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I’ve been working with B2B enterprises over 10 years, providing them web systems to facilitate and automate sales. One compelling case happened in my practice several years ago while developing an e-commerce platform with omnichannel capabilities for an equipment supplier in the automotive industry.
The company established its business, supporting a culture of excellence conveyor manufacture. Being on the top in the market, the company fell behind with a website stuck in the 90s. Many of us had known times of WCEM; no responsiveness, no SEO-friendly, hard to customize and manage.
It was challenging for managers to duplicate user management tasks in SAP MDM manually from SAP ECC, where the sales order process went through SAP ERP. I keep running into this sort of thing every time talking with prospects first. It was high time to move forward the consumer-centric approach placing it to the head of B2B sales.
Large niche manufacturers with a wide network of distributors have difficulties with the following main business challenges, I can highlight.
Business challenges of niche manufacturers in B2B sales
- Low speed of manual order processing in a sales flow hinders payments (getting revenue as a result), stock updates, and order shipment. It leads to a competitive failure as a result.
- The multiplicity of ways of making order (by phone, fax, from desktop, laptop, tablet, and mobile or by automatic electronic payments) complicates their management. Manufacturers need something to conglomerate them.
- Shipment management is complicated with geography places. Manufacturers often have a lack of automated delivery capabilities while offering a wide range of delivery options like free shipping, dropshipping, a flat/freight rate accounting, collecting orders from different stocks, overnight delivery, etc.
WCEM had outlived its usefulness hindering decision-making for B2B clients. It was almost impossible for clients to customize a search page, and managers had to set up breadcrumbs for navigation. It happens everywhere with manufacturers of automotive spare parts, clothes, beverages manufacture, or any.
Business values for niche manufacturers in B2B sales
Omnichannel possibilities by SAP Commerce Cloud alter purchasing of companies’ B2B clients from insipid work to amusement. It affects the entire company’s revenue growth.
With 4.15 billion of mobile phone users in 2015, it was expected that the wave of mobility spreads to manufacture in this way.
Once the e-commerce system was implemented, the number of mobile users who are loyal to order via smartphones turned to increase, resulting in dropping an abandoned cart rate. We all live on the go today. I always try to unleash the power of movement and doing business everywhere. I stand on manufacturers may benefit from omnichannel sales as well as anyone.
Why don’t to have a present-day checkout with a piece of full information about the order in one place (taxes, delivery rates, free shipping, etc.). Manufacturers came to me and asked to make them modern sellers. Better than SAP Commerce Cloud, I couldn’t offer them. So I did it again and again.
Someday when I got a thanks message with figures that their average order value reached 15% compared to a pre-automatization period, I realized that I wasn’t wrong. The website became a profitable sales channel than ever before. Also, I must say a conversion rate around 10% is not a fiction anymore for B2B.
If you can add some other challenges manufacturers are facing today, I would appreciate your sharing. I’m in the mode for positive changes for industries helping big players with modernization.
