Salesforce B2C Solution Architect's Handbook

Mike King

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781801811309
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Informatica
• Subtopic: Sviluppo software

The ultimate handbook for new and seasoned Salesforce B2C Solution Architects who want to design seamless B2C solutions across the Salesforce Customer 360 ecosystem – including B2C Commerce, Service Cloud, and Marketing CloudKey Features• Give your customers a frictionless experience by creating a unified view of all their interactions• Get your architectural design right the first time and avoid costly reworks• Prepare for the B2C Solution Architect exam and Salesforce certification with practical scenarios following Salesforce best practicesBook DescriptionThere's a huge demand on the market for Salesforce professionals who can create a single view of the customer across the Salesforce Customer 360 platform and leverage data into actionable insights. With Salesforce B2C Solution Architect's Handbook, you'll gain a deeper understanding of the integration options and products that help you deliver value for organizations. While this book will help you prepare for the B2C Solution Architect exam, its true value lies in setting you up for success afterwards.The first few chapters will help you develop a solid understanding of the capabilities of each component in the Customer 360 ecosystem, their data models, and governance.As you progress, you'll explore the role of a B2C solution architect in planning critical requirements and implementation sequences to avoid costly reworks and unnecessary delays. You'll learn about the available options for integrating products with the Salesforce ecosystem and demonstrate best practices for data modeling across Salesforce products and beyond.Once you've mastered the core knowledge, you'll also learn about tools, techniques, and certification scenarios in preparation for the B2C Solution Architect exam.By the end of this book, you'll have the skills to design scalable, secure, and future-proof solutions supporting critical business demands.What you will learn• Explore key Customer 360 products and their integration options• Choose the optimum integration architecture to unify data and experiences• Architect a single view of the customer to support service, marketing, and commerce• Plan for critical requirements, design decisions, and implementation sequences to avoid sub-optimal solutions• Integrate Customer 360 solutions into a single-source-of-truth solution such as a master data model• Support business needs that require functionality from more than one component by orchestrating data and user flowsWho this book is forThis book is for professionals in high-level job roles that heavily rely on Salesforce proficiency. It's primarily written for B2C commerce architects, application architects, integration architects, as well as system architects, enterprise architects, Salesforce architects, and CTO teams looking to benefit from a deeper understanding of this platform. Before you get started, you'll need a solid understanding of data integration, APIs, and connected systems, along with knowledge of the fundamentals of business-to-consumer (B2C) customer experiences.

Section 1 Customer 360 Component Products

This section is about understanding the tools in your toolbox.

Before we worry about designing solutions that span products, we need to understand what products we need and how they work. We'll demystify concepts such as Customer 360 and Digital 360, clarify product and cloud boundaries, and then take each of the three primary component products in the Customer 360 ecosystem, reviewing their data models, integration options, and governance.

If you're already an expert in one of these areas, feel free to just skim through that particular chapter and focus on the areas that are newer or where you need a refresher. Everything in this book relies on understanding the capabilities of the component products covered here.

This section comprises the following chapters:

• Chapter 1, Demystifying Salesforce, Customer 360, and Digital 360
• Chapter 2, Supporting Your Customers with Service Cloud
• Chapter 3, Direct-to-Consumer Selling with Commerce Cloud B2C
• Chapter 4, Engaging Customers with Marketing Cloud
• Chapter 5, Salesforce Ecosystem – Building a Complete Solution

Chapter 1: Demystifying Salesforce, Customer 360, and Digital 360

Salesforce, Customer 360, Digital 360, Customer 360 Audiences, Commerce Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing, CRM, CMS, OMS…starting to feel a bit lost? Getting the terminology right is the first step in designing effective solutions that leverage the Salesforce ecosystem. That means knowing the difference between products built on the Salesforce Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform, such as Sales Cloud and Service Cloud, and products built on separate technology platforms, such as B2C Commerce and most of Marketing Cloud.

In this chapter, we'll be untangling the key terms you'll encounter in marketing materials, sales cycles, and throughout the Salesforce product documentation so you can have meaningful conversations with clients or internal stakeholders. We'll then cover some things you need to know about the Salesforce Platform, before moving on to a few other critical technologies that have been added to the Salesforce family of products. The goal here isn't to go too deep into any of these technologies – we'll be covering several in more depth in the following chapters – but to refine our language and establish a firm foundational understanding that the rest of the book will build upon.

In this chapter, we're going to cover the following main topics:

• Learning the language – Salesforce, Customer 360, and Digital 360
• Salesforce Platform (Force.com)
• Additional technology stacks
• Acquisitions and legacy terminology

Throughout this journey, we'll be following along with Packt Gear, a fictional company that manufactures, markets, and sells outdoor supplies directly to the consumer. Packt Gear has been successful in recent years, but their home-grown technology stack is starting to hurt their ability to grow their business quickly. They've decided to transform their business by moving to Salesforce…they just need to figure out what that means. Fortunately, they have you to help!

Learning the language – Salesforce, Customer 360, and Digital 360

What do we mean when we say Salesforce? What does your client mean? What does your Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) mean? What do the other architects on your team mean?

This section is focused on clarifying the terminology you'll need in order to have effective conversations with all the stakeholders on projects that incorporate multiple Salesforce products.

First and foremost, Salesforce is the name of a software company. Their flagship product is the Lightning Platform, which supports many of their Salesforce-branded products, such as Sales Cloud and Service Cloud. In this section, we'll clarify the difference between Salesforce the company, the Lightning Platform CRM product, and the larger Salesforce ecosystem of products that use different underlying technology.

As a B2C solution architect working with Packt Gear, you know that the first thing to sort out is which Salesforce products are right for Packt Gear.

Lightning Platform

Over time, the term Salesforce has become synonymous with the CRM product, but using the name of the company to mean one specific product that the company sells can be confusing in real projects.

On top of the core Salesforce Platform, also known as Core, Force.com, or the Lightning Platform, Salesforce has built a variety of licensed products that extend the platform by adding use case specific features and functionality. The Lightning Platform-based CRM product sold by Salesforce is referred to as Salesforce.com (as opposed to just Salesforce, which indicates the company). Many, but not all, Salesforce products are built on the Salesforce Platform.

Salesforce Platform-based products can be divided into two broad categories: function-specific or industry-specific. These two categories have no technical significance; they are just ways for Salesforce to organize and sell features to customers. Function-specific products provide features that are organized around a specific use case but can be used across any industry.

The function-specific Salesforce Platform-based products include the following:

• Sales Cloud
• Service Cloud
• Work.com
• Employee Cloud
• Experience Cloud
• Order Management
• B2B Commerce
• Customer 360 Audiences

The industry-specific Salesforce Platform-based products include the following:

• Health Cloud
• Financial Services Cloud
• Government Cloud
• Manufacturing Cloud
• Media Cloud
• Nonprofit Cloud
  Important note
  The set of available Salesforce Platform-based products is constantly evolving, so this should not be considered an authoritative list. Many of these products are not relevant in B2C solutions; we'll be focusing on the ones that are.

Salesforce ecosystem

Other uses of Salesforce, including Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Salesforce Marketing Cloud, refer to hybrid offerings that include products on the core Salesforce Platform and products built on separate technology. They are owned by Salesforce the company, but they aren't built on the Salesforce Platform, at least not entirely.

Why does this matter? At its core, B2C solutio...