Salesforce will roll out its B2B Commerce Cloud platform upgrades this summer, including updated and new B2B and D2C sales, ordering, and payment improvements, omnichannel inventory, and much more.
B2B Commerce Cloud is a cloud platform from Salesforce for the management of online product sales, payment processing, and account services. D2C Commerce Cloud is the same platform but with additional features for self-registration when companies want new customers to sign up without having to pre-qualify. This world-class technology unifies communications systems between online commercial vendors’ sites with PCs and all mobile devices. Salesforce B2B Commerce Cloud is an exceptional B2B tool for manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers, and more. (The SFCC tech-stack is Javascript.) The 2023 CC platform release brings a new level of user functionality in commercial search, product display, shopping cart, checkout, data treatment, and more to e-commerce.
B2B Commerce Cloud 2023 Add-Ons and Upgrades
There’s a lot to look forward to in the B2B Commerce Cloud enhancements this season. For example, a new user interface for extensions replaces the default processing of commercial business activities. Innovations in payment processing at online vendors’ sales sites include upgraded payment links and an improved mobile experience. Also featured in the changes are upgrades for more advanced search functionality, location-based custom market segmentation, combined customer discount options, and much more.
Welcome Your Customers to Use Your Online Ordering Option!
Open your online sales site and invite your commercial customers to browse, place items in their shopping cart, purchase, pay, and track their shipments. They can do it all at your convenient, smoothly operating commercial site. B2B sellers will now have more controls for your customers to access.
| Customer Experience Tailored for Each Market Region | Instead of building multiple websites to serve various geographical regions, customers can visit the same B2B sales site and simply select the locale where they want to view your products. Your site then displays products, prices, promotions, etc., for their specific market area. |
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| Portal for Self-Service Reordering | In the B2B Commerce Cloud Reorder Portal, a buyer can see his or her past orders, place new orders, modify existing orders and view statuses. Per B2B Commerce Cloud’s Einstein search recommendations, a buyer can go from the Order Details page directly to the portal. |
| Combined Promotional Discounts | Guests of your online sales site can take advantage of multiple discounts, combining exclusive and non-exclusive offers. |
| Value-Added B2B Commerce Cloud Components | Just a few of the upgraded functions featured in the 2023 version of B2B Commerce Cloud include:
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| Text Translation | Text translations can now aid foreign-language purchasing agents in understanding the details of your promotional offers. |
Salesforce Payment Processing with Salesforce Payments
Salesforce Payments integrates seamlessly into your website’s framework to increase security and convenience for your customers. You can very quickly activate the gamut of options in payment types for your customers to use. This innovation replaces now outmoded installations of third-party payment service providers or the use of managed payment package requirements.
| Omnichannel Financial Transactions | Add value to the customer experience purchasing from your company online — let people pay however they prefer! B2B Commerce Cloud is converting to provide payment pages on all your devices. It will deliver a seamless payment process via the Salesforce Pay Now transaction processing within B2B Commerce Cloud. This tech boost is a game changer for customer convenience. |
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| Pay Now Page Links | Insert links to branded Pay Now pages for customers’ payments on any networked device. Using the Experience Builder too, you can simply drag your Pay Now and Confirmation components to your desired location for your customers to access. The Pay Now function can be linked to any record in Salesforce. |
| Customers Check Out Faster with Saved Payment Methods | As an online supplier, you can provide your customers with the convenience of saving their payment method at the checkout point and from their My Account page on your site. |
Advanced Optimization Tools for Your Site
The 2023 rollout of B2B Commerce Cloud advancements includes SEO improvement features that help boost the appeal of your site’s internal pages to search engines.
| New UI for Managing Extensions | Use a new Extensions user interface to replace or enhance the default Salesforce Commerce pricing and other processing with other preferences. |
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| Custom URL Snippets for SEO | To boost your SEO efforts, Salesforce is rolling out new solutions for URL configuration as part of the B2B Commerce Cloud 2023 added features and upgrades. You can create URL snippets for each category and product page that are attractive to Google. |
Upgraded Product Search Technology
Improved search capabilities via B2B Commerce Cloud give you more power over the results your site generates in Google.
| Site Search Enhancement | Use the Search Results Rules application programming interface (API) to define rules for generating search results with Connect REST API. This resource can facilitate, for example, searches applying a rule to have a user’s query based on the word “photo” also prompt a search for synonyms such as “picture.” |
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| Create Richer Search Results | Through the new Structured Data feature, you can use data gathered from your company’s website for dynamic updating of meta tags for increased attraction during search engine processing of product categories and product details, such as size, color, etc. |
| Choose Product Field Displays | Add search fields to help your prospective visitors narrow their results from searches, make the fields you choose to display visible, save those, and facilitate search index rebuilding. |
| API for Product Search Suggestions | Updates enable search parameters to be configured to render the search term along with the suggested product(s) in the search bar when a buyer searches using the updated Product Search Suggestions. |
| Einstein Search Suggestions | B2B Commerce Cloud’s Einstein Search Suggestions displays relevant search terms for users as they’re entering their search criteria. Term relevance is determined by the user’s recent search history. |
| Increased Location Support for Global Search | Salesforce Commerce Search currently supports up to 25 locations for a business. (That’s increased from the original 10.) Search results are provided in the default language set for the website if a customer is attempting to use a language which your site does not support. |
User-Friendly Fast Configuration Tools
New and upgraded B2B Commerce Cloud configuration features and the Commerce Setup Assistant make launching a high-quality, feature-rich, customer-friendly online sales site easier and faster for vendors.
| Quick Organization Setup | Salesforce’s B2B Commerce Cloud makes it possible to configure your sales website with only a few clicks, guided by the Commerce Setup Assistant. The setup wizard optimizes your preferences and provides layouts for objects in B2B Commerce Cloud that contain the necessary information for your business’s records. |
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| Product Data Exporting to CSV File | To build a file of products visible in the workspace with filters applied, you can export data for hundreds of thousands of products, with details of variations, to a CSV file. |
| Easy Content Creation and Publishing | New enhanced site and content settings on the CMS content editing sidebar enable spell-checker extensions and additional tools to improve productivity. |
| Troubleshooting Tools for Online Vendors | The new Commerce Assistant is programmed to help you work through a vast range of issues in your site’s functioning, provide intuitive advice for resolving problems, and identify any unfinished tasks necessary to complete configuration. |
Omnichannel Inventory Management
The new B2B Commerce Cloud inventory reservation tracking tool features a new reservation ID field on the Fulfill, Transfer, and Unreserve functions of the APIs for creating inventory reservations.
| Full-Scope Inventory Reservation Tracking | Have greater visibility into your omnichannel inventory management and online sales activities by using Salesforce’s new reservation ID field on the application programming interfaces:
The update is applied to Enterprise’s Developer, Unlimited, and Lightning Experience. |
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Salesforce Order Management
A change to charge fees for processing returns and order cancellations using new versions of Return Item, RMA, and Cancel Item modules.
| Self-Service Ordering | You can perform setup of self-service portals for your customers with the self-service plug-in. They can use the portal to track their order’s history and current status, process returns, and cancel orders. |
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| Pick Tickets for Quick Order Fulfillment | Pick multiple orders simultaneously. Site sales attendants use filters to work on fulfillment based on the delivery method. They can bundle orders with common shipping requirements, and track the bundled orders. |
| Enable Ordering on Behalf of B2B and D2C Customers | Place orders directly for customers with the “Order on Behalf Of” feature of B2B Commerce Cloud. This provides your service reps and customers with a major new service convenience. |
| Charge Return and Cancellation Fees | The 2023 updated Return Item, RMA, and Cancel Item features enable charging fees for processing returns and cancellations. |
Salesforce Payments System
Salesforce Payments is now available on the platform, for use with Salesforce Order Management, B2B Commerce, and D2C Commerce. The 2023 version eliminates the need for the managed package for Salesforce Payments, except in certain cases such as issuing PayPal payment refunds through the Order Management module.
| Easy Payment Processing Setup for Vendors | The Payments app guides you through the intuitive steps to configure the Salesforce Payments component and the setup of payment method options. |
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| Control Which Payment Methods Are Accepted at Checkout | Sets of credit card types, debit cards, and digital wallet account identifiers can be tailored to geographical areas to present the appropriate payment options for the region your customer selects. For example, Google Pay, Apple Pay, Klarna, SEPA Debit, iDEAL, Afterpay/Clearpay, EPS, and Bancontact. |
| Payment Functions Access | You can grant standard or customized permission sets to internal admins and for external users who want to save their payment methods and manage them at your sales website. |
| New Payments Workspace | Vendors can now view payment information in a consolidated format in a single location. You can see snapshots of processed payments, their processing status, payment method used, customer name, etc. You can apply filters to view, for example, payment status, on the side panel. |
| Refunds for Multi-Capture Payments | You can issue customer refunds on partially processed payments before authorization is complete. So, for example, if a customer buys multiple items with different ship dates, you refund the part of the payment for canceled items that have not yet been shipped. |
Cloudstreet for Salesforce Implementation
Cloudstreet is a preferred resource for Salesforce implementation to equip and facilitate online B2B sales operations for manufacturers, IT services, and commercial vendors.
For information about Cloudstreet services in Salesforce platform provisioning and support for manufacturers, call (800) 667-6389 or contact us online to arrange to speak with an expert.
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