How a Leading Research University Unified Complex Commerce on Salesforce
Red Van Workshop rebuilt the university's commerce operation on Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Order Management, and Marketing Cloud. It launched in June 2025 after a 15-month implementation and now runs physical, digital, educational, institutional, and in-store sales from one platform.
Who is the client?
A leading U.S. research university that runs one of the most complex commerce operations in higher education.
Its catalog spans physical merchandise, academic publications, digital downloads, continuing education courses with Continuing Education Unit (CEU) credits, and cooperative extension materials for agricultural professionals, 4-H families, and researchers across the country. Students buying university gear and academics purchasing scientific publications sometimes check out in the same transaction.
The store supports in-store point of sale (POS), campus mail delivery, UPS shipping, secure digital downloads, and institutional purchasing, all within a single operation that serves students, faculty, alumni, researchers, extension agents, and county organizations.
What problem did the university need to solve?
Its commerce platform ran on aging, fragmented infrastructure that could no longer support the scale and complexity of the business.
Product data, inventory, and orders were siloed across systems. Operations teams managed fulfillment manually. In-store purchases relied on order-on-behalf-of workarounds that created a disconnected view of the business and made unified reporting difficult.
The university needed physical products, digital downloads, continuing education, institutional purchasing, and in-store retail to run through one connected system.
Requirements that defined the architecture
- Support physical, digital, and educational products
- Manage shipping, pickup, mail, and digital fulfillment
- Enable institutional payment workflows
- Unify Clover POS and online commerce
- Authenticate users through university single sign-on (SSO)
- Centralize product and catalog management
How did Red Van solve it?
Red Van built a new platform on Salesforce Commerce Cloud (SFCC), Salesforce Order Management (SOM), and Salesforce Marketing Cloud, connected in real time by a custom translation layer.
A custom Product Information Management (PIM) tool
The centerpiece of the solution syncs product data, pricing, inventory, and category assignments across SFCC, SOM, and Salesforce Core. Without it, managing thousands of SKUs across product types, pricing models, fulfillment methods, and extension program hierarchies would not have been feasible at scale.
In-store and online commerce in one view
Before the project, in-store sales were captured through manual order-on-behalf-of processes, separate from online orders. Clover transactions now flow directly into Salesforce Order Management alongside online purchases, giving the operations team one view of inventory, customers, fulfillment, and sales for the first time.
What the platform includes
SFCC Storefront
Product-type-specific display logic, CEU eligibility filtering, customer groups tied to university identity, SSO integration, and WCAG accessibility remediation.
Salesforce Order Management
Custom fulfillment for physical, digital, and campus-mail orders; multi-label UPS shipping; automated packing slips; institutional order review; multi-variant digital products.
Custom Payment Adapters
Authorize.net, Cash, County Order, and institutional payment workflows with custom SOM processing, Marketing Cloud communications, and full order lifecycle support.
Marketing Cloud
Transactional emails, abandoned cart programs, back-in-stock notifications, and customer engagement workflows.
Azure Secure Delivery
Time-limited, signed download links for digital publications and eCourse materials, with download tracking and secure access.
What were the results?
The university launched on Salesforce in June 2025 after a 15-month implementation and more than 5,500 hours of development, architecture, design, and QA.
- Physical, digital, educational, and institutional commerce on a single platform
- Thousands of products managed centrally across every catalog
- Clover POS and online commerce integrated
- Secure digital delivery for publications and continuing education materials
- Automated fulfillment across shipping, campus mail, and digital delivery
- Institutional purchasing through custom payment and approval workflows
- Centralized visibility across storefront, fulfillment, and point of sale
- Scalable architecture for future growth and catalog expansion
What once required fragmented systems, manual workflows, and disconnected reporting now runs on one Salesforce architecture with greater visibility, efficiency, and room to grow.
What services did Red Van provide?
- 01Discovery and Architecture
- 02Salesforce Commerce Cloud Implementation
- 03Salesforce Order Management Implementation
- 04Salesforce Marketing Cloud Implementation
- 05Custom PIM Development
- 06Integration Architecture and Translation Layer
- 07Clover POS Integration
- 08University SSO Integration
- 09QA, Launch, and Hypercare
- 10Managed Services and Platform Enhancements
Frequently asked questions
Can Salesforce Commerce Cloud handle physical, digital, and course products in one store?+
Yes. Salesforce Commerce Cloud (SFCC) supports mixed catalogs when product types, entitlements, and fulfillment rules are modeled correctly up front. On this project, merchandise, academic publications, secure digital downloads, and continuing education courses with CEU credits all sell through one storefront, and a student and a researcher can check out in the same transaction.
How can a university sell digital downloads and continuing education materials securely?+
Secure delivery requires time-limited, signed download links instead of static file URLs. On this platform, publications and eCourse materials are delivered through Azure with expiring links and download tracking, so access stays tied to the purchaser. Continuing education products carry CEU eligibility rules that control which customer groups can buy them.
Can in-store POS and online orders run on one commerce platform?+
Yes. Clover point of sale (POS) transactions flow directly into Salesforce Order Management alongside online orders, which replaced the manual order-on-behalf-of workaround the university used before. The result is a single view of inventory, customers, and fulfillment. How cleanly any POS integrates depends on its API and how returns and inventory are reconciled.
What is a PIM and does a university commerce operation need one?+
A PIM (Product Information Management) tool is the single place product data, pricing, inventory, and category assignments live before syncing to connected systems. This university needed a custom one: thousands of SKUs across product types, pricing models, and fulfillment methods would not have been manageable otherwise. Smaller, single-catalog operations usually do not.