Order and quote capture integration

The Order and Quote Capture Integration provides an open and extensible framework that supports outbound integration of WebSphere Commerce with a generic external system.

In the Order and Quote Capture Integration framework, the WebSphere Commerce storefront acts as a front-end online application that displays the available product details including the inventory availability and offer prices for products to the customers, captures the order and quote details entered by the customer, and transfers these details to the external system for further processing.

The configured external system acts as the back-end system of records that stores the latest inventory availability and offer price information for products and performs fulfillment operations for the orders and quotes submitted by the customer.

The inventory and offer price information for products is refreshed in WebSphere Commerce through outbound web service calls to the external system. The inventory and price information is cached and used in WebSphere Commerce until cache expiration or a situation that requires using or displaying the latest inventory and price values to the customer, for example, just before a customer enters the billing information and must be shown the latest prices of the products that they choose to buy.

The orders and quotes submitted by the customer are transferred to the external system for fulfillment. Customers logged on to the WebSphere Commerce storefront can view the details of orders and quotes submitted by them to the external system, even if they have submitted their orders and quotes through a channel other than the WebSphere Commerce storefront.

The Order and Quote Capture Integration enhances the e-Commerce capabilities of the enterprise by opening up the external system to the channels served by WebSphere Commerce. The enterprise, thus, gets advantage from the combined power of a robust, external system and the rich, intuitive, user interface of WebSphere Commerce.