One of the primary focuses at my organization is helping B2B CIOs and CTOs evolve away the traditional, face-to-face sales model to serve their customers more effectively via a fully integrated e-commerce platform.
One that supports the complex needs of the B2B customer with features like:
- Click and collect
- Multi-currency pricing
- International payments
- Delivery
The B2B retail industry has been moving towards providing a more advanced, integrated e-commerce buying experience for some time, but very slowly.
The pandemic has expedited the need for digital transformation in this sector. Most B2B retailers are now moving to a platform which enables them to serve their customers better and to adapt quickly, no matter what challenges arise.
Integrated e-commerce: The flexibility to scale and pivot
Groceries, healthcare, and health products businesses were inundated with demand during the peak of this crisis. Having e-commerce sites that could easily scale enabled them to quickly meet increasing customer needs.
We’ve seen some B2B retailers pivot during the pandemic into a direct B2C model because their systems were flexible enough to allow them to adapt quickly.
One company was originally selling food to bars and restaurants and, after lockdown hit, had stock rotting in their warehouses. Within a week they were trading direct with the end consumers via their SAP eCommerce platform.
Make it personal
By making any online engagements more relevant, your customers will return to your web stores more, plus their order values will naturally increase.
A good e-commerce platform can make it easy for you to upsell and cross-sell items tailored to the specific customer, as well as provide personalised messaging and even temporary discounts and extended credit terms to help out those who need it.
Each customer should be able to easily access their individual product range and pricing online, set up repeat orders and view their delivery progress, invoices and current levels of credit and spending limits.
Everyone is dealing with disruption and no one knows what the future holds. What we can be sure of is there will always be some changes to cope with, and so it’s essential to have a flexible system that enables you to adapt to whatever comes your way.
How to evaluate which integrated e-commerce platform is best for you
With the current social and physical restrictions, clearly it’s essential to have an e-commerce platform that allows you to sell remotely, and to facilitate customer self-service wherever possible.
A platform with the inherent flexibility to support you in evolving with the market’s changing needs so that your business (and your customers’ businesses) can not just survive, but also really thrive in the ‘new normal’.
A good e-commerce solution will:
- Consolidate all your inventory, contracts, customer information, content and orders
- Allow B2B and B2C pricing configurations across multiple sites
- Not only enable distance selling, but also actively drive sales through functions such as Amazon-style recommendations based on past purchases
As experts in both B2B and B2C, we know what today’s customers expect and need. We’ve already helped many B2B retailers increase sales digitally and create a B2C shopping experience for their customers.
Commerce, customized
Designed to meet the needs of the B2B retail sector, we created Hylight Commerce so you can deliver the same quality and intuitive online shopping experience as the big B2C brands and increase online revenue for you and your customers.
To give you predictable business outcomes for a fixed price and timescale, this combines pre-configured cloud technology with our industry knowledge and specialised services – and we can get you live within 18 weeks.
