To organize all we have seen so far, we are going around 5 questions.
What is SAP Commerce Cloud strategy for Sustainable Commerce?
Heavy lifting towards sustainability, SAP is working around the empowerment of shoppers to make eco-conscious decisions as well as working with a new solution called Feather by SAP (https://www.getfeather.io/).
Feather by SAP is a new solution rolled out of SAP I/O studios that focuses on re-commerce and addresses all the complexities related to the challenges in the picture below.
Some of their main features are:
Sustainable agenda outlook
In Q1 2022 the system now has Punchout cXML for Procurement Systems.
In the near backlog for Q2 and Q3 they plan on adding:
- Advanced subscriptions and bundling
- Multi-layer bundled services with complex pricing
- User Journey & PIM Enhancements
- Customer Product Inventory
Finally in an outlook (Q4 2022, 2023) SAP plans to add:
- B2B Self-Service portal
- Product Compatibility Matrix
- Replenishment Product Recommendations
- Re-Commerce – Feather by SAP
- Extended Product Data
- Trade-in Process
How is SAP Commerce Cloud a fit for experience-led commerce?
Ongoing spearheading the e-commerce space, experience-led is a key part of the strategy, for this, SAP is working on Intelligent Selling Services, a new real-time processing solution for recommendations, with proper testing and reports to guarantee higher conversion rates.
Then it’s also working on intelligent search, to predict interest based on clicks, and boosting key products in search results.
Finally, they are working on a Facebook marketplace integration to engage more and better traffic from the social channels of the customers.
Looking at this topic from a more biztech perspective, to empower experiences, in Q1 2022 they released
- Intelligent Selling Services
- Product Trends
- Related Products
- Personalized Recommendations
- Recently Viewed Product Recommendations
- Multi-Site Support
- Reporting & A/B Testing
- Spartacus Frontend
- UX Improvements across the User Journey
- Cart I/O Improvements
- Improvements to screen reader support
In the near backlog for Q2 and Q3 they plan on adding:
- Turnkey Intelligent Selling Services Integration
- Conversion Reporting
- Complementary Product Recommendations
- Personalized Search Recommendations in Carousel
- B2B Prices & B2B Spartacus Support
- Core Search Service General Availability
- Business Tooling with new SAP UI Theme
Finally in an outlook (Q4 2022, 2023) SAP plans to add:
- Intelligent Selling Services
- Stock Handling in Merchandising
- Merchandise & Recommend Products in Search Results
- Recommended Categories as Banner Images
- Conversion A/B Testing
- Intelligent KPI Performance Alerts
- Spartacus Experience Modernization including WCAG 2.0
- Natural Language & Predictive Search
- Product Feed Syndication to Facebook
- Commerce Insights with SAP Analytics Cloud
How will SAP Commerce Cloud remain as the commerce solution for SAP customers?
UI/UX usability improvements in Backoffice and smart edit will always be appreciated, even more, if it delivers a time reduction and quality increase in the users.
Omni Commerce Connect (OCC) APIs for future stock and B2B user registration keep on growing the OCC layer to keep the solution future-proof.
Order orchestration using SAP Order Management foundation, decoupling this logic from the previous architecture into service in Cloud Foundry.
Real-time integration of order capture for B2B storefront users with SAP S/4HANA.
Looking at this topic from a more biztech perspective, to amplify the ROI on SAP investment, in Q1 2022 they released
- SAP Digital Payments Add-On for Spartacus
- SAP Cloud for Customer Quotation Management and Customer Service use cases
- CIAS procedures for setup of integration between SAP Commerce Cloud with SAP Customer Data Cloud
In the near backlog for Q2 and Q3 they plan on adding:
- S/4HANA Integration Enhancements
- B2B account summary based on invoice information
- Self-service returns leveraging SAP S/4HANA Sales
- Real-time integration of order capture for B2B storefront
- SAP Customer Data Cloud Enhancements
- Better UX for B2B administrators
- Spartacus support for login and registration
- Order orchestration using SAP Order Management foundation.
Finally in an outlook (Q4 2022, 2023) SAP plans to add:
- Multi-store Support
- Products Feed via SAP Master Data Integration Service
- Real-time self-service order adjustments
- Scalable Pricing using SAP Cloud Pricing Service
- B2B Self-Service Portal incorporating SAP Applications
How SAP Commerce Cloud is built for trust, privacy, and efficiency?
Premium disaster recovery:
- Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of 5 minutes
- Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of 4 hours
- Database is a passive replica of the primary database
Blue/Green deployments for the safer rollout of new code. This enables a gradual rollout of new code for specific requests to roll back or reduce impact in case it does not go as expected.
Connect and deliver services privately on Azure with Azure Private Link.
Looking at this topic from a more biztech perspective, to improve trust, privacy, and efficiency, in Q1 2022 they released
- Java 17 Migration
- Environment Permissions
- Private Git Support
In the near backlog for Q2 and Q3 they plan on adding:
- Blue/Green Deployment
- Automated Performance Testing
- Payment Framework
- Spartacus/Accelerator Hybrid Integration Improvements
Finally in an outlook (Q4 2022, 2023) SAP plans to add:
- Comprehensive Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) Support
- Sample Data Separation
- Centralized User Provisioning via SAP IPS
- Bring your own key
- Azure Private Link
Why SAP Commerce Cloud will remain to be an agile, enterprise commerce platform?
Headless Commerce with Omni Commerce Connect APIs (OCC) expands beyond traditional channels and devices with an API-enabled platform.
This expects to deliver a whole new set of capabilities for companies to keep growing their commerce platform connected experience in channels such as:
- Website
- Virtual reality
- Voice assistants
- IOT
- Mobile
- Social media
- Instore
- Kiosks
- Self-service stores
- Consumer devices
- Consumption replenishment
Looking at this topic from a more biztech perspective, to improve the agility of the SAP Commerce Cloud Enterprise Commerce Platform, in Q1 2022 they released
- Headless Storefront APIs
- Spartacus core: Cart validation, Product page image zoom
- Spartacus B2B: Inventory Display, Quick Order
- Spartacus Integrations: SAP EPD Visualization
- Spartacus Framework: Angular 12
- Spartacus Performance: Checkout, Order libraries
In the near backlog for Q2 and Q3 they plan on adding:
- Headless Storefront APIs
- Runtime Data modeling
- Spartacus core: Clear cart, Back-to-top, Add-to-cart toast, Bundles, Pickup in store.
- Spartacus B2B: Registration, Future Stock, ASM, Customer List, Anonymous Cart
- Spartacus Extensibility; Commands & Queries
- Spartacus Performance Improvements: Code-splitting Lighthouse Score
- Spartacus Framework: Angular 13 (primarily improves developer experience)
- Synchronous Extensibility
- ALO (At least once) Delivery for webhooks and Events
Finally in an outlook (Q4 2022, 2023) SAP plans to add:
- Headless Storefront APIs
- Spartacus support for Subscriptions, Bundles, Entitlements
- Spartacus B2B: Commerce Quotes, Punchout, Multi-Dimensional products support and bulk order, Reorder, Account Summary, Order Form Builder.
- Spartacus ASM: Customer 360 view, ASM Promotions
- Spartacus Framework updates to latest the Angular
- Headless Backoffice and Tooling accessibility
- OData V2 Full Compliance
- Admin APIs (Headless Backoffice)
- SAP Open Resource Discovery)
Why the long post?
The objective of this post was to start generating awareness about the promising future of SAP Commerce Cloud, if you want to know more, don’t hesitate to reach out or subscribe!
