Extended Site Model (Sharing of Assets like Shopping cart across e-site)

Below is good case study which analysis the potential of Extended site Model

Input.
The data to be taken in count to understand my question is the following:

• There are 18 geographical regions, each one with its own Fulfillment Center. The Fulfillment Center of each region should only be able to ship on its own region. The system has to check the stock and reduce inventory only in its correspondent FFC. The system identifies the region using the shipping address. Also, there is an additional, special FFC, called CDR, that is able to do ships from 10 of the 18 regions. If the shipping address belongs to any of this 10 regions, the system must consult stock first to this CDR and then to the correspondent FFC of the region.

Finally, each different region has a different product set and different price list, in about 5% of their product. And that 5% represent a significant sales percentage.

• When the client browses the e-store, he must feel that is a unique store, hence, the shopping cart must be unique per session, and, when the client changes the shipping address (than could means a change in the geographical region), the shopping cart must remain the same, and the system must alert the client if, due of that change, some product are not longer available or have different prices.

• We are definitely going to use the Extended Sites model, because in the future, we are going to implement others e-Stores for other countries and others brands.

Alternatives:

Two alternatives:

• To create just one e-store, with 19 FFC, and to make 2 important customizations:

- Customize the checking and reducing of stock, to use only the correspondent FFC, using the shipping address.
- Create a Rule Price Element (Rule Price Template), to identify the geographical region and to calculate the price from the correspondent price list.

• To create 18 eSites (this alternative, makes the inventory management and price management completely out-of-the-box, with the functions of Shared Fulfillment, Catalog Filter and Price Rules), however, we should make an important customization:

- Create a Command, to transfer the shopping cart from eSite to eSite, every time the client change shipping address, so the client feels that is the same shopping cart.

- Sharing of Shopping cart across store:
Extend or create your own command that chains in after the the Shipping Address Update. This way the Shipping Update occurs then invokes the URL command to check if the order has changed the FFC/eSite. If it has then modify the storeId in the request and response (this command would need to be CMDREG registered at the 0 storeid to make it global), wrap doing an OrderPrepare within the command. This will generate the price/cart update which will allow you to seamlessly recalculate the cart without having to go back to the shopping cart page and then back to the Shipping Address Page. The complexity still comes if you have eSite specific different promotions which can increase the complexity of what you are trying to do. If the URL to forward to after the Shipping Address Update changes, make sure you pass that URL as a separate parameter that you use as the forward from your custom command.Also you might perform the same by making changes in Store relationship data model.

Shared Assets in Extended Site model including Shopping cart [Link]