Ecommerce, MDM and Cloud Hosting Blog

Pivotree Commerce and MDM Blog

Branch out with Pivotree insights and analysis into eCommerce, Master Data Management and Cloud Hosting.

Want the latest trends and news articles on the world of Commerce and Information Management? Our blog is the place to be. Check back often to stay “in the know” with industry updates, along with expert digital insights from Pivotree’s Growth Team.

Read our featured story: Deploying Oracle ATG Commerce in AWS Cloud [2019 Updated Review]

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Site Stability, Security and Applications

October 27, 2020

Tis the Season for a Secure Ecommerce Site We know retail sales are huge during the holiday season – and unfortunately, so do hackers. With so many online shoppers sharing credit data and personal information, keeping sites secure and running efficiently is more…

Worried About Holiday Site Stability? Build an Infrastructure Plan

October 19, 2020

According to Deloitte, holiday ecommerce sales will get a huge boost this year, climbing 25-35%. With droves of shoppers moving online (and shopping earlier than ever), merchants are staring down two big challenges: Potentially unprecedented traffic levels. Traffic spikes that come in waves,…

Why Convenience is Crucial for the 2020 Holidays

October 13, 2020

After a challenging year (to say the least), this holiday season provides a golden opportunity to amp up digital commerce and turn the 2020 tides. Retailers know that many consumers are ready to spend – we see "Giftober" deals rolling in every day.…

Why Personalization Is Even More Important This Holiday Season

October 6, 2020

This year has certainly taken its toll on the retail market. Thankfully, merchants can see the holiday shopping season just over the horizon. But like most things in 2020, this holiday season will be . . . different. With 70% of shoppers making…

Building an Oracle Commerce (ATG) Autoscaling Solution

September 24, 2020

Originally published in the Pivotree Cloud Technology Blog. The Challenge Pivotree had a client who wanted to autoscale ATG application servers under certain conditions. The challenge was that previously servers were provisioned and built up based on requirements and were static. Server configurations…

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How Can Manufacturers Understand Their Customers?

September 9, 2020

The pandemic accelerated the adoption of e-commerce by four to six years, and that means companies who put off their digital transformation are now behind the curve. For manufacturers, the most pressing of these projects is customer data management. Why? Because insufficient or flawed customer data is often at the root of negative commerce experiences and lost revenue. This article will discuss how customer data affects your bottom line and the steps you can take to leverage it as an asset.

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Building a Strong Foundation for Your Commerce Strategy With MDM

August 24, 2020

Effective data management is an essential part of every successful business and Commerce organizations are not an exception. Organization information such as Customer, Product, Supplier and Location data are all crucial pieces in a well-oiled Commerce machine that ensures great customer experience and maximized revenue.

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Building a Business Case for Manufacturing eCommerce: A “Zoomside” Chat with Serge Rose

August 19, 2020

I recently sat down with Serge Rose (LinkedIn profile here), an eCommerce veteran and thought leader, to discuss his thoughts and advice for manufacturers who need to adapt and evolve the way they do business for this new digital world. The COVID-19 pandemic…

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How to Be Digitally Agile in a Post-COVID World

July 27, 2020

While the world may look radically different in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak, many of the commerce disruptions were already expected, just not on such a rapid timeline. The next few years were predicted to bring a…

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BOPIS + Curbside Pickup Infographic: Short-Term and Long-Term Considerations

June 1, 2020

COVID-19 has resulted in a seismic shift in the commerce world. It is something we never expected and has caught many online retailers off-guard, bringing the operations of brick-and-mortar stores to a temporary (but challenging) grinding halt. Consumers are adapting their shopping habits…

Adapting to the New Reality Series – An Interview with Derek Corrick

May 8, 2020

We are continuing with our ‘Adapting to the New Reality’ video series where we are interviewing leaders from across various organizations asking them what they have been hearing from customers and partners in terms of how to navigate…

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SAP Commerce Implementations: 4 ERP Integration Techniques to Consider (Pros and Cons)

April 21, 2020

SAP Commerce is a leading omnichannel commerce platform because of its best-in-class features as well as its ability to integrate into the extensive SAP ecosystem. When it comes to integration techniques, however, when and how you enter that ecosystem can really impact your options. Are you a legacy ERP customer? Completely new to SAP? Adding SAP Commerce onto your implementation? It’s not a one-size-fits-all approach, and there are several strategies to consider depending on your situation. Working with an SI who can help guide you through this decision process for your unique situation is key to succeed.

Adapting to the New Reality Series – An Interview with Raj Atwal

April 13, 2020

We are continuing our ‘Adapting to the New Reality’ series where we're asking leaders from various organizations to shine a light on how organizations can possibly navigate today's new reality. Today I have with me, Raj Atwal our…

Adapting to the New Reality Series – An Interview with Greg Wong

April 3, 2020

The world is changing every day, and since there is no playbook or proven strategy on how to navigate the new reality, we believe that sharing knowledge and experiences is key to help each other move forward and…

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Protecting your Online Channels with Bot Mitigation

April 1, 2020

Bots have been a constant thorn in the side of most companies operating online for several years now. With the recent drastic change in how we sell and interact with customers (as online channels in many cases are the only avenues through which…

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How to Personalize the Customer Experience the Right Way

March 17, 2020

A recent Pivotree customer survey shows that Personalization (78%) is a top three tactic for digital transformation initiatives, along with Understanding Your Customers (78%) and Having a Strong Data Management Strategy (50%). It’s a worthy strategy. A study by Forrester found that “77% of consumers have chosen,…

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Endeca vs Coveo – Get the Facts on Migrating for AI and ML Capabilities

March 16, 2020

When it comes to making online stores easy to navigate, intuitive product search is an essential tool in a merchant’s toolbox. Endeca, or Oracle Commerce Guided Search, was a leader in this area; however, the platform’s lack of certain capabilities has led companies to consider a replacement.

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What Ecommerce Companies Need to Know About Apple’s SSL Certificate Change

March 4, 2020

At the 49th Certification Authority Browser Forum (CA/Browser) meeting, Apple announced that websites with SSL/TLS certificates valid for longer than 398 days, or roughly 13 months, will not be trusted by its Safari browser. This policy will be enforced on certifications issued on…

How to Rally Stakeholders Around Your Digital Initiative

February 13, 2020

When it comes to moving the needle on your digital transformation, securing support from champions and participants across your organization is a crucial step. A recent Pivotree customer survey found that there are several roles driving digital strategy initiatives, including the CEO, CIO, Digital Team,…

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3-Step Guide to Creating a Digital Channel Expansion Roadmap

January 28, 2020

Is your organization feeling the pressure to embrace digital expansion? If so, you’re not alone. A recent survey of Pivotree customers reveals that 78% of respondents consider Digital Channel Expansion to be their primary growth strategy for the next 3 to 5 years.…

Commerce and Customer Experience Events for B2B and B2C in 2020

December 20, 2019

Whether you're looking to network, find new solutions to grow your business, or get inspired by experts and innovators, attending the right conference can be just what your business needs to develop and deliver on its vision. To help you plan out your…

Black Friday 2019 Predictions – Plus Five Tips to Help You Prepare

November 14, 2019

Black Friday is right around the corner. As families and friends plan out their turkey day festivities, savvy shoppers are also cooking up game plans for scoring the best deals. These plans, however, are changing as consumer preferences and behaviours evolve. Take a…

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Deploying Oracle ATG Commerce in AWS Cloud [2019 Updated Review]

September 11, 2019

In the past, I have written critically about running ATG Oracle Commerce in “The Cloud” (Here and here). I’ve recently spent several months working on a project implementing ATG Oracle Commerce at AWS in partnership with Pivotree and…

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Infographic: 4 Steps to Strategically Replatform your CPQ Tool

July 30, 2019

Are you replatforming your CPQ tool? We've been there. The Salesforce Lightning update would no longer support Oracle BMX, so we made a strategic replatforming decision. This month, we held a webinar to explain how we decided to replatform our CPQ software. Here is an infographic following the same story. We're sharing it in…

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Our CPQ Replatforming Decision – Part 3: The Choice

July 23, 2019

This is the last post in a 3 part series: for the previous posts, please click here: Part 1 Part 2 After careful deliberation, Glen and Kurt presented their findings to the group. SalesForce CPQ Pros Tightest integration with SalesForce CRM Familiar…

Our CPQ Replatforming Decision – Part 2: The Decision Matrix

July 9, 2019

This is the second post in a 3 part series: for the next post, please follow us on LinkedIn or Twitter, or register for our Webinar on July 17th. Leading this project were Glen Thayer and Kurt Thompson. The majority of the content in this blog series was created by these two colleagues. They administered our…

Our CPQ Replatforming Decision – Part 1: The Catalyst

June 27, 2019

This is the first post in a 3 part series: for the next post, please follow us on LinkedIn or Twitter, or register for our Webinar on July 17th. Pivotree’s mission statement is to Adapt Relentlessly and help our clients do the same. Our team has always been eager to try new things and adopt new…

How is SAP Customer Experience Helping Brands Break Down Barriers to Purchasing?

December 20, 2018

SAP Customer Experience creates personalized, 1-1 relationships with customer data control to knock down barriers to purchase and build customer loyalty. As Alex Atzberger says, "Customers are Done with Creepy". That feeling when a business knows too much about you can be downright…

What not to miss at SAP Customer Experience Live 2018

October 4, 2018

If you have not yet registered for SAP Customer Experience Live, click here to register. SAP Customer Experience Live kicks off on October 10th, promising to teach attendees how to Connect with Purpose to their customers. This will be the first conference focused…

From Hybris CEC to SAP C/4HANA: What Does That Mean?

June 5, 2018

SAP just announced their next generation front office suite, SAP C/4HANA. If you’re interested in learning more about these changes, we encourage you to reach out and contact us. For now, I’d like to take the opportunity to give some insight into this…

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3 Steps to Get Your Digital Innovation Journey Started

May 30, 2018 Read More

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An Honest Look Into Headless Commerce

March 28, 2018

With many online retailers looking to adopt headless approach, there is a surprising lack of end-to-end analysis of its…

2018 eCommerce Events for B2B and B2C in North America

March 16, 2018

With a host of events around the corner, we thought it was time to update last year's list with the freshest information on the best eCommerce events for B2B and B2C you could be a part of this year (or for some, meet…

Cloud v. SaaS: Innovation or Conformity in eCommerce?

March 13, 2018 Read More

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The Importance of Customer Reviews

February 7, 2018

Word of mouth is king when it comes to making purchase decisions. We recently focused on affiliate marketing – a natural extension of which is the importance of customer reviews in the buyer’s journey. Let’s consider the impact of these reviews and determine…

How to Master Cloud Planning with Commerce Managed Services

February 7, 2018 Read More

4 Arguments to Convince Your Boss to Migrate Oracle Commerce to the Cloud

January 29, 2018 Read More

Evolution of Ecommerce Hosting and the Impact of Cloud

December 20, 2017 Read More

Key Considerations when Migrating to AWS from Traditional Managed Hosting

July 23, 2017 Read More

What is SAP Hybris Marketing?

May 2, 2017

Are you reading this in 2019? SAP's offerings evolve and grow constantly, and we have a new blog post on how SAP Marketing, Sales, and Customer Data Cloud work together in their front-office suite, C/4HANA. Click here to check it out! SAP Hybris…

Performance Monitoring: Why It’s Critical for Ecommerce Success!

March 13, 2017 Read More

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Online to Offline (O2O): Learning from Innovative Companies & China

February 9, 2017

When we think about how we can use our online stores and advertising to aid brick and mortar shops, we often think about email collection and "click to pick-up", but so much more can be done. Online to offline (O2O) is a strategy that does just what you may think – it uses online…

Oracle Commerce on AWS Overview

January 20, 2017 Read More

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The current state of B2B ecommerce (and why you can’t afford to ignore it)

November 17, 2016

$1.13 Trillion. According to a 2015 Forrester report, that’s how much US manufacturers, wholesalers and distributors are predicted to sell online (inclusive of EDI) by the year 2020 – less than four years from now.1 By the way, that figure represents more than twice…

The Future is Modular: Modern eCommerce Site Architect

October 21, 2016

As ecommerce becomes more mainstream and accessible to retailers of all size, innovative companies are finding new ways to enhance the customer experience by building totally customized ecommerce systems that are scalable, repeatable and sustainable. A typical enterprise-grade ecommerce system is often a…

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Website Accessibility: Protect your business from the risk of lawsuit

October 18, 2016

Is your website fully accessible to people with disabilities? Probably not. Web accessibility may not be your business's top priority right now, but you could be vulnerable to lawsuits or fines if your site does not comply with accessibility standards. The post will discuss…

What Does Ecommerce SEO mean?

August 11, 2016

Ecommerce SEO (Search Engine Optimization) in its rawest form involves optimizing your site to Google’s ever-changing standards by making your site as user friendly and as crawler friendly as possible while still being able to sell your products. When working with clients, one…

Vulnerability Management for Ecommerce

January 5, 2016 Read More

12 Things to Beware of with Web Developers

October 8, 2015 Read More

Ecommerce Performance Matters – Especially During the Holidays

September 3, 2015 Read More

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Oracle Commerce Insight East 2015 [RECAP]

August 31, 2015

Last week some of the most well-known Oracle Commerce customers and industry experts met at the Oracle offices in Cambridge, MA to hear industry news, share their experiences with the platform and learn best practices. Inspired by ATG Insight, the Oracle Commerce Insight…

Tenzing to Continue Elevating GuestLogix’s Commerce to New Heights

June 2, 2015 Read More

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Writing Custom ATG Cache

May 20, 2015

Similar to the well-known repository cache and the lesser-known cache droplet, there exists a third type of cache that all ATG engineers should know about. The cache I’m referring to can be used to cache anything in memory. The cache droplet does this,…

The Importance of Customer Reviews and How to Get Them

May 14, 2015 Read More

Ecommerce Security Update: SSL & TLS Not Acceptable Security Controls for PCI DSS Compliance

April 28, 2015 Read More

Ecommerce Website Hosting: The Tenzing Difference

April 14, 2015 Read More

Canadian Ecommerce Trends

April 8, 2015 Read More

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Oracle Commerce Search Engine Optimization

March 19, 2015

Search engine optimization is critical for all sites, and eCommerce sites are no exception. The difference between #1 and #2 on google search results can be thousands of dollars. ATG/Oracle Commerce provides a number of ways at the application level to aid in…

Build-A-Bear Workshop Case Study: Performance Means Conversion

January 6, 2015

Build-A-Bear Workshop® is a global interactive entertainment retailer with nearly 400 stores all over the world with an engaging commerce-based website. Its website experienced occasional outages and slowness with the previous managed hosting provider that impacted the retailer’s conversion rate. The site buildabear.com®…

Hosting for Ecommerce: Why Flexibility is Essential

December 23, 2014 Read More

Fast Ecommerce Hosting: How Speed Affects Sales

November 19, 2014 Read More

Choosing an Ecommerce Hosting Provider: How to Find the Best

November 4, 2014 Read More

7 Tips to Manage Unexpected Traffic

June 2, 2014 Read More

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ATG vs WebSphere vs Demandware vs Magento vs eBay Largest Clients (America)

February 27, 2013

Updated – May 27, 2014 If you work for a large online retailer and are looking for an ecommerce platform, you probably conduct research comparing different platforms’ capabilities and prices. While this step is very important, having examples of the biggest sites using…

Using Cloud with Oracle Commerce: Pluses and Minuses

January 8, 2013

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Survey: Best E-Commerce Sites According To Buyers

September 18, 2012

There are multiple articles naming the best e-commerce sites based on the opinions of professional designers or e-commerce specialists. However, the only opinions that do really matter are those of your buyers. We asked people who shop online what the best e-commerce site(s)…

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Oracle Commerce Tutorials, Blogs, and Guides

August 7, 2012

Updated 10/21/2013 There are a few sources about ATG Commerce that are available online. However, many of them are outdated. In this blog post I have included a list of as – yet active (or just still helpful) tutorials, blogs and guides about…

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Open Source Java Static Code Analyzers: PMD vs FindBugs vs Checkstyle

July 3, 2012

Reviewing java source code on a regular basis is a really good idea. All programmers take shortcuts in writing code. Shortcuts save time and usually go unnoticed…until something breaks at the wrong time. Besides catching pitfalls in code, java code analyzers can help…

Successful E-Commerce Websites: 15 Factors Impacting Online Shopping Behavior

June 28, 2012

Let’s start with one important forecast from a recent Steel House data flash: 60% of buyers plan to spend more money via online shopping! Taking that trend into account, I read a few surveys and articles about online shopping published since this past…

Successful E-Commerce Websites: Product Description Page

May 23, 2012

Successful E-Commerce Websites: Product Description Page New IT technologies have completely changed the way people shop in the 21st century. Internet and mobile devices have made it possible to purchase products or services at any time and in any location. As a result,…

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Setting Up Oracle Commerce on Mac OSX

May 7, 2012

Oracle/ATG development has historically been dominated by Windows machines. There have been a small number of people migrating over onto Mac OSX because, well, Apple makes a great computer for development. Oracle and ATG have been slow to catch on to the users…

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What is PCI DSS and Why do you Need PCI Compliant Hosting?

May 1, 2012

Based on the 2012 Identity Fraud Report by Javelin Strategy and Research, 11.6 million adults’ identities were stolen in the United States in 2011, which was 13% higher when compared to similar incidents in 2010. Moreover according to TrustWave statistics, 89% of hackers break into systems…

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