Magento introduces major enhancements to Magento Commerce

Last year in April, Magento announced they are entering the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business again. This time they are trying again with their flagship Magento 2 digital commerce platform dubbed Magento Commerce.

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Yesterday, the company made two platform improvement announcements at Imagine 2017 to extend the capabilities of Magento Commerce. So let’s take a brief look at each announcement.

MAGENTO EXPANDS DIGITAL CLOUD FOR B2B

The company is already the leader in the $6.7 trillion B2B eCommerce space.

With these additions, Magento will allow B2B companies to focus out of the gate on B2B implementation. This benefits users by spending less time and money to build a B2B system from a B2C platform.

Just this week OroCommernce, a start-up B2B eCommerce platform founded by the original founders of Magento, released V1.1. There is obviously a serious competition in the works between both companies.

It is no surprise that Magento would focus on the B2B market at Imagine 2017 to maintain its leading position. Here are the key new features for the digital cloud B2B platform:

• Corporate account management: Support sales to corporate accounts with multiple levels of buyers and varying roles and permissions. As a result, the platform offers flexible payment options, including payment on credit, to boost sales.
• Quoting: Efficiently manage quote requests and negotiate pricing terms with a streamlined workflow.
• Quick ordering: Drive recurring revenue with fast, frictionless ordering. Customers can enter or upload lists of SKUs, use requisition lists, copy previous orders to accelerate the purchase process, or execute rapid reorders for common purchases.
• Custom catalogs and pricing: Ensure customers receive the right products and pricing information with custom catalogs and personalized price lists for individual companies or groups of customers.
• Real-time inventory intelligence: Expose distributors to available inventory across multiple locations to increase sales and deliver a better customer experience.
• Intelligent routing and order delivery: Provide significant cost-savings for businesses that ship from multiple locations by selecting the best fulfillment source.
• Back-end integration: Easily integrate and enable real-time communications with any ERP, CRM, or other backend system using extensive APIs and off-the-shelf extensions.
• Multi-channel support: Boost efficiency and a more consistent brand experience by serving B2B and B2C customers, multiple brands, and multiple geographies on the same platform.

MAGENTO ACCELERATES DIGITAL INNOVATION WITH COMMERCE CLOUD ENHANCEMENTS

Traditional B2C clients also received a brand new set of features to the core Commerce Cloud product. The new enhancements enable merchants to:

• Optimize shipping and fulfillment: Magento Shipping provides greater control and automation over the entire shipping and fulfillment process. Effectively reducing cart abandonment and unlocking business efficiencies to accelerate growth. Magento Shipping is powered by Temando and provided as a bundled extension in Magento Commerce Cloud. It also provides an API-based infrastructure that delivers speed, scalability, reliability, and connectivity to third-party shipping providers. Including offering out-of-the-box access to regional and international carriers.
• Deliver richer experiences, faster: The addition of advanced content management from Magento BlueFoot CMS dramatically simplifies content creation and management with powerful tools and intuitive user interfaces. Since empowering non-technical teams to own and deploy content, the advanced CMS enables merchants to quickly launch richer, more compelling shopping experiences that drive conversion.
• Extend and integrate a unified social media presence: Magento Social enables merchants to engage with audiences directly through social media channels, including Facebook and Pinterest. With social channels expected to account for upwards of 10 percent of total online sales in 2017, Magento Social enables merchants to easily integrate updates and promotions. Also, merchants receive detailed analytics that drives improved traffic.
• Provide business performance visibility and insight across commerce channels: Magento now offers merchants sophisticated and fully customizable business intelligence tools as a part of Magento Commerce Cloud. With Magento Business Intelligence Essentials, Magento merchants can more easily and cost-effectively understand customers, products, and orders. Therefore, businesses will have the confidence to make decisions for their marketing, merchandising, and topline business initiatives.

The release dates for both service enhancements is Summer of 2017. Some details are already available on the Magento website, while others are being added in due time.

In conclusion, there are exciting times ahead for Magento. Right now, none of these enhancements deal with the Magento Community Edition popular with smaller online retailers. But it shows Magento’s commitment to bring Magento 2 functionality forward.

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