At Echidna, we have been developing on Oracle Commerce for over a decade and extended our capabilities to Oracle’s newest e-commerce platform solution, Oracle Commerce Cloud, making us a preferred Gold Partner. Besides the fact that Oracle Commerce Cloud is ranked as one of the top SaaS e-commerce platforms and offers both B2B and B2C merchants a unified, modular SaaS infrastructure, we’ve come to recognize it also has additional features that are important when crafting a building products site while we were doing just that for one of our clients in the industry.
Selling building products online is a unique challenge. Creating any digital presence that delights customers requires a B2C-like experience these days and pair that with the ability to browse, configure, request a quote, and purchase the products with ease- well, that can start to make it all a bit complex. Many building products companies have hundreds and thousands of SKUs with specific attributes, work with clients that have specific contract terms, or need various shipping arrangements. It’s important for building product merchants to select the right e-commerce platform to allow them the best functionality now, and also the scalability for the future. Let’s take a look at some specific benefits of Oracle Commerce Cloud and how they relate to selling building products online.
1. Leading Search and Guided Navigation Capabilities
Searching for the exact part or specific model number just got so much easier thanks to Oracle Commerce Cloud. With their leading Search and Guided Navigation capabilities it create a more efficient and scalable management of search within the shopping experience, no matter how complex the product, part or material.
2. Catalog Management and Multiple Catalog Support
Business users have full control over their products with an intuitive UI and can simplify SKU management, associated media, custom properties, and search. Managing separate catalogs doesn’t have to be a headache either. Oracle Commerce Cloud offers management of independent catalogs for brand sites or other sites that have unique catalog hierarchies, including support for unassigned products, linking collections across multiple catalogs, and allowing a collection to exist multiple times in the same catalog hierarchy.
3. Manage B2B and B2C in a Unified Platform
Single platform, single UI. With OCC you can manage multiple business models sites and operations that support both the complexity of B2B and B2C selling. This includes volume based selling, access control, purchase lists, permissions and much more. This can be especially important for those building product companies that have several different product lines or personas they cater too and want to have various sites for them all, but be able to assure all the data is in one place. Which leads us to #4....
4. Single point of entry for data
Oracle Commerce Cloud offers this, but is still flexible enough to allow building product brands the ability to manage their highly complex engineered-to-order products, with all sorts of possible configurations. This allows for better transparency, collaboration and improved internal workflows to name a few benefits.
5. Cloud based, API-First Architecture
Internal teams can easily configure Oracle Commerce Cloud to fit their evolving needs, yet still maintain compatibility with future releases. Commerce Cloud was built from the ground-up with an API-first architecture and a complete REST web services framework for agile, standards-based development and simplified integrations. By using the cloud is takes away the maintenance and custom-coding requirements, especially notable when integrating with other cloud-based applications.
FINAL THOUGHTS
The building products industry is highly complex, with both B2B and B2C markets to consider and numerous unique SKUs, workflows, and user experiences to manage. Choosing a flexible, truly unified e-commerce platform like Oracle Commerce Cloud allows those in the industry the ability to create a truly superior user experience, while also equipping the internal users the ability to integrate seamlessly within existing business operations. Contact the team at Echidna to discuss your building products e-commerce site goals today and Download the Building Materials Insight to learn more about key factors when creating your e-commerce experience.
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