“Innovation is key. Only those who have the agility to change with the market and innovate quickly will survive.”   Robert T. Kiyosaki Top of Form

Guess what? It’s only going to get worse because they have to contend with customers using multiple devices, chat-bots, AI-driven personalized shopping experiences, omni-channel fulfillment, social media based customer feedback, and multi-channel service and support. The list goes keeps growing. 

Companies that survive and thrive in this digital world will do what we at Oracle call “Smarter CX” – deliver superior customer experiences by connecting data at every stage during the customer journey.  This investment is key to ensure that your sales, service, marketing and Commerce applications connect at the data layer to fuel customer engagement and growth.

I want you to consider the importance of the commerce platform. Here are 5 ways Oracle Commerce Cloud was built and designed to provide the control that development and business teams need to innovate and provide smarter CX.

1) Open Source Technology

2) Reduce Dependence on Development Teams

Not long ago, an e-commerce business relied on the development team to make simple, yet mundane changes.  Things like swapping banner images, rearranging page widgets, creating new pages, scheduling publishing changes, updating basic search configurations and so on too time and risked causing delays. With Oracle Commerce Cloud, business teams can now handle these day-to-day tasks. This shift fuels agility and frees up valuable development time for new innovations, services and improvements that enhance the customer experience. 

3) Empower Development to Drive Business Objectives

Since business buyers and consumers shift among devices, make quick buying decisions and expect seamless engagement, it becomes imperative to meet these needs flawlessly with the right data and information.  With a toolset of open integration standards, agnostic code and developer tools, instead of constant development, teams can now work by the ‘fail fast, succeed faster’ mantra that drives innovation and supports business goals.

4) Extensibility to Connect Data and Experiences

For the longest time, integrations have been a bottleneck, causing delays and website problems. Commerce Cloud takes a systematic approach to solving the challenges of connecting data.

API’s, Webhooks & Server Side Extensions

API’s simplified the approach of syncing data across applications and platforms. Webhooks (web callbacks) further streamline communication flows by introducing event-based notifications that provide real time data to other systems. Commerce Cloud is an API 1st platform that harnesses the power of Webhooks to drive integration efficiencies and the increased flow of data among systems. Commerce Cloud also offers server-side extensions, further empowering developers with a clean approach to writing custom integration code or creating one’s own APIs.

Pre-built plus Marketplace Integrations

Commerce Cloud provides a core set of pre-built integrations across  payments, tax, and marketing, OMS, content management and CPQ. With these integrations, complex customizations are now turned into streamlined configuration.  Oracle also has a rapidly growing marketplace of 3rd party integrations that promote faster time-to-market while enhancing the core commerce platform.

Integration Cloud

Oracle Integration Cloud includes pre-built adapters and integration flows to Oracle and 3rd party vendors, open adapter SDK’s, point and click visual mapping, and rich monitoring.  Integration Cloud fuels innovation by simplifying the approach to integration work, enabling teams to use existing on-premise solutions to shift developer’s time to other projects.

5) Customer Experience Business Tools

Business user tooling is what fuels the customer-facing front-end experience.  After developers create the essential building blocks, it is the designers and merchandisers who use those tools to create immersive experiences.  For some commerce platforms, user tooling is still an afterthought, requiring the business to talk to the IT and development groups – repeating the past.  With Oracle Commerce Cloud, user tooling has been re-imagined.  With standardized UI’s across all Oracle applications, the tools are intuitive, user-friendly and equally important, flexible to build an endless array of customer experiences.