Say hello to Oracle-SAP eCommerce!

Last week, with the help of the team at DSS-Partners, Corevist unveiled the industry’s first cloud based real time integration of an Oracle Commerce B2B webstore with an SAP® ERP system. Via our Corevist SAP® eCart* and SAP® eTrack* offerings, a group of 20+ Oracle Salespeople, Solution Consultants and Marketeers marveled at the “beauty” of the Oracle Commerce front-end user experience taming the SAP® “beast” that controls the business end of things (contract pricing, product availability, freight options, credit and payment terms, and all deliveries and invoices etc.).  Thanks to the evolving partnership between DSS-Partners, Oracle and Corevist, a new chapter is about to be written for the SAP® B2B eCommerce history books.

What made the meeting especially enjoyable for me was that the Oracle team showed us the love that we’ve been craving since we started Corevist back in 2008.

Don’t get me wrong, we get loving every day from our existing clients.  They all tell us how much they appreciate the value we bring to their businesses and are really glad that they decided to partner with us.  It’s also especially exciting to welcome new clients into the Corevist family.  I never tire of hearing their stories which more or less fit the following form:

“We searched and searched and searched and we couldn’t find any eCommerce vendors out there with your experience, SAP® expertise and responsiveness.  Certainly none that could deliver the kind of value that you guys do in the time-frame and cost that you do.”

On that note, I’m really happy to announce that we signed three new clients last quarter (one of them a Fortune 50 manufacturer!).  We continue to grow because the market recognizes that we deliver real value.

So I’m not insecure.  I know we’re loved.

However, when we started Corevist, we were hopeful that SAP® would show us some lovin’.  After all, we were going to deliver a B2B eCommerce solution that their customers were demanding.  Something that leveraged all of their investments in SAP®, didn’t cost and arm and a leg to implement and support, and provided that “Amazon-like” experience to their employees and B2B customers.  Fast forward 7 years, and without any support from SAP®, we upheld our end of the bargain.  Hundreds of thousands of customers are purchasing almost a billion dollars of product in real time into SAP® systems all around the world via the Corevist service.

We’re getting the job done.

SAP®, on the other hand, has clearly taken their eyes off of the B2B eCommerce ball, especially in the mid-market Manufacturing space.  I know that for a fact because ALL of our clients in the last year have been hybris sales cycle refugees.  So that puts me in a precarious position.  I love SAP® but I can’t in good conscience recommend hybris to any of our B2B prospects, because without hybris’ cooperation to support the hybris Connector that we built for them,  clients will be sent down an unnecessarily long, complex, risky and costly path.  But many of them really need the power of the hybris content and product information management platform.

So what’s an ethical partner to do?  Recommend Oracle, that’s what!

The Oracle Commerce platform is as highly regarded as the hybris platform by the Gartner Group.  They’re both “Leaders” in the 2014 Gartner Group’s Magic Quadrant for eCommerce platforms.  (see attached graphic)

The big advantage that the Oracle Commerce platform now has over hybris (if I may say so myself) is that Oracle embraces Corevist for their SAP® integration for B2B eCommerce.

So while the SAP® hybris team continues on their long and rugged journey to build out all of the replication and synchronization scenarios for all of the complex pricing, credit, inventory, freight and delivery rules in SAP®, the Oracle Commerce team gets an instant real time solution to the challenge by simply embracing the Corevist platform.

Thanks to the love shown us by the Oracle Commerce team, we now have three compelling stories to tell all of those hybris B2B refugees that we’re left caring for:

1. Crawl – Customer Services first – launch as quickly as you can to all of your existing clients by giving them access to our SAP® eTrack service.  Whether they are EDI, phone, fax or email customers, they want to know if you have product available, what it’s priced at and after they place their orders, when they can expect to receive them.  Liberate all of that information out of your SAP® system in 30 days and give your CSRs a break from those mind-numbing, resource sucking, non-value adding calls with your customers.
2. Walk – Inexpensive catalog – if you’re just getting started, aren’t feeling very ambitious, don’t have the funds or expertise, or just want to dip your toes in the B2B eCommerce waters, we’ll help you launch an entry level Magento solution in combination with our SAP® eCart and eTrack services.
3. Run – World class PIM and Catalog – if you’re ready for the big leagues, let the Oracle Commerce team enable your Marketing team to provide a true omnichannel experience for all of your worldwide customers while Corevist simplifies your integration to SAP®.

Beauty tames the beast.  Indeed!

Sam

 

*SAP® eCart and SAP® eTrack are my latest attempt to name the modules in our service in order to better describe the capabilities that we provide.  They’re not official names yet :-).  What do you think?  Drop me a line and give me your feedback.