Salesforce defines an order as:

“… an agreement between a company and a customer to provision services or deliver products with a known quantity, price, and date.”

In a typical B2B sales process, orders happen after the customer signs a contract with you, and before you deliver goods or services. At many companies, the signed order form represents the official step that initiates the process to provision the services or fulfill the product.

And, there are an infinite number of ways to manage this in Salesforce.

Here, we’ll look at the three primary applications in Salesforce for managing orders, and review some important questions to consider as you identify the right solution for your organization.

Order Management Option 1: The Standard Order Object

If you are a Salesforce customer, you likely already have access to the standard Order object, as it is part of the Salesforce Sales Cloud.

How do you know if this is the right solution for your order management needs? We’ve developed a quick checklist to help.

  • Do you want to manage, document and report about customers buying new items or adding new services to their contract?
  • Is your pricing straightforward?
  • Does your order management team have fewer than 5 team members?
  • Does your sales team complain about billing having too many rules related to Opportunities?

If yes, the standard Order object could be a fit! In general, this order object works well for smaller businesses, although there are certainly exceptions to this rule. If your process is more complex, or your organization relies on a more sophisticated pricing model, you may need to consider a more robust solution.

Order Management Option 2: Salesforce CPQ

The Salesforce CPQ application, part of the Salesforce Revenue Cloud, was built to support the requirements of medium to large businesses with rigorous pricing needs.

You can literally design any pricing process that fits your business, then manage it with all of the governance required by the most complex enterprises.

How do you know if Salesforce CPQ meets your needs?

  • Do you require more than 10 rules to accurately price customer purchases?
  • Do you have a deal desk?
  • Do deals require multiple approvals?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, then Salesforce CPQ may be the right Salesforce product for you.

Order Management Option 3: Salesforce Commerce Cloud

The Order Management app is part of the Salesforce Commerce Cloud, and focuses primarily on e-commerce orders.

Does your organization require a complete order management solution like OMS?

  • Do you have a warehouse that fulfills orders?
  • Are there multiple people involved in order fulfillment?
  • Do you take the majority of your orders online?

If your business is focused on e-commerce, it may make sense to consider Salesforce Order Management from Commerce Cloud to help you streamline your processes.

One important note – our goal here is to offer some guidelines to help you get started in your search. When you’re ready to dive deeper into your search for an order management solution, we highly recommend finding the right expert guidance. Salesforce partners bring a wealth of expertise in working with companies just like yours, and they can help you zero in on the best way to accomplish your goals.

And when you’re ready, Chargent makes it simple to remove friction between your payments process and sales cycle, with instant integrations to your preferred payment gateway.

Still have questions? Our team would love to talk further – contact us today.