Order and quote capture integration System Context

The Order and Quote Capture Integration introduces several data flows between WebSphere Commerce and the external system. Master data related to customers and products must be batch loaded from the external system to WebSphere Commerce. WebSphere Commerce also makes outbound web service calls to the external system for real-time data retrieval.

The following diagram illustrates the data flows involved in the Order and Quote Capture Integration.

Order and Quote Integration: System Context

Member: The external system holds the customer master data that must be synchronized with WebSphere Commerce using data load utilities and as offline processes. Additionally, in a B2B scenario, an organization needs to be registered with the WebSphere Commerce store. Buyers from the registered organization must also register and set up their profiles with the WebSphere Commerce store.
Catalog: The catalog or product data, first needs to be loaded and subsequently synchronized from the external system. This can be achieved using data load utilities and as offline processes.
Price: Only the list prices of products are loaded into WebSphere Commerce from the external system. The offer prices are fetched from the external system in real-time using external web service calls and cached till cache expiration or when the situation requires making a real time call to the external system, for example, the offer price is refreshed from the external system just before a customer enters the billing information and commits the order.
Inventory: Inventory information is fetched from the external system in real time using external web service calls from WebSphere Commerce and cached till cache expiration or when the situation requires making a real time call to the external system, for example, when a customer update the order quantity for an item in their shopping cart.
Order: WebSphere Commerce captures an order through the storefront and transfers it to the external system. The external system focuses on the subsequent order processing tasks, such as order price calculation and fulfillment.
From the WebSphere Commerce storefront, customers can also view the details of their orders that they have submitted to the external system using a channel other than the WebSphere Commerce storefront. The order details are fetched from the external system in real time.
Quote: WebSphere Commerce captures a quote through the storefront and transfers it to the external system. The external system focuses on the subsequent quote processing tasks.
From the WebSphere Commerce storefront, customers can also view the details of all their quotes that they have submitted to the external system using a channel other than the WebSphere Commerce storefront. The quote details are fetched from the external system in real time.