B2B Manufacturing Resource Center

Welcome to the OSF B2B manufacturing resource center, aimed to supply you with the necessary resources to build your business case to launch or implement a robust, agile ecommerce solution to meet the needs of current and future demands

B2B Manufacturing Resource Center
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Overcoming Pandemic Challenges with B2B Manufacturing Ecommerce Solutions

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.

Today’s bottom line: 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.

Are You Facing Similar Challenges?
  • Do you need a single integrated view of customer data from front and back-end systems?
  • Are you looking for ways you could improve relationships with channel partners?
  • Are you getting to market too slow with product launches?
  • Are you missing out on potential new revenue because your inventory is too complicated?
  • Do your customers demand ease of self-service buying?
  • Does your data lack integration and insight?
  • Worried your lack of digital adoption will lead to loss of distributors who have their own branding portals?
  • Need to integrate your OMS, CRM, ERP, and payment systems for better functionality?
consider this

Current Hot Topic for B2B Manufacturers: Identifying Needs of the Modern B2B Buyer

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.

open icon

Open

Access to
information

 

connected icon

CONNECTED

Shared goals

 

intuitive icon

intuitive

Contextual
experiences

 

immediate icon

immediate

Present and proactive
interaction

 

Forrester: “Winning The New B2B Buyer”

OPEN:

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.

Learn more about the framework
for powerful customer experiences
CONNECTED:

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.

Learn how to enhance relationships
to build customer behavior profiles
INTUITIVE:

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.

Learn how to improve
efficiency and data quality
IMMEDIATE:

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.

Learn about the anatomy of
a mature B2B ecommerce solution
Reimagine your Ecommerce Delivery and Learn How to Compete Successfully in the Digital Economy

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.

  • Discover how predictive commerce data can make your B2B operations smarter, breaking down silos between all departments
  • Learn how you can nurture your B2B Buying Committee with our Complete Guide to Mature B2B Manufacturing Ecommerce Solutions
  • Understand how to save time and money with commerce solutions and simplify the buying process for buyers and sellers
How B2B Manufacturing Ecommerce Solutions Can Help You Get to Market Faster, Generate More Revenue and Reduce Costs

B2B Digital Transformation Insights for Enterprise-Wide Revenue Growth
  • Inventory/Supply Chain Management

    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

  • Order Management

    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

  • Sales/Operations

    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

  • Pricing & Promotions

    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

fahrrad

Case Study

Advancing Europe’s Leading Digital Retailer of Bike Products to Sell B2B Online

OSF Digital specializes in designing B2B ecommerce solutions that unify customer data, creating strategic opportunities for B2B manufacturers to craft better customer experiences through increased personalization. As a Salesforce Navigator Expert in commerce, OSF Digital’s implementation, and digital transformation successes among the retail industry are award-winning.

Fahrrad.de is a brand of Europe’s leading digital multichannel retailer of bike and outdoor products—with more than 40 online shops in 14 countries, brick and mortar stores in Germany, Sweden, and France with a growing network of mobile and local service partners.

CHALLENGES

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.

SOLUTION

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.

THIRD-PARTY INTEGRATIONS

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.)

RESULTS

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 white logo
OSF Digital has been named Salesforce Navigator Expert in B2C Commerce, Consumer Goods and Retail by Salesforce, the highest-level honors for expertise. OSF Digital has also received the 2020 Salesforce Partner Award for the most relevant Salesforce Commerce Cloud project. These awards join OSF’s vast portfolio of distinctions, including the 2019 Bolty Award for Best Digital Experience in the Retail and Consumer Goods category, the 2019 Partner Innovation Award in the category of Customer 360, the 2018 Salesforce Lightning Bolt Trailblazer Award for Retail and Salesforce’s 2016 Partner Innovation Award in Retail. OSF Digital provides technology, consulting, implementation and online shop management services to emerging and premier brands, and merchants focused on building Multi-Cloud and Unified Commerce projects using Salesforce Clouds and other top-tier cloud technologies such as Sitecore and Adobe.

Case Study

SOLARWATT’S B2B COMMERCE SITE KICKS COMPETITION TO

THE CURB

SOLARWATT
OBJECTIVES
  • Wanted to sell products directly from its website and not from their competitors’ sites
  • Sought to empower customers to place orders via mobile devices
  • Needed to reduce the amount of manual work related to customer’s orders that employees were performing
SOLUTION

OSF Digital implemented Salesforce B2B Commerce and leveraged SOLARWATT’s existing Salesforce Sales Cloud.

solarwatt products
RESULTS
  • SOLARWATT now benefits from a robust B2B store and sells products directly from its own website—diverting sales from the competition
  • SOLARWATT customers can now place orders using mobile devices
  • SOLARWATT benefits from a reduced workload from employees manually handling customer orders

More Useful Insights into the
B2B Manufacturing Industry

 

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!

B2B webinar series
More Useful Insights into the B2B Manufacturing Industry
How Our Customers Benefit from Us
Smart Home Energy Systems Company Celebrates B2B Ecommerce Growth

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.

Learn More about OSF Digital’s Solutions
OSF Digital is an award-winning, certified solution and support partner for leading enterprise, ecommerce, CRM, OMS, and CMS technologies. Our proven B2B manufacturing experience and expertise with all Salesforce Clouds allow us to implement your Salesforce B2B Commerce solution quickly. We carefully adapt a solution to meet your needs and provide you with any support you require to accommodate future growth.
Solutions to Get Your B2B Manufacturing Project Started
OSF Digital supports brands throughout their entire digital transformation journey. OSF Digital also helps many brands reposition themselves post COVID-19, either optimizing existing functionality or bringing to light a whole new ecommerce platform that suits the modern B2B buyer.

Here are two ecommerce solutions
to get your projects started

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a matter of weeks, not months!

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