Our 3 reasons why Oracle Commerce should be on your short list following The Forrester Wave™: DXP Report

Download The Forrester Wave™: Digital Experience Platforms (DXP), Q3 2021 report to learn more about Oracle's recognition as a Leader.

When it comes to digital engagement, it’s hardly thought leadership to declare that your customers expect consistent, relevant experiences—no matter where they choose to interact with you. By now, the concept is universal. Yet, many companies still struggle to close the customer expectation gap, especially in B2B.

Getting the customer experience (CX) right benefits more than just the customer. Organizations that successfully create connected experiences are often rewarded with higher conversion rates, better customer retention, and greater brand loyalty and advocacy. After all, two-thirds of customer loyalty is driven by customer experience, more so than even brand and price combined. Companies that struggle to meet customer expectations risk brand erosion and lost revenues that can prove difficult to recover.

With such clear benefits and consequences, why aren’t more companies getting it right? It’s certainly not for lack of desire—or even lack of investment. Simply put: It’s just not that easy.

Coordination is key to personalizing the customer experience

Providing a 1:1 relationship with each customer requires intelligent, well-coordinated data and content orchestration across a broad range of technologies. Think of it as a relay race with the customer as the baton. Success requires every “runner” (i.e., technology and/or team) to maintain momentum without dropping the baton along the way. And the handoff is especially critical; you have to do it better than everyone else on the track. Offering such a personalized customer experience requires a holistic understanding of all the moving parts, which is why digital experience platforms are so valuable to organizations looking to solve for these challenges.

The Forrester Wave™: Digital Experience Platforms (DXP), Q3 2021 report recognizes Oracle as a Leader, which we’re quite proud of. We believe this recognition is a testament to our commitment to our customers—and our customers’ customers—to deliver better experiences through solutions that are engineered to work together.

Digital commerce is one criterion where Oracle received the highest possible score—something only three other organizations received. If you’re evaluating ecommerce solutions, here are three reasons we think Oracle Commerce should be on your short list as part of a broad digital experience strategy.

1. Flexible deployment provides the best experience for your customers and your business—even as requirements change over time.

The world of commerce is overflowing with buzzwords right now—perhaps the most pervasive and confusing is “headless.” Put plainly, headless commerce is just the decoupling of the front-end experience from the commerce engine. Some vendors are all in on headless. But if you buy into their commerce engine, you still need to shop for a front-end experience, build it yourself, or rely on a partner to build it for you.

There are two major challenges with this approach. The first is the inherent complexities of accurate data mapping across technologies that aren’t plug-and-play. Data that’s poorly integrated or goes out of sync due to versioning challenges puts customer satisfaction and the success of your digital investment at risk. Maintaining these data flows can also drive up costs over time.

The other key problem is that once you buy into the headless-only technologies, you lose the ability to choose full-stack capabilities in the future and must perpetually maintain an experience layer separate from the engine. This can be a big commitment and present several challenges over time, especially if you decide to change ownership from one partner to another or bring it in house.

Oracle Commerce provides an alternative approach. We believe flexibility is key to your commerce success, which is why we offer a cloud-native solution, engineered as an API-first service with full REST support. Whether you want to leverage the provided storefront, go fully headless, or take a hybrid approach, you can choose the deployment option that’s right for your business—both today and in the future—all while using the exact same REST APIs.

Our next-generation Open Storefront Framework (OSF) allows you to go even further with a modern composable approach that delivers efficient design, better re-use of components, and enhanced extensibility—without sacrificing expert business control. With Oracle Commerce, you’re not boxed into a headless solution with no way out. Instead, you can continue to optimize the digital experience that keeps your customers engaged and grows your business.

2. Experience management capabilities give business users more control.

Customer expectations continuously evolve based on their most recent positive and negative shopping experiences. To succeed in the face of constant change, your commerce experience must adapt as quickly as your customers’ preferences without relying on complex internal processes or an overburdened IT organization. Oracle Commerce gives users intuitive tools to be more agile, work smarter, and own the site experience—without relying on technical resources.

With Design Studio, a feature of Oracle Commerce, you can leverage drag-and-drop experience management, take control of search and navigation results, and personalize the site for every visitor, whether they’re a loyal customer or a first-time shopper. Oracle Commerce provides a widget and layout framework, as well as a large catalog of prebuilt page layouts, widgets, and elements, so you can build dynamic digital experiences faster and quickly adapt them.

3. AI-powered personalization and recommendations drive customer engagement and revenue.

Offering tailored recommendations based on real-time actions as a shopper browses your site demonstrates a true understanding of their needs and preferences. Native advanced intelligence capabilities within Oracle Commerce can help you engage your customers by responding to their individual shopping behaviors.

But you’re not just handing over control to the machine to make recommendations without oversight. From simple strategies, such as showing the top sellers that are relevant to a unique buyer, to complex merchandising scenarios like using different rules for each element to show both alternatives and complementary products within the recommendation set, you’re able to adjust and adapt to make the impact that best aligns to your business goals.

The success of your digital commerce investment goes beyond the products you sell. It depends on your ability to make meaningful connections with your customers. And that type of digital experience requires the right technology and tools, powered by unified data and connected content across channels. We’re invested in delivering the solutions you need to exceed your customers’ expectations and generate more revenue from your digital channels.

Read more about our recognition as a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Digital Experience Platforms (DXP), Q3 2021 report.

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