Forrester TEI study: How B2C Commerce and Order Management delivered a 119% return on investment

Legacy commerce systems are costly to maintain, slow to innovate on, and prone to poor performance — but migrating to a new platform can feel like a daunting task. Business and technology leaders need a clear framework to understand the benefits, costs, and risks associated with any new investment. To help decision makers arrive at a thoughtful and strategic choice, Salesforce commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study that examines the potential return on investment (ROI) of B2C Commerce and Order Management.*

The results are clear: These solutions improve critical business outcomes, including higher conversion rates and sales, improved order servicing efficiency, and increased capacity for technical and digital teams.

The quantified impact: Serious ROI and 7-month payback period

Forrester interviewed five decision-makers with experience using Salesforce B2C Commerce and Order Management. For the purposes of this study, Forrester aggregated the experiences of the interviewees and combined the results into a single composite organization, which is a global retailer with annual online gross merchandise value (GMV) of approximately $200 million. Here’s a quick look at the top-line results.

• 45% increase in online conversions. The composite organization improves site performance, merchandising, and shopper experiences by moving from its legacy commerce solution to Salesforce B2C Commerce
• Up to 40% reduction in case handling time for order servicing. Prior to adopting Salesforce Order Management, customer service representatives work across multiple disparate applications to complete order servicing activities, including modifications and refunds, and provide order status updates.
• Avoided licensing costs worth $473K. The composite organization decommissions its legacy commerce solution, order management system, and third-party applications for functionalities that are now provided natively by Salesforce B2C Commerce. 

The modern shopper expects a friction-free experience from the moment they land on your site. By leveraging a high-performance, unified platform, brands can move beyond generic storefronts to deliver deeply personalized, AI-driven experiences that resonate with individual needs. This level of relevance doesn’t just improve the customer experience; it fundamentally changes the math of your digital storefront by capturing demand that legacy, sluggish systems often leave on the table. 

Interviewees at organizations that adopted Salesforce B2C Commerce reported significant improvements in site performance, scalability, and merchandising capabilities, leading to higher conversion rates and revenue growth. Below are examples of gains reported by business leaders:

• The SVP of Software Engineering at a furniture retailer explained how Salesforce B2C Commerce improved site performance and scalability, leading to an improvement in site conversion of approximately 43%.
• The CIO at an apparel retailer shared that conversion rates improved by an estimated 30% to 50% following implementation, contributing to a more than twofold increase in daily revenue compared with prior years.
• The Head of Ecommerce Product and Engineering at a footwear retailer explained that adopting Salesforce B2C Commerce improved site performance and customer engagement. Average session times nearly doubled across all device types, bounce rates fell by more than 5%, and cart abandonment declined significantly.

Streamline the post-purchase experience to reduce service costs and call volume.

Transparency and open communication with customers after they click the buy button and before their items are delivered is crucial for satisfaction and loyalty. Salesforce Order Management provides a single source of truth for every order and makes it easy to deliver exceptional post-purchase experiences. When customers have real-time visibility into their order status and access to easy, automated self-service returns, you significantly reduce the burden on your customer service team. This helps turn a potential cost center into a loyalty driver.

Customer satisfaction is just one advantage of streamlining the post-purchase experience. The financial impact is also undeniable. By automating “Where is my order?” (WISMO) inquiries that typically clog up phone lines and chat queues, organizations can reallocate human talent to high-value interactions that require a more personal touch. Forrester found the following improvements:

• Over three years, order servicing efficiency is worth $776K
• 30% to 40% reduction in case handling time
• Reduced reliance on third-party customer service support, cutting contracted service hours by approximately 30% to 35%

Consolidate your commerce stack to minimize legacy costs and increase operational efficiency.

Complexity is the enemy of profitability. Running separate, siloed systems for your storefront, inventory, and fulfillment creates data gaps that lead to over-selling, missed shipments, and wasted overhead. Consolidating these functions onto a single platform provides a holistic view of the business, enabling smarter inventory placement and more efficient fulfillment routes. This streamlines operations and allows businesses to scale without increasing headcount.

The Forrester study shows that the ROI isn’t just found in one area of the business, but in the cumulative effect of a streamlined stack. When every department — from marketing to logistics — works from the same data, the organization can move faster and with more precision.

Modernize your technical foundation to accelerate time-to-market and developer agility.

For technology leaders, the greatest cost of legacy commerce systems is often technical debt. That’s because these systems frequently require custom integrations that turn even minor updates into large, time-consuming projects. Moving to a modern, unified architecture can free your development team from the cycle of constant, costly maintenance. This shift allows your IT organization to drive more innovation and value for the business, deploying new features and experiments at the speed of the market.

Forrester’s research found that Salesforce B2C Commerce and Order Management can simplify the developer experience significantly. With standardized APIs and a cohesive data model, teams can focus on creating new features and enhancing the shopper experience rather than simply keeping the lights on. With Salesforce B2C Commerce and Order Management, the composite organization in Forrester’s study was able to:

• Enhance productivity with merchandising and site enrichment tools, resulting in a capacity improvement of 75% for each FTE on the digital team.
• Realize productivity gains and additional capacity for technical teams. Each technical resource increases capacity by 100%, effectively doubling the team’s output.
• Improve scalability and reliability, ensuring 99.99% uptime and the ability to handle large traffic spikes during major events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Is your ecommerce tech stack driving growth or friction?

Your ecommerce tech stack is either a catalyst for growth or a barrier to it. As part of our commitment to customer success, Salesforce helps merchants drive efficiency and reduce total cost of ownership by consolidating commerce and order management onto a single, unified platform. Download the full Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study to learn more about how you can improve operations and increase sales.

*The Total Economic Impact™ Of Salesforce B2C Commerce & Order Management, a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Salesforce, February  2026