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Your Dynamics 365 Commerce partner for stores, web and call center on one catalog
Picking a Dynamics 365 Commerce partner is picking who will sit between your stores, your website and your head office. Commerce gives a retailer one product catalog, one price engine and one view of stock for every channel. We plan the rollout store by store, connect it to finance and supply chain, and train the people at the till before the first trading day.
What Dynamics 365 Commerce actually is
Dynamics 365 Commerce is Microsoft's retail application. Its back office, called Commerce headquarters, runs on the same platform as Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management. Products, assortments, prices, discounts, loyalty and customers are kept there once and published to each channel.
The channels are physical stores running the Store Commerce app, an online store built with the Commerce site builder, and a call center where agents take phone orders. A Commerce Scale Unit sits between headquarters and the channels, so stores keep trading when the link to head office is slow, and orders and payments flow back to finance for posting.
What we set up in a Commerce implementation
Product and assortment model
Categories, variants such as size and color, attributes and which stores or sites carry which ranges.
Pricing and promotions
Price groups, mix and match deals, quantity discounts and coupons, tested against the receipts your staff expect to print.
Store Commerce at the till
Register layouts, cash management, returns, gift cards and the payment connector, tried on your own hardware.
Online store
Site builder pages, product listings, checkout and order flow into the same order management as the stores.
Call center ordering
Agents create and change orders for phone customers with the same prices and stock the shop floor sees.
Loyalty and customers
Loyalty programs, tiers and points that a shopper can earn in a store and spend online, or the reverse.
Order fulfillment
Buy online and pick up in store, ship from store and returns to any channel, with the rules written down first.
Finance and stock posting
Statements from each store post sales, tenders and inventory to the ledger, with clear owners for every difference.
How a Commerce rollout usually runs
- 1
Walk the stores
We watch a busy trading hour, a return and an end-of-day count before writing any design.
- 2
Design the retail model
Channels, assortments, pricing rules, payment providers and the hand-off to finance agreed in writing.
- 3
Build and test at the till
Configuration, payment and receipt tests on real registers, plus the online checkout end to end.
- 4
Pilot store
One store goes live first while the others keep their current system, so problems surface in one place.
- 5
Wave rollout
Remaining stores move in groups, each with floor support on its first trading days.
Signs Dynamics 365 Commerce may not fit yet
- ✓You sell only online through Shopify or a similar platform and have no stores or call center. Business Central with a shop connector is often enough.
- ✓You run one or two stores with a simple range. A lighter POS linked to Business Central costs far less to run.
- ✓Nobody in the business can own retail master data. Commerce depends on clean products, prices and assortments every week.
- ✓You need it live before a peak season that starts in a few weeks. A rushed till rollout costs more in lost sales than it saves.
Questions retailers ask about Dynamics 365 Commerce
Does Dynamics 365 Commerce need Finance and Supply Chain Management?
Commerce headquarters runs on the finance and operations platform, so it shares that environment with Finance and Supply Chain Management. Most retailers use those apps for the ledger, purchasing and warehouses. We confirm the exact license mix against Microsoft's current licensing guide before anything is quoted.
Can stores keep selling if the internet drops?
Store Commerce can run with an offline database so registers keep taking sales during an outage and sync when the connection returns. Some features, such as looking up stock in other stores, need the connection. We test the offline cases with your staff before go-live.
Can we keep our current e-commerce platform?
Yes. Many retailers keep their web platform and connect it to Commerce for products, prices, stock and orders. Others move to the Commerce site builder. The choice depends on how much your current site does that you would have to rebuild.
Which payment providers work with the POS?
Commerce has a payment connector for Adyen out of the box, and other providers supply their own connectors. Your card terminals and acquirer decide which route works, so we check that early in design.
Talk to us about your project.
Tell us what you run today and what has to change. A senior consultant replies with a written next step.