Cloud Service
- Blog Post: Juergen Mueller talks about SAP Customer Order Sourcing in SAP TechEd Bangalore 2019 Keynote
- Blog Post: How to integrate ATP snapshot data from your ERP system into SAP Customer Order Sourcing
- SAP Managed Tags:
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