INDUSTRY WATCH
Enabling the sellers
It’s in a manufacturer’s best interest to
support sales teams with eCommerce tools
that empower sellers to take a hands-on
approach to customer relationships, while still
offering a streamlined interface for the buyer.
For instance, if a seller can see anomalies
in buying patterns, he or she has the
opportunity to add value, make suggestions
or pre-empt a customer need. These
additions add value in what is otherwise
a low-touch relationship, without added
friction for the buyer. With the right tools in
place, manufacturing sales professionals can
be confident that their time and efforts are
focused on opportunities to add value to the
buyer and grow that relationship.
Unfortunately, most legacy eCommerce
systems fail to give sales teams the tools
and data they need to move beyond
administrative roles and intervene or support
sales cycles.
ordering – activities traditionally handled over
the phone with a rep – are also not accounted
for on digital channels, leaving buyers
frustrated and confused.
The need for a purpose-built system
The answer to manufacturing’s eCommerce
woes is purpose-built systems offering
features specifically designed for the
complexities of B2B buying and selling.
Purpose-built B2B systems help reps move
beyond administrative, order-taking roles.
These systems support virtual catalogues,
customer segmentation and customer-
specific microsites on a single platform
to deliver buyer and organisation-specific
product assortment.
They allow you to define a buyer
organisation’s account structure and provide
division and role-specific pricing depending on
contract agreements.
B2B buyers are buying for their businesses,
not their lifestyles – basic digitised catalogues
and shopping carts won’t be enough to
meet B2B buyers’ needs. For these buyers,
it’s all about enabling efficient buying and
selling and solving both long- and short-term
problems. For example, a buyer might need
to create a new order for a quickly moving
project. But in a traditional shopping cart set
up, that buyer would need to discard any
orders they started for long-term projects. Purpose-built systems can enable
reordering of individual line items or an
entire order with guided selling experiences
to ensure products and services ordered
together are compatible with one another.
Systems designed specifically for B2B will
ensure your customers see the correct price
every time through flexible account-
specific pricing, subscription billing, usage
pricing, tiered billing or negotiated and
contract billing. They can also enable
automated reordering, allowing buyers to
spend less time purchasing and more time
on their businesses.
It’s a frustrating and inefficient process. The
right B2B platform, however, would allow
for multiple carts to enable these types of
complex buying situations. Often, nuances
like contract-based pricing or project-based The right eCommerce system could also
drive opportunities for commerce-enabled
IoT. By integrating the warehouse or
individual products with an eCommerce
system, manufacturers can automate tasks
Enabling the buyers
THOSE BRANDS THAT CAN
MEET AND EXCEED THE
UNIQUE NEEDS OF THEIR
BUYERS WILL GAIN A
COMPETITIVE EDGE.
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INTELLIGENTCIO
John Bruno, VP of Product Management,
Elastic Path
like managing supply levels, tracking
customer data and reordering.
Finally, purpose-built systems ensure
delivery of unified experiences across
channels. The right tools for B2B typically
offer an API-first platform to power both
online and offline customer experiences,
enabling manufacturers to deliver unified
experiences that are seamless as buyers
traverse channels.
Conclusion
Historically, manufacturers achieved
success because of the quality of their
products and their ability to form
meaningful relationships with channel
partners. But, translating that experience
directly to end customers and to digital
channels is a challenge.
Manufacturing eCommerce is in dire
need of a revolution. The industry is
bogged down with consumer tools
slightly modified to work in a B2B sales
environment. But they don’t work and
they never will. B2B buyers and sellers
need something more – something built
just for them.
Manufacturers must focus on digitising
the B2B buying experience rather than
attempting to mimic B2C eCommerce.
Those brands that can meet and exceed
the unique needs of their buyers will gain
a competitive edge. Simply put, better
digital experiences will drive sales growth
and long-term customer loyalty. n
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