SAP Commerce Cloud Accelerators

Starting a new SAP Commerce Cloud project can be challenging, mainly if we were to do everything from scratch.

The good news is that SAP brought us a set of tools called Accelerators that build up an omnichannel solution that is ready to use. This solution accelerates execution, improves sales, and accelerates growth across your channels.

Accelerators combine platform features and modules, often fulfilling over 80% of customer requirements. These “pre-set-up stores” fast forward the time needed to go live. Accelerators also have some already configured storefronts that can be easily adapted and rebranded to suit customer needs.

Let’s start with the most visual part of the accelerators, the storefronts. They are sample web stores which come with the hybris solution Out Of The Box.

When starting a new project, and depending on the complexity of the customizations, it might be useful to start off one of these websites as a template for your brand. This strategy could greatly shorten the configuration times for your store, but be sure to check all features in detail as you don’t want to end up having unnecessary features in your production solution.

SAP Commerce has three sample storefront accelerators. A b2b site called Powertools, and two b2c storefronts, Electronics and Apparel, which contains two independent fashion sites.

SAP Commerce’s Electronics store is probably the most basic accelerator storefront shipped OOTB. It has everything needed in a basic setup with a bunch of friendly sample-added functionalities to grasp SAP Commerce well.

It consists of a primary B2C store with plenty of core functionalities such as category browsing, product details, cart and checkout, order placing, my account areas, product search, store locator, anonymous browsing, and sign-up possibilities, to name a few.

On top of these, we have specific functionalities like product reviews, saved carts, multiple marketing carousels, or a nicely sampled promotions engine.

As we can see from the above storefronts, the standard accelerators contain plenty of features to set up a new online e-commerce store. Each of these storefronts makes use of a different set of standard platform functionalities. Generally, these functionalities are classified into two significant areas: the B2C accelerator and the B2B accelerator.

The SAP Commerce B2C accelerator is a ready-to-use omnichannel solution to hasten adoption, enhance sales, and accelerate growth across all of your channels.

The hybris Accelerator is the ideal solution for businesses with everyday needs that require speedy implementation. It is an Omni-commerce application that supports most Business to Customer requirements, such as call centers, order management, a responsive design mobile-centered, or multiple product views. It can quickly be rebranded from one of the storefront templates so that after connecting with a payment service provider, you would be ready to start selling online using SAP Commerce Cloud.

Amongst the different areas of the B2C SAP Commerce accelerator, we can identify the following modules:

This module provides most accelerator features, entirely focused on functionalities for selling online.

Most features, such as configurable checkout and Spring security, link and navigation management, SEO, pick-up in-store options, search and navigation, and much more, are offered by the Base Accelerator module.

This module generates the initial extensions for an accelerator storefront, typically referred to as yacceleratorstorefront.

These extensions provide the necessary structure for the fully operational B2C storefronts we saw earlier. Electronics and Apparel online sites, which are contained in apparelstore and eletronicsstore extensions.

The ready-to-use SAP hybris B2B Accelerator is a Web Framework that can quickly launch your B2B implementation and create and manage a feature-rich, cross-channel commerce solution. The B2B Accelerator consists of other additions on top of the B2C one, allowing enterprises to deploy a best-practice B2B omnichannel commerce solution swiftly. The solution delivers all the capabilities required to handle intricate B2B interactions since it is specifically designed to meet the demands of large enterprises targeting companies.

It streamlines order processing and enables B2B companies to control many accounts and teams from a single platform. The B2B customers can manage their users, user groups, permissions, cost centers, budgets, and approval workflows using the comprehensive self-service features included in the system. Account managers can use a wizard to create new organizations and manage the quote approval process thanks to the B2B Admin Perspective in the Administration Cockpit.

The B2B Accelerator Module contains extensions for managing your inventory, enhancing security, and providing functionality to manage a B2B platform, such as Commerce Organization units, quotes, or the basis for the mentioned B2B Powertools storefront.

These AddOns leverage the site functionality for B2B customer accounts, order forms, or login security. The account enhancements feature split into multiple AddOns to use only what we need, like Account Summary or Account Management.

The set of PunchOut extensions allows buyers to seamlessly access a supplier site. Using the cXML protocol, the system can use the shopping cart as a basis to create a purchase requisition, which gets the actual order sent back to the supplier site for processing.

Apart from the most standard B2C & B2B Commerce Cloud accelerators, hybris comes with different sets of AddOns that are ready to increase the available functionalities of your SAP platform with little to no effort.

These ready-to-use implementations will jumpstart your project with a rich, flexible commerce solution. Depending on what your project is about, you might want to use some of the available features in hybris:

China Accelerator

Specific extensions for the Chinese market come in handy when building a hybris cloud project. Some extensions provide functionalities such as Flash buy strategy sales, Alipay connector, WeChat connector, logistics, tax invoice module, or specifics about customer data, addresses, or payments.

Marketplace Accelerator

SAP Commerce Cloud’s Marketplace accelerator can move your solution to a B2B2C with minimal effort. The marketplace addons will add vendor management to the platform, along with an extended PIM, additional content and order management, and vendor & product reviews, key for a marketplace solution.

Industry-specific Accelerators

SAP also brings some ready-to-use extensions to jumpstart our project when focusing on certain industries. The most specific ones found Out of the Box are the Financial Services Accelerator, Citizen Engagement Accelerator, Travel Accelerator, and Telco & Utilities Accelerator.

SAP Commerce ships with a compelling set of modules and AddOns to handle most online commerce scenarios and requirements. The number of extensions can be overwhelming, but the provided ready-to-use storefronts flatten the learning curve with already set-up stores.

Having so many features available, how can you take advantage of such storefronts in an actual customer project?

Here the main question we should ask ourselves is whether the project we are working on is relatively standard or requires considerable customization effort. If we face the former situation, starting off one accelerator storefront can give us a significant edge in moving towards our goal. Starting out of an Electronics, Apparel, or Powertools store will put our development ahead with a ready-to-use website that we can begin leveraging instantly.

On the other hand, if we face a rather complex project with unusual flows, starting off a storefront accelerator might not be worth it. We should consider removing all unnecessary references to the sample stores and all unused parts of the accelerators, like add-ons or components we might not need. Having a lightweight solution without unnecessary parts is critical for a successful project.

If you need a hand with your own or a customer SAP Commerce Cloud project, whether you’re starting from an accelerator’s sample storefront or not, the E-Turia team is always ready to help. You can browse our services or contact us to find the proper support for you.