Top 3 Questions Executives Need to Answer When Planning for Episerver Commerce

Episerver Commerce is a powerful framework for implementing enterprise eCommerce. Just like any powerful tool, it is only as good as effective as the plan and implementation. If you are preparing for an Episerver Commerce project, here are three questions to start your planning process. 

1. What will be the source of truth for our data?
   This is a question that you will need to answer for every data type that will be used in your Episerver Commerce site. Whether it’s customer, product, order or other entity data, you will need to clearly define where data is being read from and where data is being written to. We are making the assumption here that you will be integrating the data on your site to another business system, as this is the case in the majority of instances for this type of project. The beauty of the Episerver Commerce framework is that it can be built to match your business processes, but for your Episerver Commerce project to be successful, this means your business processes need to be clearly defined up-front, including where data will be sourced from, written to and what workflow will exist in creating, updating and deleting different data types.
2. What will be our customer model?
   Will customer data be account-centric or user-centric? Can there be multiple users per account? If yes, what account data is shared among the users? What is the process for creating a user? Are anonymous users allowed to check out? The answers to these questions will likely be dependent on your overall goals for the project, but they are important to determine up-front. If you want multiple users per account, that can be designed into your system in the beginning, but adding it to an existing Episerver Commerce site would be much more complex.
3. How will we structure pricing on our site?
   Episerver Commerce’s tiered pricing model can allow complex pricing structures to be implemented. To properly implement pricing, you will need to define how the pricing tiers will be structured on your site. Episerver Commerce allows you to define different customer groups that will receive different pricing based on specific characteristics. Each customer can be in multiple groups that each have their own pricing defined, and Episerver Commerce will show the customer the lowest price from any qualifying group they are in. For example, customers in the USA would be set up with the price of $150.00 for SKU 1234, customers in the state of Illinois would be set up with a price of $145.00 for SKU 1234, and account XYZ (that is in Illinois) would be set up with a price of $140.00 for SKU 1234. When a customer in account XYZ logs in, they would see a price of $140.00, but when another customer in Illinois logs in they would see a price of $145.00. The specifics of how your pricing will work will be dependent on your business model and your current pricing structure. Along with defining how pricing will be structured, there needs to be a consideration for how the pricing information will be maintained (which often leads us back to our first question.)

Brilliance Is Here to Help
The great news is that Episerver Commerce has a well-designed architecture for meeting a variety of business needs. To truly harness this for your organization, it is important to plan your project right from the start. If you are planning for your Episerver Commerce project and are looking for a company to guide you through the planning process, feel free to give us a call at 414-425-4069 x150.