Consumption-based Solutions in the Magento Marketplace

Transcript

So our next two speakers, both Nattu and Ritesh, are working on some of the more exciting areas around what we’re calling commerce services, but really around the marketplace. And so, again, as we kind of cover the full spectrum of developer experience, we’ve talked about how we optimize things, we’ve talked about how we build things with tools, some of the exciting improvements that are happening in the roadmap. But ultimately, we’ve also got some great capabilities that are coming in kind of new and interesting ways. So with that, I’m going to head it off here to both Nattu and Ritesh, and we’ll hear from them. Hello, everyone. Today, we’re actually going to go over consumption-based solutions in the Magento marketplace. As Eric said, my name is Nattu Walker. I am the Sales and Partner Enablement Evangelist for Commerce Services. Hi, everyone. I’m Ritesh Samani. I’m Product Management for Commerce Services as well. All right, let’s get into this. So today, we have a pretty good agenda. We are going to go over what Commerce Services is and why we chose to go with the consumption-based and SaaS service route. We’ll also then jump into our first consumption-based service that is available in the marketplace now, Payment Services, and then speak about future opportunities for Commerce Services that will also be consumption-based and with a SaaS infrastructure. Time willing, we would love to answer any questions that you have at the end. To kick off, I really wanted to talk about what Adobe Commerce Services is. Our team is really to help Adobe Commerce and also Magento open source merchants maximize sales, increase consumer loyalty, optimize operational efficiencies, and grow their businesses through seamless value-added integrations. With solutions like Payment Services and shipping and logistical fulfillment, merchants can then deliver a best-in-class shopper experience. With Commerce Services, which are powered through very strategic partnerships, they’re built for Adobe Commerce customers to create a very strong relationship and support with Adobe. And they’re driven through reoccurring value with consumption-based model while reducing complex implementation, upgrades, and cost. Just adding to what Neetu is saying, the important thing here is these are partners that we have with industry leaders to leverage some of that specialized technology, and we’re really attempting to solve widely applicable, crucial business processes or needs. And so some of the common questions we get is, what do you mean by consumption-based? Why did Adobe go this route? And what are some of the benefits of consumption-based services for Adobe Commerce and open source? So kind of start off with, consumption-based services are just provisions where merchants only pay according to the resources they need or use. The best comparison to this is when you rent an apartment or purchase a home and you need utilities like water and electricity. You only pay for what you use. And at Adobe, we really believe that Adobe Commerce and Magento open source merchants benefit from having a value-added integration that helps and grow and expand their business while streamlining management of resources and having peace of mind that Adobe is supporting their services. And some of the top benefits in providing consumption-based services to merchants is that there’s very low risk and low barrier of entry. This enables businesses to grow faster by paying according to use and consumption and allowing us to expand coverage to a larger merchant base. And especially for Soho SMB merchants, they will have the competitive advantage to the big box stores and have enterprise-level functionality without the enterprise cost. Hey, Neetu. I’m hearing from folks that maybe the presentation is not visible. Oh, no. Let’s figure that out really quickly. We do have slides to back up what we’re talking about here. So it would be a shame to… Let’s try this again. Awesome. I think this works out well. Great. It’s going to be a virtual event without some surprises. And then going into consumption-based, the services that we’re offering in the marketplace also have a SaaS infrastructure. And I know, Ritesh, you have a lot of insight into this. Yeah, exactly. Thanks, Neetu. I mean, with SaaS-connected extensions, what we’re doing is we’re basically abstracting the functionality out of the core. This helps with compatibility issues by creating these decoupled services. And so what we can do now is we can deliver value without the need for constant platform upgrades. Also, it gives us the ability to enhance functionality without a lot of manual intervention in some cases. And so what that results in is obviously increased customer satisfaction for your customers and basically a lower total cost of ownership. And so you probably heard that a little bit in Chris’s opening presentation about the direction that we’re taking. And so Commerce Services is just pushing on that angle a little bit further. And one of the things that we really want to call out with these type of SaaS services, they remove the need for difficult platform upgrades, avoid frequent manual extension updates. And behind the scenes, we have off-cycle releases via React app without the need to do anything. And so this kind of jumps into our first Commerce Service that’s consumption-based and is now available in the Marketplace payment services. So as many of you might know, we actually launched payment services at the end of November 2021. And it is available in the Magento Marketplace and it’s developed for both Adobe Commerce and Magento OS merchants. And so payment services is a fully integrated Adobe Commerce service that optimizes acceptance while reducing complexities and friction by providing an all-in-one payments and commerce solution. Merchants are able to quickly onboard and configure directly from the admin. And with just one login, they can do all the reporting and transaction data. Merchants can easily reconcile all of their data, like their orders and payments in just one report in one place. And as payment services will be, it’s developed by Adobe and supported by Adobe, merchants will always have access to services that are up to date, safe and stable. I think one of the key things, Neethu, that you pointed out here was right, that it’s a payments offering, but it is integrated with sort of the platform and developed by Adobe. And so that gives merchants the ability to run payments from basically the familiarity of the admin console. And like Neethu mentioned, you can make configuration changes, run reports, view transaction info, all from that sort of integrated dashboard. And it allows you, it prevents you from having to go to different places to get that information. Exactly. You just took the words out of my mouth, basically not having to deal with third party extension compatibility issues. And from our experience, we understand that providing an easy checkout experience is necessary. And with payment services, you’ll be able to have that comprehensive solution that avoids all of those third party extensions and compatibility issues. So let’s talk a little bit about how it works. And yes, it’s six steps, but as I talk you through some of these steps, you’ll realize that it’s not that bad at all. The first step here is really just to install the extension. I’m sure most folks on this call are familiar with that process and you can pick this up off of the Magento marketplace. From there, really it’s enabling the SaaS configuration because this is a connected extension. So what that entails is a couple of steps to creating a data space and that will persist data to secure cloud storage. And then that will enable payment services to work. And then the next couple of steps are all about testing. And so we’ve got a sandbox mode, which enables folks to see the actual functionality and the look and feel right there on their live site. And so there’s no surprises in terms of what that user experience will look like and again, the type of reports and transaction information that you can see. Going from there after all sort of the testing and refinement looks good, there’s a merchant onboarding step. The beauty of this is this is all again, once again, right in the admin. And so there’s no need to go to a third party site in order to do all of the onboarding. Everything’s right there in front of you. And that is a pretty quick turnaround process. It doesn’t take that long. And after everything is set there, last step is you flip on a switch and you’re live. And that’s when the actual transactions are live transactions going through the PayPal processing backend and providing all that information and all that rich data out to you. So we’ve seen customers get up and running within a day on this platform. And we’re hopeful that you’d be able to do that with some of your customers as well. And so once a customer is live, shoppers can pay their way by merchants enabling popular payment methods in their admin, including credit and debit cards. So that includes Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express, PayPal and digital wallets as like Venmo. And additionally, Buy Now Pay Later through PayPal Pay in 4 is available, allowing customers to pay in four interest free installments while the merchant still gets paid upfront. As you know, this is now a must have since Buy Now Pay Later is becoming one of the most favored ways to pay. Sixty four percent of consumers are more likely to make a purchase with a retailer that offers these type of installment payments. Businesses have with this type of messaging on their site actually saw a 56 percent increase in overall average order value with the ability to spread payments over time. Not only does this allow shoppers more spending power, but it also increases customer loyalty. But one thing I also want to point out, currently, payment services is only available for U.S. Adobe Commerce and Magento open source merchants. What this means is that they will be able to take payments from customers globally, but will settle in USD dollars. We will be adding more currencies, including CAD and Euro and additional countries this year and beyond. And then we do offer other supported features and functionality. And I know, Ritesh, you have a lot of insight with the reporting and reconciliation. Yeah. Part of the benefit, as we talked a little bit earlier, was around the reporting and sort of the aggregation of that information right there in the admin. We’re able to provide, sort of the premise of the solution is providing detailed and sort of transparent transaction reporting. And what this translates to is just clearly showing the cost of transaction, the amount to be settled. So merchants really know what the cost of business is and how much money they’re going to be getting from those transactions, which sometimes are difficult. Also, along the lines of reporting, we’re able to provide sort of, because we understand the details of the platform and the transaction, we can provide sort of an end to end view of an order all the way to payment processing and payment settlement. And what that does is it reduces things like unshipped paid orders and really helps merchants stay on top of everything that they’re doing from their business. Go ahead. And I was just going to say, with the reporting and reconciliation and just with the admin, one thing I really want to call out is support. I mentioned this earlier, payment services is developed by and supported by Adobe. And we want to make sure that you will always have access to up-to-date, safe, and stable services. And with reliable support, we prioritize payment services as what we call priority one with quick response rates, diminishing downtime, and merchants could continue accepting payments. Yeah. I mean, we know that this is a critical function for a business. So Adobe is with you every step of the way. And to continue on to the third point around security and fraud protection, this solution is secure, it’s PCI compliant. All the card data is encrypted and tokenized. And the flexibility of this payment services solution allows merchants to configure and connect any third party fraud provider to this as is needed by the business. So just in true sort of Magento and Adobe Commerce form, we try to make this very flexible and provide the choice to you folks as developers and the end customer. Yep. And speaking about flexibility, this provides the ability to have developers and agencies to build an automation as well for a seamless backend experience. We kind of want to give you a sneak peek of what’s coming next. And as we look at this year and next, we’re looking to expand into more regions and add additional functionality. Like I mentioned, this is just a sneak peek of what’s coming down the line. And so look out for more communication from us. And we are planning to expand into Canada and Q2. And later this year and leading to next, we will be looking into adding payment services for both EMEA and Australia. Also, the primary objective is also to increase capabilities to add additional digital wallets and more impactful visual insightful reporting and dashboards that are just going to be available in the Adobe Commerce and OS admin. I mean, this is a very important area that Adobe has invested in. And basically the message here is we aren’t done yet. So stay tuned for more enhancements to the offering. Exactly. Kind of shifting gears here. So you saw what we’re doing with payment services. So now let’s take a look into the future and what is coming up for commerce services. We will be adding more consumption based extensions in the marketplace, but we need merchants and your help. Currently, there are three beta opportunities where I will be going over. And really the main reason why I’m going over these is and why we need customer feedback is to proactively seek out customer and customer influencer input to inform our strategic and tactical project decisions and when to release and how to improve our services. Merchants receive benefits from being involved in the beta opportunities because they’re able to have early and exclusive access to Adobe features. They’re able to partner with us and be able to influence and shape our product. They’ll have the competitive advantage by gaining first to market knowledge and tools. And the best part of all, they’ll have a dedicated team to assist with onboarding and product experience. So the first one I want to go over is store fulfillment for Adobe Commerce. Adobe has a strategic partnership with Walmart Commerce Technologies, which gives Adobe the access to the same buy online pickup in store technology Walmart uses to power its own omni channel fulfillment operations. So this new feature will allow Adobe Commerce merchants to create their own best in class in store and curbside fulfillment opportunities for their customers. And they can leverage their own physical stores and locations. Merchants will be able to introduce advanced omni channel fulfillment experiences utilizing mobile devices, including the ability to have customers you know, go to check in to notify store employees for in store pickup and curbside scenarios. This feature will also introduce store employees tools and workflows that facilitate pick and pack and shipping and dispensing. So this can include like barcode scanning, pick, pack and ship and batch, like the operations and optimization for merchants with larger stores and long pickup lists to pick a path to where they need to go. They’ll have the ability for order modifications, exceptions, alerts, and they’ll have a geolocation awareness so they’ll be able to detect when customers actually arrive at their locations and provide predictive wait times. Store fulfillment will be initially for both B2C and that B2B2C Commerce businesses environment. And we do have some requirements as well for participation in this program, which include that they do need to be US based. They should be on Adobe Commerce 2.4 or newer. We recommend B2C retailers or manufacturers selling direct to consumer and they need to have a physical location whether it’s a store or warehouse from where someone can pick up their order. We also need the locations to have Wi-Fi and the merchants need to have a mobile device for their employees so that they can use the dispensing and check in apps. I mean Neetu, I think you did a great job sort of covering all the salient benefits of this. I mean, we’re super excited about this offering because really what it’s doing and it’s bridging the offline and online experiences and really helping merchants deliver to customers in the way that they want to shop. And so I’m super excited about that. And as Neetu mentioned, it’s the same technology that Walmart is using themselves for their omnichannel fulfillment. And so it’s super exciting to be able to bring that to our customer base as well. I mean, I use it personally, so I’m excited for all of our commerce merchants to be able to use it as well. So our next opportunity for beta is Express Checkout for Adobe Commerce, which is powered by Bolt. Ritesh, I know you work personally with them. So I wanted to give you the opportunity to kind of go over what this includes. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks. You know, security and card abandonment are huge concerns during the checkout process, right? And so Express Checkout here actually alleviates this by providing an integrated authentication layer that can connect with your customized Adobe Commerce or Magento open source checkout and any payment provider. So again, in true form, we want to make sure that it’s a solution that’s flexible enough to work in whichever situation is there. But really the benefits that this solution delivers for customers and merchants is, one, there’s no more passwords to remember. So the Express Checkout solution will basically deliver a six digit authentication code, right, either delivered to a mobile phone or an email with which someone can log into the site. And it increases security, right? Because now you don’t have to worry about weak passwords on sort of your Magento or Adobe Commerce site. All of this is being handled with the Bolt authentication and the Bolt network. And last but not least, probably more important for merchants is the ability to increase control. conversion, because you have all of the most accurate shopper information being pulled in from that Bolt network that the shoppers are a part of. And also, quickly being able to pre like it will quickly pre fill in the checkout process. So there’s no fat fingering, and there’s just no wasted time in the process. And any of those steps that we can reduce, we’ve seen, you know, increases conversion. So we’re super excited to bring this to beta. This beta program is set to launch later on this month. And it’s open to US based customers, anyone on platform version 2.4.3 or more recent, we’re looking for a B2C customers or B2B2C customers and using sort of the native Luma checkout. So if that fits, if you’ve got customers that sort of fit that criteria, do you think that can add value? We’d love to have them as part of the beta program. Awesome. And last but definitely not least, the next beta opportunity is channel manager for Adobe Commerce featuring Walmart Marketplace. So this feature allows our commerce merchants the ability to deliver a multi channel commerce experience by connecting Walmart Marketplace through Adobe Commerce. This is a seamless bi directional product catalog inventory and order information sync with Walmart and automatically ensuring accurate pricing and inventory levels providing a frictionless shopping experience. This beta program will be available starting later this month and around February 28. And there are some recommendations and requirements for beta participants, including that they are US based, that they are on commerce version 2.4. And they can be either, you know, SMB or enterprise level. We’ve also recommend B2C retailers and manufacturers selling direct to consumer. And we also prefer that they are cloud customers, but we will take it into consideration if they’re not. And if an added bonus if they’re using the Amazon sales channel already. And so those are the three beta opportunities that we have available. We do want to hear from you as far as feedback or questions. So that way we know, you know, if there are any updates or influence that we should be taking in consideration, we can add that into our beta programs. Well, it looks like that’s the end of my deck. And so I just want to go over any questions that you might have. Ritesh and I are here to help. So one of the questions I received, Ritesh, is about, you know, how is payment services priced for their customers? And what, you know, is there any visibility or do you know, you know, is there extra costs for implementation, anything like that? Yeah, I think that’s a great question. You know, again, in the spirit of transparency, we wanted to provide a solution that is super valuable to customers and doesn’t have a lot of complexity around pricing and that type of thing. To that end, we decided to make payment services sort of a on a month to month basis. There’s no long term contracts to sign. Also, there’s no hidden fees or monthly fees or anything like that. And the way that we’re pricing it to make it very simple to understand and to help with cash flow and budgeting from a merchant standpoint is what we call a blended price, right? So it’s just a price or percentage fee and a transaction fee. And that applies to every transaction, you know, whether it’s credit card, it even Amex, which is a little different. And again, in an attempt to really simplify that, we were bundling Visa, MasterCard, Amex, Discover all in sort of that one rate, which is a little unique for folks that are familiar with payments. Sometimes the Amex rate is a separate rate. And so we wanted to try to keep it as transparent and simple as possible for merchants. So that’s the way that we’ve started with our go to market approach on that. And I have to say we do have a dedicated team for payment services. So you will be able to speak to a sales representative on our team. So that way you get the most up to date and current information and they’re able to help you with pricing. Another question that came through with consumption based services growing as you have shown, what are your personal opinions on what that means for the merchant and how it benefits their business? For this, I think consumption based services, especially from value added integrations is just a very easy way for merchants to get access to the usual enterprise or big box store level type of concepts or features that they normally wouldn’t get unless spending an outrageous amount of money. So by having it being consumption based, they’re paying for only what’s being used. If it works for them, they’re able to continue. If it doesn’t work for them, they’re able to stop the service, but it gives them the opportunity to grow and expand their business. So I’m actually very excited that we are going down this route and it being SaaS based so that way it lowers their implementation and upgrade costs. Yeah, and I think that’s a great answer. The only thing that I’d add to that is sort of something you touched upon, right? It’s the same functionality as you would expect out of an enterprise solution, but the pricing enables businesses to grow as they continue to scale. The pricing sort of grows with them in that way. So you don’t have to be large upfront investment just to get started, but you are getting the benefit of basically an enterprise level feature. And then I think one of the questions that came in about how are these new consumption modules created and how they interact with, does it only interact with Magento API only? Yeah, so these extensions, these consumption modules are basically extensions. So you would just install it like you would a typical extension. These are connected extensions. And so what that means is, as we talked about a little bit earlier, there’s ways that we can deliver additional functionality to the offering without having to then continuously upgrade the extension as well. So it’s sort of the best of both worlds from that sense. But from an installation and configuration standpoint, it feels very much like an extension module that you would add to Magento. Great. I think we’re almost at time. If there are any unanswered questions, we will follow up with you directly. We really thank you for taking the time today and joining us and letting us talk about what’s happening with Commerce Services, why we’re going down this route and how it can help your merchants. And I hope everyone has a great and happy Friday and a great weekend. Thank you everyone. Bye bye. Bye. All right. Thank you so much, Nithu and Ritesh on some of the great updates happening around Commerce Services and some of the problems they’re solving with regard to that kind of turnkey functionality within Commerce, but also Magento open source.