Perficient’s longstanding partnership with Salesforce is a testament to our belief in this platform’s transformative power in solving complex business challenges and designing superior digital experiences.   

We strive to stay ahead of the evolving Salesforce ecosystem and actively shape its future. Our talented Salesforce professionals go beyond mere implementation; we focus on driving innovation, fostering connections, and creating meaningful change for our clients and the broader technology landscape.  

Whether you’re an experienced Salesforce expert or looking to develop your skills, joining Perficient’s Salesforce team gives you a refreshing opportunity to step into a role that challenges and inspires you to drive impact at a global scale.   

So, what makes Perficient’s Salesforce practice truly exceptional? Keep reading to learn more about:  

• The ways we’re redefining Salesforce innovation across industries  

• How our people and collaborative culture serve as the backbone of our Salesforce practice  

• How our ongoing impact through Salesforce solutions will facilitate continuous professional growth  

Spearheading Advanced Solutions with Salesforce  

Our colleagues are not just Salesforce experts—they are digital innovators. Perficient’s Salesforce team is dedicated to harnessing the full potential of Salesforce’s robust ecosystem, including Data Cloud, Einstein AI, Marketing Cloud, and Experience Cloud. 

We partner with clients across industries such as healthcare, life sciences, manufacturing, and financial services to solve complex problems, create personalized digital experiences, and drive sustainable growth.  

Perficient’s commitment to crafting meaningful and measurable solutions doesn’t end with clients; we ensure that our Salesforce professionals have access to continuous learning and development opportunities to stay ahead of industry trends and technologies.  

Our goal is simple—to deliver digital solutions that matter, while fostering a work environment where your skills and ideas are championed.  

“Our clients are always excited to see how the changes we make will help make their lives easier,” said Katie Wilson, who started as an associate technical consultant and is now a technical architect on our Salesforce team in Fargo. 

READ MORE: Katie Wilson Develops Her Career Through Client Relationships  

Delivering Real Impact Through Collaboration  

Our Salesforce experts don’t work in silos. We foster a collaborative culture where our consultants, architects, engineers, and strategists come together to build tailored solutions.  

“Perficient’s collaborative spirit is what truly sets us apart,” said Jideofor Onyeneho, lead technical consultant, Salesforce. “We work together seamlessly to develop effective solutions that address our clients’ critical business challenges.”   

READ MORE: Jideofor’s Contributions to Perficient’s Salesforce Team  

We leverage Salesforce products and expertise to address industry-specific challenges—whether that’s transforming patient experiences in healthcare, improving partner engagement in manufacturing, or empowering advisors in financial services.   

“I transitioned from web development to Salesforce because problem-solving has always been my passion,” says Carl Thress, technical architect, Salesforce. “The most rewarding part of my job is delivering Salesforce solutions that simplify our clients’ lives. I’m currently pursuing my sixth Salesforce certification to keep growing in my career.”   

LEARN MORE: Carl Thress Learns on the Job and Continues to Thrive   

 Our people are at the core of our success. We believe in creating an environment where professionals with a problem-solving mindset, a collaborator’s approach, and a creator’s mentality can thrive.  

READ MORE:  Highlights from Our Demo Jam Events 

Our promise to challenge, champion, and celebrate our people is at the heart of everything we do. We offer a supportive environment where your ideas matter and foster growth for everyone. Whether through our mentorship programs, our commitment to work-life balance, or our collaborative culture, you’ll find that Perficient is a place where you can thrive personally and professionally. 

Driving Success Across Industries  

• Healthcare  

To expand its community impact and improve patient engagement, a leading pediatric health system partnered with Perficient to modernize its outreach strategy. The organization relied on a legacy CRM that lacked the scalability needed to support its growth ambitions. Managing critical data such as leads, forms, and campaign information became increasingly difficult, limiting its ability to connect with patients effectively. 

By integrating Salesforce Health Cloud with the organization’s existing Marketing Cloud, we created a unified platform that streamlined patient data management and enhanced communication capabilities. Additionally, we optimized system functionality to improve workflows and outreach efforts, making engagement more seamless and efficient.  

The results of this transformation were significant. Improved patient engagement became possible through enhanced data visibility, enabling more effective and personalized communications. Operational efficiency also saw a boost, as the integrated Salesforce ecosystem eliminated manual processes and streamlined workflows. 

This success story highlights the power of digital transformation in healthcare. As Perficient continues to partner with healthcare organizations, we remain committed to driving innovation that enhances patient care, optimizes operations, and strengthens community impact. 

READ MORE: Learn more about how we’re reshaping healthcare technology solutions. 

• Finance 

By leveraging Salesforce to streamline operations and unify data, financial organizations can improve efficiency, enhance customer experiences, and drive better business outcomes. 

For one of our leading clients in Mexico, inefficiencies in its lease platform caused integration gaps, reporting challenges, and manual processes that hindered call center performance. We automated dealer communication, digitized third-party vendor data, and updated Salesforce to address these issues to prevent future business disruptions. As a result, internal processes became more efficient, agent productivity improved, and management gained greater visibility into business operations. 

In another instance, a global financial organization sought to unify its marketing processes by consolidating multiple marketing automation platforms into Salesforce Marketing Cloud Engagement (MCE). Perficient developed a roadmap and architecture integrating multiple CRMs using Multi-Org in MCE and companion orgs in Data Cloud. 

This solution provided the marketing team with a centralized data hub, enabling consistent workflows, advanced segmentation, and seamless cross-organization communication.

• Manufacturing  

Manufacturing companies often face challenges in consolidating data from multiple systems and ensuring seamless sales operations. Perficient has helped industry leaders use Salesforce to streamline workflows, enhance data visibility, and drive revenue growth. 

For a leading manufacturer, the need to consolidate key sales data and generate actionable insights was critical to identifying new business opportunities. Perficient’s Agile global delivery team developed a custom digital sales analytics tool, integrating Google Cloud’s data storage and Tableau’s reporting into the Salesforce interface with a real-time API. This solution provided sales and marketing teams with a single, user-friendly platform to research prospects, follow up efficiently, and generate leads based on detailed asset and account data. As a result, productivity improved, and the company gained a scalable system for driving future revenue. 

Interested in learning more about our work within the manufacturing space? Click here.  

• Data 

In today’s digital-first world, businesses need a solid data foundation to deliver seamless, personalized experiences. For companies rolling out Agentforce, integrating Salesforce Data Cloud is a game-changer. By unifying customer data across multiple sources, Data Cloud enables agents and brokers to gain real-time insights, improve customer engagement, and make informed decisions that drive business growth. 

With AI-powered analytics, Salesforce Data Cloud enhances personalization by equipping sales teams with predictive insights, helping them anticipate customer needs and tailor interactions. Additionally, its scalability and security make it a future-proof solution for growing organizations. By centralizing and optimizing data, businesses can empower their teams to operate with agility and precision. 

READ MORE: Learn how Salesforce Data Cloud is transforming sales and customer engagement across industries. 

Insights From the Salesforce Manufacturing Summit 2025 

Our team had the opportunity to participate in the Salesforce Manufacturing Summit in Atlanta, an event that brought together over 800 attendees with more than 40 sessions and 20 product demonstrations. It was an exciting space for industry leaders, peers, and customers to engage in meaningful discussions about the future of manufacturing, with a strong focus on innovation and digital transformation. 

A key highlight of the summit was the increasing role of Generative AI in manufacturing, particularly within Salesforce’s Agentforce and Data Cloud solutions. These technologies are set to transform the industry by streamlining operations, enhancing efficiency, and improving customer satisfaction. According to the Salesforce State of Manufacturing Survey 2024, over 80% of manufacturers are now engaged with Generative AI. 

Salesforce’s Manufacturing Cloud was another major focus, with its goals centered on unifying digital experiences across the value chain. The platform aims to modernize commercial operations by streamlining sales and fulfillment processes, simplifying partner engagement by enhancing collaboration with suppliers and channel partners, and transforming service experiences by improving customer interactions and field service operations. 

The summit also featured exciting announcements, including new integrations with Revenue Cloud, agent-first field service capabilities, and expanded manufacturing-specific skills for Agentforce. These innovations further reinforce Salesforce’s commitment to helping manufacturers optimize operations and stay ahead in an evolving landscape. 

Read the full article here to dive deeper into the key takeaways, trends, and insights from the Salesforce Manufacturing Summit 2025. 

Join Our Salesforce Team   

If you’re ready to take the next step in your career and join a Salesforce team that’s leading the charge in digital transformation, we’d love to hear from you. With roles available such as lead technical consultant, senior project manager, and solutions architect, there’s a place for you to make an impact.  

Explore our open roles and become part of a global team dedicated to solving complex business problems through the power of Salesforce.   

Learn about current opportunities here. 

By joining Perficient, you’re not just advancing your career. You’re becoming part of a global community striving to shatter boundaries, obsess over outcomes, and forge the future.  

Omnichannel fulfillment methods such as curbside, buy-online, pick-up in-store (BOPIS), and ship-from-store have become extremely familiar to retailers, especially due to the climate of the COVID-19 pandemic. These methods are very resourceful and beneficial when utilized correctly and tailored specifically to each business. Understanding the technology systems the enable these fulfillment methods are important for successfully driving positive, enhanced customer experiences, and retailers need to rely on omnichannel fulfillment as a main source of delivery for seamless customer buying experiences, even in post-COVID-19. I recently participated in IBM’s live webinar series, LinkedIn LIVE, to discuss omnichannel fulfillment as a main source of delivery for customers.

Curbside is Your Friend, Not Your Foe

Curbside pick-up and BOPIS is not a new concept to most retailers, but COVID-19 has accelerated the usage of these omnichannel fulfillment tactics for retailers everywhere, especially for those who have not explored them yet. Using an omnichannel strategy may be intimidating at first, but it is important to remember that these methods are convenient, safe, help customers shop quicker, and reduce shipping costs for businesses.

Do it Your Way, Do it Right, and Do it Differently

Many of our own clients felt the demand to enable omnichannel fulfillment, and while it is always great to see clients and other retailers invest in these capabilities, it is more important to utilize them in the right way.

Providing curbside pickup experiences will not only be beneficial to customers but to businesses as well. For example, geofencing creates an instant connection between customer and retailer, allowing the customer to notify the retailer through the retailer’s mobile app when they start their journey to pick up their order and when they arrive in the parking lot. Geofencing prepares retailers for the customer’s arrival and allows for seamless and quick interactions between retailer and customer.

Measure These Methods

Retailers need to understand the metrics of their omnichannel fulfillment methods, such as how quickly stores can fulfill a curbside pickup, how often they are delivering the product most conveniently, how safe the product delivery is, and so on. By doing so, retailers can successfully tell if their specific strategy is proving to be effective.

Your Omnichannel Fulfillment Line-Up is Key

Retailers should recognize that there are several ways to utilize omnichannel fulfillment, and businesses must remain consistent in their plans and operations to deliver seamless fulfillment solutions for customers to remain ahead of the competition. To learn more about omnichannel fulfillment, contact our commerce experts today.

Much has changed in the world of commerce this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and retailers have had to adapt quickly to circumstances and shift their business models to thrive, especially with their return processes. Customers can’t shop as they normally would, causing complications for customers who aren’t digitally-savvy with online tools, such as a size chart or cart management. As a result, consumers are returning purchases more than they would like to.

I recently participated in IBM’s live webinar series, LinkedIn LIVE, where we discuss the uptick in certain trends that have helped retailers adapt return processes to provide an excellent commerce experience.

How Brands are Adapting

How well businesses adapt depends on how digitally mature the organization is. Less mature retailers that do not automate returns often take more time to process. Digitally mature companies handle these processes differently, and here’s how:

They Modernize In-Store and Online Returns

Traditional returns are an exhaustive process with several steps that neither customer nor business has time for anymore, and digitally mature businesses handle returns in a more sophisticated manner. For example, customers can take their product without packaging it to the store, where they give a return code, and the retailer will take it and go from there. Simple and no hassle involved.

Digitally mature businesses can also achieve sophisticated returns from an omnichannel perspective, meaning customers are able to return an item to any channel regardless of it was purchased online or in-store. These mature retailers have full visibility and capability of managing returns in any way the order was placed. Providing this kind of experience is table stakes for many customers, as many are looking for a holistic, seamless commerce experience.

They Rely Less on Receipts

Many customers do not keep their physical receipts, and the expectation that retailers will ask for receipts during the return process is disappearing. Instead, retailers ask for the credit card used in the transaction, the order number, or even the customer’s email address. Even if the previous credit card is expired, retailers can find new ways to refund through the customer’s new credit card or rewards.

Keep the Sale for Customer Satisfaction

If a product arrives damaged or the wrong order arrives, more often than not, the customer is not required to return the product. Retailers must acknowledge that the order failed to come through correctly and supply the customer with a brand new product or exchange it without having the customer worry about dealing with the return process and for retailers getting the product back only to salvage is not a cost-effective process. For example, Target’s mobile app has a “Fix an Issue” capability that allows customers to seek help with a product they ordered. After receiving the request, Target will replace or exchange the product completely free of charge. Retailers can offer appeasements to customers, such as a discount on an order if other issues occur such as delayed shipping.

Partner with Other Brands for Returns

Businesses are finding new ways to eliminate multiple return processes through collaboration. For example, Business Insider states that just three weeks after Amazon set up return kiosks in Kohl’s stores, Kohl’s gained a 24% increase in foot traffic when customers came in to return their Amazon products, leading customers to stay a lot longer and have a stronger interest to shop after their return. It is a win-win situation for both parties because businesses and customers don’t have to worry about shipping costs, have better shopping experiences, and create stronger relationships with these brands and their customers because of these partnerships.

Simplifying Return Logistics

When a customer returns a product bought with a promotion or discounted price, they expect to receive the amount they paid for it in their return. Customers shouldn’t have to worry about how that process is handled and should be taken care of by the retailer. For example, Kohl’s cash and rewards are used and applied to the order once it is processed. If a customer bought a discounted product and returns the product, Kohl’s return system ensures the exact amount of money and rewards are returned to the customer.

Extension of Returns

Like myself, many customers do not open their orders within the usual 30-day return period, and retailers are starting to realize the importance of extending return periods. Costco provides a 365-day return period for most items and, like many mature retailers, can look up your order through your membership and return it from there. Extending the return period can provide a great experience and ease customer’s minds about the return process.

The Future of Returns

Modernized, seamless return processes have a direct impact on the customer buying journey and making a return possible no matter the conflict or situation will benefit the customer in every way possible. To learn more, contact our commerce experts today.

Over this past year, we have seen a great amount of customer influence introduced and reinforced with our online commerce experiences. Digitalization of online shopping experiences is at the greatest it has ever been, especially the emphasis on creating a safe and exceptional space for customers to shop. I recently participated in IBM’s live webinar series, LinkedIn LIVE, to talk about what we have learned from Cyber Week, which includes Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Here are some reasons why retailers were so successful this past holiday shopping period:

Preparation at its Finest

The COVID-19 pandemic struck every single business with unexpected roadblocks and uncertainty this year, and many of these companies took this as an opportunity to refocus and create a plan that would prepare them for commerce experiences like Cyber Week. Online ordering became more popular than it has ever before once the pandemic forced businesses and stores to close in-store shopping, and businesses were tasked with responding and delivering against surging online demand.

Putting Belief in Omnichannel Fulfillment

Retailers increased their investment in omnichannel and other capabilities such as curbside pickup, ship from store, and buy-online, pick-up in-store (BOPIS) to ensure they were ready for the upcoming peak, as well as streamlined their fulfillment processes in-store and warehouses when they invested in their technology. Enabling inventory visibility and optimization, and scaling across fulfillment centers helped these retailers to address the surge in online demand and scale appropriately to enhance system performance. Walmart converted its regional distribution centers, primarily meant to replenish its stores, into centers where the company could fulfill online commerce orders. Similar to the Walmart experience, some of our retail customers turned their big format stores into dark stores to be able to fulfill online orders faster, reliably, and more efficiently. They accounted for increased labor capacity to pick, pack, and ship customer orders. Businesses now have an idea of how to manage inventory, fulfill customer orders from different stores and warehouses, and invest in technology that will benefit their business and their consumers throughout the commerce journey.

Encouraging Consumers to Shop Online

Before the pandemic, consumers were more used to shopping in-store, especially on Black Friday. This year was different, as many businesses encouraged customers to buy online for a safer and more convenient shopping experience. Retailers started offering Black Friday-type deals weeks before the holiday season and expanded the timeframe of those sales so they can ease the burden on their carriers and ship out their customer orders on time. It is important to reassure consumers that although this may be different from usual, your business will ensure a seamless and easy commerce journey, they will receive their orders and do so from the comfort of their home with the knowledge that the businesses have the capabilities to fulfill online orders.

The Advantages of these Takeaways

These Cyber Week trends have more businesses recognizing the advantages of investing in technologies, plans, and processes to evolve omnichannel experiences and elevate the digital maturity of commerce processes to benefit their consumers. Although companies must take every day as it comes, we can feel assured that these emerging trends and new shopping touchpoints are here to stay for years to come. To learn more, contact our commerce experts today.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses have had to transform how they interact and assist their consumers completely. Many retail or consumer goods businesses have had to switch from traditional, in-person shopping experiences to digital buying. This transition is never the easiest for either party, but businesses must adapt and step up their game when accommodating and providing a seamless shopping experience for their customers.

I recently participated in IBM’s live webinar series, LinkedIn LIVE, to talk about customer experience, and whether good customer service is enough to provide a sincere customer experience during these unprecedented times. Here are tips discussed to ensure customers receive the best shopping experience in conjunction with an unexpected, digital switch.

Stay One Step Ahead of Consumer Expectations

With or without a pandemic, customer expectations are always evolving, especially as the experience between physical and digital shopping is converging. Bridge that gap, make it convenient, consistent, and channel-agnostic of how and where the customer shops. It may seem tricky molding these two together, but shifting the focus towards understanding and serving your consumers is the main priority.

Understanding Customers and the Experiences They Demand

With your customer in the center of it all, the last thing your business wants to do is create a poor customer experience. In the midst of the pandemic, it is paramount to provide your customers with the most safest and convenient way to shop with your brand. For example, curbside pick-up has become extremely resourceful to consumers during these unprecedented times. If your business failed to deliver a good curbside order experience, the chances of retaining this customer for the future are slim.

Modern consumers hyper-adopt and hyper-abandon brands because many of the products they shop for are available at another retailer. Customers remember the last best experience they had with a brand, they will stay or convert if you meet or exceed that experience. Find ways to be very relevant when you target and market to your existing and future customers. Offering a loyalty program to your customers is necessary. Take advantage of the customer activity data to power your marketing and personalization engines.

Communication is Key

With heightened tensions and greater levels of confusion than usual, stabilizing communication across all touchpoints of your business ensures consumers that there is a business they can rely on to help them. Notify customers on their order status, new product arrivals, inventory positions, delivery, and tracking information. Retailers can use multiple ways of communication such as emails, text, and social media. Remember, every touchpoint or communication opportunity you get with your customer and don’t forget to market your brand or products. Comforting your consumers through constant communication can make for an effective and incredible customer experience.

Creating the Opportunity to Excel

These times are difficult to comprehend and the path to purchasing includes many shifts, road bumps, and distractions. If businesses focus more on providing the customer with the best customer experience possible in conjunction with the state of the world, then the opportunities for both consumers and businesses will be endless. In a way, these disruptions are teaching us to be innovative and explore ways to make the businesses operate more efficiently and bring value to their customers.

To find out more, contact our commerce experts today.

With companies looking to reduce costs and increase agility, many are looking to move their CMS to the cloud. Adobe offers two cloud solutions for Adobe Experience Manager (AEM): Adobe Managed Services (AMS) and AEM Cloud Service. For existing on-premises customers, AMS is a lighter lift as it is closer to on-premise architectures.

Is AMS a Fit?

The first question to ask is: is AMS a fit? AMS is not the best solution for all customers. AMS is good for organizations with a single development team, simple/limited integrations, and limited internal technical teams. Teams with complex integrations, extensive DevOps capabilities, or multiple teams will find AMS limiting.

Once you’ve validated that AMS makes sense for your organization, here’s how you can make sure your AMS migration is a success!

Environment and Stack

• Consider how to integrate existing CI/CD pipelines with Adobe Cloud Manager. Cloud Manager’s limitations can have a ripple effect on code and configuration changes, e.g. possible consolidation of multiple AEM projects.
• This Jenkins plug-in for Adobe Cloud Manager can trigger deployments from Jenkins.
• The selection of your Adobe Managed Services CSE is very important as there tends to be a wide variance in knowledge and personalities.
• Use Adobe IMS for federated authentication with Creative Cloud and Experience Cloud. This will make login scenarios simpler for your internal users as well as partners.

Application / Development Practices

• Evaluate integration patterns to ensure they use publicly available API endpoints or endpoints which can be whitelisted by IP
• Setup of a local SonarQube instance to identify issues and speed-up development once you are in a steady-state
• Evaluate customizations to the AEM JAR execution or dispatcher configuration to ensure compatibility

Migration and Testing

• Evaluate different tools for the physical migration based on the scope / size, e.g. VLT RCP vs Oak Backups vs Packages (which tend to be cumbersome when they get too large)
• Leverage automated migration and testing to expedite the process
• Crawl the site for backlinks and combine with historical analytics to identify key pages to perform manual testing

Rollout and Go-Live

• Be prepared to allow extra time in your project to meet requirements mandated by Adobe Managed Services. E.g. code coverage, dispatcher configurations, OSGi configurations
• Plan in advance for performance testing. Adobe Cloud Manager does a very limited check, but it is not sufficient for go-live validation
• Plan go-live well ahead of time as Adobe CSEs only work business hours in local time zones and have a large number of off days
• If go-live is outside of CSE working hours, notify them at least a month ahead of time

Next – to the Cloud!

Adobe Managed Services may run in a cloud environment, but to get to true Cloud Native capabilities you want to get to AEM Cloud Service. To help customers get started on their Cloud roadmap, Adobe is offering convertible contracts where you can start on AMS and then convert to AEM Cloud Service.

If you need some time to pay down technical debt or make architectural changes, moving to AMS is a great first step to uncouple your implementation before going all-in on cloud. Need help with your Adobe Cloud strategy? We’re here to help!

Sitecore 10 is here! And with it comes some exciting new features - from improving the content experience to new analytics tools and evolving to a stronger integration with Content Hub.  

With the release of Sitecore 10, our digital and content strategists at Perficient wanted to dig into the new features. Working with these strategists, Monique Anderson, a Perficient marketing manager, interviewed them to explore some of the new features. 

Content Hub and CMP

To start, Rick Bauer, a Sitecore Digital Strategy MVP, updated us on Content Hub. From reminiscing about Content Hub’s beginnings to where it is today, Rick covers modules including Digital Asset Management (DAM), Content Marketing Platform (CMP), and more. Rick talks about how additional integration between Sitecore and Content Hub could lead to making Content Hub’s CMP the place to build content, with Sitecore being one of the channels to distribute it through.  Additionally, Rick discusses the new field types that have been added and the new functionality to pull marketing taxonomies into Content Hub.  Listen for Rick’s take on Content Hub’s DAM replacing the media library! 

Segmentation Matters 

For marketers, analytics are used to determine the effectiveness of content and the need to create new, more relevant content. But how can you know what content each segment of your audience is interested in? Megan Jensen (MJ), a Perficient Digital Strategist, went over the new advanced audience segmentation feature. While she mentions that this functionality to filter by segment has been available in previous versions of Sitecore before Sitecore 10 the implementation required some MacGyver-ing and was not very flexible. In the new release, segments can be applied as a filter to Experience Analytics reports with a few clicks to get really rich insight about these segments.  

Update on SXA and SCORE

In addition to the new features in Sitecore 10, the Sitecore Experience Accelerator (SXA) also debuts new functionality and fixes. Sitecore Digital Strategy MVP, Jo Troxell, delves into the fixes for personalization within Snippets and Partial Designs as well as his favorite new feature, A/B testing a component within a Partial Design! Jo pointed out that SCORE, Perficient’s own Sitecore accelerator, already had this feature for two years and many clients have enjoyed taking advantage to test global content on their sites. So if this is a feature you’re interested in, upgrading to Sitecore 10 and/or getting Perficient SCORE might be for you! 

Horizon and Experience Editor

Lastly, we have Jim Petillo, a Sitecore Ambassador MVP, who spoke about how he is really excited about Horizon, Sitecore’s new authoring experience that improves upon the WYSIWYG Experience Editor. For seasoned content authors like Jim, specific features such as the ability to edit some Content Editor fields within Horizon, the new autosave feature, and Undo/Redo buttons will definitely improve their productivity and workflow. Jim briefs us on Horizon’s simulator mode, an improvement from the previous Experience Explorer, allowing content authors to review their pages on different devices as well as different days and times in case you might have any time-based rules. And what would all of these features be without a bit of analytics? Horizon includes Page Insights to give content authors and even marketers a quick look at the performance of a page.

And there you have it! While these features are not an all-inclusive list of what Sitecore 10 has to offer, our strategists are confident you’ll be excited for those mentioned. If you haven’t already, take a look! Don’t forget to leave a comment and we look forward to sharing more on Sitecore Sessions, Vol 2!  

What is CPQ?

In the B2B industry, complicated products and a large catalog can make providing a quote a lengthy process, often generating inaccurate product configurations and quotes. The same order may vary in price depending on factors like your relationship with the client, the promotions you’re offering, product bundles, accounts with recurring orders, and more. A configure price quote (CPQ) solution can set you apart from the competition with the ability to provide accurate, compliant, configurable quotes in real-time. 

There are various indicators that your business could benefit from a CPQ solution, including: 

Complex Products

For manufacturers with complex customizable products with extensive variables, the rules of configuration for those products can be difficult to manage. Without a system to manage the cost effects of these various variables and maintain changes in those values, your business may be resorting to providing complex quotes manually. This could result in quotes for the wrong products or at inaccurate costs. A CPQ with a user-friendly interface and intelligent inventory data management factors in all the variables that affect pricing to simplify the process.

Inaccurate Pricing

Inaccurate quotes are a detriment to both your business and your customers. By over-pricing an order, you may drive your clients to look to your competition for lower prices which is frustrating for them and an overall negative customer experience, and end with you losing a customer and that revenue. By under-pricing in a quote, your customers come to expect a lower price even if it’s inaccurate and means you’re losing revenue. Either way, you end up leaving money on the table and creating a bigger headache for you.

Wasted Time and Resources

Tracking all the complex factors that go into price configuration is not only difficult to do manually, but extremely time intensive. Rather than having members of your team waiting for quote requests to come in and then spending time to calculate a price manually, a CPQ system uses your defined workflows and inputs to generate effective price and allow your employees to focus on more pressing matters.

The Customer Experience

Just like today’s B2C consumers, modern B2B buyers want instant results and answers to their queries. Rather than selecting their variables, submitting a quote request, and waiting for a representative from your business to call them with an answer, you can use a CPQ system to provide an immediate answer and seamless customer experience. That means you have a shorter time to market, thus beating your competition to the sale, and your customers get their orders faster.

Do You Need a CPQ?

A CPQ solution is just one facet of the B2B commerce stack. Whatever technology challenges your business is facing, a CPQ can seamlessly integrate into existing systems to provide value, such as an enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform, a product information management (PIM) system, and more. Not sure how or where to start? A partner can help perform an evaluation to find out what areas of your business and your tech stack could benefit from a tightly integrated CPQ solution. Contact us to find out more.

In the midst of COVID-19, we as individuals are faced with personal challenges, including keeping ourselves and our families safe. For businesses, and especially retailers, the challenges continue as you look to support the struggling economy and maintain sales while in-store traffic is significantly reduced.

To remain agile during this time – and during any disruption to your supply chain – retailers should take advantage of an omnichannel strategy and rules-driven order management system to adjust the way you do business throughout the disruption. With the correct technology and strategy in place, you are prepared to make instant changes to your supply chain and reduce product fulfillment issues for your end customers.

Here are three order management strategies you can use to adjust during this unknown environment.

1. Ship-from-Store
   • While retail locations remain open, take advantage of that network to reduce operational costs and expedite shipping. Utilize in-store teams to carry out fulfillment tasks, as they have increased capacity due to lower-than-normal traffic.
2. Distribution Center-Only Shipping
   • While a lot of retailers are closing stores and/or reducing hours of operation, it’s important that your order management system automatically adjusts and fulfills customer orders from your distribution centers. This strategy looks simple, but it can only be executed correctly with an order management system that understands the reduced labor capacity and other restrictions.
3. Same-Day Delivery
   • Use your physical locations and order management system to identify nearby locations with inventory and deliver to nearby customers in need. In the current climate, it’s most pressing for merchants who carry everyday essentials – like groceries, personal products, and cleaning supplies. But as customer expectations are set, we’ll start to see this become the standard across other products and industries – like clothing, furniture, and decor.

We are currently working with our retail clients to modify their order management roadmaps to react to the current COVID-19 situation. For example, one of our beauty retailer clients quickly shifted their priorities to enable ship-from-store capabilities to address the current supply chain challenges. Understanding the importance of serving their clients, we are working around the clock to get this functionality rolled out in three weeks.

Depending on your organization’s digital maturity, enabling new order fulfillment capabilities does not require a large investment or extended roadmap. And, it will result in not only a significant ROI but an increase in your overall customer experience, both in times of uncertainty and times of stability.

If you’re having supply chain challenges in the current crisis, please reach out to our experts who can provide mission-critical advice to get you through.

What’s so funny?

You may have noticed our blog has a new name–goodbye Brainjuice Box, hello Jockularity! And many of you may be wondering “what’s up with that”? As we’ve grown this blog over the last few years, we’ve come to love this community even more than we thought we could. You’ve been an awesome tribe. Sharing your thoughts on all things digital and helping us expand the conversation into areas we never imagined. You’ve been with us through launch, Symposiums, that A-Z series–all of it. And we have been honored to share these stories with you, and bring your stories back into the site as well. But it’s time to make a change.

And we’re not kidding (we’ll wait–go look up the word jockularity!).

We’ve redesigned and renamed the site because we want one thing–inclusion. We want this to be a space for everyone to participate. Whether you’re a digital strategist, a content editor, a developer or a seasoned exec, we want Jockularity to be your number one choice for content, community and connection…and if we can bring some fun to the mix, then we’ll honor the name we’ve chosen.

So dig right in. All the content we’ve posted is still here, and we’ll continue to feature the best that Brainjocks has to offer. Learn from the best experts on MarTech, Strategy, and CX as they continue to navigate the digital world, and we’ll continue to feature the freshest voices and viewpoints to arm you with the knowledge you need.

We’ll keep it intelligent, informative and hopefully at least a little fun. And that’s no joke.

Brainjocks is globally known as a thought leader in content management. We approach CMS differently and our enablement focus is one that we promote on behalf of our customers throughout everything we do, including our technology development. In fact, we’ve been delivering a modularized approach to CMS based on the principles of atomic design for almost 10 years. If you haven’t seen our SCORE approach to content management, you’re in for a treat. We even have a new release of our accelerator module, SCORE for Episerver, being released very soon.

In fact, we’ve been delivering a modularized approach to CMS based on the principles of atomic design for almost 10 years now.

Epijocks Episerver Blog

We are proud to launch this new blog and are excited about sharing more about our approach. We’ll share all the tips and tricks we’ve learned in our Episerver implementations. We’ll use this space to share not just technical expertise, but also anything related to Episerver content authoring, digital marketing strategies and the MarTech space in general. If it’s about Epi or would be important to Epi users and partners, it’s fair game! It is our goal to serve the Epi community and we hope you’ll find Epijocks educational, and maybe even a little entertaining, as we grow together.

Join us as we venture forward. Go ahead and comment or connect with us in any way you feel inspired! We are excited about building a community with you.

Ascend takes over Miami Beach Fountainebleu

With an all new location this year, Episerver’s Ascend conference was held at the Miami Beach Fountainebleu the 27th-29th of October. Ascend is a three-day event for digital marketers, developers and commerce leaders to share strategies for driving growth through digital innovations. 

We were proud to kick off their inaugural participation as Platinum sponsors, and we also announced SCORE for Episerver. Previews of the SCORE module for Epi were given as demos at our booth. If you missed it, no worries! You can still request your own personal preview.

The largest Ascend to date, the over 750 attendees were offered 7 session tracks from Product and Labs, to Developer, to Marketing and Strategy.

Personalization Pointers: Building a Compelling Business Case

Director of Digital Strategy Jill Grozalsky was one of our favorite presenters on day 1 of Ascend. You can see a post show overview of their presentation below.

As they do at every event, Episerver continues to be a thought-leader in the CXM space, rolling out enhancements to the platform, of course with the two major headlines this year around the acquisition of IDIO and Insite.

Ascend 2019 Photo Gallery