Integrated eCommerce Video Storyboard

Hi, Ron from Clarity. I’m here to introduce you to Clarity’s Integrated eCommerce solution, where we take our eCommerce platform and integrate with your back-office applications, like your ERP or CRM.

Overview Slide

Let’s take a quick drive through the out of the box storefront. The first thing we’ll do is go searching for product by mis-spelling the name. The elastic search engine’s fuzzy logic matching displays items close to my spelling, and it’s predictive auto-fill shows me the results. Next we’ll go look at the built-in mega menu, where I’ve created a few graphics and uploaded them for each category. We’ll take a quick look at the Electronics.

On the left of the catalog view we’ve got the category, pricing and attribute filters, which are dynamic, along with the counts of each, another search box, and the comparison engine.

On the right, we have the typical sorting filters, plus the standard grid and list views. One B2B view we’ve added is the table view. This allows you to quickly view every product within a category, seeing the price, stock quantity, and adding them easily to your checkout cart.

Let’s check out the Acer laptop today. Magic Zoom and magic scroll allow us to zoom and check out all the uploaded images. The numerous lists and request a quote are on the right. One B2B option, allows you to create any number of custom lists.

Attributes can also allow HTML markup and be turned on as tabs, as the bulleted specs here. You can see I’ve created a nice-looking list of all the laptop features, and then embedded a YouTube video in the Notes attribute that shows a demo of the laptop. The long description shows a number of views of the laptop, some text and a model comparison, and finally at the bottom, I’ve included a few upgrades and accessories for the laptop.

For those in marketing, that are interested in increasing UI/UX and sales conversions, we can do custom elements, such as this upsell opportunity at checkout to save 10%, by switching to quarterly billing. For something more straight-forward though, let’s go look at the ram. Once loaded, you can see that this product is displaying a different HTML template, where on the right sidebar, we’ve included our recently viewed products, keeping them in our sight so we don’t forget to buy those too, as well as another list of similar products within the electronics category. These lists are customizable and used to help personalize the shopping experience.

Other layouts, such as this dress’s, is helpful when we want to completely change the way we showcase our products or services. This layout is more about the vertical and graphical display of the clothing and any related pieces that we want the user to see. Gone are the specs and anything getting in the way of clearly seeing the beautiful clothing.

One final view I’ll showcase, is where we have a 1 to many SKU. That means that one image, in this case an Amazon Echo, can represent many different colors, sizes or variants. So in this template, I’ve added the ability to order any number of all the colors and add to cart at the same time.

Now that we understand the catalog, let’s go look at how quickly we can re-order. First off, in the checkout cart, we’ve added a quick add feature, where you can type any part of a product’s SKU, name or short description, and it will provide matches automatically that can be added to the cart with a single click.

Checkout allows you to decide if you force a login or allow guest checkout. I’m already logged in, so onto selecting or entering a billing address on file, then onto shipping. We allow split shipping before estimating, so I’ll send one product to each location, and once the estimates are back, will select one from FedEx, and the other from UPS. For the payment options, we’ve integrated hundreds of payments gateways, but credit card, ACH and net terms are the OOTB payment options. I enter my PO number, confirm the order and we’re done. The cart separated out the sub-orders, since the items are fulfilled by 2 different vendors, allowing us to track independently.

In my Account, the default dashboard shows me my most recent orders, invoices and quote requests. I can click into any of them to check shipping details or look for a tracking status.

In my account settings, since its built for B2B as well, we have both our user and company profiles, tax exempt status and more. The address book allows me to define my own addresses, but checkout can be populated with additional addresses from the ERP integration. The wallet is a PCI compliant wallet.

When checking orders, I can filter on any order status or date, finding orders placed in Q3 of last year for example. I can drill into any order to view details, print them, or even reorder items.

Invoices are the same, being able to view details from any invoice, re-ordering from them and finally paying them online, even selecting a card from my PCI compliant wallet. The platform has 36 built-in notifications, for example when your orders are updated, or invoices are posted.

For those that order or re-order frequently, we have wish lists, favorites and custom shopping lists, where you can create many lists for any re-curing things like monthly office purchases, or upcoming needs, such as events or annual yard maintenance. Finally, there’s an in-stock alert that automatically emails you when your product that was out of stock is in.

Let’s go look at the types of integrations you can have with your solution:

Types of Integrations Slide

There are 3 main architectural types of integrations: Connect is designed, out of the box, to handle all these scenarios and more complex/hybrid scenarios as well.

  • The first are the Cloud-to-On-premises integrations. These are the most common. An example would be a small to mid-sized company integrating their WooCommerce storefront with their QuickBooks software to automatically process online orders and payments.
  • The second moves the back-office application to the cloud, so everything is now running in the cloud. An example would be a Shopify storefront integrated with Sage100c (cloud), Salesforce or QuickBooks online.
  • The last model happens all behind the client’s firewall. These integrations are used to integrate and automate a company’s full back-office applications into a fully automated solution. Your accounting software talks to your ERP. The ERP talks to the warehouse. The warehouse to manufacturing, etc.

Connect is designed, out of the box, to handle all these scenarios and more complex/hybrid scenarios as well.

Cloud to On-Premises Slide
  • The most common integrations are cloud to On-premises. This is where we integrate your ERP into your online storefront to automate the posting of products, pricing updates, invoices, inventory, as well as updating your customer’s order and shipping status (to name a few examples). This is also common for integrating patient portals into a hospital’s EMR.
  • From the eCommerce side, the integration automates user registration, sales order processing, invoice payments, quote requests and much more.
  • Connect has a persistent, bi-directional connection which can run an unlimited number of tasks in either real time, or on a schedule. For example, while sales orders get pushed in real time to the ERP (to ensure shipping goes out on time), inventory updates from the ERP back to eCommerce might only get pulled once an hour.
  • In this scenario, Connect is normally installed behind your firewall to talk securely to your back-office application, then configured to communicate outside the firewall only with the eCommerce or portal solution. This provides complete control over redundancy and security with your back-office application(s).

Connect is designed, out of the box, to handle all these scenarios and more complex/hybrid scenarios as well.

Cloud-to-Cloud
  • Another popular integration starts with your eCommerce or online portal in the cloud needing to be integrated with another SaaS-based application.
  • These integrations are common with NetSuite, Salesforce, Microsoft 365 applications, QuickBooks online and many more.
  • In this scenario, Connect is also installed in the cloud with application specific access restrictions to enable a fully SaaS-based and secure integration solution.
Cloud-to-Cloud
  • Another popular integration starts with your eCommerce or online portal in the cloud needing to be integrated with another SaaS-based application.
  • These integrations are common with NetSuite, Salesforce, Microsoft 365 applications, QuickBooks online and many more.
  • In this scenario, Connect is also installed in the cloud with application specific access restrictions to enable a fully SaaS-based and secure integration solution.
On-prem to On-Prem
  • Every project begins with a technical discovery where a Clarity Business Analyst works with your team to document all the available data fields and workflows that can be integrated with each of your company’s applications, helping you define the ones you need to drive and achieve your business goals.
  • Typical integrations are usually bi-directional and will integrate the creation of user accounts on the portal side, pushing sales orders, invoice payments, return and quote requests into the Back-office ERP or CRM.
  • To improve their customer’s user experience, the reverse integration would typically push product updates, inventory counts, order and shipping status and control all the customer-specific information in the portal, such as custom pricing, purchasing terms and invoicing (for example).
  • Although these may be the typical integration workflows, with over 3,000 integrations under our belt, we help clients automate, customize and improve many other business processes and custom workflows.
Clarity eCommerce Implementation

Let’s take a look at an integrated Clarity eCommerce implementation. This client of ours had us design and build a B2B storefront, providing supplies to wineries, so let’s buy a big lot of wine bottles and see how this client’s integration with Microsoft Dynamics GP both improves the buyer’s experience, as well as automates the back-office processes.

Let’s go shopping for some wine bottles. Now, there are prices for each bottle in the catalog, however, I’m not logged in yet. The integration looked up the retail uplift for each bottle and calculated the prices that you’re seeing. It also checked to see if each product was in stock or not, to help improve the speed and accuracy of the shopping experience.

Next, we’ll adjust our filters for Bordeaux, 750ml and finally our favorite colors. We’ll pick these 3 that are similar so we can quickly compare them side by side, before deciding on the blue one. Once on the page, you can see that the exact stock count is displayed, another field pulled from the integration. Now, some custom work we did for this client allows their customers to add to cart, add to quote request or request a sample bottle. Each of these cart workflows go to different departments, thus the separate carts.

Let’s go ahead and checkout. One of the custom workflows we built checks the bottle’s exact requirements for stacking and lets us know that we have to purchase this bottle in cases of 16. So let’s grab 4200 bottles and update our cart. Now we can see that this is quite expensive, at over $44,000. For new visitors, we’ve added the ability to convert this to a quote request, since we’re buying so many. For us, however, we’ll just log in. You can see that the integration has looked me up, seeing that I’m Lee from Black Star Farms, also that we’re a defined partner with tiered pricing and has recalculated our cost, lowering the price per bottle to $9.81 which has resulted in a $7000 dollar savings.

Here on the right, it’s also pulled in our billing address since the ERP says that I’m approved to purchase on account. Next we’ll go to shipping.

For this client, we’ve integrated 8 different LTL carriers, as well as UPS for the smaller items. The solution has calculated the shipping rates for these carriers based on the….. 38 pallets that will be shipped, automatically looking up the address, and in this case seeing that we’re less than 100 miles away from Brick, is providing us free local delivery with no pallet core charges. However, if I swap the shipping location to the Indy warehouse, you can see that the free shipping option is no longer available, and we’ve tacked on a $7.50 core charge for each pallet. We provide the ability to customize your receiving information, adjust your shipping accessorials, before finally moving onto our payment options.

I’ll pay on terms, entering my PO number and confirming my order. The order receipt is done in real-time, allowing me to view or print it. I’ll just head into my Account Dashboard. You’ll notice that the checkout cart has been cleared and my order has been submitted for processing. I can even go in, review my order, cancel it or re-order the items again.

Quote requests, order and tracking statuses, returns and invoicing can all be automated with the integration as well.

Summary Slide
  • So in summary, Clarity provides a robust and customizable eCommerce platform for your B2C and B2B needs
  • Integrated with your back-office ERP or CRM
  • In any architectural configuration, whether in the cloud, on-prem or both
  • We offer the solution in both a one-time license, with no ongoing or annual fees, or SaaS-based monthly pricing, whether you need Capex or Opex billing.
  • All administrative access to the solution is provided, allowing you to both maintain and manage the solution yourself. You can also get a copy of the source code if you want.

For more information on getting your own integrated eCommerce solution, give us a call or visit us online at clarity dash ventures dot com.

Thanks for watching.