E-Commerce Native client capabilities

[ANKUR_CHAUHAN]

Hi All,

I am currently exploring the native eCommerce client which is part of OOTB AEM.

While exploring this and mapping its functionality against client requirements I have some queries.

We are planning for the following:-

1). PIM database to be maintained within AEM. 

2). Inventory is maintained in third party system which will be used to periodically fetch “warehouse location city, pin codes”, “stock quantity” and other information within AEM.

I’m looking for guidance on the following:-

1. “Order management”. 

Our requirement is to build an Order Management interface that manages routing orders to correct warehouse, multiple shipment addresses for a single order. This system would be meant for internal users and distributors who would be able to see listed orders.

Is the last part (Order Management) provided in some form in OOTB AEM installation?

2. Customer Account Management

We are also exploring setting up end customer profiles in AEM itself. In OOTB geometrixx demo site registration leads to creation of user profiles within “/home” hierarchy where other user profiles (site authors) are available. How scalable is it to maintain end user profiles in AEM? We could expect maintaining end user profiles north of 100K.

Please share your learnings and best practices for handling such requirements. Some of the big questions would be how it would come together in a multi tiered architecture with multi publish instances with independent repositories AND caching strategy for an eCommerce implementation.

Regards

Ankur Chauhan

[mhaack]

Hi Ankur Chauhan,

if you plan create your own implementation based on the OOTB AEM native eCommerce implementation please have in mind that is intended for mainly for reference and demonstration [0]. To use it in your project you will need your own implication or us a commercial eCommerce system.

Regarding your questions:

> 1. Order management
There is a basic order management user interface in AEM, which can be extended as well. 
But to fulfill all your requirements (routing orders, splitting order, update stock information, etc.) it must be customized heavily. Depending on your requirements (customizing, external distributor accusing the system) and the amount of expected orders it might be more appropriate to build a custom user interface for that with AEM or look for some separate already existing pice of software.

> 2. "Customer Account Management"
Within AEM all users and groups are stored within /home, that should not be a problem with customer profiles. Usually customer profiles are created on the publish instance while internal profiles for authors are on the author. For a clear separation of internal accounts and customer profiles I recommend storing them with a custom separate in the path like /home/users/customer/
100k user profiles should not be a problem for AEM.

Addition learnings and points from projects I was involved are:

• you should have a clear understanding of the caching strategy, especially for page containing static and dynamic parts (like hover cart, dynamic pricing and availability, personal recommendations, etc.) > try to cache as much as possible in the dispatcher
• use AJAX or other technics like SSI to cache the static parts of the page and include the dynamic elements
• the amount of daily product and catalog updates can have an impact on the performance because caches needs to be flushed
• depending on your use cases SEO might also be an imported aspect to consider 

Regards
Markus

[0] http://docs.adobe.com/docs/en/cq/current/ecommerce/eCommerce-framework.html#Integration%20Framework%... 

[Sham_HC]

Hi Ankur Chauhan,

Is mongo as persistance an option?  Or you are looking specifically at tar pm only.    How are you planning to addess PII requirements of commerce website?

Thanks,

Sham

Twitter: adobe_sham

[klare_gua]

it's interesting, I also subscribe to the issue

[Jitendra_S_Toma]

Hi All,

Regarding PII, there are multiple things which can be used. for instance, government issued ID numbers, email, credit card, bank account and user ID. we could also combined some more info like gender, postal code etc.  

any recommendation or nice approach to take care of PII?.

Regards,

Jitendra

[gcarlino]

Hi

The link you gave is the 5.6.1 documentation, so just in case the customer is using AEM 6.0, the equivalent page would be  http://docs.adobe.com/docs/en/aem/6-0/administer/ecommerce/concepts.html#Architecture.

A good starting point of the 6.0 eCommerce documentation is http://docs.adobe.com/docs/en/aem/6-0/administer/ecommerce.html

[ANKUR_CHAUHAN]

I am looking for guidance for creating my own PIM (Product Information Management) in AEM. It would be great If I got an idea about how to store 10K product information with 100K customers details in AEM. I don't know, how mongo DB is going to help me. It would be great if I achieve it using tar pm. Looking guidance for PIM architecture & design. 

Regards

Ankur

[Jitendra_S_Toma]

Hi All,

I do have following concern regarding AEM native eCommerce :

• Is AEM 6.0 native eCommerce (out-of-box features) good for these kind of loads : 100K users, 10K Products, Profile Management and Order management etc.
• With above loads, Which persistence manager will be good TarPM(TarMK) or Mongo (MongoMK)?.
• If somebody uses out of the box AEM ecommerce functionality and looking for end to end solution, will this be good enough?. if not, what are the things, we should care about.?.

Thanks in advance and looking for some response, 

Regards.

Jitendra

[mhaack · Accepted solution]

Hi Jitendra,

the expected load shouldn’t be a problem for AEM. I’m currently working on a project with 3 shops with ~ 500k products each and ~200k registered users. They have a custom implementation of the eCommerce Framework, based on the AEM native eCommerce implementation.

TarMK is used for both author and publish instances. I would recommend todo so as well, unless you have requirements which requires MongoMK (like author clustering, soco features, etc.)

In terms of functionality the generic AEM eCommerce implementation provides only basic features for some aspects like order management, tax calculation or integration of external payment provides. This is custom for each project anyway and must be extended / implemented by your own or you chose a separate module for these.

From my point of view AEM native is a good starting point for your custom implementation. And as documented here http://docs.adobe.com/docs/en/aem/6-0/administer/ecommerce/concepts.html#Architecture that is exactly the propose of the generic AEM eCommerce implementation. 

Markus