Sitecore OrderCloud Connector for Microsoft Fabric

Introduction

Microsoft Cloud for Retail recently announced a Sitecore OrderCloud Connector. This connector provides a quick and reliable mechanism to use Product, Customer, and Order data into the Microsoft Retail Data Model.

Microsoft Fabric is a data analytics platform that offers a range of use cases. It aims to bring everything for the various data practitioners under one roof — data integration, data engineering, data warehousing, real-time processing, analytics, and BI. Microsoft Fabric uses the data and opens unlimited opportunities, a few of which I have described below in this blog.

On the other hand, Sitecore OrderCloud is a B2B, B2C, B2X commerce and marketplace development platform, with a cloud-based, API-first, headless eCommerce architecture.

Having the data available in the Retail Data Manager (RDM) unlocks a new level of AI-driven productivity and access to the solutions built on top of RDM like Power BI, CoPilot for Personalized shopping, etc. Power BI reports provide actionable insights on top of data, where each report can be used as input for any decision-making related to Products, Customers, or Inventory Management.

Let’s look at a few use cases below.

Optimizing Shopping Experiences with Personalization and Conversational Commerce (CoPilot)

• Zero Training Time: Microsoft AI experts built a model that works for retail shopping, meaning, you don't need further training time before deploying copilot templates for personalized shopping.
• Future Proof: By leveraging the latest Microsoft technologies such as Azure OpenAI, ChatGPT, Azure Cognitive Search, and Power Apps they’re supporting you with future-proof technology.
• Uses Existing Tech Stack: The backend technology used for the storefront is seamlessly reused in the conversation experience.
• Improved Customer Shopping Experience: Delivers personalized experience and recommendations to build trust.

Recommendation Engine

Recommendation engines are tools or algorithms that analyze user behavior, preferences, and historical data to provide personalized suggestions or recommendations. This feature is provided by the Microsoft Fabric Platform, Lakehouse, and Spark. Suggestions aim to:

• Drive sales by finding closely related products and providing actionable recommendations.
• Enhance user experience by showcasing products that are likely to be of interest to a particular user.

Retailers have the option to assess generated revenue and refine their models according to recommendations across geography, population, or different timings.

Recommendations can also be provided based on the current weather conditions of the shopper.

Gain Actionable Insights Quickly in Microsoft Fabric

With the data available in RDM, you can:

• Create meaningful reports, insights, and visualizations with effective analytics and business intelligence.
• Adapt easily to changing business needs and adjust the data model to accommodate new data sources.
• Define relationships and rules governing the data leading to data consistency and accuracy, which helps in key decision making.

AI-driven productivity is going to differentiate your eCommerce business from others. If you are looking to strategize a path forward and need a partner to help you navigate through your organization’s eCommerce-AI transformation, please Contact Us

References:

• Microsoft Cloud for Retail unlocks a new level of productivity with AI
• Overview of copilot template for personalized shopping