When you are a billion dollar company that has built a business with the Cloud as the foundation, a crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic cannot stop you in your tracks. Amidst all the chaos surrounding the pandemic, Salesforce is standing true to its nature as a pioneer in cloud technology. The California-based cloud-based software company had spent at least $16 Billion in 2019 shopping for new acquisitions and technologies that will beef up its capabilities and also fend off competition. So, when the COVID-19 crisis hit, Salesforce was ready with innovative product launches.
As a first response, Salesforce released a set of best practices that acted as a quick fix. It even launched Salesforce Care meant to help its customers rapidly respond to customers, employees, partners, and communities in this unprecedented time.
To help businesses to put their online commerce in full swing, Salesforce Commerce Cloud has released 4 quick-start business packs. The specialty of these packs is that they get businesses up and running their online operations in weeks (two) and not months.
The Four Business Packs That Salesforce Has Released Include:
- Quick Start Commerce for D2C
- Quick Start for curbside and store pickup
- Quick Start for B2B commerce
- Quick Start for grocery and quick service
All these four quick-start business packs deliver primary benefits, or rather utilities, for the crisis-stricken businesses:
- Go to market in two weeks, compared to the usual months
- Start selling online faster with essential apps and partner-managed services
- A strong support team that facilitates quick scalability
- The reliability of the world’s most trusted commerce platform
Here is a deep dive into what each of the quick start business pack is capable of delivering:
Quick Start Commerce for D2C
When lockdown and home quarantine is a forced way of life, businesses must move to the online medium to keep their market share and revenue sources intact. Until recently, launching a direct-to-customer meant a development process that spanned several months of rigorous activity.
Given the crisis situation, businesses needed a reliable commerce solution that will help connect directly with its customers.The Salesforce Quick Start Commerce for D2C businesses is an all-in-one commerce solution that enables businesses to:
- Set up a full-fledged online store complete with brand presets
- Have a dedicated merchant setup for admin controls
- Process orders seamlessly with payment and tax integrations
Quick Start for Curbside And Store Pickup
When the news of virus infection spread fast and wide, contactless payments and deliveries for essential products and services surged like never before. For eCommerce, this meant that customers started shifting to a shopping pattern where they have minimal contact with delivery personnel. Thus, curbside deliveries or buy online and in-store pickup rose to popularity.
Curbside delivery and in-store pickup meant that every storefront of a business had to be turned into a distribution center. This can put too much strain on inventory control, order fulfillment, and even order tracking. To orchestrate all of these functions while keeping the customer experience intact demands the extensive support of a commerce solution — which is exactly what the Quick Start for curbside and store pickup is.
It offers two major Salesforce offerings:
- Salesforce Order Management
- Salesforce Commerce Portals
Here is how the quick package is going to help businesses:
- Quickly set up B2C online stores and add store locators
- Create inventory lists, shopping carts, and checkout systems
- Configure store associate users for the last-mile app
Quick Start for B2B Commerce
Although the crisis situation has affected all layers of businesses equally, B2B businesses have several inherent challenges that the crisis further aggravated. The quick start package for B2B commerce aspires to address some of those critical challenges. It brings a self-service flavor to B2B commerce that will enable businesses to quickly digitize their sales with online catalogs, recurring orders, and even smart product recommendations. The bigger goal of the package is to enable B2B businesses to get back on their feet quickly and start selling online with haste.
To achieve that goal, the package offers:
- Site setup and administration
- Site branding and configuration
- Product, pricing, and order data load
- Storefront management, product catalog, and search
- Key integrations to 3rd party applications
Quick Start for Grocery and Quick Service
According to Coresight Research, “Nearly half of shoppers are buying more groceries online due to COVID-19.” This has pushed retailers to go beyond their usual repertoire and devise new order management and fulfillment mechanisms. The grocery and quick service package aims to fast-track operations for Grocery and Food Service providers.
It includes:
- B2C Commerce
- Salesforce Order Management
- Storefront Reference Architecture app for grocery and foodservice
The package also comes with picking applications, payment integrations, and tax integrations that simplifies online order fulfillment.
Difficult times demand rapid responses
A quick start commerce solution may not be as critical as a first responder service. Nevertheless, considering the burgeoning demand for online orders and curbside deliveries, it is necessary for businesses to switch to the online medium.
These four quick-start packages aim to enable businesses to move to the online medium in weeks instead of months. In fact, these packages are also designed to spare the customers from having to meddle with site management and maintenance chores. To sum it up, during difficult times, Salesforce was able to form a rapid response for its customers with thoughtful quick start packages that should help customers ease their path to recovery.
