Cloud Retail: Developing a Robust Online Shopping Ecosystem

Shuvam Aich

University of Stuttgart, Germany

Paper Written as a part of

Service Management and Cloud Computing

Taught By,

Dr. phil. Kristof Klöckner, Universitätsstraße 38, Stuttgart 70569, Germany

Abstract. This paper presents a cloud-native approach for developing software solutions tailored to emerging online retail businesses. It outlines a comprehensive architectural framework covering website development, blog integration, inventory management, payment processing, customer relationship management, and analytics. Recommendations are provided for selecting appropriate technologies, ensuring security, availability, and performance, and managing operations and lifecycle. Emphasizing adaptability and scalability, the paper offers insights for practitioners seeking to design cloud-native solutions for online retail.

Keywords: Cloud computing, Salesforce, Ecommerce.

1             Introduction

A cloud-native approach conforming to industry best practices for developing the software for an emerging online retail business would involve using a combination of in-house developed services and third-party services. The major components of the solution, such as the website, blog, inventory service, payment service, and customer relationship service, would be developed in-house. For integration with third-party services, APIs and standardized protocols can be used to ensure seamless communication and data exchange between different components. Security, availability, and performance can be ensured by implementing best practices such as encryption, redundancy, load balancing, and monitoring. Operations and the lifecycle of the solution can be managed using DevOps practices, automation, and continuous integration and deployment. To adapt to changing business and customer needs, the solution can be designed to be scalable and flexible, utilizing cloud-native technologies such as virtual machines, containers, and serverless stacks. The development process can follow agile methodologies, with cross-functional teams and regular feedback loops to ensure efficient and iterative development.

1.1         Approach

In today's digital age, online retail businesses must be able to adapt quickly to changing market conditions and customer demands. To achieve this, businesses need a robust and scalable software development platform that can streamline their operations and improve their customer experience. Salesforce, a cloud-based platform, offers a cloud-native approach to software development that is becoming increasingly popular in the industry. This paper will explore the concept of cloud-native development, industry best practices for developing software using Salesforce. Salesforce is a versatile software encompassing customer relationship management and cloud computing functionalities. It not only features Sales and Service cloud platforms tailored for customer-oriented organizations but also offers additional capabilities such as marketing automation, analytics, and application development through the Salesforce platform. Both of these components aim to foster closer connections within our society. Utilizing Salesforce enables businesses to efficiently address customer issues, whether they reach out via email or various social media channels. One of its key features is multitenancy, where multiple tenants or organizations share common resources like infrastructure, hardware, and code. This approach helps to reduce the total cost of ownership as each tenant's data is securely partitioned and hardware/code resources can be shared among users. Additionally, automatic upgrades ensure parity among all users' data.

               While AWS offers many valuable services, it requires a higher level of technical expertise to work with than Salesforce. In terms of features and benefits, both Salesforce and AWS offer unique advantages. Salesforce is known for its ease of use and intuitive user interface, making it accessible to professionals in a variety of roles. Moreover, as the industry is slowly moving to a “no-code, low code” era, Salesforce clearly becomes a better option.

1.2         Development Process and Organization

The development process would follow agile methodologies, with cross-functional teams responsible for different components of the solution.

2             Design and Architecture

To construct comprehensive solutions catering to customer requirements throughout the entire purchasing journey, we need to provide integrated solutions spanning various teams and technology platforms. The reference architecture serves as a means to convey the vision and strategy of a solution to business executives and stakeholders. [1]

The website back-end will be located natively on Salesforce using the force.com platform. Primarily, it will consist of Visualforce pages, but the use of Lightning components will be assessed at a later date as they become more readily available. The back-end services will mainly be orchestrated through the usage of Sites, which allows for public access to certain parts of the back end as seen fit by the developer. An example would be providing access to a customer's order history and allowing them to modify personal details. At the time of writing, it is our understanding that Lightning components cannot be used with Site pages. Therefore, Lightning components could be an option for store administrators if the platform becomes suitable within the next year.

2.1         Website

Salesforce provides the capability to establish a Commerce Cloud instance, offering a range of tools for configuring our website, such as setting locales, currencies, and customer groups. This includes various site components like templates, layouts, and UI elements such as headers, footers, and navigation menus.

Salesforce provides the capability to establish a Commerce Cloud instance, offering a range of tools for configuring our website, such as setting locales, currencies, and customer groups. This includes various site components like templates, layouts, and UI elements such as headers, footers, and navigation menus.

Product Catalog Management facilitates the importation and management of product data, encompassing descriptors, images, pricing, and inventory levels. Products will be systematically categorized, and to enhance user experience, an advanced search functionality with filtering and sorting options will be integrated. Furthermore, Commerce Cloud's AI-driven personalization tool can be leveraged for tailored product recommendations and targeted content delivery. [2]

The website will be meticulously optimized for mobile devices, ensuring responsiveness across all screen sizes.

2.2         Blog

Creating a blog for an ecommerce website built on Salesforce Commerce Cloud can help us engage with our customers, provide valuable content and improve SEO. Salesforce Commerce Cloud does not have a native blogging platform, so we will have to integrate an external blogging platform or build custom blog functionality.

We can integrate an external blogging platform that suits our needs like WordPress. WordPress stands as the foremost Content Management System (CMS) globally, while Salesforce reigns as the premier Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform. Through seamless integrations facilitating automatic data synchronization between them, WordPress and Salesforce emerge as potent resources for businesses, educational institutions, and nonprofit organizations alike. [3] We can set up our blog, customize the design to match our website’s branding and configure the settings. We will be using a sub-directory (ourwebsite.com/blog) which is preferred for SEO purposes. And the integration of the blog to our website will be done by adding links to the website’s footer and the navigation menu. We will also add a Single Sign On two allow customers to use their existing accounts to comment or interact with the blog content. Posts can be promoted through our website, e-mail newsletters and social media channels.

When visitors engage in activities such as donating, subscribing to newsletters, or registering for events, this data can seamlessly synchronize directly with Salesforce. Additionally, WordPress website can retrieve and showcase information stored within Salesforce. This includes lists of sponsors or grantees, program data, chapter or affiliate details, or any other personalized content tailored to the visitor's profile, all of which can be synchronized effortlessly. Active Salesforce WordPress plugins maintain compatibility and work well with many prebuilt themes. The cost of annual licensing is low ranging from $50 to $300 depending on the package compared to other tools that charge $1000 to $8000 depending on the package.

We can install a range of plugins to support your WordPress website [5]. Some exciting ones include:

• Jetpack can be used to gain features that support social sharing and statistics of your website.

• UpdraftPlus helps in backing up the website.

• Yoast SEO to help with search engine optimization.

• Akismet to assist with any spam comments left on your website.

• Contact Form 7 to help create contact forms for your website.

Choosing a Salesforce and WordPress integration is quite important as this integration will help us improve the accuracy of your data by removing any manual data entry tasks.

2.3         Inventory Service

Implementing an inventory service using Salesforce involves leveraging the platforms capabilities to track products, manage stock levels, and handle orders. Salesforce provides a versatile environment with a variety of tools that can be customized to fit inventory management needs. We need to understand the requirements and define what we need to track our inventory. This could include product names, descriptions, quantities, locations, suppliers and pricing. Then we need to determine the processes that need to be managed, such as procurement, sales, restocking and reporting. Now Salesforce has some standard objects like Products, Orders and Accounts. We can also create custom objects to represent our inventory items, warehouses and other relevant entities. We can customize fields to store all necessary data such as quantity on hand, reorder levels and supplier information. Salesforce even provides us with automation tools for inventory management like process builder, workflow rules or Apex triggers to automate inventory processes such as reordering notifications for low stock and updating stock levels after sales. 

Omnichannel Inventory represents a scalable inventory solution designed to provide near real-time visibility into inventory availability at various locations across all your fulfillment channels. Leveraging the synergy of headless APIs and the adaptability of the Salesforce Platform, Omnichannel Inventory establishes a unified source of truth for inventory availability, benefitting both merchants and shoppers. Seamlessly integrating with Salesforce B2C Commerce, B2B Commerce, D2C Commerce, and Salesforce Order Management, it empowers businesses to offer a comprehensive end-to-end shopping experience on their ecommerce platforms. [4]

The key components of Omnichannel Inventory include:

Omnichannel Inventory Service. A multitenant system comprising headless APIs for retrieving inventory availability data and managing reservations across all fulfillment channels.

Omnichannel Inventory App. A Salesforce console application enabling users to visualize inventory availability across various locations and efficiently manage location details and groups.

Prebuilt Integrations. Built-in tools facilitating seamless integration between Omnichannel Inventory and B2C Commerce and Salesforce Order Management.

Connect REST APIs. Salesforce APIs that offer customization capabilities for enhancing the inventory experience while integrating Omnichannel Inventory with other Salesforce Platform applications such as Salesforce Order Management and B2B Commerce on Lightning Experience.

2.4         Payment Gateway

Salesforce Billing is an additional package that receives essential records and data from Salesforce CPQ. Once a sales representative completes a quote and places an order in Salesforce CPQ, Salesforce Billing takes over the order details for invoicing, payment processing, and recognizing revenue. It's designed to help businesses streamline and automate their billing processes, ensuring accuracy, efficiency, and compliance.

Payment gateways serve as intermediaries facilitating communication between Salesforce Billing and customer banks throughout the payment transaction process. Within Salesforce, payment gateway records hold the necessary information to establish the link between Salesforce Billing and external gateways. These records are associated with payment methods, which in turn are linked to specific accounts. Consequently, all payments made towards an account's invoices are routed through the gateway specified in the account's payment method. However, users retain the flexibility to override payment methods when necessary.

The payment gateway object within Salesforce Billing encompasses precise details necessary for communication with the actual payment gateway, responsible for processing financial requests with the customer's bank.

Configuration of payment gateway objects can involve various default and custom fields tailored to the requirements of the customer's payment gateway. For instance, certain payment gateways may necessitate specific security keys or merchant credential information. Additionally, Salesforce Billing extends support for third-party payment gateway packages, which introduce supplementary fields onto the payment gateway object. [6]

The authorize.net gateway facilitates the acceptance of credit cards, debit cards, and ACH payment types. It offers functionalities such as tokenization, enabling secure storage and processing of payment information. Moreover, it supports various payment operations including charging, processing refunds, and voiding payments, providing comprehensive payment management capabilities. [7]

Salesforce Billing supports the following payment features end-to-end.

·    Tokenization

·    Charge

·    Refund

It also supports the following payment features through API:

Tokenization, Void Token, Authorization, Capture, Get Payment Status, Get Refund Status, Charge, Void, Refund, Void Refund, Non-Referred Refund

2.5         CRM Service

Built on advances in digital information gathering and analytics, Salesforce retail CRM gives customers and retail employees a digital advantage that bridges the gap between retail and ecommerce. [8][9]

By seamlessly integrating retail and ecommerce functionalities, Retail CRM offers a unified platform that caters to the needs of every shopper, combining the advantages of both realms to optimize their overall shopping experience.

Salesforce Retail CRM enhances the shopping experience by offering personalized product information, comparisons, and reviews. It integrates data from all touchpoints to create detailed customer profiles, allowing for personalized offers and recommendations. Endless aisle functionality expands product selection and improves conversion rates by enabling digital browsing and flexible shipping options hence shoppers don’t have to worry about products being out of stock or only available at certain locations. Additionally, CRM optimizes employee productivity with task management tools and access to reliable product information.

Salesforce CRM integrates with various systems and data sources within the retail ecosystem, including eCommerce platforms, point-of-sale (POS) systems, inventory management systems, and marketing automation tools. This integration ensures seamless data flow and enables a unified view of customer information across channels.  Salesforce's AI-powered personalization capabilities to analyze customer data, predict preferences, and deliver personalized product recommendations, offers, and promotions. Salesforce ensures data security and compliance with industry regulations through built-in security features such as role-based access controls, encryption, audit trails, and compliance certifications. This ensures the protection of sensitive customer information and maintains trust with stakeholders.

Salesforce CRM provides a robust case management system to track and resolve customer complaints efficiently. When a customer submits a complaint through any channel, whether it's email, phone, social media, or in-store, a case is created in the CRM system automatically. With Salesforce CRM, all customer interactions and communications related to complaints are centralized within the platform. Salesforce CRM allows businesses to define escalation rules and automate workflows for handling customer complaints.

2.6         Analytics

We use Salesforce Analytics for consumer goods dashboard to get detailed insights on the territory stores and sales Rep performance. Sales managers can use the dashboard to increase sales, improve store compliance, identify stores that risk and maximize sales rep effectiveness. Sales rep get store level insights on visits, performance, sales compliance and top selling products. We can also use Salesforce Analytics for CRM and for Inventory Management.

We can access the in-app dashboards through the app in CRM Analytics Studio. The Analytics includes dashboards embedded in Lightning Experience pages. These dashboards provide detailed insights into the store, including account performance, last visit, and the product whitespaces. The Salesforce admin embeds these dashboards in specific Salesforce pages. Salesforce Analytics can directly access data stored within the Salesforce CRM system. This includes customer information, sales data, service interactions, and more. By analyzing CRM data, businesses can gain insights into customer behavior, purchase patterns, and sales performance.

Salesforce Connect allows for seamless access to external data sources, such as databases, ERP systems, and other Salesforce instances, from within Salesforce CRM and Analytics.

It goes beyond basic metrics, allowing users to delve into key business factors, identify trends, and take informed actions. This translates to rapid generation of answers concerning business outcomes.

The application provides additional focus through lenses, which are detailed visualizations that extend the dashboard's capabilities by offering a deeper look into sales KPIs. Notably, upon creating Sales Analytics, the app generates a dataset automatically. This dataset incorporates standard fields from Salesforce objects within the Sales and Service clouds, alongside custom fields derived from the user's Salesforce data. The combined dataset serves as the foundation for the dashboard and lenses to visualize KPIs and deliver valuable insights for business operations.

Some reasons to choose Salesforce Einstein/Tableau Analytics [10] are:

Data Management. Out-of-the-box connectors, Self-contained ETL functionality, Visual data prep, Scalable, built-in data mart, Bring in data from any source

No-Code AI. One-click storytelling and automated discovery, Real-time recommendations, Narrative explanations and natural language generation, Predictive and prescriptive analytics, Model transparency

Discovery and Analytics Studio.  Build AI-powered apps from scratch – or with prebuilt templates, App framework, App designer, Explorer and NLQ

Intelligent Experience. Engage, collaborate, and act on insights with intelligent analytics, Proactive alerts and notifications, Action framework, Embedded in business apps, Integrated with workflow automation tools, Mobile-friendly

3             Functionality and Features

Salesforce Commerce Cloud (Demandware)

For Ecommerce needs - Commerce Platform is a highly scalable B2C Commerce platform for web and mobile eCommerce. Products built on the Salesforce Platform, including Sales, Service, Communities, Order Management System, Force.com applications, CRM Analytics, Salesforce Customer Identity, and Customer 360 Privacy Manager, run on the same physical platform and share a common data model.

Salesforce Service Cloud

For Customer issues - Salesforce Service Cloud, built on the Customer Success Platform, offers a comprehensive suite of tools designed to elevate customer service experiences. By providing a holistic view of the customer (360-degree view), Service Cloud empowers businesses to deliver personalized, efficient, and intelligent service interactions. Notably, Service Cloud facilitates the automation of service processes, streamlining workflows and surfacing relevant knowledge resources (articles, topics, experts) for agents. This streamlined approach fosters a more efficient and empowered agent experience.

·    Support: Support all channels from one screen

·    Route: Route issues to the right person

·    Track: Track critical metrics for improvement

Salesforce Marketing Cloud

For Customer journeys and emails - Marketing Platform is a grouping of Marketing Automation products that includes:

• Marketing Cloud enables personalization, journey orchestration, and cross channel messaging.

• Datorama for deep marketing analytics.

• Interaction Studio provides real-time interaction management, personalization, and AI driven recommendations.

• Social Studio provides social monitoring and interaction.

• Audience Studio is used to create complete profiles across first, second, and third-party data and to segment, and activate that data.
  

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform

Provides API management and system to system integration.

• Tableau/Einstein provides business intelligence analytics and has direct connections to the rest of the Salesforce ecosystem

• MuleSoft can integrate third-party systems such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Product Information Management (PIM), and Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) with Salesforce.
  

The Salesforce Platform goes beyond its core functionalities to serve as a powerful integration hub. APIs enable seamless connections with various Salesforce clouds and external platforms. This flexibility allows businesses to manage their customer master data and consent directly on the platform or integrate with existing Master Data Management systems. The Order Management System (OMS) from Commerce Cloud even leverages the core Salesforce Platform for native operation. CRM Analytics offers direct connections for analyzing Sales and Service data. Customer Identity features provide Single Sign-On (SSO) and authentication management, ensuring secure logins across all connected applications. The Customer 360 Privacy Center helps manage data retention, user rights, and consent to comply with global and local privacy regulations. Finally, Data Cloud unifies and segments marketing data, enabling activation across various channels. In essence, the Salesforce Platform acts as a central hub for data management and integrations within the Salesforce ecosystem and beyond.

Connectors are point-to-point connections provided by Salesforce that allow customer experiences to cross Marketing, Service, and Commerce platform boundaries. [1]

Marketing Connector allows the Commerce platform to initiate actions in the Marketing platform.

·    Track page views, searches, product views, cart contents, and order placement.

·    Manage marketing opt-ins, email subscriptions, and preferences.

·    Trigger transactional email, including account creation and update messages, password recovery, customer service messages, and order confirmation.

·    Sync data such as product catalogs, customer information, order details, and promotional details.

·    This connector is community code and provides a development framework for customers to follow.

Service Connector connects Commerce Cloud to Service Cloud. Commerce products usually initiate actions, but service products can pull data from Commerce Cloud.

·    Submit cases from a storefront for anonymous or registered customers.

·    Retrieve case details for a registered storefront customer from Service Cloud.

·    Sync profiles of registered customers and profile-specific addresses between Commerce and Service Clouds.

·    Sync order data between Commerce and Service Clouds.

·    This connector is community code and provides a development framework for customers to follow.

Marketing Cloud Connect connects Marketing platform products with Sales and Service Cloud products. The connector allows data to sync between clouds. It also allows Marketing Cloud products to trigger events such as emails and journeys based on Sales and Service Cloud data.

·    Automatically sync data from Sales or Service Cloud to Marketing Cloud.

·    Connect Journey Builder to other clouds.

·    Use Sales and Service Cloud data to construct email.

·    Provide Marketing Cloud email tracking data such to Sales and Service Cloud products.

Distributed Marketing allows users in Sales and Service Clouds to view, personalize, and send on-brand, best practice content through Marketing Cloud.

·    Use data stored in contact, lead, or person account records to address emails.

·    Craft email to a segment of customers based on a list view.

·   Send email about a campaign to a group of customers based on a touchpoint cadence managed by Marketing Cloud.

Social Customer Service turns social network posts into case or lead records.

Heroku Connect syncs data between the Heroku app platform and the core platform.

• Create a data lake.

• Build, deploy, and monitor other highly scalable customer-facing mobile and web applications.

4             Security and Compliance

All Salesforce products and microservices have MFA auto-enabled. Shiseido, an innovative, global beauty brand, implemented MFA for Salesforce to help protect their critical systems and customer data. Security in a retail e-commerce website built on Salesforce can be enhanced by implementing security zones, deploying firewalls, strategically placing components, implementing intrusion detection, and managing systems effectively. Vulnerabilities in e-commerce operations beyond checkout/payment integration can have serious consequences, such as store takeovers and listing illegal products, highlighting the need for a comprehensive security evaluation framework. Common cyber threats like malware, ransomware, SQL injection, and phishing should be prevented through best practices and a robust risk management strategy. Utilizing a cloud security-based login method can guide user login effectively and protect user login security.

Salesforce also combines MFA and SSO [11], so we can deliver enhanced security along with a convenient, simplified login experience. Salesforce offers various MFA options to strengthen your security without frustrating the users. These methods go beyond simple passwords to verify user identities.

·    Salesforce Authenticator App: Get quick and easy verification through push notifications directly on your phone. This app integrates seamlessly with Salesforce logins.

·    Popular Third-Party Apps: Use trusted apps like Google Authenticator or Microsoft Authenticator to generate temporary codes for logins.

·    Security Keys: No installation or codes required! These physical devices are perfect if mobile options aren't ideal. Salesforce supports various USB, Lightning, and NFC keys following industry standards.

·    Built-In Authenticators: Utilize the existing phone or computer's built-in verification features like Windows Hello, Touch ID, or Face ID for a convenient MFA experience.

Table 1.  Benefits and considerations for each type of verification method supported by Salesforce products [12]

5             Integration and Scalability

To scale up Salesforce for ecommerce, we can integrate it with Shopify, Magento, Adobe AEM with Salesforce using APIs or third-party integration tools like Zapier or MuleSoft. This integration ensures seamless data flow between your e-commerce store and Salesforce. We can use Salesforce Process Builder, Workflow Rules, and Flows to automate repetitive tasks such as order processing, inventory management, and customer support workflows. Automation improves efficiency and reduces manual errors. We can ensure that our Salesforce instance and e-commerce platform can handle increased traffic and transaction volumes as our business grows. We can monitor system performance and scalability requirements regularly and invest in infrastructure upgrades as needed. We can also integrate with third-party CDNs for better scalability and performance in future.

               Continuous Integration can be achieved using Jenkins, an open-source, extensible automation server for implementing continuous integration and continuous delivery. We can easily integrate Salesforce DX into the Jenkins framework multibranch pipelines. to automate testing of Salesforce applications against scratch orgs. The computer on which the Jenkins server is running has access to your version control system and to the repository that contains our Salesforce application.

Integrating Salesforce with AWS DynamoDB using Amazon AppFlow bi-directionally for backup: Amazon AppFlow consumes events payload from salesforce and Lambda updates the DynamoDB table after processing the payload. In parallel, a scheduled based flow sends response back to salesforce object as a notification.

Event (data add or delete) occurring on a particular object in Salesforce is captured by Amazon AppFlow (event-based flow); event payload displays as “Input” in AWS environment. An EventBridge bus receives the “Input” payload. The EventBridge bus triggers the AWS Lambda (Lambda-1). Lambda-1 processes the “Input” payload, then performs a write operation (data add or delete) on a DynamoDB table. A write operation on the table triggers DynamoDB streams. DynamoDB stream triggers Lambda (Lambda-2). Lambda-2 processes the payload from DynamoDB streams. It saves the results in .csv file format, with a “Success” or “Fail” flag. This .csv file is uploaded to an S3 bucket. A second flow (schedule-based) is configured in Amazon AppFlow. This reads the S3 bucket at a regular interval of time to find new .csv files created by Lambda-2. A schedule-based flow transfers the .csv file data as an event-status output to the Salesforce object, notifying the user that their event has been successfully handled in DynamoDB table. In parallel, DynamoDB streams trigger Lambda (Lambda-3), which processes the payload and initiates an Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) notification based on the status of the event request. [13]

6             Availability and Performance

For e-commerce sites, downtime is lost money. Every minute your site is unavailable translates to missed sales and frustrated customers. Backups are the safety net, safeguarding product data, customer information, and order history from unexpected data loss. In short, robust availability and backups are the cornerstones of a reliable e-commerce operation, preventing financial setbacks and ensuring a smooth customer experience.

Disaster Recovery procedures can run on best-in-class services provided by Amazon Web Services to achieve high availability. Elastic Load Balancers are used to detect problems with an availability zone and distribute traffic to another zone if necessary. If the active availability zone goes down, the Elastic Load Balancer begin to distribute traffic to one of the other availability zones. Service remains fully operational, with the possibility of reduced throughput, as long as one availability zone remains available. The service relies on a master database and a hot standby database. All data written into the master database is automatically synchronized to the standby database so that if the master fails, a transition to the standby instance occurs more seamlessly. [14]

Periodic backups are automatically made by AWS and are stored on S3. AWS also stores write-ahead logs since the last backup so you can restore to any point between the last backup point and a few minutes before the current time. The backup functionality is not exposed to users. There is no limit on the file size of the DB backup. AWS guarantees the data integrity of the backup. The backup includes the product catalog. We must complete the normal AWS authentication or authorization before performing the restore operation. The whole database is restored as opposed to only the product catalog or data. The database as a whole is restored to its previous state, including settings configured on other services to access database services, such as login credentials, hostname, etc. We can perform the restore operation from the AWS IAM console or the AWS command line. AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)controls who can access backups. Backups are encrypted.

Improving Salesforce e-commerce website performance involves optimizing various aspects, including website speed, user experience, and backend processes. We can reduce image file sizes without compromising quality. A content delivery network is a geographically distributed network of servers that store cached versions of web assets. To optimize page load times and site performance, a CDN efficiently delivers publicly cacheable content to users. By reducing the distance between the server and the user and increasing content availability and redundancy, CDNs improve website load times and site performance.

The Salesforce CDN includes an image optimization feature that makes the site pages load faster for guest users, whether they’re viewing the site on their phone, tablet, or desktop computer. In addition, the Salesforce CDN comes with configurable availability pages. We can display a custom Service Not Available page when the site is down or a custom Too Many Requests page when the site is in high demand. In each production environment, you can define multiple sandbox custom domains, but only one custom domain associated with a sandbox org can use the Salesforce CDN. The Salesforce CDN supports HTTP/2 protocols. Experience Cloud sites served through our CDN support HTTP/2 for fast content delivery. Salesforce also provides a secure HTTPS site and certificates. Caching on our CDN improves your site’s performance and scale. When your users access a site served by the Salesforce CDN, cached content is served directly from CDN servers. CDN servers are distributed globally and are often closer to your users than Salesforce servers. Because cached content is served directly from CDN servers, your users experience faster load times routinely and in times of high traffic. CDN caching can work with browser-side caching, which also improves performance. We are entitled to 48 terabytes of traffic per year and 10 single certificate domains. [15]

We will use the default Experience Cloud site domain. If enhanced domains are enabled, the hostname for that system-managed domain ends in *.my.site.com and that domain uses the Salesforce CDN. We can use a third-party Service or gateway to serve our custom domain but it will unnecessarily increase the complexity of the software and increase the cost. can use two reports to check your Salesforce CDN usage. A CDN Usage report is part of the Experience Management Package found in AppExchange. We can also create a custom report type with Domains as the primary object.

Lightning Web Runtime (LWR) is built for performance and scale, and it caches more publicly available content in addition to static resources. In LWR, Salesforce caches base documents for a site’s pages, public data returned from Salesforce API calls, and public data from Apex methods used internally. Admins and developers can cache their Apex methods that return public data. When you cache Apex methods on the Salesforce content delivery network (CDN), you improve performance of your LWR site, and your customers benefit from faster page load times. Only public data from Apex methods is intended to be cached, and it’s only cached for guest users.

7             Operations and Lifecycle Management

Order Management is your central hub for handling all aspects of the order lifecycle, including order capture, fulfillment, shipping, payment processing, and service. [16]

With the Order Management app:

·    Customers can submit orders from any commerce channel, and then track and manage their orders throughout the order lifecycle.

·    Merchants can manage order fulfillment, shipping, payment capture, invoicing, and service by using integrated and customizable business processes and workflows.

·    Service agents can access a master repository of all order-related information, see a global view of the entire order lifecycle, and process cancellations, returns, exchanges, reshipments, refunds, and discounts.

A Salesforce deployment pipeline is an automated process that runs the salesforce metadata through a series of steps, such as quality checks, unit tests, and deployments. This process fires in response to events in your version control repository. A source code version control system makes CI possible. The version control system is supplemented with other checks, such as automated code quality tests, syntax style review tools, and more. To implement CI/CD for Salesforce using GitHub and Jenkins, I first set up a GitHub repository to host our Salesforce source code, ensuring version control for effective management of changes. Then, I configured Jenkins to monitor the GitHub repository for any updates. Upon detecting a new commit, Jenkins triggered a build process that retrieved the Salesforce metadata from GitHub, ran tests, and deployed changes to our Salesforce sandbox or production environment. I incorporated tools like Salesforce DX for source-driven development and automated testing, ensuring code quality and consistency. Integrating Jenkins with Salesforce CLI enabled seamless execution of deployment commands. By implementing CI/CD, I streamlined our development process, ensuring quicker delivery of Salesforce customizations and enhancements while maintaining code integrity. Regularly reviewing and refining the CI/CD pipeline allowed me to optimize performance and ensure agility in our development lifecycle.

8             Future Enhancements

Salesforce announced new data and AI-powered tools to transform every shopping experience [17]. With generative AI built into Commerce Cloud and Marketing Cloud, retail merchandisers and marketers can tap into generative tools with a real-time understanding of customer behavior and preferences to optimize every customer interaction — increasing loyalty, driving revenue, and boosting employee productivity.

Salesforce's groundbreaking retail innovations are fueled by the robust Einstein AI Platform. This platform seamlessly integrates with existing retail and shopper data sources. Crucially, it incorporates secure connections to large language models (LLMs). This ensures real-time context, consistent brand voice, rigorous data governance, and robust security. This powerful combination unlocks entirely new shopping experiences for customers, empowers merchandisers with intelligent tools, and equips retail marketers with AI-powered applications. Page Designer can use generative AI-powered natural language prompts to design, build, and customize ecommerce sites and pages more quickly.

Einstein Copilot for Shoppers, an extension of the existing Einstein Copilot framework, represents a consumer-facing conversational AI assistant designed to personalize customer interactions. By leveraging natural language processing capabilities, the system facilitates product discovery and purchase processes directly through retailers' digital platforms and messaging applications. Global Promotion Management will help retailers bring together customer marketing and promotions data with predictive insights to forecast potential promotion revenue, so retailers can easily coordinate pricing and rewards initiatives for both loyalty members and non-loyalty customers.

In addition to new commerce and marketing AI product innovations, today Salesforce announced a series of solutions for theft, media networks, employee productivity, and real estate that help retailers better manage operations and create new revenue streams.

Availability:

·    Einstein Copilot for Shoppers is in pilot and will be generally available in summer 2024.

·    Page Designer is currently in pilot.

·    Return Insights in Order Management is generally available today.

·    Customer and Product Insights Dashboard and Inventory Insights are in pilot and will be generally available in summer 2024.

·    Global Promotion Management is in pilot and will be generally available in spring 2024.

·    Referral Marketing is generally available today.

·    Segment Creation is in pilot and will be generally available in spring 2024.

·    Content Creation is generally available today.

9             Conclusion

The designed architecture introduces a simple one-platform based solution. The system has been implemented strictly according to the requirements provided. The aims have been fulfilled and the solution to each problem has been given without any compromise. However, to make the system more perfect, the developers will always be ready to provide any help regarding the system at any time and hence need to be trained in Salesforce. A system like the one designed can change the large-scale working of the business houses at a global level, adding to revenue multiplication and cutting down the working hours for maintaining the system.

The architecture solution offers a comprehensive and scalable framework to meet the dynamic demands of the digital retail landscape. By leveraging the robust capabilities of the Salesforce platform, including Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Commerce Cloud, and MuleSoft integration, businesses can achieve seamless customer experiences, streamlined operations, and enhanced flexibility. The research underscores the importance of adopting a holistic approach to e-commerce architecture, integrating customer relationship management, order management, and marketing automation functionalities to drive growth and competitiveness. Furthermore, the solution's emphasis on cloud-native technologies and API-led connectivity ensures adaptability to evolving market trends and technological advancements.

Future studies could focus on the implementation process, analyzing timelines, resource allocation, and potential challenges. Additionally, research could delve into specific metrics to quantify the impact of this architecture on e-commerce KPIs like conversion rates, customer lifetime value, and operational efficiency.

Acknowledgments. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Dr. phil. Kristof Klöckner, for his invaluable guidance, support, and mentorship throughout the research process. His expertise and encouragement have been instrumental in understanding the cloud architecture.

Additionally, I extend my heartfelt thanks to my senior at Allianz Technologies, Stuttgart, Germany, Dominic Weisser, for providing invaluable insights and perspectives from their extensive experience on understanding and structuring out a solution for the cloud architecture. His input has been immensely valuable in refining and validating the proposed architecture solution.

I am grateful to each of these individuals for their unwavering support, expertise, and encouragement, which have been indispensable in the completion of this research endeavor.

.

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