WHAT’S NEW IN SAP HYBRIS COMMERCE 6.4?

• • by Mathew Forsyth

Hybris Commerce 6.4 contains brand new Backoffice Product Content Management & Marketplace Module products, and a stack of new features on top of its previously existing products.

Accelerator Features

The Accelerator has new Commerce Quotes, Sales Organization, and Assisted Service Module (ASM) Customer List features, to improve Sales Agent efficiency.

• Commerce Quotes have been wired-up so that a Buyer can move smoothly between quote management assets to improve the Buyer-Seller negotiation process
• Sales Organization has Sales and Buyer unit hierarchies, which allow for example, a Sales Employee assigned to North America to have access to its Canada, United States, and Mexico Buyers
• ASM Customer List leverages the new Sales Organization feature above, and allows a Sales Employee to quickly search and sort by Buyer unit or name

Assisted Service Module (ASM) Customer 360° Views

The ASM Customer 360° View has new Coupons and Promotions, Customer Loyalty, and Customer Technology views, to facilitate better customer support, as well as new ASM RESTFul Web Services to allow ASM functionality to be called from different touch-points.

• Coupons and Promotions view displays coupons a CSA can offer a customer to facilitate cross- or up-sells, or to appease an unhappy customer who has experienced poor customer service, and promotions to encourage customers to spend more in order to earn a higher promotion discount
• Customer Loyalty view allows a CSA to see a customer's loyalty point balance, activity score, and loyalty tier, so they can provide contextual customer service, relative to the customer's loyalty information
• Customer Technology view allows a CSA to see what technology a customer uses to browse their website, e.g., their device, operating system, and browser type, so they can provide contextual customer service, relative to the customer's technology information
• ASM RESTful Web Services allow external systems, extended channels, and different touch-points to leverage the ASM's functionality

Backoffice Product Content Management

The new Backoffice Product Content Management is built on the Hybris Commerce Backoffice framework, and has improved Data Validation & Quality Coverage, Catalog Management Assortment, and Product Search & Browse views.

• Hybris Commerce Backoffice framework passes on to the Backoffice PCM numerous Backoffice features out-of-the-box, whilst vastly improving its extensibility
• Catalog Management Assortment view allows the management of product, category and catalog hierarchies, whereby products, categories and catalogs, can be created, removed, and rearranged across different hierarchies by dragging and dropping them to their desired locations
• Product Search view allows simple searching and filtering to further narrow search results
• Product Browse view provides a catalog selector, explorer tree and facets, to quickly drill down to products of interest, as well as quick product summary view, and multiple product selection from a list, enabling quick access, and administration of products

The new Backoffice PCM looks great too!

Configurable Bundles Features

The Configurable Bundles include new Generic Cart Entry Grouping features and a new core Accelerator Configurable Bundles AddOn.

• Generic Cart Entry Grouping allows configurable bundles to be used within any Accelerator implementation
• Core Accelerator Configurable Bundles AddOn serves as an implementation template to facilitate rapid Configurable Bundle implementation
• Configurable Bundles provide an engaging guided selling experience for customers, to increase up-sells and general sales

Data Hub Features

The Data Hub has new Monitoring Events to support business process monitoring to enable status visibility at Batch and the Item level, increasing traceability and awareness.

Marketplace Module (from China Accelerator)

A new Marketplace Module provides an out-of-the-box marketplace solution for the B2C sector. This allows a Merchant to host a marketplace for Vendors and Consumers to conduct online commerce. Vendors can set up a shop to sell their products, and Consumers can purchase products from different Vendors in a unified online commerce experience.

• Merchants get an out-of-the-box e-commerce site with Vendor sample data, and easy-to-use, intuitive interfaces for Vendor, Product, and Content Management
• Vendors get a ready-to-use, customizable landing page, and easy-to-use, intuitive interfaces for Vendor User Management, Product Management, and Order Management

The Marketplace is feature rich & attractive!

Order Management Features

Order Management includes new Task Assignments, Advanced Shipping Notice, Return Approval, Manual Carrier and Tracking ID Entry, and RESTful Order Management Web Services features.

• Task Assignments allow consignments to be assigned to employees throughout the Order Fulfilment workflow
• Advanced Shipping Notice allows vendors to send notifications of inbound inventory shipments
• Return Approval allows price modification prior to approval steps
• Manual Carrier and Tracking ID Entry allows Warehouse Agents to manually enter for tracking information for consignment tracking
• RESTful Order Management Web Services, through the Omni Commerce Connect API, have been extended to support standalone Order Management deployment

Platform Features

The Platform includes a wide range of new features, including Suspend-Resume, Improved Containerization Support, Improved Deployment and Operations Deployment Tooling, Base Image Unification, Orchestration Test Framework, and CronJobs Status and Progress features.

• Suspend-Resume gives the ability to enter a safe-sleep mode for pause/continuation, or safe shut-down
• Improved Containerization Support allows easier design, build and deployment of complex SAP Hybris Commerce clusters
• Improved Deployment Tooling facilitates operations automation and makes deployment easier
• Base Image Unification limits the number of the components needing to be patched
• Orchestration Test Framework allows end-to-end tests to be run using containers
• CronJob Status and Progress provides an API and user-interface for tracking the progress of CronJobs, such as synchronisation CronJobs for example

Promotion Engine Features

The Promotion Engine introduces the Marketing Manager View and the Master-Child Filtering Mechanism features.

• Marketing Manager View enables company marketing managers to have access to the Promotion Engine functionality relevant to them, hiding all technical system administration tasks
• Master-Child Filtering Mechanism in the Rule Builder allows users to restrict the results returned for values in the promotion rule’s condition and action fields

Rule Engine Features

The Rule Engine now supports Multiple Rule Modules, Simultaneous Multiple Rule Publishing, and Rule Module Synchronization among other new features.

• Multiple Rule Modules support now allows administrators to create multiple modules in the system; this enables retailers to test and review their rules in a preview environment before publishing to their live systems
• Simultaneous Multiple Rule Publishing allows administrators to deploy multiple rules to a specific module at once
• Rule Module Synchronization provides administrators the ability to make changes to one module and easily sync the updates to another module of the same type

Search and Navigation Features

Search and Navigation includes Search Profiles and Adaptive Search Perspective features to optimize product searches & navigation, and increase conversion rates on the storefront.

• Search Profiles can be setup to display different search facets, boost rules, or to promote or exclude individual search result items on the storefront
• Backoffice Adaptive Search Perspective configures Search Profiles and displays the search results of the Search Profile that would be displayed on the storefront

SmartEdit and SmartEdit Personalization Features

SmartEdit now offers Simplified Generic Support, Page Cloning, Hotkey-Enabled Storefront Navigation and Permission-Based Content Editing features, which shorten go-to-market-time for supporting custom components, and provide Content Managers with better flexibility and agility.

• Simplified Generic Support allows the support of a wider range of components, restrictions, and page types, saving implementation time and effort
• Page Cloning offers easy content re-use by cloning existing pages and tweaking them
• Hotkey-Enabled Storefront Navigation supports quick-key storefront navigation while editing the content
• Permission-Based Content Editing defines user permissions at the catalog version level to restrict the creation and display of content

Personalization in SmartEdit now enables complex AND, OR, NOT Segmentation Configurations, Default Variations, and Personalization for Anonymous Customers using SAP Hybris Profile, that provide user-friendly and relevant experiences to customers.

• AND, OR, NOT Segmentation Configurations allow complex segmentation scenarios for better targeting of specific user groups
• Default Variations can be applied to all users, e.g. a default variation can be configured for the duration of a Summer Sale that applies to all customers, except when variations target specific user groups, e.g. Summer Sale Beach Lover or Summer Sale Menswear
• Personalization of Anonymous Customers using SAP Hybris Profile provides relevant content to anonymous customers

Here is a video overview by Charles Barton:

Here's a more detailed look at the new Backoffice PIM/PCM by Yannick Robin.

You can find more information within the SAP Hybris Commerce 6.4 Release Notes [login may be required].

Source: What’s New in SAP Hybris Commerce 6.4?