How to Handle Salesforce Commerce Fulfilment

Salesforce is one of the best-known cloud-based software for customer relationship management — and for good reason.

Salesforce is ecommerce-friendly by offering a powerful selling channel, Commerce Cloud. This platform is a great option for retail stores to connect to customers in a data-backed and personalised manner.

When these ecommerce features of Salesforce Commerce Cloud tie in with fulfilment technology, you’re able to get insight into how fulfilment and shipping impacts the customer relationship in both B2B and B2C.

Read on to learn how Salesforce Commerce Cloud’s ecommerce platform and services can work with ShipBob, an omnichannel fulfilment provider, to deliver greater revenue, productivity, and customer engagement.

What is Salesforce Commerce Cloud?

Salesforce Commerce Cloud is a scalable, cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) ecommerce solution. It helps your business stay ahead when it comes to ecommerce best practices without having to constantly manage a technical roadmap.

The Salesforce Commerce Cloud’s ecommerce platform supports:

• Order management
• Personalisation of customer experiences
• Localization of shopping experiences
• Streamlining of customer service
• And so much more.

Introducing ShipBob’s Salesforce Commerce Cloud fulfilment integration

ShipBob’s full-stack omnichannel fulfilment services and technology are leaps and bounds ahead of the competition; even more so when integrated with Salesforce Commerce Cloud.

Whether you are a B2C or B2B ecommerce retailer, the integration makes digital commerce transactions smoother and faster.

When integrated, the platforms connect commerce to sales, service, marketing, and order fulfilment, which offers a single source of truth and optimising the entire customer lifecycle.

In this section, we deep-dive into the functionality and value it adds for ecommerce.

Order management

Together the two platforms offer enhanced, real-time inventory visibility, and easy allocation and fulfilment logic. Salesforce automates fulfilment, payment capture, and invoicing.  

Once you migrate ShipBob data into Salesforce Commerce Cloud (via ShipStation), it becomes possible to speed up order flows.

AI recommendations and Automation

Salesforce’s AI tool, Einstein, uses machine learning to power merchandising insights, time-saving task automation, and product recommendations personalised to every shopper.

It also automatically personalises customer experiences based on historical shopper interaction with the brand.

Omnichannel buying experiences

Do you have multiple sales channels and distribution points? Salesforce Commerce Cloud fetches user data from the CRM so you can:

• Build customer segments
• Test offers on each segment
• Improve SEO visibility
• And target content to segments in various channels.

Ultimately, this enables better customer experiences throughout the buying journey and helps to increase sales conversions.

White glove delivery

White glove service offers assistance in delivering orders with close attention to detail and an extra level of care. 

This delivery management service entails typing up with the right vendor to support the inspection of goods, offering protective packaging, delicate handling, product assembly, or product dismantling.

ShipBob integration with Salesforce helps to support the delivery of goods of unusual size, value, or fragility.

Local distribution networks

ShipBob also offers ecommerce brands a wide network of fulfilment centres, within your country and internationally.

This means you can place your stock at locations closest to the customers for quick and affordable global and local delivery.

Within Salesforce, you can collect data on where customers are located to help make a better decision on where to store inventory based on geographical demand.

How to integrate Salesforce Commerce Cloud with your ShipBob account

To get started, you will need to use ShipStation (as the middleware) to integrate Salesforce Commerce Cloud with your ShipBob dashboard.

Be sure to create accounts with ShipStation, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, and ShipBob.

Here’s how you link Salesforce Commerce Cloud to ShipStation:

1. Download the ShipStation cartridge for Salesforce Commerce Cloud and install it in your Salesforce Commerce Cloud store.
2. Log in to Salesforce Business Manager.
3. Click on “Merchant Tools” > “Site Preferences” > “Custom Preferences” > “ShipStation”.
4. Log in to your ShipStation account, on another tab or browser, and click on Account Settings.
   
5. Choose “Store Setup”, under the Selling Channels option in the left-hand sidebar.
   
6. Click on “Connect a Store or Marketplace”.
   
7. Pick the Salesforce Commerce Cloud tile.
   
8. Hit connect after entering your username, password, and URL from Salesforce Commerce Cloud, and map or adjust any custom statuses if needed.

After you’ve connected your Salesforce platform to ShipStation, follow these steps to integrate ShipStation with ShipBob:

1. On the ShipStation platform (after logging in), click on “Connect a channel”.

2. Select the selling channel: Salesforce Commerce Cloud.
3. Click “Complete Setup”.
4. Create a list of products on ShipStation.
5. Import Orders from Salesforce Commerce Cloud to ShipStation.
6. On the ShipBob portal:
   1. Click on “Quick Setup,” then “Store Integration”

2. Select ShipStation

3. On the ShipStation dashboard (Account > API Settings > Generate New API Keys), create API key and API secret 

4. Paste the API key and API secret into the ShipBob dashboard and click “Link Store Now”.

This is how you connect the two platforms via a third party or middleware.

You could also build a custom integration from a Salesforce Commerce store to ShipBob, using our Developer API.

You may gain more control over the fulfilment process with flexible and easy-to-use developer tools. ShipBob’s REST API can be used to interface with your store(s), marketplaces, custom websites, ERPs, and more. Visit ShipBob’s developer portal to learn more. 

Have your developer use this documentation to get started with the integration.

Selling on Salesforce Commerce and want ShipBob to fulfil your orders? Contact us to see what the requirements are to configure an integration.

ShipBob’s Salesforce Commerce Cloud integration solves pesky challenges

ShipBob and Salesforce Commerce Cloud can work together to help ecommerce businesses fine-tune their fulfilment strategies.

Many modern fulfilment problems can be addressed by opting for ShipBob’s Salesforce Commerce Cloud integration:

1. It enables the understanding of your sales, inventory, and fulfilment metrics, such as OTIF, to make more data-driven decisions and avoid some of the biggest shipping mistakes. We do away with the need to calculate and track these data points in spreadsheets or through multiple different integrations on your store.  
2. It speeds up and reduces the cost of fulfilment, thanks to ShipBob’s many fulfilment centres located globally. 
3. Whether you are shipping from the US to UK, or anywhere in the world, ShipBob can improve the shipping experience and avoid delivery exceptions to meet customer expectations.
4. We automate the fulfilment of orders from your Salesforce Commerce platform and secure affordable wholesale shipping rates*.

*Note: Please check the carrier updates and coronavirus updates to see how your ship date can be affected, especially during peak shipping season.

“Learning to tailor our sales strategy, marketing, and packaging to each retailer’s requirements has been a challenge, but that’s where ShipBob really comes in handy.

ShipBob is EDI-compliant with dozens of popular retailers, and their API integrations make it possible for them to fulfil orders according to each retailer’s compliance.”

Aaron Patterson, COO of The Adventure Challenge

ShipBob offers Developer API, an advanced WMS system, and fulfilment services to help you optimise and customise your fulfilment strategy. Learn more about our services by clicking the button below.

ShipBob and Salesforce Commerce Cloud FAQs

Below are answers to the most common questions about ShipBob and Salesforce Commerce.