Until recently, most B2B companies relied on print catalogues, armies of sales reps and well-staffed call centres to drive and support customer purchases. Today, they are having to reinvent B2B selling, with sales channels increasingly moving online. Customers now expect B2C-like ecommerce experiences, and demand online access to B2B purchasing and self-management processes.
If B2B organisations want to stay competitive, they have no choice but to build a comprehensive digital ecommerce environment. This article highlights five of the key challenges.
1: Shifting buyer preferences
The Death of a (B2B) salesman report issued by Forrester in 2015 confirms the changing preferences of today’s business buyers. A new generation of B2B buyers are emerging, and they increasingly use digital tools to interact, process orders and gather content. They favour self-service online options for choosing and buying products and services.
In order to better serve these buyers, B2B companies must facilitate a self-service customer portal with digital tools that can be used on a variety of devices – from desktops to smartphones. Today’s B2B buyers expect to find the same features and functionality as those of top web retailers. Easy navigation, extensive product information, advanced search functions, and intuitive ordering are all essential. For a seamless connection between the online and offline channels, customer-facing account managers, sales reps and customer service agents need to be armed with the same tools. This will help them respond to customer queries, and do their jobs more efficiently.
2: Order processing is slow
The majority of B2B businesses still process orders manually via fax. In many cases, the required product name and quantity is hand-written onto a pre-printed order sheet which is faxed or emailed to the supplier’s customer service team, where it is manually processed and entered into the ERP system for order processing. This is a time-consuming and error-prone process. The buyers don’t usually receive an order confirmation or shipping notification. They have limited or no visibility of whether the items they need are available for ordering, of stock levels, or estimated delivery dates.
With digital self-service customer portals that are integrated with the ERP system, customers can be given access to online ordering and stock control tools. As they automate previously manual workflows, these tools increase the efficiency and accuracy of the order fulfilment process for the manufacturer too.
3: Labour-intensive processes
Business customers normally have to call telephone support agents to access information about their accounts, initiate a support inquiry, request documentation or change their account information. This administrative burden can be significantly eased if business customers are given basic self-service access to their account, product information such as FAQs, and service contract status information – including the ability to renew existing contracts or initiate requests for contract upgrades, and parts ordering.
4: Outdated systems
In B2B organisations that have grown their IT landscape over the years, too many siloed applications result in a complex ecosystem that slows down innovation. This generates inconsistency across regions and ultimately impacts the customer experience. Outdated systems are expensive to maintain. Catalogue updates across regions are cumbersome and time consuming. What’s more, the lack of analytics capabilities makes it difficult to analyse important KPIs like frequently ordered products, reorders and other data.
Many B2B companies are struggling with the rigid architectures and low functionality environments of their ERP-based digital commerce offerings, which typically feature slow performance and difficult-to-use interfaces.
While ERP-centric solutions perform well in the area of inventory and supply schedules, they aren’t flexible enough to allow quick responses to fast-changing customer demands. They also underperform in the areas of reordering, order history, mobile, social, marketing, promotions and product information.
Advanced ecommerce platforms, on the other hand, provide multiple components that can be combined in a centralised, global self-service customer portal. Taking an iterative approach will reduce many complexities. Starting with the definition of customer personas and their shopping journeys simplifies the creation of business scenarios, and helps to prioritise which digital tools should be implemented.
The platform architecture should contain standardised APIs to ensure that applications and services can be easily integrated.
5: No digital integration
The digital sales channel cannot be a separate, standalone channel. Both the existing selling model and the traditional sales force need to be supported too, through digital tools. It is important to complement offline with online and vice versa.
Failure to do so leads to channel conflict – sales representatives view the digital channel as a competitor and won’t actively use digital tools to better serve customers and make more money.
Organisations need to develop the roles of traditional sales channels within the digital environment, arming them with the tools to sell more, deliver accurate information and provide agile customer service.
Compared to embarking on a multi-year project, taking a step-by-step approach ensures that implementation efforts remain focused on the scenarios that make a difference – and matter the most – to business customers.
Continuous improvement can help defend positions in crowded markets and keep competitors at bay.
