Order Management System for Salesforce Commerce Cloud - Blog (2023)

What is an order management system?

An order management system (OMS) is everything that happens after you click the buy button. OMS supports all stages of your company's sales process; from order creation to delivery and even returns. It also helps organize and automate key parts of the buying/fulfillment process for you and the customer.

Why do sellers need an order management system?

Online OMSs are centralized platforms that allow tracking of all orders, regardless of how they were received.

Additionally, OMS can increase the efficiency of your order management process. Automating many of the steps that previously required manual involvement can increase customer satisfaction and improve cash flow and profitability. Plus, it helps meet customer expectations that you have the flexibility to order, pick up, receive, and return products.

Benefits of owning an OMS

OMS will provide many benefits. We list the main benefits below:

1. Automating the order flow from purchase to shipment;flow automation will help control costs and drive revenue by automating manual processes and reducing errors. Because this process touches everyone in the supply chain, such as suppliers of packaging components and services or distribution centers.
   
2. inventory management; Manage inventory activities such as checking and maintaining availability, picking, packing and shipping. It provides better sales visibility and helps optimize inventory levels to meet customer demands, minimizing excess inventory as it coordinates orders and inventory across multiple channels, leading to efficient order-to-inventory matching and maintenance. informed about stock levels so you can avoid shortages
   
3. Analysis and reporting;OMS platforms can provide fulfillment reports and insights so you can track order fulfillment times, fulfillment-related costs such as picking, packing and shipping, and even product defects and return rates. However, tracking this is the first step towards identifying inefficiencies and developing plans to address them.
   
4. Strong customer service/satisfaction;Customers can use OMS to track order status, and customer service staff can track order status and have full visibility into the order lifecycle, connecting the store to customer service.

Salesforce Order Management System (OMS)

A cloud-based OMS provided by Salesforce.

Because I?

• cloud-based OMS; Software as a Service (SaaS) has faster and easier deployment, "pay as you grow", better scalability options and access from anywhere you have an Internet connection via a browser or mobile app, which requires no maintenance hardware or software installation.
• Easy to create/assign roles and permission sets, Roles and permission sets work together to determine what users can see and do in the SOM.
• High performance and reliability.
• A robust ecosystem of partners and third parties with AppExchange. One of Salesforce's best features is its large "app store" for business software.
• Ease and flexibility of customization. Using a combination of tools and declarative settings ("clicks, not code"), users can configure user experience and business logic. They can further customize these aspects using Apex code and Salesforce's Lightning Web Components.
• The Salesforce OMS interface uses the Lightning interface because this customer service can view order information with a minimum number of clicks. What's more, with Salesforce Lightning App Builder, screens are highly customizable to suit user preferences with no development involvement.
• Salesforce OMS uses Salesforce Flows; SF Flows lets you build complex business automation using clicks instead of code. Since you won't need the help of a Salesforce developer to tackle the toughest business requirements, Flows will be your best friend as an admin!
• Avoid cross-platform integrations and middleware and keep ordering data centralized and accessible. As a result, additional Salesforce services such as Marketing Cloud, Service Cloud, Einstein, OMNI Channel, etc. can access order information.

SOUND and SFCC Compatibility

Salesforce Commerce Cloud (SFCC) provides e-commerce solutions for B2C (business to consumer) and B2B (business to business) customers.

Why Salesforce Order Management System and SFCC are Better Together

• Integration CODE ZERO; Salesforce Order Management natively supports SFCC integration.
• Order and customer data flows from SFCC to OMS in real time and seamlessly
• Less work for the customer support team.
• Salesforce B2C Commerce has an OOB plugin called "plugin_ordermanagement" that supports the following key features:
  1. Real-time order history search and order status display.
  2. The customer can initiate a return.
  3. Customers can cancel the order.

SFCC and SOM Integration Checklist

SOM does not need any code to integrate with SFCC. Instead, some configuration needs to be done on both sides. To avoid wasting hours trying to figure out why requests are not flowing correctly from SFCC to SOM:

1. Check that SFCC and SOM support the same set of applicable currencies.

2. When creating an order shipping method in SOM, make sure the "Reference Number" matches the SFCC shipping method ID.

3. When configuring payment gateways in SOM, make sure the "External Reference" matches the SFCC payment process.

4. Pay special attention to granting the appropriate permission (access) to the B2C permission set when creating a custom record type such as payment method or invoices.

5. SFCC custom attributes are automatically mapped to SOM objects. You must ensure that the field id and data type match. And the B2C permission set must have appropriate read/write access.

6. Pay more attention to the data mapping between SFCC and SOM because in some cases SOM stores two or more SFCC attributes in one field such as Account.Name consists of SFCC address, company name, first and last name; therefore, in such cases, attention should be paid to the length limitation of the SOM data field.

7. Custom attributes from SFCC to SOM are automatically mapped. However, if you have an object that does not support automatic mapping of custom attributes such as "Account", "OrderDeliveryGroup", etc., you must write APEX code to map these attributes accordingly.

SOM request lifecycle

The milestones listed below can be used to summarize the order lifecycle:

1. creating a summary

2. Assignment - Fulfillment

3. Invoicing

Creating an order summary

The order summary extracts data from the base order that represents the original order for the transaction. Given that the dispatch is the original for the dispatch summary; The order summary gathers all the information about the order; from pickup to fulfillment, payment collection, shipping, delivery and service, and displays it all in one display.

Order Assignment - Fulfillment

Fulfillment is the process of assembling and shipping the customer's order. Unlike allowing customers to select and purchase items in person at a retail location, an e-commerce retailer is responsible for packing the shipment with the correct products and picking up the package in transit after placing an online order. In other words, the order fulfillment process simplifies the assignment, allocation, selection, packing and shipping of order items.

The actions below show a simple filling process.

1. The customer places an order through your sales window.

2. Order Management receives the order details and a summary is created.

3. The order is assigned to a fulfillment location and assigned to a fulfillment order.

4. Order items for a fulfillment order are taken from on-hand inventory (picking) and packaged for shipment.

5. The order items have been shipped (filled).

Order Billing

Order Management creates a payment summary for each order as part of the order summary creation process. An Order Payment Summary is a set of payment records using the payment method associated with the order summary. Payment information dynamically updates the order payment summary. So you can see order balances for various payments, including authorizations, registrations, and refund amounts.

Authorizing, recording, and reconciling payments occur as orders move through stages in the fulfillment workflow. The time to generate an invoice is usually when the order status changes to Fulfilled. However, your Salesforce admin can automate payment capture, invoice generation, and refund processing to help manage your payment transaction needs.

SOM Payment Gateway Adapter

Salesforce Order Management (SOM) processes payment transactions through payment gateway adapters. Payment gateway adapters are the bridge between your Salesforce payment platform and external payments. Salesforce Order Management (OM) provides this capability with various App Exchange plugins for integration with various payment gateways such as Adyen, Cybersource etc. from an App Exchange payment gateway or existing payment gateway applications do not meet the business requirements.

Custom Payment Gateway Adapter

Salesforce offers two types of payment gateways. Before you start creating a custom adapter, here's a brief description of each type:

1. Synchronous Access Adapter; The payment transaction processing process flow is described below:
   1. The gateway receives transaction data from the Salesforce payment gateway.
   2. The Salesforce platform awaits a response from the gateway containing the final status of the transaction.
   3. Salesforce will only create a payment transaction if the transaction completes successfully.
      
2. Asynchronous Access Adapter;The payment transaction processing process flow is described below:
   1. The payment gateway first sends transaction information to the gateway.
   2. The gateway responds by confirming that it has received the transaction.
   3. The Salesforce platform creates a pending transaction.
   4. The Gateway sends a notification with the final status of the transaction.
   5. The platform then updates the pending transaction status according to the gateway's notification response.

SOM customization best practices

To apply customization to the SOM and get its best performance:

He does:

• Augment your code: Training your code to efficiently handle multiple records at once is a process of augmenting it.
• Querying Large Datasets Salesforce has a management limit on the number of records SOQL queries can return, which is 50,000. A SOQL looping query should be used if you are working with large datasets that exceed the heap size limit.
• Use SOQL for loops. We can use our query directly as an iterable variable in our for loop instead of assigning our query results to a variable. This leads to some behind-the-scenes modifications to the way the query is executed. Allowing the results to be divided and treated with much more efficiency and transparency, preventing us from reaching the limits of the heap.
• Use of SObject Map when we need to retrieve record values ​​based on SObject records in a loop of different SObjects. If yes, we can get the values ​​using Map of SObjects and avoid using SOQL in "for" loop.
• Use database methods when doing DML operations.
• Reuse Apex code if you can, and break larger methods into smaller methods to make your code more modular and easier to read and maintain. Writing scalable, reusable code that can be used in another feature or module is an important Apex Code best practice. Creating generic code will allow it to be reused with minimal changes.
• Code Test Coverage When we want to get Apex code into production, Salesforce requires us to have at least 75% code coverage.
• Write a trigger per object per event. The purpose of Salesforce Apex triggers is to help you automate certain processes. You can perform unique actions before and after Salesforce events using Apex triggers. A best practice when writing Apex triggers is to build a trigger for each object.
• Use Asynchronous Apex Apex written using an asynchronous method obtains a unique separate set of constraints from the controller's upper end.

No:

• Avoid looping DML/SOQL queries. Some of the most expensive activities we can perform with Salesforce Apex include SOQL and DML, both of which have strict regulatory restrictions. Given how easily and unintentionally we can cross these boundaries, especially when it comes to triggers, piling them up in a loop is a recipe for disaster.
• Avoid hard-coding IDs in Apex programming, avoid hard-coding IDs. Apex code deployment between sandbox and production can fail if the ID is different.
• Don't mix Apex, process builders, workflow rules and record-driven flows based on the requirements of the business and the Salesforce team supporting it, all installations should have an automation plan. Generally speaking, you should choose an automation tool for each item. One of the many unavoidable situations in legacy organizations is mixing Process Builder and record-triggered flows with Apex triggers or, more recently, Process Builder and auto-triggered flows/processes.