Documentation

Plan integrations

commercetools provides you with a robust base to deliver exceptional commerce experiences. To complete your solution, additional components are needed. We'll cover the main components you might need to complete your solution and discuss common setups that will help you decide what your source of truth is for the various data types involved in the integrations.

Customer

The customer master record is the data type with the most variation across organizations, often because a customer profile can be created in several different ways. If an organization has a CDP (Customer Data Platform), that’s the obvious place where customer records are mastered. If an organization doesn’t have a CDP, the most common approach is to have commercetools be the source of truth because that's where most accounts are created. The alternative is to have the customer master record live in the OMS or ERP. This is more common with organizations not having a unified commerce solution for all markets, brands, or channels.

If a customer record is mastered in another system, you will need a Customer in commercetools to be able to handle customer-related permissions, for assigning carts and orders, and personalized promotions. A commercetools Customer requires only an email address as a unique identifier upon creation, but we highly recommend storing their addresses too, as they determine shipping costs and taxes. For keeping a reference to the respective customer record in the other system, we recommend using the externalId field of the Customer resource. If you want to replicate data that does not have an equivalent field on the Customer resource, you can store those on Custom Fields.

Order

Order management is essential for commerce applications. commercetools focuses on capturing orders, which are then typically passed on to other systems, such as OMS or ERP for further handling.

The order master record generally lives in a downstream system from commercetools. This can either be an OMS or ERP. These systems are designed to be centralized for orders coming from all channels and provide robust reporting mechanisms.

To connect to an OMS, you can choose an existing integration, or build an integration using the Composable Commerce APIs. Such integrations ensure that upstream events and updates are synchronized to commercetools. This allows customers to see up-to-date information in their order management portal, such as order status, shipping information, delays, and build-to-order information for specific line items.

For organizations without an OMS or ERP, commercetools can be the source of truth for orders.

You can use the Merchant Center to view and manage Orders:

  • Create Orders: assign Line Items and Customer information to create Orders.
  • Update/edit Orders: edit Order details if a customer requests a change.
  • Order status workflow: create a custom Order workflow.
  • Fulfill Orders or change status: handle Order fulfillment and manage custom Order statuses.

Inventory

Inventory generally comes from the system that has the order master record. This is because orders directly influence inventory, and a tight relationship must exist between them.

To avoid the overselling of items, we recommend establishing threshold levels for inventory tracked with commercetools. This allows the inventory to become depleted in commercetools without making a call to the inventory master for each order. Once the threshold is reached, commercetools makes a real-time call to the inventory master to confirm stock availability before the order is created.

For organizations where commercetools is the source of truth for orders, commercetools can also be the source of truth for inventory.

Tracking inventory in commercetools is optional. For instance, manufacturing companies might want to sell the goods they produce without tracking any inventory in commercetools.

Product Catalog

Product catalog is mastered either in a product information management (PIM) system, in an ERP system, or in commercetools Composable Commerce. If you have a PIM or ERP system in use, we recommend managing the product catalog there and synchronizing its data with commercetools. If Composable Commerce is your source of truth, you can use the Merchant Center to manage your catalog.

Composable Commerce can support all existing classification standards for products and categories including BMECat, ETIM, eCl@ass, UNSPSC, and more.

Pricing

The system for mastering product catalog data, such as a PIM or ERP, is also typically used as the source of truth for product catalog pricing, including MSRP, list, and base prices. Any customer-specific prices, on the other hand, are more likely to be defined in the customer data platform (CDP). In such a case, the prices are consolidated in commercetools and serve as the data source for the storefront.

For organizations using a Configure Price Quote (CPQ) system, the CPQ should also receive products and price data similarly to commercetools, but only to support the quotation flow, not the regular checkout flow. Organizations not using a CPQ system can also run the quotation flow natively out of commercetools.

Promotions

Promotions are most commonly mastered in commercetools. Composable Commerce provides a sophisticated promotion engine that uses customer, catalog, and order information to verify eligibility and apply discounts.

Tax

You can configure commercetools to handle net prices, with taxes calculated automatically. This allows B2B companies to purchase and sell based on net prices, while still maintaining the tax information needed for certain processes or services.

For businesses operating in the United States or Canada, adhering to complex tax regulations is essential. To ensure compliance, we recommend integrating a tax calculation service.

Payment

The most common payment method in B2B commerce, payment by invoice, is integrated by default in the Store Launchpad for B2B. You can add other payment methods with commercetools Connect, either with ready-to-use connectors for specific payment service providers or by creating your own connector.

Email

For sending out order confirmations and other customer communication, you can complete your solution with an external email service.