10 Reasons to Migrate to Salesforce B2B Commerce Lightning 

Director of Technical Architecture, Raja Patnaik highlights the benefits of migrating to the B2B Commerce Lightning platform.  

Migrating your B2B Classic storefront to B2B Commerce Lightning is a strategic decision driven by the desire to capitalize on the latest technological advancements of Salesforce. The migration to Salesforce offers businesses numerous advantages. It includes an improved user interface that is easy to use and comprehend. Additionally, advanced customization options allow companies to tailor their storefront to their needs. Furthermore, it offers enhanced integration capabilities with other Salesforce solutions and third-party applications.

The Lightning platform is built with performance in mind, promising faster loading times and more responsive interactions. It also scales effortlessly with your business growth, managing increased transaction volumes without compromising efficiency. Data-driven insights provided by the platform’s robust analytics tools enable more informed decision-making, while a mobile-first design ensures optimal accessibility for users on any device. 

Below is the visual representation of the B2B Commerce Services and Experience layer built on top of Salesforce core services. 

10 Reasons to Migrate to Salesforce B2B Commerce Lightning  

Making the switch from a B2B Classic Storefront to Salesforce B2B Commerce Lightning is a no-brainer when you consider all the enhanced functionality and business growth opportunity. Let’s dive into just some of the many advantages of a Lightning upgrade. 

1. Highly Scalable and Customizable platform 

Improving website performance and scalability is a crucial focus for modern ecommerce platforms. Salesforce B2B Commerce Lightning addresses this by introducing storefront templates powered by the Lightning Web Runtime framework. This framework allows the creation of custom, reusable components optimized for performance and aligned with modern web standards. It allows for more accessible adaptation to changing business requirements, expansion into new markets, and implementing unique branding and customization options. 

2. Easy-to-use navigation and shopping cart features 

The LWR template, utilizing the Lightning Web Components framework, represents a more current and modular approach. With LWC components, the shopping cart and checkout process becomes more flexible and performance efficient. The modular design allows components to be individually configured and assembled within the Salesforce Experience Builder, providing high customization and reusability. The Experience Builder enables you to drag and drop components, design the layout, and configure settings in a user-friendly interface, simplifying the customization of the checkout experience to meet unique business needs. 

3. Advanced Product Search Features and Functionality  

With the evolution of Salesforce and its B2B Commerce solutions (often referred to as B2B Commerce Lightning), the functionality has been enhanced to improve the user experience, including how products are filtered and displayed.  

By leveraging Field-Based Filtering, Dynamic Filter Selection, and other advanced features, B2B Commerce on the Salesforce platform can offer a more personalized and efficient shopping experience. This improves the platform’s usability for customers and allows businesses to present and sell their products more effectively. 

4. Boost Efficiency and Agility in Order Management and Payments 

Integrating an Order Management System (OMS), payment processors, and CRM core functionalities offers significant advantages for businesses seeking to streamline operations and improve customer satisfaction. 

This integration can be facilitated through APIs, platform events for real-time integration, or app exchange partners that provide pre-built connectors. This integration is crucial for business agility and provides a competitive edge by enabling a business to be more responsive and adaptable in its processes and manage orders. 

5. AI-Powered Insights 

Salesforce Einstein is an artificial intelligence technology embedded into the Salesforce platform that brings AI capabilities to various Salesforce Clouds, including B2B Commerce and applications. It provides insights, predictions, and recommendations to Salesforce users, enabling them to work smarter and make data-driven decisions. Salesforce Einstein helps automate routine tasks, allows more efficient data analysis, and enhances user experiences through predictive insights and recommendations. It assists sales, service, marketing, and analytics teams to be more productive and effective.  

6. Supports Localization Feature 

B2B Commerce Lightning supports localization, adapting your ecommerce site to different languages and regions. This feature is crucial for businesses with a diverse customer base or multi-country operations. Localization in B2B Commerce Lightning ensures that customers can interact with your storefront in their native language and that the content is relevant to their cultural context. With localization support, the Lightning platform empowers businesses to reach a global audience and provide a culturally relevant online shopping experience. 

7. Automated Messages and Notifications 

Salesforce Experience Cloud, which includes solutions like B2B Commerce Lightning (previously known as Salesforce B2B Commerce), leverages the core capabilities of the Salesforce platform, such as automation with Salesforce Flow and customization through the Lightning platform. Salesforce Flow is a powerful tool that allows administrators to automate complex business processes without coding and improve customer communication and engagement. 

It offers tools and features that make automating these communications easy and effective: Personalized communication, such as order confirmations, shipping, and payment notifications. 

8. Integration with Salesforce Ecosystem 

Salesforce’s B2B Commerce Lightning solution is built on the core Salesforce platform and uses the same data model as Salesforce CRM, allowing seamless integration with other Salesforce clouds. This integration enables businesses to create a comprehensive view of their customers, which is often referred to as the ‘360-degree view. By leveraging standard Salesforce objects for products, pricing, and orders, the B2B Commerce Lightning solution ensures that information is consistent across the entire Salesforce ecosystem. This means that customer interactions are captured within the same system, whether they are sales transactions, service inquiries, or marketing engagements. 

9. Security and Compliance 

B2B Commerce Lightning prioritizes security and compliance, ensuring that sensitive business data and transactions are protected against threats and vulnerabilities. This enhances trust and confidence among B2B customers, leading to increased adoption and retention. B2B Commerce Lightning is developed to comply with relevant industry standards and legal regulations, such as GDPR, HIPAA, or PCI DSS, which govern data privacy, security, and transactional integrity. 

10. New and Improved Features and Support

The transition to B2B Commerce Lightning provides businesses with ongoing support and access to Salesforce’s latest features and enhancements. B2B Commerce Classic, the predecessor to Lightning, is no longer being actively developed, which means it won’t receive new features or improvements. For businesses that want to stay current with the latest ecommerce capabilities, migrating to B2B Commerce Lightning is a strategic and necessary move. 

Power Up Your Business with Salesforce B2B Commerce Lightning 

Migrating from the classic B2B Commerce storefront to B2B Commerce Lightning on Salesforce represents a significant upgrade that leverages cutting-edge technology to enhance business operations. Transitioning to B2B Commerce Lightning is not merely a technological advancement, but a critical step towards future-proofing your business operations and staying competitive in the digital marketplace. With faster loading times, responsive interactions, and a mobile-first design, B2B Commerce Lightning ensures optimal accessibility and a superior customer experience. Furthermore, including AI-powered insights and comprehensive analytics tools empowers businesses with data-driven decision-making, enhancing overall efficiency and agility. 

– Raja Patnaik, Director – Technical Architecture