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This blog is continuation of my earlier blog about integration with Amazon and Macy's. In this part, I'll discuss integration with e-commerce website, various payment vendors, Gift Card vendor and Sales Force.

Following process flow is continuation of the process flow in the last blog and details out returns process.


Details: Integration with Vendor for Company Website using Credit Cards and Paypal


Integrating with company website hosted by an external vendor was an easy one, but what proved to be a difficult nut to crack was integration with payment card vendors. Biggest reason for difficulty for integration with payment vendors was the high level of security they have.

Business process for handling sales from Ecommerce website after the project was as follows

  1. Materials maintained manually.

  2. Inventory uploaded daily using a XML file.

  3. Payment card (Credit cards/Gift Cards/Paypal) interfaces for initial authorization are maintained by website vendor.

  4. Sales orders are processed and each payment vendor may or may not have tokenization of payment details.

  5. Information shared with PI (SAP) must be PCI compliance since payment details are shared

  6. PI creates sales order in SAP via IDocs with payment information.

  7. Data send to Sales Force Marketing Cloud for order confirmation email.

  8. Delivery is created automatically and data passed on to warehouse software, PKMS.

  9. PKMS confirms delivery and shares information with SAP via PI.

  10. SAP receives delivery confirmation and IDocs pick, pack and do PGI. Information is shared with following vendors

    • NARVAR for tracking details of the shipment.

    • PCI compliances settlement information to payment vendors.

    • Salesforce Marketing Cloud for Shipment confirmation email.

    • If shortages occur, then different data is send to Sales Force Marketing Cloud for Shortages email.



  11. Returns are received by warehouse using a brand new FIORI app to create a return order.

  12. Creating credit memo requires search for original sales order. This is done using customer address attributes from the return slip.

  13. Share information with Sales Force Marketing Cloud for return received email.

  14. After billing run, send credit information to vendor for original tender

  15. New FIORI apps for Call center team for customer service (Order tracking, Appeasement orders, credits)


Details: Integration with Vendor for Company Website using E-Gift cards


Sales (and returns) when one of the original tender included Gift Cards and/or E-gift cards presented a different challenge of its own and that’s why I have chosen to mention the gift card process separately.

Previous to this project, E-gift card process was outsourced to a vendor. But after the project whole process was brought in-house. Here’s what the new process looked like

  1. Gift card provider provides gift cards numbers in a file when requested by business.

  2. These gift cards are encrypted and stored in a custom table in SAP.

  3. When a sales order for e-gift card comes in, a process to get the next gift card available kicks in and an activation message is send to bank for activation.

  4. A separate email is generated to send unencrypted gift card information to the customer.

  5. For returns credit memo creation, special logic was built when one of the original tender included physical gift card or E-gift card. This process will get the next e-gift card available and an activation message is send to bank for activation.

  6. Special logic was built when original payment methods included both gift cards and payment cards to determine what should be primary tender to process the credit.

  7. If original tender included gift or E-gift card, relevant unencrypted information is send to Sales Force Marketing Cloud to generate emails for e-gift card details.


Challenges Faced


For integration with Amazon, biggest challenge was trying to find someone at Amazon who can help with the integration efforts.

For Macys’, biggest challenge was dealing with discounts and promo codes used by Macy’s. Macy’s does not provide any insight into that and ultimately it was decided that we shall continue the same way with no insights in discounts and promo codes.

Challenges for integration with Ecommerce web site provider were very different in nature, since the business process included multiple vendors. I will list a few of the biggest challenges

  • Connecting with Credit Card service provider and Paypal due to incompatible security protocols

  • Connecting with Private label credit card provider due to non-tokenization of payment details.

  • Connecting with Sales Force due to design of the Sales Force interface. The interface design proposed by Sales Force has a few hundred fields, whereas no more than fifty may be required.


Conclusion/Lessons learned


There were two big lessons learned from this project

  • Connectivity with Financial companies should be figured out well in advance and it will need quite a few diverse skill sets. Networking experts, Basis and technical resources will have to work with functional resource to get first few messages out and tested before testing can begin.

  • Bringing a new technology in company needs lots of preparation and leadership team should be prepared to bring in extra help. In this project, FIORI was used for first time at the client location and everybody has to pull in more than their weight to get it working.


 
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