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This winter we decided to get away for a long weekend staycation in the mountains. Having sold my old 2001 vehicle over a year ago, we needed a way to get to our destination. I’d been eager to take the Tesla Model 3 for a spin. It would be a nice step up from my old 20mpg car that frequently needed expensive repairs.
The Model 3’s acceleration was smooth and quick, and the vehicle was fun to drive. It was also convenient and inexpensive to charge at one of Tesla’s many charging stations.
GM is set to spend close to $30 billion through 2025 on all-electric and autonomous vehicles, and Cairn Energy Research Advisors reports that global electric vehicle sales in 2021 will jump by about 35%. Beyond my personal experience, these numbers don’t lie; electric vehicles are the future, for many good reasons.
E-Commerce of the past
Much like a heavy, inefficient vehicle, e-commerce websites of the past are clunky and less performant. They often require loading entire webpages as you navigate the website, making for a poor user experience. These old e-commerce websites also often provide cookie-cutter implementations with little to no flexibility in tailoring the website to meet your needs.
SCC for B2B, welcome to the Cloud
In late 2020, Sana Commerce Cloud (SCC) was launched as a new product. Sana has a long history of delivering ERP-integrated e-commerce solutions for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations (and other ERPs). With this re-imagined product, Sana brings several new exciting features to its e-commerce platform.
Single Page Applications
Single Page Applications (SPAs) offer a way to improve the user experience by allowing websites to behave more like desktop applications. Rather than loading entire webpages as a user navigates a website, the application runs in one webpage. As the user navigates the SPA, sections of the webpage are swapped out and data is fetched from the server as needed. This makes for a much faster and more enjoyable user experience for visitors to the e-commerce website.
With its re-architecture of its technology stack, SCC has evolved to offer a SPA design for its new product. Like Gmail and other apps that you enjoy and use regularly, SCC brings an improved shopping experience to users. Whether on a mobile device, with a slow internet connection, or a desktop, users of the new e-commerce website will appreciate the improved SPA design.
What is headless e-commerce?
Headless e-commerce decouples your front-end e-commerce website from the backend of your system that provides much of the functionality and data that supports your e-commerce solution.
Many e-commerce solutions offer pre-defined product detail pages and product listing pages. Customizing these pages, and others can be painful, costly, and difficult or impossible to do. This makes it difficult to tailor your B2B e-commerce website to better suit your industry and business-specific needs. Creating a distinct and memorable shopping experience that represents your company’s brand well is also complicated by this lack of flexibility.
Headless e-commerce decouples this system. This liberates you to build a custom e-commerce website that fits your needs, while still leveraging your backend ERP data and functionality.
Among the many benefits of the new SCC product is headless e-commerce. While out of the box e-commerce web stores are still an option for rapid development, custom-made front-end websites can be built now too.
Don’t get left behind!
If your e-commerce platform needs an upgrade or you are new to e-commerce and need guidance, we are here to listen and support you through the journey.
Whether it’s getting set up with the new Sana Commerce Cloud or consulting with you on your other e-commerce needs, we are here to help.
RSM US has helped a number of companies bring their e-commerce vision to life.
RSM US offers end to end e-commerce and digital marketing capabilities, with decades of experience. Our team stands ready to help you in the B2B and B2C space, with integrating various 3rd party e-commerce platforms, from POS to ERP, extending and customizing ERP systems, developing ground-up solutions for your web store or customer portal, designing intuitive and inviting user interfaces and launching engaging digital campaigns.
Zach Oxman
Growing the Sana Commerce practice at RSM US - Over 15 years of full stack software development experience - Ground-up and ERP backed e-commerce solution expertise - Lead developer and architect