5 Issues with managing discounts and promotions in SAP Commerce Cloud (+ How to fix them easily)

You've been working hard on your new promotion campaign. Your online store is all set-up,  your marketing strategy is planned, your SAP Commerce Cloud looks ready for the incoming order, and you're all excited to launch. You can almost hear the cha-ching sounds in the background, the (virtual) credit card swipes, and the packages flipping through the conveyor belts.

You launch your campaign, and wait, and wait... and something goes wrong. All of a sudden, all your dreams of glory (and revenue) are shattered by technicalities that shouldn't be there. Yet, here you are, looking at a flood of emails and chat messages from angry would-have-been buyers.

It's not you, it's SAP

OK, maybe not SAP, but errors happen everywhere. Especially during promotional campaigns, when there's usually a surge of traffic to the website. Your ecommerce website is no exception, and it could very well be the main culprit for your perfect promotion going haywire.

This is not to say you should just drop your promos and roll with the full prices all year round. On the contrary, regular discounts can help you:

• Sell more;

• Increase customer loyalty;

• Boost evangelism among your customers;

• Convince shoppers who were otherwise on the fence;

• Encourage repeat purchases, and more!

At the same time, promotional campaigns will most likely cause downtime. There are many moving parts involved in running sales campaigns, there's a huge influx of traffic, and your team is busy with marketing and customer support tasks.

It's all too easy to miss crucial updates, overlook issues, or simply be unaware of problems that may arise during this time. So we’ve gathered the most common struggles online retailers like you face and came up with the tested and proven ways to fix or avoid those whatsoever! 

Top SAP CC promotions issues and how to solve them

Although many other things could go wrong, the following issues have been flagged by SAP CC users the most:

1. Can't see promotions in backend (After upgrading to 2215)

After upgrading SAP CC to the 2215 versions, some users complained that they couldn't see their promotions in the back office.

The solution was simple, but it involved modifying system settings related to SAP Commerce. Specifically, you should remove the dynamic attribute handler spring bean ID "AbstractRule_deploymentsAttributeHandler" from the system's configuration.

This adjustment is aimed at addressing the visibility issue of promotions in the back office after an upgrade. For a detailed, step-by-step guide, it's best to consult the original discussion on the SAP Community page.

2. Promotions applied twice in the application

Other users complained about their promotions being applied twice in the application, both at the product and the order levels.

This is a recognized issue in some versions of the SAP CC software, and a patch has already been provided for versions 5.x and onwards. If your software runs on an older version, then you will have to write to SAP for further assistance to obtain a patch or fix for your problem.

3. Issues with publishing new promotions

Some users noticed that after migrating their SAP on-premises Hybris version from 2011 to 2105, new promotions were not published, and the issue seemed related to the Drools rule engine.

If you've encountered this problem, you need to either clear the content of all Drools rules and republish them OR remove all DroolsRule objects. Of the two options, the former is better because it helps you avoid data loss.

Whichever option you choose, you must republish your rules once you're done.

Additionally, you might also want to check Drools rules for specific promotions and debugging promotion applications. You can do this by examining the cart in the back office and the promotion results tab.

4. Maximum number of promotions

This one isn't quite an issue per se, but a limitation of the system, which you might want to be aware of. 

Specifically, you need to know that the promotion engine's performance issues might start after 2,000-3,000 promotions, everything will become slower after 5,000 promotions, and might cause potential issues with memory allocation in the JVM once you exceed 10,000 promotions.

There's no "solution" to this – as a general rule, you should limit the number of promotions and keep it well below 10,000. Or 2,000 if you want everything to run extra smoothly.

5. Promotions not taking effect on the cart page

The issue at hand is that some promotions set up via Impex and activated are not taking effect on the cart page, despite functioning correctly when tested with promotions in the HMC.

The reason behind this is that from version 6.0, SAP has transitioned to a new rule-based promotion engine as the default, replacing the previous HMC-based system. To use the older promotions, you should manually eliminate the promotion engine extensions and replace them with legacy promotions. 

For more information, refer to the comprehensive discussion on the SAP Community page .

Stress-free promotions: The composable commerce way

If you want to avoid these (and other) SAP CC promotion-related issues altogether, then consider adopting composable commerce for your ecommerce website. It offers you the best of both worlds: sticking with your existing SAP CC solution while introducing new powerful tools for managing promotions.

Composable commerce lets you easily build, deploy, and manage your ecommerce website in a modular manner. You don't have to worry about upgrades or lengthy implementations – you can simply add, remove, or replace components as needed.

With this approach, you can choose from various best-in-class technologies to design your perfect site, promotions, and campaigns – all hassle-free and with little to no risk of technical issues.

And the best part is that with Alokai , you can leverage all the perks the composable approach has to offer while sticking to the SAP backend you know, love, and trust. We offer a dedicated integration for all SAP Commerce Cloud users , ensuring that composability becomes practically seamless!