麻豆原创 supports businesses globally with a powerful commerce solution fit for the future. At a time when commerce trends are evolving faster than ever and customer demands continue to rise, remains a reliable foundation for agility, speed, and stability.

Businesses across industries are using the solution to boost profitability and achieve sustainable growth. Carhartt, an iconic brand crafting durable, premium workwear since 1889, uses 麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud to create an omnichannel e-commerce presence that matches the brand鈥檚 legacy of quality and accessibility. As Carhartt continues to expand its reach and transforms from workwear leader to fashion icon, the brand can exceed customer expectations.

鈥淐arhartt鈥檚 job is to get products into the hands of hardworking folks, when and how they want them. 麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud helps us do just that. We needed a solution that could stand up to task during the busiest times of the year,鈥� said Donavan Marchywka, director of Digital Solutions for Carhartt Inc. 鈥溌槎乖� Commerce Cloud holds up from an infrastructure and performance standpoint. The solution reacts to traffic so customers can connect with our products. When we transformed our e-commerce experience on 麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud, not only did we get the benefits of this new technology, but we also got the chance to rethink the design of our site鈥攁nd do it right.鈥�

In addition to Carhartt, notable B2C brands and household names from Nestl茅 to use 麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud to stay ahead of the competition in increasingly saturated and competitive markets. B2B leaders such as and HORSCH keep industries moving by using the solution to stabilize and scale their e-commerce marketplaces.

Startups and innovators setting out to create a more sustainable future 鈥� like MVV Enamic and 鈥� are using it to deploy artificial intelligence (AI) and new technologies as they emerge.

Even public sector and government organizations, including , are creating standout experiences with 麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud.

These brands join others, such as  , , , and , that rely on 麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud to drive profitable growth for their businesses.

麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud is part of the portfolio. The combination of integrated solutions spanning commerce, marketing, sales, and service empowers businesses to connect with their customers in the moments that matter most. The 麻豆原创 Customer Experience portfolio also turns AI innovations into real business outcomes with intelligent tools that employees, customers, and other users are using every day.

To learn more about 麻豆原创鈥檚 position as a Leader and see in-depth analysis of the digital commerce landscape from Gartner, read the .

Ritu Bhargava is president and chief product officer for 麻豆原创 Customer Experience.

Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce, Mike Lowndes, Sandy Shen, Jason Daigler, Aditya Vasudevan, 6 November, 2024.

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally, and MAGIC QUADRANT is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved.
麻豆原创 was recognized as 麻豆原创 Hybris in 2014, 2016, and 2017.

While the solution鈥檚 functional breadth and depth is well documented, 麻豆原创鈥檚 primary focus leading up to 2022 was platform modernization. This focus was necessary to make sure that our customers, as well as 麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud, were set up for long-term success. As a result of that focus, 麻豆原创 ranked as a major player in the IDC B2C Digital Commerce Report back in 2020. While the modernization journey is truly never-ending, we have clearly turned a corner on that front.

During the last 24 months, this has allowed 麻豆原创 to focus its investments on functional innovations that can drive measurable business results 鈥� including in generative AI 鈥� and in 2023 alone 麻豆原创 delivered over 150 of them. As a result of both modernization and functional innovations, we are delighted to share that 麻豆原创 has regained leadership in both the and . IDC isn鈥檛 the only analyst that is paying attention, as Gartner has also improved 麻豆原创鈥檚 position in the Leader quadrant in 2023 relative to competitors, after a couple of years of a widening gap.

How did we do it? Knowing that if our customers win, we win, we listened and executed relentlessly. Our enterprise customers run some of the largest commerce deployments on the globe, and they told us in no uncertain terms that they needed a platform that solved their very complex commerce challenges with the utmost flexibility, but not at the cost of agility or TCO. As a consequence, we made a by advocating for and adopting pragmatic composability to help our customers evolve on their digital transformation journey, no matter where they are from a digital maturity perspective. We accelerated innovation for 麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud through an all-cloud deployment model with continuous innovation across all commerce areas including headless, API- and event-based architecture, composable storefronts, modern microservices-based implementation of core areas such as payments, promotions, order management, sourcing, and inventory availability, and more.

Here are some of the innovation highlights that we have communicated recently and that help our customers succeed at critical points in the customer experience they are trying to deliver.

Generative AI

For many years, AI in commerce has been about personalizing the customer experience to increase loyalty and profitability. While this remains true and important, generative AI is opening more ways to empower commerce teams to remove mundane tasks and work more efficiently, with the end results of connecting customers more quickly with the products they鈥檙e looking for. 

To leverage AI for better outcomes, 麻豆原创 utilizes its wealth of operational and experiential data, along with third-party data, to help provide the holistic view our customers need. For 麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud, has been made available to help supercharge catalog management and product discovery. Many commerce managers know the difficulty and mundaneness of keeping up with catalog hygiene. Although this task is arduous, it鈥檚 critical for product visibility and discoverability. Our set of AI capabilities within 麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud can review product tags and catalogs, generate and customize product descriptions, embed supplemental technologies such as machine vision, and guide customers to the right choice for their needs.听

Order Management Systems

A connected enterprise is a prerequisite to delivering seamless and delightful customer experiences. Acting as the central nervous system and connective tissue of unified commerce, order management systems enable orchestration of orders from order placement to fulfillment and delivery.

At NRF, we announced new retail capabilities through 麻豆原创 Order Management Services, including the 麻豆原创 Order Management solution for sourcing and availability as well as 麻豆原创 Order Management foundation. With these modular solutions, organizations can create frictionless omnichannel experiences that can respond to business events, such as fraud holds, delivery, or in-store pickup, and determine the optimal sourcing strategies to deliver customer satisfaction while protecting margins and optimizing organizational business outcomes.

Open Payment Framework

With our latest announcement at Shoptalk, we are working to help accelerate our customers鈥� time-to-market with the open payment framework for 麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud. This packaged business framework can connect 麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud via low-code or no-code with third-party payment service providers, including Stripe, Adyen, WorldPay, and Airwallex 鈥� with numerous more planned for the future. This modular, extensible, headless framework helps give power back to retailers to pick their own payment partners based on their needs, whether local or abroad. Organizations can be equipped to scale faster and avoid being confined to a single provider, making wrangling multiple connectors and manual flow mapping a thing of the past.

Front-End Framework Modernization

Digital experience composition, as Gartner puts it, is the new frontier in commerce composability that leverages agile API orchestration and front-end as a service to deliver personalized experiences in a unified way. Our vast ecosystem of best-in-breed partners helps us provide a strong digital experience composition, so that customers can deliver the experiences that their customers want. We continue to grow our partner ecosystem as the market evolves and new technologies emerge, striving to provide multi-business model, multi-market, and multi-industry coverage.

Commitment to Sustainability

Part of 麻豆原创鈥檚 mission is to provide the tools to empower our customers to attain their sustainability objectives. That commitment extends to 麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud, as we offer a recommerce module to embrace new circular business models and help the world reduce retail waste. caters primarily to retailers to help digitally create processes to introduce consumer excess as well as restored, returned, and used products back into the market, creating a circular revenue stream to help drive additional growth.

As we continue our commerce journey, we are working with our customers to help ensure that they can innovate their businesses with speed and pivot when the market demands it. Customers like Roche are able to step into the future with software monetization platforms, powered by integrations with 麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud.

Roche is a leading multinational Swiss healthcare company that provides cancer treatments around the world. To transform the patient journey, Roche adopted digital solutions that can empower people to manage their health better, allow healthcare providers to confidently diagnose and treat diseases, and help healthcare institutions unlock greater efficiency. With 麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud, integrated with 麻豆原创 Subscription Billing and 麻豆原创 Entitlement Management, Roche was able to propel itself into the future by enabling the commercialization of its digital products, removing manual interventions, allowing customers to upgrade or downgrade subscriptions via a self-service portal, and providing product managers the ability to quickly develop, test, and deploy ideas among broad ranges of business models. All this only took Roche four and a half months to go live in three countries and 13 more within the year.

鈥淚f we want to be customer-oriented and efficient, a software monetization platform is a key enabler. It is indispensable for serving, fulfilling, and servicing digital products in a scalable way, laying the foundation for our future business.鈥�

Moritz Hartmann, Global Head of Roche Information Solutions

We invite you to learn more and reach out to see how helps deliver profitable digital commerce growth, from discovery to delivery and beyond. Check out .

Through Cyber Week, customers achieved over a 35% year-over-year (YoY) increase in the number of orders processed, an astounding amount of $110 million in peak gross merchandising value (GMV) per minute, and a 9.3% YoY increase in overall site traffic. Essential for driving site traffic and increasing conversions is customer engagement, and on Cyber Weekend, supported customers with a nine percent YoY increase of overall send volume across all channels. What鈥檚 more, 麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud customers achieved a 5.04% higher conversion rate versus 2022, and retailers saw a 5.2% higher conversion rate during Cyber Week.

This success was possible due to the reliability, scalability, and intelligence of for individually curated shopping journeys across the globe.

But at 麻豆原创, it is not just about the numbers. Deriving insights from data is at the heart of 麻豆原创 and the start to the holiday shopping season provided a treasure trove of learnings and understanding about how people are shopping and how retailers can optimize their experiences.

By serving some of the largest brands in the world through this holiday season, here is what we learned.

Insight One: The Definition of 鈥淗oliday Season鈥� Is Expanding

Traditionally, Black Friday is considered as a starting point for the holiday shopping season. However, recent research has revealed the holiday shopping is starting sooner and extending over the course of several weeks.

According to , an 麻豆原创 commerce media partner,  the longest path to purchase during the holidays is . This includes Singles Day, originated in China, on November 11 and El Buen Fin, Mexico鈥檚 version of Cyber Weekend from November 17 to November 20.

In 2023, 麻豆原创 Emarsys Customer Engagement saw a spike on Singles Day, nearly surpassing 1 billion customer engagements — for example, email, SMS, mobile push, and web push — two weeks ahead of Black Friday. This figure was then eclipsed not once but twice during El Buen Fin, which saw overall an approximate 30% YoY increase in messages delivered.

When looking at just email growth during this season, the growth of volume for the entire month of November was nearly twice what it was for Cyber Weekend. This not only underscores that holiday shopping is starting earlier, but how brands are scaling up sooner and avoiding sharp peaks, which is a win for deliverability too.

Newly emerging celebrations and extended shopping seasons also mean a higher and longer strain on e-commerce sites. However, 麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud prepared the customers to combat this challenge during these peak sales times leading up to Cyber Week, and delivered 100% uptime. In fact, customers that ran holiday sales events during El Buen Fin achieved 112% growth in conversion rate, with 10% higher traffic volume compared to the regular daily average of 2023.

Insight Two: Email Still Reigns, But Omnichannel Engagement Is Rapidly Growing

While overall 2023 holiday sales are expected to , online sales are expected to double and . More digitally advanced customer journeys and increasingly tech-savvy buyers present an exciting opportunity for businesses to engage with shoppers more often and on their preferred channels.

Aiming to capitalize on this opportunity and remain top of mind with shoppers, 麻豆原创 Emarsys customers sent a record number of omnichannel messages, resulting in a nine percent YoY increase in customer engagements from 2022. Email remained the top promotional channel in terms of volume and saw a respectable 10% YoY increase.

In addition to email, brands are also now investing heavily in omnichannel engagement strategies to meet customers where they prefer to shop. Mobile messages like SMS (35% YoY increase) and in-app (15% YoY increase) were utilized effectively alongside email, as were Web channel engagements, like Web push, which saw a whopping 74% increase in usage in 2023.

Insight Three: Personalization Proves Less is More

It is important to acknowledge that success does not equate to the quantity of messages, but also the quality. Bucking the notion that more is simply better, marketers using 麻豆原创 Emarsys increased utilization of data-driven segmentation by 20% compared to Cyber Weekend 2022, enabling more targeted offers and personalized messages. While conversion rates would naturally be expected to dip given the extra volume, this targeted and personalized approach contributed to minimal or no change compared to baseline conversion rates during a typical weekend.

Similarly, AI-powered product recommendations, delivered across channels, and also helped consumers find the right product or best deal  among the seemingly limitless choices — with confidence and ease. 

With consumers shopping for an extended period on more channels, brands have both an obligation to meet them where they are in their journey and an opportunity to earn their business and loyalty by investing in data-driven, omnichannel strategies that better match them with personalized offers on the items they wish to buy.

Insight Four: B2B Shoppers Share the Holiday Fever During Cyber Week

Black Friday is usually seen as an influential opportunity to create a revenue boost for retailers. However, 麻豆原创 has the privilege of working with many B2B commerce companies in addition to a large number of retailers.

According to our data, other industries outside of retail also experience the benefits of Black Friday and Cyber Monday pushes. While the retail industry had the highest volume of orders, consumer products and wholesale distribution came in close behind. Additionally, the chemicals industry saw a huge spike in AOV over the weekend and achieved a GMV increase of 51% YoY, while life sciences industry saw more than 120% YoY GMV growth.

These data points indicate that Cyber Week trends are no longer limited to retailers, as various industries now achieve bigger sales volume and revenue during this period. Moving forward, organizations across all industries must put their best foot forward during Cyber Weekend activities to support profitable growth.

Insight Five: Black Friday Isn鈥檛 Just About the U.S. Thanksgiving Holiday Anymore

The data from 麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud also reflects the globalization trend. While North America led the biggest GMV number on Black Friday, the Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) region is comparable. In fact, the highest number of orders, about 800,000, was placed in EMEA. Additionally, the Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) region on Cyber Monday achieved over 130% growth in conversion rate compared to last year.

麻豆原创 Emarsys customers were also ready to leverage this trend and engage with customers around the world. On Cyber Monday, total send volumes saw significant YoY increases in multiple regions: by 20% in EMEA, over 27% in Middle and Eastern Europe (MEE), and over 15% in Asia.

The data also highlighted differences in how consumers shop and buy in different regions. Unsurprisingly email continued to be the most used channel across the board, though EMEA proved to be the only region, outside of the Americas, that saw high growth in email volume year-on-year with a 13% increase.

The MEE region saw a slight decrease in the use of email (-12% YoY) in favor of SMS, mobile push, and in-app messages. In APJ, where a mobile-first mindset is often the norm, usage of in-app (58% YoY growth) and mobile push (176% YoY growth) went up significantly compared to email growth (two percent YoY). Even in EMEA, SMS (53% YoY growth) and in-app (388% YoY growth) mobile messages outpaced email growth, underscoring the importance of an omnichannel strategy.

This data illustrates the global influence of Black Friday, what used to be considered an U.S.-specific sales event. For businesses across the globe, it is crucial to recognize this shift and consider customer behaviors, so they can adapt and evolve their commerce and channel engagement strategies to gain customer loyalty and boost profitability.

Next Step

As market trends evolve, organizations must proactively adopt strategies for profitable and sustainable growth. With the right blend of modern technologies, agile business processes, and customer centric strategies, businesses significantly benefit from extended shopping season, through personalized omnichannel engagements, increased conversions, and lifelong customer loyalty. 

Moreover, with the right choice of cloud technologies, organizations can remain secure and compliant, while delivering reliable, scalable, and personalized experiences that are optimized for their industries.

To learn more about how 麻豆原创 Customer Experience solutions can help, please .

Balaji Balasubramanian is senior vice president and global head of Commerce and Industry Cloud at 麻豆原创.

*All data presented here is approximate and is based on various assumptions. All data is unaudited and is subject to adjustment. All financial figures are in USD. Data represents online and offline sales made by 麻豆原创 global merchants.

In today’s complex and multi-channel marketplace, organizations must constantly optimize to deal with emerging channels and new competitors while serving their customers best-in-class experiences to earn their trust and loyalty. Commerce systems that are not built for this design principle cannot help organizations adapt quickly or cost effectively.

Compose on Your Own Terms, Not Your Vendor鈥檚

At , 麻豆原创 is pre-announcing its new 麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud composable offering, a different approach to composability than what has been available in the market thus far. This offering is predicated on the recognition that every industry and enterprise is unique and that existing one-size-fits-all approaches to composability are not ideal for most businesses. Through this 麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud composable offering, merchants will be able to compose commerce experiences that best suit their individual needs today, wherever they are in their digital maturity journey, without jeopardizing flexibility down the line.

For example, some businesses may want a more traditional, 鈥渁ll-in-one鈥� approach across areas such as order management, product information management, content management, personalization, and marketing engagement. Meanwhile, more digitally mature enterprises may want to compose best-of-breed digital commerce experiences and can now do so on a single platform. 麻豆原创鈥檚 unique approach to composable commerce can give our merchants that level of flexibility as well as anything in between, enabling them to future proof their investment without sacrificing agility. By adopting best-of-breed 麻豆原创 and partner solutions on top of a highly flexible and proven platform, 麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud customers can extend the solution鈥檚 capabilities and create an offering that fits their own unique business strategy, today and tomorrow.

Digital Commerce Composability Done Right

With 麻豆原创鈥檚 unique approach to composable commerce, 麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud customers can drive profitability through agility by leveraging a feature-rich, extensible 鈥渄igital anchor鈥� solution, coupled with a vast pre-integrated and certified partner ecosystem. With its continuous innovation delivery model, 麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud enables merchants to focus on delighting customers instead of investing in table-stakes capabilities that require stitching together disjointed solutions not designed to be interoperable at scale. 麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud, composable storefront, the solution鈥檚 full API-coverage, 鈥渉eadless with-a-head鈥� software, in conjunction with 麻豆原创 Business Technology Platform (麻豆原创 BTP) and Kyma Runtime, enables developers to extend 麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud functionality with containerized microservices and serverless functions while keeping pace with their customers鈥� expectations.

Highly Curated and Strategic Partner Solutions

A rich and vibrant partner ecosystem is a key aspect of digital commerce success, so 麻豆原创 is also introducing strategic relationships with the following curated, best-of-breed vendors from its existing extensive partner ecosystem:

• helps businesses connect, create, and extend content more efficiently so they can build faster and deliver at scale, no matter the channel or touchpoint.
• provides artificial intelligence (AI)-powered search and discovery, recommendations, and personalization to improve merchant profitability through higher conversion, increased average order value, and customer lifetime value.
• provides an easy-to-use product experience management solution for retailers, distributors, manufacturers, and brands to organize and enrich product content, delivering impactful product experiences across all owned and third-party channels on a modern cloud-native platform.
• powers one-click checkout, identity, accounts, payments, and post-purchase infrastructure, helping to reduce friction for the customer by turning every checkout moment into an opportunity and driving higher conversion for the business.
• enables businesses to capitalize on the platform economy by bringing their digital marketplace to life, expanding their business vertically to deepen customer and channel partner relationships and drive profitability while simultaneously reducing inventory risk.
• supports the entire pricing journey, from setting optimal prices and managing the rebate process to maximizing your organization鈥檚 pricing power.

Benefit from an Industry-First Approach to Digital Commerce

麻豆原创鈥檚 long and rich history of helping organizations from more than 25 industries grow and transform enables us to tap into our deep industry knowledge and expertise to deliver industry-specific digital commerce capabilities.

Unlike other commerce vendors that emphasize strength of technology alone, 麻豆原创 is taking a more customer-centric approach by also pre-announcing the availability of our headless composable storefronts for financial services, travel, telecommunications, utilities, and public sector, on top of our currently available B2C and B2B composable storefronts for retail, consumer products, wholesale distribution, and industrial manufacturing. Industry add-ons can provide unique business workflows with pre-configured tools, capabilities, and storefronts that help shorten time-to-market, increase operational efficiency, and drive sustainably profitable growth through digital commerce.

Hear from our partners and customers:

“With 麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud’s approach to composability, we’ve been able to create our own commerce platform with solutions we need, such as Contentful, to deliver the best commerce experience to customers. 麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud is the essential power to implement business agility and flexibility, and ultimately to generate increased profitability for us.”听

鈥� Matthieu Houle, CIO, ALDO Group

“麻豆原创’s approach to composable commerce provides agility, flexibility, and extensibility with its feature-rich commerce platform. As our customers focus on profitability in this uncertain economic climate, we’re excited to support their digital commerce growth via 麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud.”

鈥� Deepak Sobhani, Principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP

鈥溌槎乖粹�檚 composable commerce approach allows us to work with customers in a way that offers significant extensibility on top of a proven, robust feature set.听We’re excited to create the most flexible, scalable, and customer-centric solutions with these world-class ISV partners while maximizing the business value of our customer’s investments.鈥�

鈥� Ryan Heusinkveld, Chief Technology Officer, Smith

鈥淲e are thrilled to join with 麻豆原创 as the content partner for 麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud, composable storefront. The Contentful Composable Content Platform meets the unique demands of digital teams by making it easy to orchestrate content from multiple sources and publish to any digital channel. This helps companies reach new customers faster, maximize their 麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud investment, and drive revenue.鈥�

鈥� 鈥疭teve Sloan, CEO, Contentful

鈥淲e are thrilled to have Coveo certified as an 麻豆原创 endorsed app. 麻豆原创 has been a natural partner for Coveo in B2B and B2C commerce. Together, we extend digital commerce capabilities to unlock profitable commerce growth with AI. Our enterprise-class AI platform complements the 麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud portfolio by helping companies power online buying experiences we believe today鈥檚 shoppers expect 鈥� fast, dynamic, effective product discovery and relevant recommendations 鈥� and also provide the AI platform merchandisers need to maximize business outcomes versus managing manual rules.”鈥�

鈥� Louis T锚tu, CEO and Chairman at Coveo

Drive Digital Commerce Excellence across the Entire Value Chain

By seamlessly and comprehensively connecting demand signals with the supply chain, 麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud enables enterprises to drive profitable growth, regardless of their industry, business model, or level of digital maturity. 麻豆原创 is consistently recognized as a leading digital commerce solution vendor by Gartner, IDC, Paradigm B2B, and other industry analysts. 麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud can provide a highly scalable, fully featured, and flexible commerce platform for B2B, B2C, or B2B2C use cases.

麻豆原创 reaffirms its commitment to the digital commerce and customer experience categories and is taking a bold step into the future with a unique, industry-led approach to composability that puts merchants鈥� digital commerce needs front and center.

To learn more,听 .

Riad Hijal is global head of Marketing and Solutions for 麻豆原创 Commerce.

But the fun of my conversation with Lamees Butt, SVP Global Alliances & Channels at Zoovu, was more about the sheer inventiveness of the offering itself than the name. You know how everybody loves to tell you about their 鈥渞evolutionary鈥� new products? Well, Butt quickly convinced me that the Zoovu app, one of the hottest sellers on 麻豆原创 Store, really is. As for the name 鈥� I鈥檒l get to that later.

Transforming Discovery

Product discovery: that鈥檚 what Zoovu is revolutionizing. While online search does keep improving, the truth is that you still have to know what you鈥檙e looking for. Zoovu 鈥渉umanizes鈥� product discovery, Butt told me, making products easier to find, evaluate, and buy by bringing context to your search.

鈥淢ost e-commerce sites are not much more than indexes or digital catalogs,鈥� she commented, 鈥渘ot well organized or structured. Say you need a new laptop and go online to do some research. Where do you start? You鈥檒l probably be asked to specify, for instance, how much RAM you need, how much CPU. What does that mean?鈥� She added a shocking statistic: 80% of organizations believe they are offering a good user experience. Only 8% of buyers agree.

Imagine instead being guided through the process with relevant questions and interactive buying advice. With Zoovu integrated into your commerce experience, Butt explained, you are asked the questions the knowledgeable sales assistant would pose in-store. For example, what do you typically do with your laptop? Say you run a lot of spreadsheets, meet colleagues virtually online, travel on business, design flyers for community events, and construct crossword puzzles. Voil脿! With five questions, the digital assistant translates your needs and recommends you a laptop. Essentially, it uses artificial intelligence (AI) and semantics to personalize your search.

That鈥檚 a simple example for a B2C use case. Now imagine a complex purchase for a B2B buyer 鈥� a hospital upgrading X-ray equipment, for example, or a contractor building aircraft components. 鈥淚t鈥檚 so easy to make a mistake in specifications or choose the wrong product,鈥� Butt said, 鈥渁nd there typically are no tools on commerce for cross-checking product compliance. With our solution, by connecting the back-office product content and exposing it to the front-office commerce experience, there is zero error.鈥�

Converting Prospects

Since 麻豆原创 Store is such a valuable resource for 麻豆原创 account executives, who can learn about and recommend partner offerings, I broached concern about the app eliminating sales people鈥檚 jobs. On the contrary, she replied, it can serve as an assistant for them, too. Customers can get answers to simpler questions on their own and free up the experts for transactions that require their know-how. Account executives can work with customers to better understand what they need and adapt their sales approach in real time 鈥� and dramatically improve conversion rates. Another Zoovu app on 麻豆原创 Store, , enables your end customer to virtually set, build, bundle, and configure complex products online while reducing manual intervention.

Innovating Through Integration

The Zoovu discovery experiences are integrated with 麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud, 麻豆原创 Sales Cloud, and 麻豆原创 CPQ to work securely with any IT landscape. The Zoovu platform enriches product content automatically with industry-specific taxonomies and work across all industries. 鈥淭he qualifying questions,鈥� Butt remarked, 鈥渁re gold dust for companies that are building complex mechanics for their customers.鈥� Because of that tight integration, the apps scale across channels and regions and can easily be embedded at distribution partners via web, chat, and in-store kiosks.

I was intrigued about Butt鈥檚 role, since she is such an enthusiastic evangelist. She鈥檚 been a member of the Zoovu team as one of the first employees, coming in with a background in the digital transformation space. She noted that the company expanded quickly after it was established in 2017 by several young computer scientists, who surrounded themselves with smart people from diverse fields with different skill sets. Her responsibility is to help the company scale through partnerships, and 麻豆原创 is an ideal match, she observed, because of the product-customer fit. Let me add that she is 100% correct in that respect. The Zoovu apps set a record on 麻豆原创 Store with the speed of uptake from our customers.

It seems that an intern came up with 鈥淶oovu鈥� in the process of building a product subset, and it caught on. That intern, Butt added, is now part of the Zoovu leadership team.

Is your organization ready for a revolution in product discovery? Why not find out how on ?

Rajiv Nema is part of Marketplace Group for Digital Experiences at 麻豆原创.

The findings of the survey 鈥�,鈥� conducted by Futurum Research and sponsored by 麻豆原创, unpack the forces that are shaping both the demand for and the process of enterprise software procurement.

鈥淒ramatic changes in the global economy, ongoing supply chain disruptions, the rise of a highly distributed workforce and the rapid digitalization of the consumer have pushed organizations to adapt swiftly and evolve to survive 鈥� not just from a procurement perspective but also their core business model,鈥� said Kahly Berg, Senior VP, Digital Experiences, 麻豆原创 SE. 鈥淭his survey proves that the digital marketplace is here to stay and that resources like the and are key to the success of 麻豆原创 partners, customers and peers in the industry.鈥�

Approximately 1,000 B2B decision-makers from small to enterprise-level companies across nine major industries responded to the survey, which also served as a follow-up to the 鈥�.鈥�

Notable findings from the new report include:

As business requirements change, so too does the type of software enterprises need to procure.

• Of organizations responding, 89% say they changed their business model during the past two years (with 39% saying the change was significant).

• Of responding organizations, 41% say their software or solution needs have significantly changed over the past two years.
• Of our panel, 78% say they鈥檙e looking for ways to streamline the procurement process, while 27% say their current process never or only occasionally operates as efficiently as it did in the past.

The future of procurement is digital.

• A majority of procurement professionals (54%) say they want to be purchasing primarily online by 2024, either through a vendor鈥檚 own site or a digital marketplace.
• Of respondents, 44% cited having a one-stop shop for multiple vendors as the most important feature in a digital marketplace.
• Of respondents, 16% expect to purchase at least half of their enterprise software through a digital marketplace.

Both corporate executives and procurement teams have become more involved in the procurement process.

• Of respondents, 61% say corporate executives are more involved in the purchasing process than they were two years ago. In contrast, our 2019 study panel indicated that less than 30% of C-level executives were active in any given part of the purchasing journey.
• Of procurement teams, 51% are now significantly involved in determining enterprise software needs.

Distributed decision processes are becoming the new normal.

• A majority of enterprises believe it takes four or more team members per functional group to make a final procurement decision.
• A quarter of enterprises with 50,000 or more employees say they need at least 11 corporate executives to sign off on a typical procurement.
• Of enterprises, 34% say a lack of group consensus is a significant concern, impediment, or risk to successful procurement of enterprise software solutions.

Visit the . Follow 麻豆原创 on Twitter at .

Media Contact:
Cindy McKendry, +1 (503) 231-7274, cindy.mckendry@sap.com, PST
麻豆原创 麻豆原创 Room; press@sap.com

This document contains forward-looking statements, which are predictions, projections, or other statements about future events. These statements are based on current expectations, forecasts, and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results and outcomes to materially differ. Additional information regarding these risks and uncertainties may be found in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including but not limited to the risk factors section of 麻豆原创鈥檚 2021 Annual Report on Form 20-F.
漏 2022 麻豆原创 SE. All rights reserved.
麻豆原创 and other 麻豆原创 products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of 麻豆原创 SE in Germany and other countries. Please see for additional trademark information and notices.

Fortunately for all concerned, Coveo was available to help them with an intelligent search and recommendations solution powered by artificial intelligence (AI). Since then, Coveo has experienced dramatic growth for its e-commerce products, leading to a decision in early 2021 to invest in the 麻豆原创 ecosystem. has quickly become one of the hottest sellers on 麻豆原创 Store.

The idea is to help online buyers easily and quickly find what they鈥檙e looking for, as well as what they might be looking for 鈥� and might purchase if given a personalized recommendation. When shoppers can discover more options in an online product catalog thanks to automated suggestions based on their intent, guess what? They buy more. The Coveo app also engages shoppers with a unified search experience that spans helpful content such as expert blogs and videos. The key is real-time personalization: relevance.

But the Coveo story starts years ago in 2005, when Simoneau and two close colleagues spotted an opportunity: to improve online search. Working together at another company with an advertising-based model, they shifted gears, launching Coveo and quickly finding a niche. 鈥淲e evolved into a classic on-premise search business in enterprise software,鈥� Simoneau told me.

A Well-Timed Move to the Cloud

By 2011, however, another opportunity had appeared. 鈥淚n retrospect,鈥� he observed, 鈥渙ur move to the cloud was perfectly timed. The market was not well defined, and many companies preferred the comfort of on-premises platforms. We recognized that the cloud would enable the capture of massive amounts of data that could be used in countless ways.鈥�

Within a few years, Coveo had harnessed AI and applied it to search, branching into customer and employee service and support. These are important lines of business for Coveo, using the same technology to help users find what they need and giving Coveo a broad customer base.

Growth is now also happening in e-commerce, though, thanks in large part to the ability of the Coveo solution to help companies scale rapidly. I asked Simoneau what life was like in 2020, expecting him to say utter chaos. Instead, 鈥淚t was pretty flawless,鈥� he replied. 鈥淭he platform is designed to handle these peaks of activity. After all, it was designed to handle Black Friday volume for very large retailers.

A Cohesive Global Team

He added that the organization also absorbed the shocks of COVID-19 well since it was already operating in many cases in hybrid mode. With R&D headquarters based in Quebec City and offices in nearby Montreal, Coveo has employees located globally, primarily in the U.S., with offices in the UK and the Netherlands covering Europe. That said, the team works quite cohesively, and geographic diversity is an advantage. 鈥淚t gives us a sensibility about the world 鈥� an important dynamic because we have customers everywhere. And I think the different opinions, backgrounds, experiences, and cultures come together to create a better product.鈥�

The organization is anchored by the long-standing relationships of its co-founders and executives. Co-founders Marc Sanfa莽on leads as senior vice president of Technology, and Richard Tessier as senior vice president of Products, whereas CFO Jean Lavigueur joined in 2006 and current CEO Louis Tetu joined as an early investor in 2008.

鈥淲e built the company, through good days and bad days, as a team based on trust,鈥� Simoneau remarked. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 powerful.鈥�

A Natural Fit with 麻豆原创

That鈥檚 one reason why Coveo鈥檚 partnership with 麻豆原创 is a good match: the emphasis on relationships. In less than a year, the Coveo team has built close alliances with 麻豆原创 product marketing, resulting in clear direction on how the Coveo offering can complement the 麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud solution. In addition, continuous conversations with 麻豆原创 execs have led to alignment on product direction, positioning and messaging, and sales strategies.

From a technology standpoint, he noted that the 鈥渉eadless鈥� approach, whereby the 麻豆原创 back end is decoupled from the Coveo front end, makes for an 鈥渆legant architecture鈥� that supports the best functionality of each. Perhaps most relevant of all, Simoneau noted, is that 麻豆原创 stands out as the company that best supports both B2B and B2C, a natural fit with Coveo.

Why not explore today? My bet is that you鈥檒l find it relevant to your business.

Rajiv Nema is senior director of 麻豆原创 Store Partner Solutions at 麻豆原创.