Phil Bui
Vice President of Commerce
XCentium Continues To Lead The Way In Innovations For Sitecore Experience Commerce
Since the inception of Sitecore Experience Commerce, the XCentium Commerce team has been behind the scenes brainstorming how to leverage and extend the platform to drive additional value for business users. With over a dozen plugins available and more on the way, our team continues to passionately pursue advances in functionality on the Sitecore Experience Commerce platform, which has earned us a strong reputation in our field, while making it easier for clients to engage their customers and grow their business.
In early 2019, our team met to consider which new Sitecore Commerce innovations would be both technically feasible and valuable to companies. I am honored to share our recent contributions that have been spearheaded by several ecommerce visionaries on our XCentium team including Amrit Raj (Founder and Partner), Kautilya Prasad (Director), Balaji Thirumeninathan (Senior Project Manager) and Srikanth Kondapally (Architect).
Using AI For Advanced Content Migration
Over the years, we have seen our clients struggle with content migration. Many clients have multiple websites across diverse properties. Multiplied out this can make for thousands or tens of thousands of pages of content. Additionally, marketing and technology teams are continually being asked to do more with less personnel. Seeing how content migration can be manually intensive, we are looking to relieve this burden. Our team is building extensions that tap into Machine Learning engines to automatically tag content, paving the way for relevant content to show up on both SEO and onsite search. Thomson Reuter was chosen as our first plugin integration point as its natural language processing engine was a good functional fit. We expect to incorporate this in a client delivery soon.
Bringing Sitecore Commerce to the Mobile Market
With companies of all sizes adapting to multiple payment methods to stay relevant with customers, smart marketing and technology teams are focused on preparing for mobile ecommerce, as sales are expected to account for 54% of total ecommerce sales by 2021. With the advancement of multiple types of currency used for ecommerce, XCentium created the Stripe plugin, enabling companies on the Sitecore Commerce Platform to engage with their customers and provide a relevant, friction free ecommerce experience, at scale. The Stripe Plugin for Sitecore Experience Commerce brings enormous value to clients by providing a wide variety of digital payment types including ACH Payment, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Microsoft Pay and Amex Express Checkout options. With having previously rolled out a plugin for Bitcoin provider, Coingate, XCentium’s Commerce team enables companies to provide the right payment, in context and at scale.
Using Subscriptions and Recurring Payments to Increase Revenue
With the Subscription Box Industry booming, it is more important than ever for companies to be able to leverage their ecommerce solution to claim their share of this $2.6 Billion dollar industry. Subscription Commerce provides clients with a way to stay repeatedly in front of their customers, while providing a constant revenue source. Our subscription plugin gives business users additional flexibility by allowing them to configure subscription products dynamically in Sitecore Experience Commerce, using business tools. Clients are now able to tag any product in the catalog to allow automatically recurring subscription purchases, enabling customers to easily subscribe and save online. Through the checkout process, the customer will go through a secured process that tokenizes their payment information for PCI compliance. Upon completion of checkout, the customer receives a recurring discount and the site receives an additional revenue stream. It is a win-win situation for everyone.
Putting the Personalization In Products
People love personalization. Whether its marketing being targeted to them, or buying a gift for a loved one, people enjoy that “special touch” personalization offers. Given that Sitecore Commerce serves many retailers, our team wanted to create the ability to personalize products such as mugs, t-shirts, backpacks and more. In our recent commerce demo, our team showcases how easy it is to offer personalized engraving on a ring. With this feature, Sitecore Commerce clients will be able to offer personalization to their customers, if desired, as well as charge a personalization fee. Happy customers and increased sales. It doesn’t get better than that.
A Sneak Peak At What’s On Deck
If there is one thing customers love more than personalizing products, it’s surprising their loves ones with gifts. Marketing teams will also be excited to know that our team is working on expanding functionality for gift boxing and personalized messaging, which will be available in the second half of 2019 on Sitecore Experience Commerce.
B2B for Sitecore Experience Commerce?
Rumors have circulated for some time now on whether Sitecore Experience Commerce would ever expand functionality for B2B users. As B2B companies know, this is an extraordinarily complex task involving intricate requirements. However, we are pleased to announce that the XCentium team is working to add this functionality to Sitecore Commerce during the second half of 2019. Given the enormity of this project, our team has created a wish list and prioritized the order in which we will be adding these functionalities. First, we are working on pricing and quotes. This will include the capability to add a custom pricelist and the ability to create catalogs unique products and pricing for your customer. Second, we will be working on user management and the ability to have a tiered and secure workflow. This will enable the B2B buying process to incorporate multiple levels of permissions.
In summary, I am so proud of our team and their passion to help our clients have the utmost in business functionality within the Sitecore Experience Commerce platform. Their unending dedication to innovation in addition to their daily work with clients is one of the reasons I enjoy working at XCentium.