Tag: Database Server

Salesforce Commerce Cloud Explained: Pricing, Hosting, Performance, Scalability
Nasdaq forecasts that 95% of purchases will be made online by 2040. Statistics also say that the global e-commerce market is expected to reach $18.89 trillion by 2027, compared to $5 trillion in 2021.

As the market grows and buyers’ experience becomes more digitized, only tech-savvy businesses will be able to survive the competition.

Therefore, today many online businesses are looking for platforms to help them engage with their potential customers without the need for hiring a team of developers to maintain their websites.

Salesforce Commerce Cloud has proved to be one of the best solutions available today. It promises to radically transform the way e-commerce businesses are managed.

Below we explain what Salesforce Commerce Cloud is, highlighting the components of Commerce Cloud that raise the most questions and combining them into one concise article.

What is Salesforce Commerce Cloud?

Old-fashioned marketing ploys no longer work on modern customers. Therefore, if you decide your business needs a fresh start, now is the perfect time to implement an intelligent Salesforce Commerce Cloud, a cloud-based software as a service (SaaS) solution that offers simplified e-commerce integration for small to medium businesses and large enterprises.

The platform is really sophisticated, providing an intelligent 1:1 personalization of the shopping experience. The multichannel architecture allows shoppers to easily move within the brand’s web and mobile ecosystems and get what they are looking for with just a few clicks.

To get a feel for the popularity of Salesforce Commerce Cloud, you can check out the long list of satisfied customers: Brands such as Adidas, L’Oreal, Ralph Lauren, Ecco, and Columbia are among the many proud clients whose revenues have skyrocketed thanks to this platform.

And now for the details.

Salesforce Commerce Cloud Hosting

What makes the platform stand out from Salesforce Commerce Cloud competitors is that it eliminates the need to acquire web hosting. The team will take care of all the technical aspects so that you can focus on your business strategies.

Customer data is stored on a primary database server. Like Google, Microsoft, or Amazon web services, Salesforce has multiple data centres across the globe. All records—up to the last transaction—are automatically replicated to a second location for high availability and performance.

Salesforce Commerce Cloud Performance

Salesforce Commerce Cloud has a proven track record of great performance, helping many big-name brands serve millions of users around the world on a daily basis.

Adidas, for instance, has worked with Salesforce since 2011, reaching €23 billion in net sales according to its latest annual report.

Rituals, the number one bath-and-body brand in Europe, is also growing its business empire using Salesforce Commerce Cloud. The company grew its online business by 70% in just one year, providing a rich digital experience that includes click-and-collect data capture, real-time inventory, next-day delivery, local payment options, and dynamic brand content.

And the list of successful performance stories continues.

Don’t forget to check out: Get Started with Salesforce Order Management in Commerce Cloud

Salesforce Commerce Cloud Scalability

Scalability can be defined as the ability of a system to expand its resources as the amount of data and traffic increases.

You might be wondering whether your platform can handle an increasing number of users.

With Salesforce Commerce Cloud, the answer is a resounding yes. It is a highly scalable solution that can easily handle millions of users daily. The Salesforce team quietly scales websites behind the scenes with no system downtime.

And here is how the Salesforce team answers customer inquiries about scalability issues.

Customer: Will I see a decrease in performance as Salesforce’s subscriber base grows?

Salesforce Help Desk: “We are very conscious of performance and have designed the service to be scalable in such a way that we can constantly stay ahead of customer demand. Our architecture allows us to easily add web and application servers to accommodate more users. The system architecture also allows us to add more database servers as needed to accommodate more users. In addition, the facility that houses our servers provides us with guaranteed bandwidth, which we can increase as needed.”

So, as a retailer, you can be sure that your online store will work without sacrificing performance, as the platform’s multi-tenant architecture provides more resources for expanding your business.

If you’d like to learn more about website scaling capabilities, do not hesitate to contact Salesforce’s tech consultants. They can provide you with up-to-date information on all the technical aspects of the platform.

Salesforce Commerce Cloud Pricing

Pricing is based on the gross merchandise value (GMV) and is determined by customer and segment specifications.

The Salesforce Commerce Cloud pricing model is based on shared success, which means the vendor is incentivized to help you succeed. In short, if your business grows, they grow as well. In addition, they offer important data insights and provide valuable support services for your business through their customer success management (CSM) system.

But as in any business, there has to be a caveat somewhere. In the case of Salesforce Commerce Cloud, it is an up-front annual fee with some serious zeros. The actual cost depends on many factors, but according to the latest information, it will cost you on average around $150,000 a year. Let’s face it: When it comes to serving the best of the best, a financial threshold is necessary to ensure the highest standards of service.

Depending on what kind of business you run, there are two core products available:

B2B Commerce allows businesses to process a large number of orders while enabling efficient scalability and a smooth online experience. It powers sites for many of the world’s largest companies in industries such as manufacturing, retail, technology, and health care.

B2C Commerce facilitates more personalized interactions. The solution merges websites, social media channels, email, and physical stores. Such multi-channelling boosts customer engagement and increases brand loyalty.

In addition, there are editions available for both B2B and B2C: Starter, Growth, and Plus.

So, let’s compare the top features to get a clearer picture of their differences.

B2B Commerce Starter includes 1 storefront, 7,500 SKUs, and an additional 20 MB of cache storage. Not included are multi-channel orders and additional APIs.
B2B Commerce Growth includes 5 storefronts, 75,000 SKUs, 1 API call per order, an additional 40 MB of cache storage, and multi-channel orders.
B2B Commerce Plus includes 10 storefronts, 750,000 SKUs, 2 API calls per order, an additional 80 MB of cache storage, and multi-channel orders.

B2C Commerce Starter includes 1 site, 2 price books, an on-demand sandbox, and 750K credits.
B2C Commerce Growth includes 5 sites,10 price books, an on-demand sandbox, and 1.2M credits.
B2C Commerce Plus includes unlimited sites, unlimited price books, an on-demand sandbox, and 2.0M credits.

You can also extend your capabilities by selecting different add-ons that will work specifically for your business. Check out add-on pricing here. Please note that to receive a direct price quote on some features, you will still have to contact Salesforce. During the consultation, you will get up-to-date information and discuss which solution suits your business the most.

Salesforce provides e-commerce businesses with many of the essential tools for planning, launching, marketing, and tracking data.

Let’s quickly go over the core Salesforce Commerce Cloud features, including those that we mentioned above.
Salesforce Commerce Cloud Features

For the B2B Commerce edition:

personalized user experiences (targeted promotion management, multiple catalogues for different customers, personalized promotions and coupons, multi-account and contract ordering, responsive design for optimized mobile experiences)

advanced ordering capabilities (products (SKUs), ordering on behalf of sales and service, quick-order and reorder templates, subscriptions, multiple carts, and multiple payment methods, including PO, tax integration, and split shipments across multiple locations)

enhanced search functionality (site search, guided navigation, and search engine optimization)

localization for your site (currency localization, language localization, global support, global scalability, security, performance, and hosting)

customized experience with platform features (order history, a single view of your customer, RESTful APIs with componentized services, Lightning Flow automation, additional platform cache storage, platform development, real-time dashboards and reports, and multi-channel orders)

For the B2C Commerce edition:

premium commerce experiences (a powerful commerce platform, mobile commerce, a number of sites, price books, and on-demand sandboxes)

implemented innovations (a full-featured reference application that includes a shopping cart, checkout, and certified integrations)

best-in-class marketing tools (merchandising and marketing tools, native targeting and A/B testing, catalog and pricing management, campaigns and content management, site search and guided navigation, and search engine optimization)

additional features that drive growth (global scalability, security and performance, multi-site management and localization, and AI-powered experiences and business tools)

To conclude, let’s highlight the main benefits the platform offers to online businesses.

Check out another amazing blog by Brimit here: Messaging in Salesforce: Ways To Send Text, WhatsApp, Viber Messages
Key Strengths of Salesforce Commerce Cloud

Salesforce Commerce Cloud is a SaaS-based, multi-tenant platform, the technical part of which is fully managed by the Salesforce team. From server maintenance to security patching, everything is handled with the help of their own resources.

Now online retailers can reach their customers in a more personalized way, as AI-powered Einstein provides a 1:1-level personalized customer experience.

Also, Einstein Analytics makes it possible to increase your average order value (AOV). New products are showcased properly, and what’s more, you receive essential information on less popular items so that you can manage orders properly.

While integrated A/B testing expands merchandising capabilities, localization features allow you to use native multi-currency, language, and storage options.

Also important is the user-friendly interface, which distinguishes Salesforce Commerce Cloud from its competitors. In order to serve customers even better, it is crucial to have a mobile-friendly store. Salesforce handles this issue brilliantly, as the platform’s architecture was designed using a mobile-first approach.

Its strong omnichannel features simplify order and content management. The Lightning Order Management feature allows you to visually manage multiple workflows at the same time, while Einstein showcases the most relevant information based on the user’s geographical location, helping you reach your target audience more efficiently.

Last but not least, by integrating the Endless Aisle feature, you can unify online and physical stores, leaving your customers happy in case a product was out of stock at a specific location. With this add-on, you can easily ship the necessary item to their home address or to the closest in-store pickup location. This solution boosts your sales and ensures customer satisfaction.

ABOUT BRIMIT

Brimit is a Certified Salesforce Partner with access to the latest tools, services, and knowledge provided by Salesforce. We share our experience with companies seeking to move to Salesforce, adopt the platform’s products, or extend the Salesforce products they already use. Our Salesforce сonsulting services help businesses digitalize sales processes; automate marketing and customer service; improve collaboration between employees, customers, and partners; publish products on AppExchange, and consolidate disparate data from corporate systems.
October 31, 2022
How Does Salesforce Secure Your Data? Learn Here!
Salesforce makes the use of various effective techniques to secure your data

SSL technology – Salesforce makes use of SSL technology to protect your data from any kind of breach and infringement. SSL also known as (Secure Socket Technology) is an internet security protocol that is encryption based, which helps to maintain authentication and data integrity by ensuring privacy.

Salesforce helps the user by providing a unique id and username to each member of the organization which is important to be entered by the user when he/she logs in. Instead of using cookies for storing the user’s sessional and confidential information, Salesforce uses the advanced method which uses dynamic data and encoded session ids.

Salesforce makes use of a firewall-protected safe and secure hosted environment, including advanced technologies that help to restrict intruders. It also helps to store the customer’s data in a primary database server that includes multiple active clusters for frequent availability.

Salesforce stores the customer’s data using a highly redundant class disk storage that consists of Multiple Data paths to ensure reliability and performance. It uses covered services for submitting every customer’s data with the commitment up to the last transaction, which gets replicated automatically to the secondary site on a real-time basis, which gets backed up to the Localized data store. These backups get stored in the same data centres after getting verified for integrity.

Don’t forget to check out: Learn About Permission Sets in Salesforce | Salesforce Security Guide

Levels of Security Used by Salesforce

Salesforce uses three levels of Security which are Objects, Fields, and Records
- Object Level Security – Before granting permission to the user, Salesforce itself verifies the content to see the object. This level of Security is managed by using 2 configurations
  
  Profile – These are used to control the object-level security. A profile is considered to be the most important part of page layout assignments and log-in IP restrictions
  
  Permission Sets and permission Set Groups – Permission sets are considered to be the primary way of assigning object or field permissions, as they provide more flexibility, and packageability and are easily upgradable too.
- Field Level Security – Similar to object-level security field-level security also permission sets and permission set groups after which only the user gets access to field-level security.
- Record Level Security – Record level security is mostly accessible by the owners of the record, it can be considered as another way of providing ownership to the user.
How Salesforce is Better than Other CRMs
- Customization with proper Scalability – Salesforce is highly efficient in maintaining a good relationship with its customers in comparison to the other CRMs, by having the high capability of Scaling up every business and providing a customization fitting according to the customer’s needs. Salesforce permits its customers to personalize their Emails.
- Provides Multitenant Architecture – Salesforce is known for maintaining performance with large and small clients without any variation in service quality. It provides its clients with the infrastructure and one platform. This structure is also assured with proper updates and upgrades.
- Giving Partner Ecosystem – After becoming a partner with Salesforce you are with access to various free and popular apps and provide with an opportunity to develop the app for Salesforce and market it. You are also provided access to various important tools.
- Security – Various CRMs lack provide security services Salesforce keeps the proper security check by providing its customers with proper security services. Salesforce comprises various pre-installed security features that help the owner to decide he/she wants to provide access to the specific Organization.
Salesforce Cloud Apps Advantages

Salesforce is known for offering Innovative SaaS Solutions which help several businesses to use a common platform that is very cost-effective and helps to save money. On the other, it helps many businesses to grow many folds with better-enhanced communication through the Salesforce cloud. These are cloud services and Sales Chatters. Sales Cloud is the tools-loaded platform packed with features, which help to take care of everything related to customers, which includes nurturing the performance analytics, monitoring pipelines, etc.

Check out an amazing Salesforce video tutorial here: Salesforce Security Review | Tutorial Video

Loaded with Features for Salesperson and the Market

Salesforce is known for delivering greatly advanced features that are not delivered on other CRMs, this feature includes the management of contacts, efficient task management, workflow management, and track opportunities, using collaboration tools. Along with these features it also offers designed features for marketing leads and interrogating the emails.
August 23, 2022
Lightning Data Service (LDS) in Salesforce
If we have a lightning application that Creates, Reads, Updates or Deletes a record (basically CRUD operations) in the Salesforce database, Lightning Data Service (LDS) is the best and most efficient way to do so. By using LDS, we don’t have to write Apex controller code to fetch or create data in Salesforce. The code is already implicitly written in LDS, and we only need to call it to use one of the several tools based on our requirements.

Suppose we have several components made to fetch data from the same record, then without LDS, each component would have to make an independent call to the server irrespective of the fact that all these components are fetching information from the same data, hence it reduces efficiency and makes unnecessary calls to the server leading to inconsistencies. Through LDS, we need to fetch record once which reduces network transfers, app server load, and database server load.

Lightning Data service is designed to serve as a data Layer for Lightning Components. It is basically a Lightning Component counterpart of Visualforce Standard Controller, providing access to data displayed on the page. There are several advantages of using Lightning Data Service:

Don’t forget to check out: Salesforce Lightning Dialer | Boost Sales productivity by making hassle-free calls
- Minimize XMLHttpRequests
- LDS eliminates requests that involve the same record data. It sends a single shared data request that updates all the relevant components.
- Create notifications when record data changes
Leveraging the tools of Lightning Data Service

Salesforce provides us with the following form-based components:
1. lightning:recordViewForm
2. lightning:recordEditForm
3. lightning:recordForm
In addition to the above mentioned form based LDS tools, Salesforce provides a very versatile components named force:recordData.
1. lightning:recordViewForm — We can use this component to view a record data.The fields are rendered with their labels and values which are read only. It requires recordId to display the fields on the record. This component also takes care of Field Level Security and Sharing Settings. To display the fields and values we require, we need to specify them using the inbuilt tag lightning:outputField. Here is an example:
```
<lightning:recordViewForm recordId="{!v.recordId}" objectApiName="Account">
    <lightning:messages />
    <lightning:outputField fieldName="Name" />
</lightning:recordViewForm>
```
This example shows an account object record with the Id specified in recordId attribute and field inside the lightning:outputFIeld tag.The RecordId can either be hard-coded or can be obtained from the inbuilt interface for showing a page on the record :

“flexipage:availableForRecordHome, force:hasRecordId”

2. lightning:recordEditForm — We can use this component to create/edit a record data.The component displays fields with their labels and the current values, and enables us to edit their values. To specify editable fields, we need to use lightning:inputField components inside the lightning:recordEditForm component and lightning:button to save the changes made. Let us see this by an example:
```
<lightning:recordEditForm recordId="{!v.recordId}" objectApiName="Account">
   <lightning:messages />
   <lightning:inputField fieldName="Name" />
   <lightning:button class="slds-m-top_small" type="submit" label="Create new" />
</lightning:recordEditForm>
```
This example shows an account object record with the Id specified in recordId attribute and field inside the lightning:inputFIeld tag along with lightning:button to submit it.

3. lightning:recordForm — Both the tools defined above can be combined into lightning:recordForm component. This can be used to view, create and edit records based on RecordId. The record ID is inherited from the record page via the force:hasRecordId interface. For example:
```
<lightning:recordForm recordId="{!v.recordId}" 
                              objectApiName="Account"
                              fields="Name" />
```
In this example, lightning:recordForm displays the account name field and label with a pencil icon, just like how it appears on a record detail page. When the pencil icon is clicked, the field becomes editable with the Cancel and Save buttons shown below it.

4. force:recordData —We can use this component to create,view, edit and delete records. This tool does not inherently include UI elements to show data fetched. We can use it to create highly customization user interfaces beyond what the form-based components provide.It does not contain UI elements. It is just the simple logic fed to the server to fetch relevant data. But for us to be able to view and modify data, we have to use UI elements, for example, lightning:formattedText. Here is the example of the component to load data:
```
<aura:component>
    <aura:attribute name="recordId" type="String" />
    <aura:attribute name="record" type="Object" />
    <aura:attribute name="simpleRecord" type="Object" />
    <force:recordData aura:id="forceRecordCmp"
recordId="{!v.recordId}"
layoutType="{!v.layout}"
fields="{!v.fieldsToQuery}"
mode="VIEW"
targetRecord="{!v.record}"
targetFields="{!v.simpleRecord}" />
<div class="recordName">
<p class="slds-text-heading--medium">
<lightning:formattedtext title="Record Name" value="{!v.simpleRecord.Name}" /></p>
</div>
</aura:component>
```
Check out another amazing blog by Anurag here: Best Practices for Data Security in Salesforce

To load a record on the client side, we have to add the force:recordData tag to our component, and set our recordId, mode, and layoutType or fields attributes.
- recordId specifies the record to load. Records can’t be loaded without a recordId.
- mode can be set to either EDIT or VIEW, which determines the behavior of notifications and what operations are available to perform with the record. If you’re using force:recordData to change the record in any way, set the mode to EDIT.
- layoutType specifies the layout (FULL or COMPACT) used to display the record, which determines what fields are included. Using layoutType allows your component to adapt to layout definitions.
- fields specifies which fields in the record to query.
The force:recordData tag also supports a set of target attributes, which are attributes that force:recordData populates itself. The target attributes can be used to allow access from the UI.
- targetRecord is populated with the loaded record
- targetFields is populated with the simplified view of the loaded record
- targetError is populated with any errors
Reference: trailhead.salesforce, rajvakati
May 26, 2020