While large B2B corporations like Fastenal Co. and W.W. Grainger Inc. use their substantial digital technology resources to serve customers effectively and grow sales across multiple online and offline channels, much of their strategies apply to corporations of all sizes. That’s largely because today’s digital commerce technology offers a wide selection of capabilities, as noted in the brand new report, B2B Commerce Handbook: Going More Digital.
“Technology is not any longer the challenge,” says Steve Martinez, a former vp of digital solutions at chemicals distributor Univar Solutions, who’s now the founding managing partner of Chicago-based digital agency Aspirant Digital LLC. “The largest challenge is, how do I adapt my existing processes to embrace recent digital commerce-enabled processes?”
He adds: “The data I actually have in my enterprise resource planning system is great for internal purposes, however it was never intended to be customer-facing. So, loads of product descriptions don’t have much useful content, or simply have item numbers and SKU data that don’t mean much to the top user, the shopper.
It’s all in regards to the transition of constructing information fit for being customer-facing.”
Watching inventory and profit margins
Martinez and other experts say it’s crucial to start out with comprehensive and reliable data management related to customer activity, inventory and profit margins, using critical applications like product information management (PIM), customer data platforms (CDP), and inventory and financial management systems.
“Probably the most pressing challenges B2B organizations need to achieve digital/omnichannel commerce are data integrations that enable accurate inventory updates and profit margin evaluation,” says Lori McDonald, founder and CEO of Brilliance Business Solutions, a Milwaukee-based digital agency. “When selling on many channels, it is extremely easy to quickly lose money should you don’t have strong integrations and reporting in your margins that lets you be confident that you just are pricing products properly.”
Dale Edman, an independent ecommerce expert who’s a former executive at such corporations as boating products retailer West Marine and consumer products manufacturer Newell Brands, adds that it’s crucial for ecommerce practitioners to display on their very own online venues and distribute to channel partners accurate and comprehensive product data, descriptions and pictures.
Winning with personalization
“There’s an old saying in the pc programming world: Garbage in equals garbage out,” he says. “That is true for B2B ecommerce sites. In the event you don’t have the product content including attributes, descriptions, images, diagrams, videos, then it’s hard for a customer to make a choice. For that reason, I’d start with assembling your whole data and getting it into some form of product information management system. From there, you may tackle the ecommerce system in addition to syndicate to another systems and channel partners.”
Managing product and customer data effectively is a critical step to personalizing content — including product displays, search results and promotions — to the interests of individual buyers and groups of them.
“Where it gets really exciting, is what you may wrap around your ecommerce engine,” says Justin Racine, principal, unified commerce, at digital agency Perficient. “Start with product and customer data, leverage a customer relationship management (CRM) and customer data platform, and manage the technique of advanced personalization.”
Constructing a unified commerce strategy
Racine, a former ecommerce executive for a health products distributor, advises corporations to increase personalization throughout a unified commerce that connects with customers and addresses their interests consistently across multiple commerce points, including an organization’s ecommerce site, mobile app, social media venue and sales reps.
“First, understand what your customer wants, their customer journey and their pain points. Then, work backward to know the right way to construct a unified commerce system.”
Jerry Bernhart, principal of ecommerce recruiting firm Bernhart Associates Executive Search, says it’s crucial for corporations to have senior managers and executives who can strategize with critical data across multiple operations.
“You’ve got to place strategic pondering right at the highest,” he says. “You’ve got to know the market. You’ve got to anticipate changes. You’ve got to develop a long-term plan. And also you’ve got to make all these data-driven decisions — integrating digital marketing, customer insight and relationship management — and integrate all that right into a coherent approach.”
This text was excerpted from the recent Digital Commerce 360 report, B2B Ecommerce Handbook: Going More Digital. The complete report, available as a free download, covers the B2B ecommerce strategies of crane manufacturer Huisman, global ecommerce company Alibaba and beverage distributor Republic National Distribution Co.
Paul Demery is a Digital Commerce 360 contributing editor covering B2B digital commerce technology and strategy. [email protected].
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