An Oracle White Paper April Extend Your Oracle E-Business Suite Investment With Oracle Commerce

Transcription

1 An Oracle White Paper April 2014 Extend Your Oracle E-Business Suite Investment With Oracle Commerce

2 Introduction There have been many questions around how current Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) customers can benefit from Oracle s commerce offerings. The Oracle Commerce team has written this document to offer guidance for leveraging Oracle Commerce (the unified solution suit of ATG and Endeca) in an environment in which the customer has Oracle EBS. The white paper will provide information on the value of Oracle Commerce and how the technologies can work together in a commerce environment. 1

3 Overview The shift for B2B e-commerce has happened. B2B organizations are no longer asking if they should sell online, but are now figuring out how to best sell online. B2B organizations have embraced the online channel as a way to better serve their customers, reduce costs, and improve sales team efficiency. Forrester Research estimated that B2B e-commerce sales would reach $559 billion in 2013 and Gene Alvarez, vice president and e-commerce technology analyst at Gartner believes the market will soon go much higher toward $800 billion to almost $1 trillion. Investing in the right commerce technology is crucial in order for B2B organizations to stay ahead of their competition and increase their market share. We will outline how current Oracle EBS customers can leverage Oracle Commerce to handle the complexities and scale of their organizations while delivering a unique commerce experience that exceed customer expectations. 2

4 End-to-End Commerce Using Oracle EBS and Oracle Commerce amplifies the value of each solution. Oracle Commerce delivers best-in-class commerce applications focused on scalability, performance and personalized experiences to meet the evolving demands of commerce businesses. Oracle Commerce is specifically designed for the needs of any business selling products online that wants to deliver always-relevant experiences to buyers at any touch point in their purchase journey. Oracle EBS provides the back end systems and processes that manage a business s core data (customers, products, pricing, contracts, inventory, invoices, etc.); enables configuration of complex products, services, and bundles; streamlines the order-to-cash process; and enhances customer satisfaction by enabling customer self-service and providing timely and accurate order status tracking. Together, the two solutions provide an end-to-end commerce offering that allows companies to more efficiently manage the customer buying processes on and offline at unprecedented scale. Purpose-Built for Today s Complex Commerce Environment For Oracle EBS customers selling online to other businesses across the globe, Oracle Commerce provides what no other technology on the market can: a unified, end-to-end commerce solution that delivers more lucrative online selling experiences while simplifying management, reducing total cost of ownership, and accelerating time to value. B2B organizations often deal with massive product catalogs, complex products, services, and bundles, and complex sales channels. Oracle Commerce enables Oracle EBS customers to tackle these challenges and more efficiently manage their cross-channel commerce efforts, including the ability to: Easily integrate with Oracle EBS for customer, product, pricing, contract, and order information as well as with other technologies within the commerce ecosystem such as WCMS, recommendations, and user reviews. Manage complex organizational hierarchies and delegate user administration. Set up and manage custom catalogs, pricing, contracts, and payment terms. Create and manage configurable products. Schedule recurring orders and manage invoices. Process data and deliver dynamic experiences at unparalleled scale. Quickly build new brand sites, expand to new geographies, support multiple languages and currencies, and extend to new customer touchpoints. Manage personalized commerce experiences. Provide advanced search and facetted navigation. 3

5 Figure 1. Diagram of Oracle Commerce key components and capabilities. Oracle Commerce integrates with any enterprise system, including Oracle EBS, to help companies more efficiently manage their cross-channel commerce efforts. Key Areas of Integration Between Oracle Commerce and Oracle EBS Oracle Commerce integrates with Oracle EBS using standard Oracle-defined integration points. The most common objects to integrate and exchange are customer information, catalog, pricing, and orders. From our customers who ve performed this integration, the most common pattern is to use the Integration Repository and the Integrated SOA Gateway from Oracle EBS. Keep in mind that Oracle Commerce provides flexibility so that data that lives outside of Oracle EBS such as customer (MDM) or product data (PIM) can also be integrated to deliver a complete commerce experience. Figure 2: Example method and common architectural integration points between Oracle Commerce and Oracle EBS. 4

6 Synchronization of Your Product Data Selling online is a complex process that requires a heavy blend of data integration. Technologies are often siloed, including the systems that manage product and product details, business policies, inventory, different brand catalogs, prices lists, price rules, discounts, and product configuration rules. Oracle Commerce was architected to handle complex product data by offering out-of-the box functionality and prebuilt components focused on reducing operational costs and manual effort. Developed to integrate with any combination of enterprise systems, including Oracle EBS, these prebuilt, pretested components can be customized and re-used. As product data in Oracle EBS is created and modified, Oracle Commerce continually collects and aggregates it. The system then finds relationships between different data points and connects them at run-time to deliver the most optimal commerce experience for your customers. For example, many B2B organizations have large product catalogs with hundreds of thousands or even millions of SKU s. They need to enable customers to get to the right products at the right prices, quickly and efficiently. Oracle Commerce uses contracts to provide the appropriate pricing and products for a given customer and can target products to customers based on a variety of factors such as past purchase history, current products selected, and/or products viewed. As another example, using Oracle Commere allows B2B organizations to provide their customers with the information they need to make decisions in context. Oracle Commerce provides a full content management system so that content such as videos, drawings, technical data sheets, etc., can be dynamically integrated into customers search and navigation experiences. Figure 3: Oracle Commerce offers integration points for legacy data and content systems (including ERP, PIM, MDM, CMS, and more) making it easy to synchronize your product data across platforms. 5

7 Improving The Commerce Experience With More Accurate Customer Data Your customer data is in a constant state of change. What products have they just bought? What new contract requirements were recently negotiated? Not having the most accurate customer data available during the buying process will make your customers frustrated and even worse; have a negative impact on sales. Oracle Commerce and Oracle EBS exchange customer information in real-time so you are only triggering content that is relevant to a particular customer. For example, it may be time for a customer to refill or replace a specific product, and which they do not have in their cart at checkout. Using data from Oracle EBS, Oracle Commerce would present targeted content as a reminder to that customer. The solution allows organizations to track and store customer behavior over time to ultimately deliver more valuable experiences. The combination of Oracle Commerce and Oracle EBS allows you to know as much as possible about your customer to ensure they are receiving the most accurate details and information, based on their unique history, needs, and preferences, at every point in their buying journey. Figure 4: Real-time updates between Oracle EBS and Oracle Commerce ensure your customers are always seeing the most relevant content. Support of Complex Pricing Needs Oracle Commerce supports the management and configuration of pricing logic natively, including volume-based and tiered pricing, and can also take advantage of the advanced pricing capabilities offered by Oracle EBS for more complex pricing needs. In business environments where customers submit a request for quote as part of the ordering process, Oracle Commerce is able to enhance its quoting capabilities by leveraging advanced functionality 6

8 within Oracle EBS. The quoting process includes workflow for quote approvals, notification to the end customer, and ultimately conversion to an order. Appliance Manufacturer Drives Product Innovation Leveraging Oracle Commerce and Oracle EBS A leading appliance manufacturer relies on Oracle EBS for its back-end system but needed a commerce platform to help manage pricing and product configurations throughout a complex B2B and B2C sales model, as well as provide a compelling customer experience. This company sells through a network of distributors and dealers. Because of this B2B model, they were always a step removed from their end-customers and wanted to provide tools to both their consumers and dealers in order to get closer to customers and gain more visibility into conversion rates. The solution was to offer configuration, pricing and quoting via touch-screen kiosks directly in the showrooms of their key dealers. This program enables dealers to configure all products quickly and confidently, thereby extending sales beyond the products in an individual showroom, limiting configuration and pricing errors and ultimately building customer - and dealer - satisfaction. With Oracle Commerce, they were able to increase sales of their appliances and accessories, eliminate incorrect order options and pricing errors, and provide more visibility into customer preferences, all with a tight integration with Oracle EBS for product and customer data. Real-time Order and Invoicing Integration When customers are ready to complete a transaction, Oracle Commerce combined with Oracle EBS simplifies the process while giving your customers a more personal experience. Examples include automated ordering processing with pre-populated information for order-entry that streamlines the order process. With pre-populated purchase orders, shipping, and billing forms, a B2B organization makes their customers lives easier and reduces errors in the order capture process. The combined solution ensures total account transparency for customers to check their order status, transaction history, access reports, and update their billing and shipping information in real-time. Combining Oracle Commerce with Oracle EBS enables you to: Create real-time order submissions from Oracle Commerce to Oracle EBS Manage credit card, PO, and other payment options Support volume-based and other complex pricing options Enable quote submission and approval workflows Display real-time order status, fulfillment, and invoice updates 7

9 Figure 5: Real-time quoting, order and invoicing integrations streamlines the order-to-cash process and increases customer satisfaction by ensure giving customers timely and accurate updates for their current and past orders. Conclusion Oracle Commerce allows current Oracle EBS customers to innovate, grow, and leverage their existing investments by giving them the ability to deliver dynamic online experiences to their customers at unparalleled scale and performance. The ability to leverage complex, changing data and present only contractually relevant information to customers is what makes Oracle Commerce the provider of choice for the globe s largest, most complex B2B organizations. Oracle EBS customers leveraging Oracle Commerce have seen increased customer satisfaction, more efficient quote- and order-to-cash processes, and ultimately increased revenue. Contact Us Find out why the world s biggest and best brands rely on Oracle Commerce to power their commerce experiences visit oracle.com/commerce. 8

10 Extend Your Oracle E-Business Suite Investment With Oracle Commerce April 2014 Oracle Corporation World Headquarters 500 Oracle Parkway Redwood Shores, CA U.S.A. Worldwide Inquiries: Phone: Fax: Copyright 2014, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is provided for information purposes only, and the contents hereof are subject to change without notice. This document is not warranted to be error-free, nor subject to any other warranties or conditions, whether expressed orally or implied in law, including implied warranties and conditions of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. We specifically disclaim any liability with respect to this document, and no contractual obligations are formed either directly or indirectly by this document. This document may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, for any purpose, without our prior written permission. Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. oracle.com