Maintain Your B2B Solution Architect Certification for Summer ’25

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

Follow Salesforce standards and best practices with the Well-Architected Framework.
Analyze data harmonization strategies for creating a unified B2B customer profile using Data Cloud.
Evaluate multicloud integration patterns for designing a robust lead-to-cash solution.
Establish data governance policies and procedures based on strategy patterns and antipatterns.
Implement cart-to-quote and quote-to-install multicloud solutions.
Integrate cloud interaction points to provide consistent incentives for B2B customers and partners.
Architect loyalty solutions that integrate multiple B2B interaction points to provide consistent incentives.
Develop communication strategies, assets, and documentation to align stakeholders.

Maintain Your Certification

If you hold the B2B Solution Architect certification, keep in mind that you need to complete this module by the due date to maintain your certification.

Interested in learning more about getting certified? Check out the B2B Solution Architect certification.

While anyone can earn this badge, this module is designed for those who hold the B2B Solution Architect certification.

Protect the Integrity of Your Certification

The quality of our certification exams and the value that they provide are our highest priority. Protecting the security and confidentiality of our exams is essential to providing our customers with certifications that are respected and industry-leading.

As a participant in the Salesforce Certification Program, you’re required to accept the terms of the Salesforce Certification Program Agreement. Please review the Salesforce certification exam-taking policies in the Salesforce Certification Program Agreement and Code of Conduct Trailhead Help article for more details.

Salesforce introduced great feature enhancements over the past year. Take a look at some of the more important ones.

Adhere to Salesforce Standards and Best Practices in B2B Multicloud Solution Design

A challenge for architects creating solutions with Salesforce is the platform’s fundamental flexibility. One solution might extend a prebuilt solution offered by Salesforce, while another might be a completely custom application. What you can do with Salesforce is broad and deep, and the right implementation choices depend on business needs. This means benchmarking is more complicated. Review Salesforce Well-Architected for prescriptive guidance and examples of patterns and antipatterns to look for in your landscape. Based on knowledge from product teams and implementation experts throughout our ecosystem, the Salesforce Well-Architected framework can help you build solutions that are trusted, easy, and adaptable.

Trusted Solutions Protect Stakeholders	Easy Solutions Deliver Value Fast	Adaptable Solutions Evolve with the Business
Secure solutions control access and protect data. Compliant solutions follow legal and ethical guidelines. Reliable solutions operate efficiently and dependably.	Intentional solutions deliver business value immediately and over time. Automated solutions enable the business to get work done faster and at scale. Engaging solutions delight users and drive adoption.	Resilient solutions handle change well. Composable solutions adjust quickly and with greater stability.

Cross-Cloud Data Harmonization for Unified B2B Customer Views

Businesses often store customer data across multiple clouds and systems, leading to fragmented and inconsistent customer profiles. Cross-cloud data harmonization connects and unifies this data, resolving duplicates and aligning formats to create a single, trusted view of each B2B customer. This unified view enables more personalized engagement, smarter sales strategies, and stronger partner relationships across the value chain.

Data Cloud allows you to ingest, harmonize, unify, and analyze streaming and batch data. Regardless of which data source the information came from, Data Cloud is highly customizable and integrates with not just Customer 360, but third parties. Review the Data Cloud Developer Guide for a look at the architecture and the Data Integration decision guide for use cases.

Key Terms

Customer 360 Data Model: The standard data model used by Data Cloud to aid in data modeling and extensibility across platforms.
Data model objects (DMOs): Groupings of data created from data streams, insights, and other sources. To model data in Data Cloud, review the Standard DMOs. DMOs are physical and virtual views of data lake objects.
Account DMO: A DMO for how a party wants to interact with your company.
Loyalty program member DMO: A DMO for a person who has joined a loyalty program.
Data lake objects (DLOs): DLOs are storage containers within the data lake for the data ingested into all data streams within Data Cloud.
Starter data bundle: The Salesforce-defined data stream definition that includes mapping to Data Cloud DMOs. After a data stream is deployed, the starter data bundle automatically maps source objects from the source to a DMO in Data Cloud. Then, you can add or customize the data mappings to meet your business needs.

Multicloud Integration Patterns for B2B Lead-to-Cash

Multicloud integration patterns for B2B lead-to-cash in Salesforce are architectural approaches you can use to seamlessly connect various Salesforce cloud offerings with each other and third-party systems. This helps you ensure that data flows smoothly, processes stay in sync, and manual work is minimized, which is critical for delivering a seamless, end-to-end lead-to-cash experience.

In a Salesforce lead-to-cash journey, or any multicloud architecture, you want to ensure that data moves reliably and securely between tools like Sales Cloud, ERP systems, and billing platforms. API integrations, which allow different systems to talk to each other in real time, and central integration layers, like MuleSoft, connect systems, standardize data, and orchestrate business processes. In this situation, multicloud integration commonly refers to the seamless data flow and process automation across clouds like:

Marketing Cloud Account Engagement for leads
Sales Cloud for opportunities
Revenue Cloud for quotes, orders, and billing
Channel Revenue Management for indirect sales scenarios

As we mentioned, preferred methods include API integrations and central integration layers (middleware), like MuleSoft. Multicloud integration supports the full lifecycle of a B2B transaction. This lifecycle includes:

Lead capture and qualification
Lead conversation and opportunity management
Quote configuration and pricing
Contracting and order management
Billing and invoicing
Customer service, renewals, and expansion

Platforms like Revenue Cloud allow the user to manage the entire contract lifecycle on Salesforce CRM. Common integration tools–such as MuleSoft Anypoint Platform for APIs and system integration, Salesforce Connect, Channel Revenue Management, or external platforms–can provide a unified view of all your data. A unified view makes it easier to grow revenue and increase partner loyalty through features like automated deal registration and claim submissions, plus it allows you to maximize channel growth with extensive rebate management.

Cross-Cloud Data Governance in B2B Architectures

Establish policies and procedures to ensure data quality, security, and compliance across disparate Salesforce clouds involved in B2B processes, including data management and data retention strategies. A strong data governance strategy makes your business more transparent and trustworthy.

So how can you ensure data is protected in cross-cloud situations where data is moving across B2B architectures?

Identify all data sources, assets, and their current state.
Define or adopt appropriate standards based on accuracy, completeness, consistency, timeliness, and security.
Train and entrust employees and AI.
Establish a cadence for data governance reviews and updates.
Commit to a set of data governance metrics.

Salesforce security is robust and built into our products to protect your data and applications. Data Spaces and Platform Encryption for Data Cloud, for example, are two features baked into Data Cloud security to help you establish and control access, visibility, and data security in the solution. Here are some questions you can ask when thinking about enhancing security.

Work requests: How can users ask for functionality or features? How are bugs reported?
Prioritization and work planning: Who decides what work requests matter? How is work scoped, prioritized, and accepted or signed off on?
Environments and release planning: What’s the environment pipeline for development, testing, and release? Who does what to provision, refresh, and provide access? Who handles deployments and validation? How and when are changes released? How do you handle deployments or environments during a Salesforce release cycle?
Service ownership and production support: Who supports what? Who handles “hot-fix” production issues? How are those items tested and released? Who’s responsible for the overall security standards of the org?

The following governance table shows a selection of patterns to look for (or build) in your organization, and antipatterns to avoid or target for remediation.

Topic	Strategy Patterns	Antipatterns
Governance within your business	Users can easily report bugs and request features. The prioritization process for work items is documented and transparent to all stakeholders. Environment strategy is clearly documented, and development environments match the documentation. Release planning is predictable and transparent to all delivery team members. Team members know who’s responsible for what throughout the app lifecycle. Releases are clear to users and delivery/maintenance teams. Production support processes are clear, and hot-fixes have a clear path to production. Teams and projects use only AI models approved for business uses.	Bug reports and feature requests are ad hoc. Work items have no clear prioritization. Environments are provisioned ad hoc and may not be refreshed predictably; developers often do not have the environments and access they need. Releases are unpredictable for delivery teams and users. Teams do not know who is responsible for what. Hot-fixes are addressed ad hoc. Your backlog has become an “idea bank” that is stale and stagnant. Governance bodies act as a help desk that troubleshoots support requests. Documentation is not easily accessible. Teams select AI models ad hoc.

Implement Cart-to-Quote and Quote-to-Install Multicloud Solutions

Often in B2B scenarios, customers can convert their online shopping carts into a formal quote request. This cart-to-quote action allows for negotiations and personalized pricing before the customer places an order.

With a quote-to-install or quote-to-sales agreement, a contractor provides an estimate that outlines the total cost for a specific installation project, including labor and materials. This type of quote details the expenses associated with both the contractor’s services and the necessary materials for the job.

Although B2B Commerce and Salesforce Revenue Cloud live on the same platform, each cloud has its own data model for storing product and pricing details. You can implement cart-to-quote or quote-to-install multicloud solutions by taking these overall steps.

Use connectors to integrate Salesforce Clouds, synchronizing your multichannel sales.
Plan your strategy, then sync product and pricing data into a single source of truth.
Turn carts into negotiated deals, catering to customers with blended channels.
Sync orders for easy reorders and billing with the right payment integration, and consider taxes.

Maintain Loyalty Management Across B2B Channels

Provide customers with more options to earn, redeem, and engage with cross-industry partners. Managing partnerships on one platform increases participation and reduces liability. You can seamlessly onboard partners, launch joint promotions, and manage currencies between partners and your programs with the Loyalty Management Solution Architecture.

Customer loyalty platforms allow you to earn continuous loyalty with personalized rewards, powered by behavioral data. When designing loyalty programs, integrate multiple clouds to incentivize and reward B2B customers and partners consistently across all interaction points. Examples include programs that integrate with:

Sales Cloud for direct sales
B2B Commerce Cloud for ecommerce
Channel Revenue Management for indirect partners

With loyalty management, configure your loyalty program to fit your needs through centralized program management. Activate segments across channels fast with industry templates, and integrate them with external systems. Run multiple programs at once within one platform for different brands and initiatives. Then use that customer behavior to optimize immersive, omnichannel experiences. Easily analyze members at risk for disengagement, and launch campaigns to reengage them with tailored experiences and segmentation.

Integrate Channel Revenue Management with Core B2B Processes

Channel revenue management allows you to automate channel operations, boost partner engagement, and create revenue growth to nurture trusted channel partner relationships. The following systems and processes are most often used to manage revenue earned through partners.

Partner incentives and rebates
Channel pricing and discounting
Claims and accruals
Deal registration
Inventory, rebate, and payout management
Performance tracking and compliance

It’s important to integrate channel revenue management with core B2B processes. Without integration with core B2B processes, channel operations can become siloed, leading to financial and data issues. For example, duplicate or inconsistent data, delayed payouts or approvals, inaccurate revenue reporting, missed opportunities, and overpayments. Using tools like MuleSoft APIs or Salesforce Connect, you can link partner data in Sales Cloud or Rebate Management to unify channels into a scalable system to improve direct and indirect sales.

Example solutions that architects use to connect channel revenue management with core B2B processes include:

Channel Revenue Management with Sales Cloud for opportunity sharing
Rebate Management for rebate calculations on orders
Loyalty Management for partner incentives

Facilitate Stakeholder Alignment and Acceptance of B2B Multicloud Architectures

Ensure stakeholder alignment and address stakeholder concerns to gain final acceptance of your proposed multicloud solution with clear communication of business value and objectives. Consult the Salesforce Reference Architect Gallery for technical guidance on creating assets such as design documents, keynotes, templates, prebuilt artifacts, and demos.

How to Build Salesforce Diagrams: Get started creating diagrams with this guidance, which includes standards and classifications for using Salesforce Diagrams resources.
Salesforce Data Model Notation: Read an overview of the Salesforce entity relationship diagram (ERD) notation and conventions used in the Data Model Gallery.
Standard Components: Review best practices and details on how to use Salesforce Diagrams components to build the most effective diagrams.

Sum It Up

Keep your B2B Solution Architect certification fresh with cart-to-quote flows, channel partner incentives, and loyalty programs—all powered by smart, multicloud integration. You’ve learned about some of the most important feature releases for architects over the past year. Now it’s time to test your understanding of these topics and complete the quiz to maintain your B2B Solution Architect certification.

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