Shopping Workflow

There are many different types of e-commerce websites, however the two most common ones are:

• Business-to-Consumer (B2C) - typically designed for selling goods and services to consumers.
• Business-to-Business (B2B) - used to build strategic relationships with other businesses, and to ease the supply and procurement processes that characterize trade among those organizationsGroups or sub-groups of registered users and customers. An organizational unit is a "child" or subsidiary of a "parent" organization. Within Commerce Manager, you can assign an organization as a parent of another organization. For example, the parent company Company X, and the organizational units are Company X West and Company X East. Organization units include regional branches or departments or you could name them by business categories such as "Computer and Electronics" or "Clothing and Accessories." Organizations can be structured into a tree structure with sub-units with different levels of permissions assigned to each. So for example, you can set up your company as a parent level organization while your departments such as Sales & Marketing, IT/Development, and Operations as organization units. With this scenario, you can allow users in each departments to have access to only relevant subsystems, screens and functionality within Commerce Manager. Same as "organization units"..

Sites can also have multiple rolesThe Commerce Manager system has its own set of user roles covering the different tasks that online store managers work with. Order Supervisor, and Order/Shipping/Receiving Manager are examples of the role setup. There are also roles for managing the website as such, for instance editor or administrator. A "visitor" to the website is also a role in this context. Roles control the level of access privileges of each user account in Commerce Manager. Users can be either granted or restricted access to an entire subsystem or a particular menu item within a subsystem based on the role assigned to them. Different roles may be added to user accounts (i.g., store operator or webmaster) so that they can access, edit, or process relevant information. By default, a customer who registered his/her account to make a purchase in the front-end site will have no roles assigned to them, hence giving him/her preventing access to both the editing feature of the front-end site as well as the back-end Commerce Manager., and a single EPiServer Commerce site can provide several functions. EPiServer Commerce is a flexible platform allowing for seamless integration with external systems such as financial, CRM, inventoryThe procedure of checking the availability in one or more warehouses for a specific product., warehouse and customer service systems.

Depending on how you choose to work with editorial contentContent such as articles or news, created by website editors through the EPiServer CMS editorial interface. Compare this to content that is displayed as pages on the website, but where the content itself is data fetched from Commerce Manager. This type of data cannot be only be edited in Commerce Manager. and your online store administration, you will define your user1. The number of unique IP adresses that visited this page/URL during a specified period. 2. A person using a product, or someone visiting a community website either anonymously or as a registered member. roles and groups, and give them access rights to the different parts. Example of user roles in EPiServer Commerce are content editors, marketers, business owners, and store and system administrators.

Step-by-Step Process

A typical "shopping workflow" involves a number of interactions between a "shopper" on the website, EPiServer Commerce, and any integrated external system.. Depending on how the system is set up, the shopping workflow can be fully automated so that it requires little manual attention. However, a purchase orderCan be created manually in the Commerce Manager interface, or automatically by the system when a customer check out and complete an order from the front-end website. can always be monitored, accessed and handled manually from the Order Management part of Commerce Manager if needed.

In the following we will describe an example of a shopping workflow and the actions and tasks involved. This example is mainly based on a standard installation of EPiServer Commerce, which is a B2C type of e-commerce site.

Shopping Process

1. Cart created
   In this example, a shopper does not need to register on the site in order to buy. The order process actually starts as soon as the shopper selects a productA product represents various forms of merchandise that you can display and purchase from the public site, including Products, Variations/SKUs, Bundles, Packages and Dynamic Packages. and adds it to a shopping cartA collection of products selected by a website shopper, with the intention of completing a buying procedure. Also called "shopping cart" or "basket".. A cart will be created and saved in the system, and can be viewed in Order Management under "Carts". If the shopper doesn't complete the checkoutThe procedure of buying one or more products in a webshop. Involves defining shipping and billing addresses, shipping methods and payments. procedure, the cart will remain in the system for a specified time.
   
   When the shopper returns to the website, the cart will be "remembered" and made available for continued shopping. Already in this early step the system will perform an inventory and pricing check, to look for availability in the warehouse, as well as discounts for selected products in the cart. This will be updated if and when the shopper returns to the cart at a later stage.
   
2. Start checkout
   When the shopper decides to complete the purchase and chose to "proceed to checkout", the first step of the checkout procedure is initiated.
3. Add address
   In the second step of the checkout procedure, the shipping and billing address information is added together with the preferred type of delivery (First class/Express etc). The address information can be entered manually by an "anonymous" shopper, or automatically if the shopper is logged in and has a registered user profile with address information. The system can also be set up so that it is possible to split shipmentsA shipment may need to be split if one or more of the desired products for a purchase order are not available in the warehouse. in different parts and to different addresses here.
4. Add paymentThe verification of a money transaction in a website shopping situation. The e-commerce system most often needs a verification for a payment, in order to create the actual purchase order and complete the shopping workflow.
   In step three of the checkout procedure, the payment is added to the "purchase order to be". The system will calculate the total sum including the purchase amount and the shipping fee. In this step the shopper selects a payment method, for instance by credit card or PayPal. The payment will be registered and verified. This may happen instantly or after a certain specified time, depending on how the payment process is set up and the type of e-commerce solution (B2C or B2B). In this step it is also possible to split paymentsPayments can be split for instance in time or between different receivers., if the system is configured for this.
5. Order created
   Usually the actual purchase order is created in the system when the payment is settled. In the last checkout step, a purchase order number is created, the shopper confirms the purchase, and an order confirmation is sent to the shopper. The shopping cart is now converted to a purchase order which is visible with statusCan be set for an order to "NewOrder," "Submitted," "Processing," "Canceled," "Rejected," "Shipped" "In Progress" under "Purchase Orders" in Order Management.
6. Order processing
   When the order is created the order processing starts. This consists of steps to check the warehouse and inventory status for the products in the order, and for creating the actual shipmentA collection of products from a purchase order, ready to be shipped to the receiver after having gone through inventory check and other verifications.. Depending on the inventory status for the products, the order may be split into more than one shipment.
7. Shipment released - when the shipment is verified, it will be released. The purchase order will now appear in Order Management, under "Shipping/Receiving" and "Released for Shipping".
8. Add to picklistThe list used in a warehouse to collect the physical product items for a purchase order shipping.
   This steps involves the addition of the shipping items to a picklist. The picklist is the list that the warehouse will use to create the physical shipping of the products in the order. This step will also produce a packing slipThe paper slip with order information that will be attached to the physical package during the shipping procedure., which is the paper slip that will be attached to the physical packageA package is comparable to an individual SKU because the package item must be purchased as a whole (i.e. computer system). to be shipped.
9. Order completed/shipped
   When the picklists with the different orders and their respective packing slips have been created, the order will be set to completed. In the system this involves the creation of a shipment validation number which is associated with tracking numberUsed for tracking shipment of orders.. The tracking number can be entered manually or automatically, if such an integration exists. The tracking number connects the physical package with the shipping provider for the delivery, and is used for tracking the package on its way to the delivery address. The purchase order will now appear in Order Management under "Purchase Orders" again, with status "Completed".
10. Return/Exchanges
    Only completed orders can be subject to returns/exchanges. Depending on how the system is set up, returns can be created automatically or manually. Creating a returnThe term used in Commerce Manager for managing exchanges and refunds for faulty products. usually involves replacing a delivered product with another one in exchangeThe procedure of replacing a faulty product with another one, may also involve a money refund., and/or a payment refundWhen a payment is returned to the shopper due to a faulty product delivery.. When the return is created it will appear in Order Management under "Shipping/Receiving" and "Returns". Order status can be for instance "Awaiting Exchange".
    
    If the return involves replacement of a new product, the shipping procedure will be initiated again. The return may also involve receiving a faulty product, in which case a receiving procedure is initiated involving the acknowledgement of a receiving receipt for the returned product.

Integration with External Systems

EPiServer Commerce is a flexible platform built for integration with other business systems needed in an e-commerce environment. These systems are typically integrated with various parts of the shopping workflow, for exchange of data with EPiServer Commerce.

Examples of such external systems:

• Financial system - for instance invoice management, payment refunds,and sales reporting.
• CRM system - for management of customer profiles and address information.
• Payment gateways - the setup of different payment solutions for instance credit cards and PayPal.
• Shipping gateways - the management of shipping providersA shipping provider is the class(es) that interacts directly with one or more actual shipping services such as USPS, UPS, or FedEX. It retrieves shipping price information from the shipping service(s) its associated with. One typical scenario would be to have a provider that represents a particular service (e.g. USPS). A provider can also represent a particular type of shipping situation. One example is that you could have a provider for overnight delivery. The provider could retrieve pricing for that service to determine the lowest price given the location of the customer. A provider could also represent other specific scenarios with one or more services such as price by weight or ground shipping. and exchange of tracking information.
• Inventory/Warehouse system - exchange of inventory information in connected warehouses.
• Customer Services - exchange of for instance order status information.

Version: EPiServer Commerce 1 R2 SP2| Last updated: 2012-09-20 | Copyright © EPiServer AB | Send feedback to us