B2B eCommerce is growing exponentially and so is the demand for digital commerce services. The pandemic has made digital interactions more important than traditional sales interactions. Almost 90% of sales interactions have moved to video conferencing, phone, or web sales models, and many believe that this is equally or more effective than the sales model used before COVID-19.
As per research, 80% of sales interactions taking place between business buyers and suppliers will take place online by 2025. Therefore, new-age buyers would not want to engage with a salesperson until they are in the middle of the purchasing decision.
The majority of B2B buyers use mobile devices to search for a product and their buying behavior mimics B2C buying behavior. Therefore, B2B companies’ eCommerce strategy should involve targeting mobile users with specialized Digital Commerce services, like Oracle CX Commerce, and offer a personalized and innovative buying experience to their B2B buyers.
Leveraging E-commerce Strategies with the help of Digital Commerce Services
1. Simplified end-to-end purchase process
Once you have a B2B eCommerce channel, the users can log into the site, view the product catalog, and have complete access to the product information.
It is important that you have an eCommerce site that provides enough information about your products to B2B buyers. It should cover various product attributes, videos, images, or any manuals.
You need an easy-to-navigate dashboard so your B2B buyers can track their order status, order history, download invoices, and maintain their payment or credit history.
2. With B2B eCommerce, reach out to more customers anytime, anywhere
With an online B2B eCommerce channel, your existing sales team can support and serve far more customers or prospects than you are doing right now. It will enable you to enter new markets and regions without heavily investing in salespeople.
If you have built your eCommerce channel on modern technology and framework, customers can access your web channel 24x7 through any device be it desktop, mobile or an iPad.
3. Empower your sales reps with intelligence
Your sales reps need to access the B2B eCommerce portal to leverage the intelligence provided by the eCommerce engine to the analytics or the data that has been collected. Such insights will help your sales reps know ahead of time what your B2B customer needs are.
Additionally, sales reps can perform actions on behalf of your customers. This means that they can log-in to the B2B eCommerce portal and configure products and place orders on behalf of your customers.
4. Deliver orders faster with connected systems
Once you have your B2B eCommerce channel integrated with your ERP system, then your products, the pricing, and the inventory will always remain in sync with your back and front-office applications.
As soon as an order is placed on your eCommerce portal, the order will flow into your back-end system and your fulfillment teams can immediately take action on it.
5. Build new business models
You can focus on innovation and deploy new features on your eCommerce channel, creating the required differentiation for your business in the market. You can look to build subscription models for your business.
Oracle CX Commerce offering B2B eCommerce Functionality
- Oracle CX Commerce includes all of the necessary functionality required to manage an online storefront, such as standard catalog management, marketing, promotion, search, drag and drop, experience management, and reporting.
- Oracle CX Commerce also includes B2B eCommerce strategies, such as predefined workflows to meet most B2B use cases.
- Oracle CX commerce is scalable, has modern architecture, and provides B2B businesses with the tools to start achieving desired results more quickly than an aging on-premise solution.
- With B2B eCommerce capability, organizations can create accounts and related hierarchies with different contacts, contracts, and catalogs; pricing can be based on volumes and be associated with different accounts or subaccounts.
- Complex approval workflows are included to ensure compliance with things such as order value limits, and a greater range of payment options are available, such as payment by invoice. Through extensibility tools, custom payment options can also be added.
- Quick and recurring orders based on history can be used to increase the speed of taking orders. The solution also includes B2B-specific email communications and support for agents using a call center application.
How you can set up your B2B eCommerce site with Mastek
We've developed a starter kit that makes it easy to set up an eCommerce site on Oracle CX Commerce. It is based on the best practices in the area of UX, SEO, search personalization, transactional commerce, and back-office application integrations.
Key aspects of setting up your B2B eCommerce website
- We start with setting up the product catalog, including products, inventory, product images, and pricing.
- Then we set up and configure the widgets on web pages for smooth UI.
- The next step is setting up the contracts inside Oracle CX Commerce, which can configure these specific catalogs and price lists associated with a specific B2B customer, followed by setting up a different role for those B2B customers.
- Next would be configuring the checkout, payment methods and configuring the order fulfillment aspects.
- Finally, we set up aspects related to search engine optimizations, so your eCommerce channels can rank higher in Google search results.
Building Online Customer-facing B2B eCommerce Portal for USA’s leading Manufacturing Company
One of our clients is a leading manufacturer of metal roofing, metal siding, and substructural components with locations across the United States. Their customers could not browse the catalog or place orders using an online channel, nor could they view a consolidated view of their orders.
So, we built an online customer-facing B2B eCommerce portal for them leveraging Oracle CX Commerce that was integrated with their existing ERP system in the back end. The portal helped deliver an excellent digital experience to their customers, as they had a complete view of their catalog, pricing and ability to place orders online, along with a consolidated view of their orders.
The portal also provided capabilities allowing customers to directly share quotes with end users, Sales representatives to create quotes on behalf of the customer; and the ability to design and order customized products with a visual product configurator.
We can help you get started on your eCommerce journey
The key to growing your eCommerce business is fulfilling the buyers’ needs. Get in touch with us today and get insights on how you can revamp your website, offer more flexible solutions, and improve customer experience with our digital commerce services.
