Sitecore OrderCloud: Design Your Own eCommerce Marketplace Application

The online world is changing rapidly around us and organisations are demanding their e-commerce solutions are industry leading today and are prepared for 2022 and beyond. Through Sitecore's acquisition of Four51 comes OrderCloud, a solution which puts an API first, Headless eCommerce SaaS solution as a must consider for businesses struggling with their omnichannel selling and when scaling up is a technical nightmare.

What is Sitecore OrderCloud?

OrderCloud is a single commerce solution for all B2C, B2B and B2B2C customer needs. Whether you're a retailer, distributor or manufacturer, OrderCloud is designed to meet all your complex selling requirements. It is composed of what is known as MACH Architecture which incorporates Microservices, API's, is Cloud Native and of course is Headless. With all these key features in mind, there is no sacrifice in the ability to customise the solution, unlike many SaaS products we've become so familiar with. Overall, OrderCloud encapsulates the very best in Cloud based multi-channel eCommerce, yet still keeps the customer front of mind with intelligent user definition and clever UX customisation capabilities.

Why Sitecore OrderCloud?

As organisations venture into new markets and offer their products to new audiences, comes the additional challenge of fulfillment and 'buying roles.' For instance, the company may be a B2C in Australia yet functions as a B2B distributor in New Zealand. OrderCloud allows you to define your regions and marketplaces with 'Building Blocks' and mirror how you intend your organisation to function offline, these are:

• Seller
• Buyers
• Users
• Product Catalogues
• Suppliers

For a B2B Marketplace, various suppliers can feed directly to a single seller which in turn can offer customised catalogues based on pricing structures and accounts. Therefore the catalogue shown to users in New Zealand could be vastly different to an Australian User. This results in an infinitely more sophisticated experience to the standard Out of the Box e-commerce solution.

Leading organisations in the APAC region have realised the importance of being customer centric and they're achieving this through relevant, customisable and personalised experiences. Through implementing persona based API delivered content, and capitalising on their existing XP CMS, OrderCloud can showcase the products and services which truly resonate with customers. Most of OrderCloud's APIs allow you to query by any segmentation or persona property you assign. This handles use cases such as finding all buyers tied to a sales region or triggering different content or promotions during shopping depending on properties on the logged-in user and their associated buyer account.

Switch and Sitecore

Switch is a Sitecore Platinum implementation partner. To find out more about Sitecore OrderCloud and what it can do for your organisation, simply book a consultation with us today.