Learn About B2B Commerce

Learning Objectives

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

• Explain what Salesforce B2B Commerce is.
  
• Describe the functionality of B2B Commerce.
  
• Describe the benefits of combining B2B Commerce and CRM data.
  
• Describe the added benefits of Salesforce D2C Commerce.
  

Introduction

While Salesforce B2C Commerce focuses on online retail shoppers, there’s another whole area of ecommerce with its own demands and capabilities—B2B—business to business. Salesforce B2B Commerce enables organizations to create ecommerce storefronts that are specifically designed for businesses making large volume purchases from other businesses online. B2B commerce customers need easy online access to suppliers so they can buy products to run their businesses.

What Functionality Does B2B Commerce Offer?

As we mentioned in Unit 1, business buyers purchasing online need different functionality than retail consumers. These purchasers might place an order for hundreds of items totaling millions of dollars. For these types of transactions, buyers need:

• Authenticated sites including logins for each visitor
  
• Shopping carts that can accommodate hundreds or thousands of items per order
  
• Rapid reorders to make large, frequent orders fast and easy—in just a few clicks
  
• Custom storefront themes for a unique look and feel for each account
  
• Specific product catalogs by account for a selected subset of products
  
• Dynamic and variant products
  
• Negotiated/contract pricing by account or by customer segment
  
• Complex shipping functionality allowing for multiple delivery dates and locations
  
• Multiple payment types including credit cards, purchase orders, and automated clearing house (ACH) transactions
  
• Order history for each authenticated visitor
  
• Search
  
• Storefront and order templates
  

Since B2B transactions are often made over time by long-term customers, capturing commerce data is super important. That’s why B2B Commerce is built natively on the Salesforce Lightning Platform. It integrates out-of-the-box with Salesforce CRM data from:

• Service Cloud
  
• Sales Cloud
  
• Experience Cloud
  

How B2B Commerce and CRM Data Work Together

The intersection of B2B Commerce and CRM data makes important data easily accessible to both sellers and buyers.

Sellers (the organization selling products or services through the site) can see all the B2B Commerce activity in their sales dashboard in Salesforce. When account managers or sales reps drill down to the account or contact record level, they can see B2B Commerce activities such as orders and carts, along with sales and service objects such as opportunities and cases.

This means that account managers and reps have a full view of customer activity whether a purchase was made online or through a sales rep. They can also identify opportunities based on abandoned carts or changes in order history.

Buyers (the businesses making purchases through the site) can see CRM data directly from their website. For example, they can use CRM data to show a specific customer’s negotiated price rather than the list price. Plus, buyers can access service case data, previous orders, and other account data directly from their sites.

The combination of B2B Commerce with Salesforce’s #1 CRM is one of the reasons some of the biggest global companies choose Salesforce when they decide to sell online.

Want to learn more? Check out the Salesforce B2B Commerce and D2C Commerce Basics module.

What About Going Direct-To-Consumer?

Many B2B companies, wanting to satisfy buyer and industry demand, need a quick direct-to-consumer (D2C) solution. That means adding D2C Commerce to their commerce solutions toolbag. With D2C Commerce, built on the Salesforce Platform, they can sell direct to consumer with the following benefits.

• Fast time to market: Launch new stores fast.
  
• Intelligent experiences: Create personalized shopping experiences with drag and drop Commerce Einstein Recommendations and Search.
  
• Trusted platform: Create your stores on the trusted Salesforce platform.
  
• Partner Ecosystem: Use AppExchange integrations and systems integration partners to accelerate your business.
  

Let's Wrap It Up

Ecommerce is an enormous market and growing quickly worldwide. Consumers and businesses now demand a connected online buying experience that meets their needs whether they are making large or small purchases. Now you know how the awesome products that make up Salesforce Commerce Cloud give both B2B and B2C companies the solutions they need to sell products and services online.

With all that knowledge, go earn your awesome new badge!

Resources

Trailhead: Salesforce B2B Commerce and D2C Commerce Basics