Salesforce bought Demandware this week. It's about time Salesforce got serious about having a proper eCommerce platform, and also show come commitment to B2C. Of course web/mobile is a major channel (digital digital digital), and my thinking is that this acquisition filled a gaping void in their offering.
Up to now you have a few ISVs and customers who have built eCommerce solutions on the much maligned Salesforce 'Sites' technology - the native on-platform quicksand. I guess this is ok for small-scale use but it can result in customer/prospect feel like they are caught in a blustery headwind. The Salesforce platform will punch you in the face if you throw a spike in demand at Sites, so given you are willing to accept the sub-optimal performance it deals you, you need to make sure the context is one of small/moderate demand. Today there is a lot of focus on, and associated tools for optimising the checkout experience to avoid dropouts, but you will only get so far with Sites.
You also have had the option of custom building something on Heroku and leveraging the most expensive sync job in existence to port your data into core Salesforce (Heroku Connect, would you really go near it?). Or custom integrating your eCommerce platform with core Salesforce which isn't a bad option if you are careful, many ways to do that in realtime or batch, but you need to be careful of API limits.
Now though, Salesforce will, down the line, offer Demandware as their 'Commerce Cloud', and increasingly it will be brought closer to the core Salesforce platform. Expect them to use the term 'digital' a whole lot more.
Indeed, with this acquisition Salesforce will be talked about a whole lot more in the 'digital transformation' circles. The Salesforce core platform is essentially a very flexible business back-end, internally facing, albeit one that slots in nicely with digital transformation efforts given the great API-first approach. So you can integrate your customer apps, websites etc into Salesforce without too much headache - Salesforce becomes the kind of 'brain of your business'. This across Sales, Support and Marketing. At Hive we have done a lot of that, and Salesforce provides a great number of integration options to tie processes together. The end goal is to have a single/simple view of what is going on, implement business logic centrally/consistently, rather than hop around different CRM, eCommerce, ticket system etc back-ends. In terms of back-end, we are always looking to change processes and rationalise systems to simplify our integration architecture. Where we can't, we integrate.
Now, however, Salesforce have a beast of a 'front-end' eCommerce framework, quite a highly regarded beast. You read your Gartner, Forrester analysis, it's up there with Oracle ATG, SAP Hybris etc. They have an impressive client base - Adidas, Lacoste, M&S etc. This is proper 'enterprise', SMBs and the like will probably stick with lower priced offerings. It will be interesting if the pricing model will still be based on revenue share as that is counter to how Salesforce generally operate.
Digging a bit deeper into customer reviews by G2Crowd, the consensus seems to be positive - again, being a 'beast' comes with complexity, but in terms of capability it seems to be very much an 'all-in-one', covering multiple devices across online and in-store. Expect the term 'omni-channel' to be used a lot (more) by Salesforce, more in the context of Sales as they have beaten the Service one to death. That's 'digital' and 'omni-channel' now. 'Domni-channel'?
Architecture-wise it has a lot in common with the core Salesforce platform - SaaS, multi-tenant, customisable to some extent, frequent upgrades etc. It should slot in nicely. One major consideration, as with all eCommerce platform, is the overlap between this and the other Salesforce 'CRM' offerings, in that an eCommerce platform always provides CRM functionality of sorts, whether that be sending emails, order management etc. A front-end always has a back-end, as I always say (I do actually, when you are trying to rationalise systems it can be a problem). So defining the responsibility of the bits of the Salesforce empire you were bludgeoned into buying is important. ie where will your product catalogue be mastered? Where will emails be sent from? What back-end interface will your agents use, for what purpose? If you have Demandware and Marketing Cloud, which predictive recommendations engine will you use? All in the architecture definition.
A key point to make is that Demandware seems very 'retail' oriented, especially fashion etc. Shifting stock. I am not sure how it will fare in the ever increasing proliferation of service 'wrappers' around things in the IoT world - there is a bit more to that journey than just filling your basket, taking a payment and throwing the goods over the wall. I thought Zuora may integrate with them but no, it tends to be just payment gateways. There is something to be said for developing a buying journey that is more tailored to service wrappers and subscriptions, the 'subscription economy' as Zuora like to put it. Maybe something for the future, or demonstration of my lack of Demandware knowledge.
As an aside, at Hive we currently use an open source framework called Spree as a basis for the Hivehome shop and integrate the web checkout journey with Salesforce. We log the journeys in Salesforce. If someone drops out and calls the call centre, the agent can pick up the basket from within Salesforce and progress the sale. It has worked well, and the Salesforce team works closely with the web team to continually develop this. I bought some window/door sensors through it at the earlier in the week, smooth. Over the course of the year this will be changing and expanding quite considerably, exciting times ahead.
So, in summary, your 'opportunity' to go 'all-in' with Salesforce has just increased. If you are a retailer, I would hide under the counter as the sales guys will hunt you down, they will find you, and they will throw 'Domni-channel' at you.
Anyway, in summary it looks to me like Demandware would be most appropriate for heavy duty Retail/Enterprise needs, with more mid-market / open-source solutions appropriate for more moderate needs. But don't use Salesforce Sites. Let's see where they go with Demandware, but all in all, for the continuation of the Salesforce story, it's a logical and positive move.
 |
| Who is the most Digital? "I am!" |
You also have had the option of custom building something on Heroku and leveraging the most expensive sync job in existence to port your data into core Salesforce (Heroku Connect, would you really go near it?). Or custom integrating your eCommerce platform with core Salesforce which isn't a bad option if you are careful, many ways to do that in realtime or batch, but you need to be careful of API limits.
Now though, Salesforce will, down the line, offer Demandware as their 'Commerce Cloud', and increasingly it will be brought closer to the core Salesforce platform. Expect them to use the term 'digital' a whole lot more.
Indeed, with this acquisition Salesforce will be talked about a whole lot more in the 'digital transformation' circles. The Salesforce core platform is essentially a very flexible business back-end, internally facing, albeit one that slots in nicely with digital transformation efforts given the great API-first approach. So you can integrate your customer apps, websites etc into Salesforce without too much headache - Salesforce becomes the kind of 'brain of your business'. This across Sales, Support and Marketing. At Hive we have done a lot of that, and Salesforce provides a great number of integration options to tie processes together. The end goal is to have a single/simple view of what is going on, implement business logic centrally/consistently, rather than hop around different CRM, eCommerce, ticket system etc back-ends. In terms of back-end, we are always looking to change processes and rationalise systems to simplify our integration architecture. Where we can't, we integrate.
Now, however, Salesforce have a beast of a 'front-end' eCommerce framework, quite a highly regarded beast. You read your Gartner, Forrester analysis, it's up there with Oracle ATG, SAP Hybris etc. They have an impressive client base - Adidas, Lacoste, M&S etc. This is proper 'enterprise', SMBs and the like will probably stick with lower priced offerings. It will be interesting if the pricing model will still be based on revenue share as that is counter to how Salesforce generally operate.
Digging a bit deeper into customer reviews by G2Crowd, the consensus seems to be positive - again, being a 'beast' comes with complexity, but in terms of capability it seems to be very much an 'all-in-one', covering multiple devices across online and in-store. Expect the term 'omni-channel' to be used a lot (more) by Salesforce, more in the context of Sales as they have beaten the Service one to death. That's 'digital' and 'omni-channel' now. 'Domni-channel'?
Architecture-wise it has a lot in common with the core Salesforce platform - SaaS, multi-tenant, customisable to some extent, frequent upgrades etc. It should slot in nicely. One major consideration, as with all eCommerce platform, is the overlap between this and the other Salesforce 'CRM' offerings, in that an eCommerce platform always provides CRM functionality of sorts, whether that be sending emails, order management etc. A front-end always has a back-end, as I always say (I do actually, when you are trying to rationalise systems it can be a problem). So defining the responsibility of the bits of the Salesforce empire you were bludgeoned into buying is important. ie where will your product catalogue be mastered? Where will emails be sent from? What back-end interface will your agents use, for what purpose? If you have Demandware and Marketing Cloud, which predictive recommendations engine will you use? All in the architecture definition.
A key point to make is that Demandware seems very 'retail' oriented, especially fashion etc. Shifting stock. I am not sure how it will fare in the ever increasing proliferation of service 'wrappers' around things in the IoT world - there is a bit more to that journey than just filling your basket, taking a payment and throwing the goods over the wall. I thought Zuora may integrate with them but no, it tends to be just payment gateways. There is something to be said for developing a buying journey that is more tailored to service wrappers and subscriptions, the 'subscription economy' as Zuora like to put it. Maybe something for the future, or demonstration of my lack of Demandware knowledge.
As an aside, at Hive we currently use an open source framework called Spree as a basis for the Hivehome shop and integrate the web checkout journey with Salesforce. We log the journeys in Salesforce. If someone drops out and calls the call centre, the agent can pick up the basket from within Salesforce and progress the sale. It has worked well, and the Salesforce team works closely with the web team to continually develop this. I bought some window/door sensors through it at the earlier in the week, smooth. Over the course of the year this will be changing and expanding quite considerably, exciting times ahead.
So, in summary, your 'opportunity' to go 'all-in' with Salesforce has just increased. If you are a retailer, I would hide under the counter as the sales guys will hunt you down, they will find you, and they will throw 'Domni-channel' at you.
Anyway, in summary it looks to me like Demandware would be most appropriate for heavy duty Retail/Enterprise needs, with more mid-market / open-source solutions appropriate for more moderate needs. But don't use Salesforce Sites. Let's see where they go with Demandware, but all in all, for the continuation of the Salesforce story, it's a logical and positive move.
Posts
