At Corevist, we often talk to manufacturers who are looking to replace CloudCraze (now called Salesforce B2B Commerce). There’s a consensus among these companies: CloudCraze is too expensive and difficult to maintain. These manufacturers find they can’t justify keeping the platform.  

We wanted more context for these stories, so we turned to Google. We found many positive reviews of CloudCraze online, which reinforces the notion that CloudCraze is a great fit for many organizations. However, we found complaints about CloudCraze, too. Most of them centered around the expense of maintaining the solution and keeping it integrated to SAP.

(NOTE: the Corevist Platform includes your SAP integration out of the box, and we maintain it for you.)

Here are 6 caveats for manufacturers considering CloudCraze for B2B eCommerce.

1. Heavy lifting in IT may hamstring the Business

“Overall, it is an extremely highly strung package that is hard to work with and breaks/misbehaves at every opportunity. The business goes crazy, as they are coming from a fairly standard website platform and things that would be a few minutes work in that are taking hours/days on CloudCraze.”

—Reddit Salesforce thread: Does anyone else hate B2B Commerce/CloudCraze?

A digital channel should enable growth and agility, not stifle them. Unfortunately, a solution like CloudCraze wasn’t built with manufacturers’ SAP business rules in mind. Since those business rules are the lifeblood of your customer relationships (and your transactions), you need to ensure your B2B eCommerce channel will enforce them. In the case of CloudCraze, that SAP integration often turns into an endless battle.

How we’re different: The Corevist Platform is integrated to SAP out-of-the-box

At Corevist, we realize that many manufacturers can’t spare IT resources for new projects—let alone for ongoing support of those projects after GoLive. That’s why we built the Corevist Platform. It’s integrated to SAP out of the box, and it automatically supports your complex SAP business rules.

2. You’re on your own if you customize your SaaS instance

“Upgrade functionality requires effort and does not guarantee retro-active fit of the previous functionality.”

—Capterra review of CloudCraze.

“I mostly dislike [CloudCraze/Salesforce B2B Commerce] because I think the overrides for out of the box handlebar templates is a dangerous game. It makes upgrade a potential nightmare every single time as things may change and templates overrides might have to be altered.”

—Reddit Salesforce thread: Does anyone else hate B2B Commerce/CloudCraze?

SaaS solutions get into trouble when one organization owns customizations, yet the vendor continues to roll out new versions of the product which may not play nice with the customizations.  

The Corevist Difference: We manage your customizations and upgrades

Because the Corevist Platform is a fully managed, cloud-based solution, you won’t end up with a site that breaks when it’s upgraded. Since we own the solution and provide customization services, we coordinate with you as necessary to harmonize any customizations with upcoming core upgrades.

3. You may have to build and maintain duplicate versions of your business rules

“The price logic must be manually configured for different regions and no link can be created between multiple price catalogs.”

—G2Crowd reviews of Salesforce B2B Commerce/CloudCraze.

Don’t underestimate the amount of manual work behind this statement. In a complex B2B scenario, different regions may have their own base pricing for the same SKUs. Not only that, but each distribution partner (i.e. eCommerce buyer) must see only the catalog for their region—and must see their own negotiated contract pricing. If your business lives in SAP ERP, then pricing data lives there, too.

If all business rules surrounding the transaction are already specified in SAP, then rebuilding price logic in each regional storefront is a tremendous waste of resources. The simplest way to present the right pricing in the right web experience is to integrate eCommerce to SAP so that each eCommerce user sees the pricing associated with their region and/or sold-to in SAP.  

The Corevist Difference: Customer’s SAP pricing logic enforced automatically in eCommerce

Because Corevist is built on a direct integration to SAP ERP, you’ll never have to rebuild pricing logic in any system. Corevist eCommerce users are mapped to SAP sold-tos, and the contract pricing associated with that sold-to is exactly what the user will see in the web store. This includes minimum quantities, scaled pricing discounts, and more—everything associated with the customer’s pricing.  

4. We’ve seen $1M+ annual cost of integration support

We’ve talked to one manufacturer who spends $1M+ per year in supporting CloudCraze.

That doesn’t include licensing cost. It’s just the cost of supporting the integration.

While that’s an anecdotal stat, we believe it’s not unusual. As you’ll see below, CloudCraze requires a hefty chunk of IT resources to keep the lights on. This is not only due to integration. It’s also due to customizations not playing well with new versions of the SaaS product.

5. CloudCraze resources command high salaries

“I’ve been working on [CloudCraze] almost full time for about 3 years now, and I don’t enjoy it very much… significant customization is almost always required. The only good thing about it, and the only reason I still do it, is the absolutely bonkers salaries you can make.”

“This is exactly why I do it… I still hate it though. The salaries are redonkulous.”

—Reddit Salesforce thread: Does anyone else hate B2B Commerce/CloudCraze?

Just how big are these “redonkulous” salaries? Here are a few sources (your mileage may vary):

• Paysa reports an average of $109,000/year
• As of this writing, Indeed job postings range from $145,000 – $208,000/year

How we’re different: The Corevist Platform is built to run lean

Every manufacturer must decide whether they’re getting enough bang for their eCommerce buck. However, we believe manufacturers should spend less on eCommerce while getting all the features that matter in a B2B scenario. We built our solution to deliver on that vision.

The secret is our direct integration to SAP ERP. Because the Corevist Platform enforces your relevant SAP business rules automatically, including relevant personalization for each customer, you don’t need an army of developers to keep Corevist up and running.

Here are two stats which demonstrate the efficiency of the Corevist model:

• 1/3 of all Corevist clients have no dedicated resources on staff supporting our platform.
• Corevist clients typically spend around 0.15% of eCommerce revenue on their eCommerce solutions.

6. You may need several of these resources to maintain your CloudCraze solution

“CloudCraze [is] great in many areas, but particularly if you have a development group internally within your company. They will provide great knowledge transfer of the product into your development group allowing great autonomy when developing a solution”

—G2Crowd reviews of Salesforce B2B Commerce/CloudCraze.

Great, but what if you don’t have a development group within your company (and don’t want to hire one)?

Not every manufacturer can justify hiring the necessary resources to run CloudCraze/Salesforce B2B Commerce. Even if you can hire a full department of eCommerce developers, that level of control will bring great responsibility with it. How much control (and responsibility) are you prepared to take on?

The Corevist Difference: You control customer interaction and business rules; we maintain your integration

The Corevist Platform gives you full control of your customer interaction in the web store. You own every aspect of the eCommerce experience, from branding and merchandising, to product content, to the transaction itself.

Unlike other solutions, the Corevist Platform also allows you to retain full control of your business rules. Since Corevist integrates directly with your SAP system (no middleware), you don’t need to rebuild and maintain those business rules in 2-3 systems. You control your business rules in SAP, and the Corevist Platform automatically enforces those business rules in the eCommerce store. We support your integration, so you can retain control of your business.

We believe this is the ideal balance of control for manufacturers doing B2B eCommerce.

The Takeaway: Analyze your IT capacity against your business goals

The answer to the CloudCraze question will look different at every manufacturer. The key is to analyze your capacity to hire new IT resources against the value of your business goals—the things that are driving the eCommerce initiative in the first place.

If you find that CloudCraze will cost too much for the revenue you plan to target, consider an SAP-integrated solution that doesn’t require dedicated IT resources. That’s the Corevist way. It’s how we make B2B eCommerce accessible to every manufacturer running SAP ERP.