CRM leader Salesforce and the cloud arm of Chinese technology giant Alibaba have announced a partnership planning to launch a Salesforce Social Commerce solution in China.
The solution is designed to help multinationals succeed in the region by unifying data across Chinese storefronts and integrating with local systems – while being hosted on Alibaba Cloud. Salesforce framed the offering as overcoming frequent regional challenges such as data residency and issues with integrating with Chinese platforms.
“This is a planned part of the partnership between two global technology leaders to bring Salesforce’s trusted products to mainland China,” said Lancelot Guo, VP of Alibaba Group, and President, Ecosystem and Sales Operations, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence.
“Once launched, this localised commerce solution will help brands meet the unique needs of the Chinese market while providing consistency with global Salesforce products. The partnership is designed to ensure that customers of Salesforce that have operations in mainland China will have access to a locally-hosted version of Salesforce from Alibaba Cloud, which understands local business and culture.”
The solution will support Chinese channels including websites and social networks, as well as integrations with digital commerce solutions such as order management, product information management and shipping provider systems. The companies said it would also support local payment systems such as Alipay.
“Together with Alibaba Cloud, we plan for Salesforce Social Commerce to offer a new, localised product that will enable companies to manage and unify their first-party commerce experiences, from websites to social applications, to gain a 360 view of their customers,” said Ryan Aytay, Chief Business Officer at Salesforce. “We are committed to helping multinational customers succeed in China, and are energised to bring more products to the market together in partnership with Alibaba Cloud in the near future.”
The solution is planned to be the first product brought to market from a wider strategic partnership between the two companies, with regularly updated features and integrations mooted. The product itself is anticipated to be generally available later this year, according to the companies.
