B2C Commerce Solution for Communications and Media

Communications and Media

Only existing customers can access some of the links on this page. Visit Salesforce Commerce Cloud GitHub Repositories and Access for information about how to get access to the Commerce Cloud repositories.

An increasing number of CSPs and telco providers are moving beyond connectivity, to deliver new innovative digital commerce offerings. Opening an online storefront is only the start. In an attempt to have a 360-degree view of their customer, communications and media companies want to connect all omnichannel interactions. This includes all consumer touchpoints, along with an ecosystem of independent partners, data sources, and legacy systems. To advance this digital transformation, companies are launching new direct-to-consumer channels, curbside pickup apps, and integrated marketing and service experiences. A flexible commerce platform with pre-built accelerators and toolkits enhances speed and efficiency to enable commerce transformation.

What’s driving communications and media companies to transform with digital commerce? Increasing Customer Lifetime Value and reducing cost. Customer Lifetime Value is all about cross-selling, up-selling, and maintaining existing customers. With an integrated digital commerce solution that connects marketing and service, companies can personalize engagements via product recommendations, target communications to individual customers, and merge in-store and digital channels.

Companies can also use customer data to reduce costs to help them maintain their profitability. For example, online portals can reduce service hours. Implementing digital commerce can also help companies lower the cost of entering new markets, reduce physical store footprints, and enable new business models.

To jumpstart development, the Communications and Media Industry Toolkit for B2C details how to deploy digital commerce for the communications and media industry Developers. The aim is to teach these Developers how to publish a commerce catalog and extend the Salesforce B2C Commerce Storefront Reference Architecture (SFRA) to accelerate time to market. This toolkit further customizes the SFRA cartridge for industry use cases, and it uses Communications Cloud and Media Cloud product configurations.

The toolkit helps our telco and media customers provide a highly scalable self-service buying experience for B2C shoppers. It enables our customers to develop storefronts with these features:

  • Registered User Browse, Cart (Basket), Order Creation, and Submission Operations
  • Anonymous Browse and Cart (Basket) Operations
  • New Mobile Equipment Purchase
  • New Postpaid and Prepaid Mobile Plan Activation
  • New Home Internet Plan Activation
  • New Bundles with Optional Add-Ons
  • New TV Plans and Equipment
  • New OTT Services
  • New Media and Entertainment Services, for example, Spotify or Pandora

B2C Platform: Top Features for Communications and Media for Commerce:

  • High-Scale Customer Experience (with Storefront Reference Architecture)
  • Multiple and Localized Site Management
  • Page Designer and Content
  • Embedded CDN
  • Integrated Payments
  • B2C Developer Tools
    • Salesforce Commerce API
    • Open Commerce API (OCAPI)

Salesforce Communications Cloud and Media Cloud for Industry-Specific Capabilities:

  • Product Management for complex bundles with cardinality rules
  • Attribute-based pricing
  • Omni-Channel services

The SFRA Extension Toolkit For Communications and Media is a free cartridge showcasing an integration approach. This cartridge is not a turnkey solution and doesn't have all the use cases implemented. This cartridge showcases a proof of concept for how the two products can be integrated. This is available for all customers and partners that are part of the Commerce Cloud github community.

Product, pricing, and context rules are merchandised on Salesforce Communications Cloud and Salesforce Media Cloud. The catalog containing the configured products is then published to B2C Commerce Cloud. The high scale storefront is built with a combination of out-of-the-box B2C Commerce Storefront Reference Architecture (SFRA) and B2C Commerce capabilities, Configure Price Quote (CPQ) from Salesforce Communications Cloud, Salesforce Media Cloud, leverages Digital Commerce cacheable APIs.

Consumers can create an account in B2C Commerce, and the respective consumer account is created in Communications and Media cloud in real time. This version of B2C Commerce Toolkit for Communications and Media includes:

  • SFRA Extension Toolkit For Communications and Media: This allows you to accelerate your integration to our industry cloud. Supports, Browse, Configure, and Checkout processes using our APIs along with a sample Comms-specific UI. Available on Salesforce B2C CC GitHub (You must have access to Salesforce Commerce Cloud GitHub organization via Concierge.)

The Communications and Media Industry Toolkit for B2C is built using the following on-platform native capabilities: OmniScripts, Integration Procedures, and DataRaptor. In addition, we leverage TM Forum Open API 620 and our Digital Commerce, GetOffers API to extract the commercial products from our shared product catalog. Therefore, any limitations governed by the platform and features would be applied to this toolkit.

The SFRA Extension Toolkit For Communications and Media is built as a B2C Commerce Cloud Cartridge. Therefore, modifications and enhancements are expected to be made by our customers, partners, and services teams.

To make the Communications and Media toolkit to work on your demo environment, you need SFRA Extension cartridges deployed on a Commerce Cloud environment and Vlocity Managed package (Fall '20 release) installed on the Salesforce Org. B2C Commerce licensing and professional services aren't included as part of the toolkit, which is provided under the BS-3-Clause. For full license text, see the LICENSE file in the repo root, or go to https://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause.

To implement and enhance the toolkit, we expect you to work with our services team. Therefore we strongly recommend and invite you to test and try out our toolkit to measure if this solution meets your customer’s needs.

A developer customizing this cartridge needs a Salesforce Communications and Media license and a B2C Commerce Sandbox.

Consumers in the Communications and Media industry are often referred to as subscribers.

  1. A subscriber or a potential customer starts as a guest. The guest subscriber is eligible to view all based products information on the commerce storefront.
  2. After browsing the storefront, the subscriber signs in (existing users) or signs up (new user). The user record is created on B2C Commerce and on Communications Cloud and Media Cloud, and the person account ID is stored in Commerce Cloud as a custom attribute.
  3. The subscriber selects a catalog and gets eligibility and context-based product offers.
  4. The subscriber selects a product in Communications Cloud and Media Cloud.
  1. The subscriber adds products to the cart, changes quantities, and selects different options on bundles.
  2. The prices are updated based on the price rules configured in Communications Cloud and Media Cloud CPQ.
  1. The subscriber places an order or subscribes to a new plan.
  2. The order is sent to Communications Cloud and Media Cloud, and then the assetatization process begins.

Learn how to get started quickly from these tutorials.

Salesforce Professional Services teams can help you every step of the way. With deep industry and commerce expertise, customer success experts can help plan, scope, and build your next communications and media project.

To access the Salesforce Commerce Cloud GitHub repository, you must have a GitHub account that is linked with your Commerce Cloud Account Manager Credentials. Authenticate your account with the Salesforce Commerce Cloud SSO Signup.