Deliver consistent data across channels with MuleSoft Accelerator for Retail

Kreena Mehta (0:00)
Hello everyone. My name Kreena Mehta. I'm a Product Manager at Salesforce and a part of our MuleSoft Solutions Team. Today, we are going to discuss how to deliver consistent product data across channels with MuleSoft's Accelerator for Retail.

The last two years have put a spotlight on e-commerce. As drastic changes in consumer behavior are accelerating the shift from in-store to online, retailers are pivoting quickly to open new digital revenue channels, while existing e-commerce businesses are adapting their operating model by building new ways to reach their consumers. Whether in-store, online, or through customer service interactions, retailers across the board are realizing the need to innovate faster by empowering everyone to build a foundation that can adapt to the changes in the future.

Kreena Mehta (0:57)
Customers today want more than just uniquely branded commerce experiences when they shop. They demand consistent experiences on every single channel they interact with. Reportedly 67% of consumers use multiple channels to complete a single transaction. And in fact, 73% of consumers are likely to switch brands if they don't receive consistent experiences across those multiple channels.

Customers expect to see consistent behavior and range of products. Whether they're browsing through a retailers, eCommerce website, social media, live shopping, or interacting with the chatbot. As a result, companies are under enormous pressure to rethink how they connect siloed systems to provide a uniform product catalog experience to not only their customers, but also employees through technology, or they risk their customer's business to a company that can.

Kreena Mehta (1:55)
In this demo, we will see how Accelerator for Retail can help unlock and sync critical product information to empower everyone. Store Operation VPs and eCommerce leaders can deliver seamless, engaging experiences with automated data syncs for product launches and nominal updates to ensure that everyone from customers, partners, and service teams have the most up-to-date information when they need it the most.

For the demo purposes, we will be using SAP S/4 HANA as our sole system where product data is used to support planning, logistics, modeling, forecasting, and reporting. Our goal is to synchronize product data with Salsify, a leading product information management system that provides product content management and digital asset management tools to help users customize product pages to drive sales. In addition, our goal is to synchronize product data with Salesforce B2C Commerce Cloud, Service Cloud, and Sales Cloud all in real-time.

Kreena Mehta (3:02)
Let us create a new product in SAP S/4 HANA. Using SAP event listener from the accelerator for retail, we are able to get real-time data on product creation or change. These events are pushed to Anypoint MQ, which performs advanced asynchronous messaging between SAP and other downstream applications. Further, the product process API has subscribed to this messaging queue and consumes product events, which are originally generated in SAP S/4 HANA. Accelerator for Retail's product process API is built with a refined business logic that handles product creations and updates. It maintains a golden entry in an MDM system that allows process APIs to create a new product or update an existing product in all the downstream systems based on product ID trust and avoid duplication. Using this mechanism, the product process API will create new product entry in Salsify and Salesforce clouds.

Kreena Mehta (4:08)
Within Salsify, the business users can easily enrich product data by managing universal product codes, skus, product names, titles, digital assets, technical specifications, and much more. Once the product data is enriched and updated, the Salsify channel event listener will make the changes and reuse the same product process API to apply the logic of updating product data, keeping it up to date in Salesforce and SAP. Although we showcased SAP, Salsify, and Salesforce, these templates and assets can be leveraged for whichever system of record you use.

Let us see how to access these APIs and implementation templates. You can simply go to MuleSoft's Anypoint Exchange, where you can discover prebuilt assets from MuleSoft ecosystem. Search for Accelerator for Retail. Once you click and open the Accelerator for Retail homepage, you can navigate to product sync use case from the left navigation panel. Here, you can find detailed use case descriptions, reference architecture diagrams, sequence diagrams, and downloadable assets. All of these resources are already included in your MuleSoft subscription and you can access them on any point exchange without any additional cost.

Kreena Mehta (5:40)
By using MuleSoft Accelerator's pre-built assets, retailers and CG companies can now seamlessly unify product details across relevant applications giving their customers and employees access to all the product data, including descriptions, images, video links, and more to make informed shopping decisions and improves customer service interactions.

Thank you.