
The importance of planning and growing B2B digital channels has grown significantly in the past few years and has radically increased the manufacturing sales trajectory since the COVID-19 crisis began. The global transition to remote workforces only amplifies how B2B manufacturers need to adjust how their organizations sell in the face of new customer habits and trying economic times.
A digital transformation of the B2B landscape involves using top B2B ecommerce platforms to streamline processes and improve customer experience to meet changing business and market requirements. Many B2B companies now find themselves in a dilemma—needing to completely shift and reposition themselves from a particular product-centric company to becoming an omnichannel customer-centric organization.
Take The Clorox Company, as an example, whose ecommerce grew 35% in 2019 before the global pandemic hit. Because of prior ecommerce platform and strategic planning, they were positioned for future growth of the “new normal” brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. The coronavirus has permanently accelerated the pace of B2B ecommerce and exponentially sped up the implementation of transformational tools, processes, and approaches.
B2B manufacturers giving buyers an open, connected, intuitive, and immediate ecommerce experience will dominate the market. B2Bs that create more dynamic and engaging experiences will build loyalty and drive retention, helping win the most discerning prospects.
As customer behavior changes, there is only one way to catch up on long-predicted ecommerce trends to meet needs quickly: B2B manufacturers need to consolidate their processes—with a robust but straightforward ecommerce solution to meet the needs of today and the future your customers demand.
Take a look at Coca-Cola European Partners, the world’s largest independent Coca-Cola bottler based on revenue and a major fast-moving consumer goods company in Europe serving 13 countries. Discover how OSF Digital played an integral role in their digital transformation journey.
OSF Digital created a single B2B commerce site by merging three stand-alone sites using different technologies into a solitary site using multiple Salesforce Clouds and only one ERP system.
OSF Digital, a B2B manufacturing industry digital transformation partner, worked with Coca-Cola European Partners to deliver a single, robust B2B commerce site used by eight countries with multi-language support. By leveraging the brand-new customer portal’s strong capabilities, Coca-Cola European Partners now provides an enhanced ordering experience for their customers, allowing them to place orders anytime, from anywhere, on any device.
On the new website, customers can create lists of favorite products, view previous orders’ history and status, request information and download invoices, receive reminders and notifications of product availability, and register buyers with different permission—using an employee-management feature. The company now uses a single SAP environment, ensuring consistent business processes, regardless of region.
Maybe your organization has started to pick up on the changes—customers don’t want to fill out forms, ignore emails or calls, take longer and longer to make decisions, and eventually churn out of your company. But do you know why? Forrester reports the industry has reached a tipping point—the modern B2B buyer is driven by a unifying set of expectations for a whole new customer lifecycle, and the bottom line is they expect to be treated like a partner.
B2B buyers expect their experience to be open, connected, intuitive and immediate.
Forrester: “Winning The New B2B Buyer”
Future B2B buyers want access to a much more extensive range of helpful and transparent information, including business practices/policies, market feedback, digital sales channels, delivery options, and a 360-degree view of customers and results. Openness builds trust and decreases buyer frustration. Meeting B2B buyer’s growing expectations for pricing transparency can accelerate your buying process while increasing sales results too. Discretion is an essential part of the openness and transparency buyers expect from their relationship with you.
A majority of B2B buyers say knowledgeable providers to address their needs have the most influence in their buying decisions. Buyers are attracted to providers that work to understand and deliver their goals throughout the sales lifecycle. Connection also includes facilitating more peer-to-peer conversations and fostering buyer-seller collaboration. Advanced companies are starting to use digital collaboration platforms to bring B2B buyers into the solution process, from creation to value measurement.
Future B2B buyers expect all experiences with your organization, from content, conversations, and offers, to feel like a natural extension of their previous experiences. Future B2B buyers won’t tolerate needing to be reintroduced or restating their needs. Demonstrating more in-depth customer knowledge requires contextual, customized digital experiences. Intuitiveness also means embracing machine learning so that your data is unified and AI-powered marketing or sales apps can orchestrate that intuitive functionality.
Modern B2B buyers expect providers to be proactive and present at every touchpoint of their journey, in all their preferred channels. Do you want to offer a frictionless buying experience? It’s time to adopt self-service and AI-powered apps that give digital purchase options for omnichannel buyers. Chatbots and virtual assistants can help as much as “sell,” providing important contextual answers and recommendations to make the next step in the buying journey.
“The global pandemic has dramatically accelerated the adoption of digital technology and will forever change the way people engage across the value chain—not just in sales and marketing—but customers too. B2B buyers demand an entirely new relationship from you, and there will be no way of going back from here.”
OSF Digital supports brands throughout their entire digital transformation journey. Companies wondering how an ecommerce solution can drive revenue growth won’t want to miss our award-winning white paper.
With increased knowledge of your B2B buyer, you can understand what each buyer needs at each point of the customer journey, offering robust order, payment, and delivery processing
Facilitate brand and channel partner collaboration with shared tools, integrated planning, and strategic budgeting
Offer relevant and personalized digital experiences for buying and engaging in channel partners
Manage inventory in multiple, concurrent units of measure and inventory formats
Increase gross delivery profit per order 2 to 6% by improving order experience
Visually manage workflows with automated order fulfillment, payment capture, and invoices with supply chain workflows
Customize logic behind workflows with simple drag-and-drop tools
Process payments
Create a mobile-first, B2B ecommerce experience designed around relationships and improve satisfaction via cross-selling, upsell, renewal, and subscription management
Implement or optimize a Salesforce B2B Commerce solution to consolidate multiple tools (ERP, OMS, supply chain, and distributors) to gather data for a personalized digital experience
Know and grow your audiences using AI-powered insights
Deliver hyper-relevant messages throughout the customer journey
Offer seamless commerce experiences and integrated customer support to turn your buyers into brand advocates
Expand your social marketing capabilities to take your brand’s social presence to new heights
Power your multichannel marketing with customer journey maps
A B2B ecommerce interface provides a single digital catalog, and promotions platform enables a company to streamline communication with brokers, salespeople, and customers
Automate processes for accurate delivery and payment
Manage complex customer pricing to accommodate contractual pricing details
Handle promotional pricing issues connected to physical logistics Implement automated price optimization based on demand
Implement automated price optimization based on demand
Fahhrrad.de needed to extend its existing business model of selling bikes to consumers by reaching a broader audience through a B2B online bike leasing shop for corporate customers.
OSF Digital implemented Salesforce B2B Commerce. Based on the B2B website, OSF developed a highly customized B2B2C ecommerce solution that will help Fahrrad.de with both consumer and corporate customers.
Based on numerous integrations, the new B2B website features Adobe Sign, its internal ERP system, and service partner’s solutions (bike repair shops and bike delivery services.)
Fahrrad.de has a feature-rich B2B commerce website allowing Fahrrad.de to provide an exceptional digital experience for B2B customers and a comfortable, B2C-like experience to its corporate customers.
OSF Digital implemented Salesforce B2B Commerce and leveraged SOLARWATT’s existing Salesforce Sales Cloud.
Don’t miss our B2B Webinar Series, where we walk you through customer success stories, explain how omnichannel B2B works, and detail how quickly OSF Digital can accelerate a B2B project. This fascinating look inside can help you decide the next steps for your business!
Defining Success in B2B Commerce: Trends and Next Steps for Your Business:
Examine the evolving importance of a self-service portal in the B2B buying process and what “consumerization” means for B2B companies, and how it can accelerate growth and loyalty.SMA Solar Technology AG, a premier global specialist in photovoltaic system technology with more than 3,000 employees in 18 countries, offers people and companies worldwide greater independence in meeting their energy needs. emerce, a subsidiary of SMA Solar Technology, gives customers the best future-proofed smart home energy systems and services.
emerce was looking for a long-term implementation partner using a top B2B ecommerce platform to help them extend their existing shop in an agile way to launch new products based on a new B2B commerce solution. emerce sought to expand its B2B shop’s current functionality, improving marketplace capability and software order options for one-time customers and subscribers.
To meet the company’s needs, OSF Digital implemented Salesforce B2B Commerce Cloud and added third-party integrations enabling the company to provide detailed product information and offer an efficient and comfortable ordering process, available 24/7.
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