For businesses planning to build a medium to large eCommerce website, you need an effective and scalable commerce platform to help you respond to changing business conditions—one that is built on powerful SaaS architecture that can help you thrive and grow.
Oracle CX Commerce offers you all these advantages—and more.
So, what exactly is Oracle CX Commerce, and why should you care about it? Below are some compelling reasons the platform could be an option for you to consider.
What Is Oracle CX Commerce?
Formerly known as Oracle Commerce Cloud, Oracle CX Commerce is an enterprise-grade, cloud-based commerce platform that provides a robust set of tools for retailers and brands to build, manage, and grow their business.
It is marketed as a unified commerce solution for B2B and D2C eCommerce. It enables users to employ real-time customer actions and customer lifetime data to provide buyer-specific experiences at scale wherever they are needed.
They develop the platform on an API-first strategy to provide commerce practitioners the flexibility to adapt as business and customer needs change and the ability to differentiate the experiences that keep customers engaged continuously.
It was initially derived from Oracle Commerce Platform (ATG), but it is now a separate product developed specifically to address growing SMB and mid-market commerce business needs.
While not among the most popular enterprise system, the platform is the leading eCommerce platform in Macao, Macedonia, and Uruguay.
Features of Oracle CX Commerce
It has an extensive list of features- too much to detail in one blog post. Head on to Oracle Commerce demos, a series of videos and interactive tours comprehensively describing all its feature sets for more information.
Below are some of its features:
- Subscription Management Tools: automatic billing and payments, fixed recurring orders, support for various pricing models, flexible revenue recognition, AI-driven analytics, and subscription-based orders
- Content Management Tools: content augmented with AI and machine learning, content collaboration and workflow, API-first omnichannel delivery, taxonomy-driven content personalization, digital asset management, machine-driven tagging, content recommendations, video streaming, and support for over 40 languages.
- B2B Commerce Tools: embedded content, personalized buyer interactions, customer-specific catalogs and pricing, account and contact management, delegated administration, account hierarchies, recurring orders, approval workflows, custom payments, and CX and ERP integrations.
- B2C Commerce Tools: catalog and inventory management, search and guided navigation, headless API, unified direct and wholesale sales
- Pricing Tools: self-service ordering, multi-tier pricing, subscription ordering, Paypal integration, and support for over 60 currencies.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Oracle CX Commerce
Before deciding, you should consider the platform’s pros and cons. This will help you determine if you should use it as an eCommerce platform for your business. Below are the benefits and drawbacks of Oracle CX Commerce.
Pro: One Ecommerce Cloud, Not Two
Oracle CX Commerce allows you to reach more customers through a single platform while streamlining your operations with easy-to-use business tools to support any B2B, B2B2C, or B2C eCommerce model.
You launch and maintain multiple eCommerce experiences using a consistent set of capabilities and required skillsets within one system.
That can’t be easily done with other eCommerce platforms- like Salesforce Commerce Cloud– that is split into two separate products with mismatched technologies for B2B and B2C use cases. There is little to no common data model or native integration in multi-data architectures, which can raise the cost of launching and maintaining multiple selling models.
Pro: More Built-In Capabilities Included
The platform has more built-in features, such as search, AI-powered personalization, experience management, promotions, and content, to help you build and grow your digital channels.
Oracle’s rich, native functionality lets you create the eCommerce experiences that customers want and the market demands in a quickly changing environment.
Many of the most popular features necessary to sell successfully on digital channels, such as tailored content and basic B2B search, are missing from other eCommerce platforms.
You often need the help of third-party partners to supply these essential features, which increases the number of required integrations and costs.
Pro: Unified Data Model Across the Business
By integrating your consumer-facing apps with operational and financial systems, Oracle’s unified data model gives an accurate customer 360 view, allowing you to tackle essential eCommerce problems in real-time.
Accurate contract pricing, availability to order, and supply chain visibility are some of the real-time features included. You can respond to real-time demand signals with Oracle CX Commerce and connect customers to the right product with the best offer in any channel.
Pro: Effortless Scale Provides Room to Grow
You can develop a system suited for your business and adapt and grow it as your needs evolve using Oracle’s open and scalable platform.
Regardless of your growth, Oracle CX Commerce has no limits on the number of customers you can serve, SKUs and catalogs you can manage, or page views you can deliver.
Other eCommerce platforms are designed to work under constraints imposed by their company’s business model, and these constraints might add additional costs to your solutions.
Oracle CX Commerce does not limit your possibilities by using multiple, fragmented application and data architectures.
Pro: Personalized Customer Experiences with Smarter Content
Oracle allows you to deliver personalized customer experiences at scale by supporting centralized digital asset creation, utilization, management, and smart content and recommendations.
Create compelling eCommerce experiences powered by intelligent content to engage, convert, and retain customers.
Other eCommerce platforms lack the native capability for content suggestions, taxonomies, and collaborative tools that allow you to build and manage experiences across channels efficiently.
Con: Confusing Framework to Work With
One issue with Oracle CX Commerce was that the core ATG e-commerce engine was never written for the cloud and has never been completely re-engineered.
Rather than migrating to a headless/REST/API approach, it was first deployed on Oracle Cloud VMs, preventing it from interacting with other cloud services from other providers.
The platform only started fully supporting APIs with version 11.2 published in 2015. Nonetheless, it extends the original engine rather than a root and branch re-engineering.
As one Oracle Commerce developer tells The Register, “Oracle Commerce Cloud is a weird mix of the Oracle Commerce pieces plus this strange UI front end rendering framework that most people don’t necessarily want or need because they want to do their own things with the front end.”
Con: Harshly Expensive
Although Oracle Commerce Cloud doesn’t have a fixed price for site construction, the current implementation cost around $125,000 to 150,000. Implementation cost varies with technical complexity.
Digital commerce consultancy firm, RealDecoy estimates the ongoing costs of licensing to $250,000 annually with the company’s usage model or 4% (list cost) of your monthly sales with Oracle’s revenue share model.
Grow Your Online Store by Having an Oracle CX Commerce Specialist on Your Team
Oracle Commerce Cloud is an excellent platform for launching your eCommerce site. It provides a wide range of features and capabilities that can help you create a successful online store.
But choosing the right Oracle CX Commerce SaaS development specialist to build your eCommerce store is all about striking the right balance between a slew of variables. There is no silver bullet, but given the intricacies of Oracle development, there is always a candidate that best meets your needs.
Jarvis is a world leader in eCommerce recruitment.
We have successfully sourced and placed full-time and contract professionals with Oracle retailers and service providers for a wide variety of clients, from start-ups to megastores in all industries.
Ready to supercharge your eCommerce presence with the help of Oracle development experts?