One of the most popular ways to start a new year for your business is to start your eCommerce migration project. It has been due for a while. The entire company is probably on board, right? Marketing is ready to get going, the sales team is imagining new leads and customer opportunities. And the IT team is eager to hand off any website responsibilities to a new vendor. But wait. Does everyone have the same goals for a new project, the same eCommerce priorities? Does everyone agree on the same business pain being caused by the same points? Are you aware of the common digital transformation challenges that B2B companies face? Which in turn leads them to decide to invest in an eCommerce re-platform project.

With so many resources required like time, investment, and business interruption. Let’s look at what you will need to get started. There are many barriers to digital transformation that companies face. Some of them are:

  • Lack of organizational change management strategy.
  • Lack of expertise and skills.
  • Dynamic customer needs changes.
  • Management Internal resistance to change.
  • Security concerns.
  • Budget constraints.
  • Organizational management changes.
  • Continuous upskilling and recruitment.

But, what are the common digital transformation challenges B2B companies face today with their current commerce platforms and initiatives?

1. Product Catalog & Selling

 “We can’t do what we want!” This is the phrase that sums up the challenges B2B companies face with their existing platform.

Inability to sell the entire product catalog

Whether the product catalog is small or extends into thousands of items. Making compromises to only support a limited number of products. This means that your customers are likely to find what they want on the digital storefront. 

Service contracts, licenses, accessories, product bundles, sets, and other combinations fall slightly outside the norm. These are the easiest pieces to have been left behind on a past site launch. Yet, there are likely other gaps as well. Have the latest products and brands been included with site updates? Frequently, once a company moves past an initial honeymoon period with a new site. The ongoing process or workflow to update and maintain its product catalog data falls by the wayside and the catalog grows stale quickly.

Configuration Challenges

Does your entire catalog get sold the same way? Probably not. Between the requirements that products have customized shipping methods, pricing configuration, or even a unique order workflow. It’s an easy escape to simply not include those items on the storefront. When it’s impossible (or expensive) to find the right solution, you likely will avoid it altogether.

Optimized Product Data Management Process

Efficient product selling, improving conversion rates, and managing the catalog with an optimized product data management process are often missing altogether. That is to say. A haphazard approach to acquiring, cleaning, optimizing, and then updating or creating new products can hold back the selling. Why? Because simply the resources required to run the process.

Overall, improved product data import and processing from vendors is essential for optimizing eCommerce conversion rates. By automating the importing and exporting process, ensuring accuracy and up-to-date information, reducing manual errors, and speeding up product listing creation.

Digital Transformation Challenges facing B2B companies
Optimized Product Data Management

2. Integration

Effective eCommerce incorporates data and services from an assortment of technologies throughout the business. Without the flexibility of a reliable commerce engine. More effort and management are required to make eCommerce work within a business.

eCommerce Storefront to Back-Office Integration

As a matter of fact, an incomplete or unreliable integration between the eCommerce storefront and sales channels with backend systems will make it difficult to stay up to date with orders. Also to keep up with inventory, and customer information. Without proper integration, businesses may struggle to provide customers with accurate delivery timelines, reliable product availability, and accurate shipment tracking.

Additionally, integrating the eCommerce storefront with the back office can be incredibly time-consuming and costly. B2B companies may suffer from a lack of scalability, data entry issues, or data access.

Data Access

We grimace a little bit anytime we hear someone describe the process of being forced to export data out of an eCommerce platform and import it into third-party systems. Whether it’s customer accounts, order history, or other data systems.

Without access to data, it is difficult to capitalize on sales opportunities. This can result in missed profits and reduced customer loyalty.

Integration Breakdown

Bad integrations harm the customer experience across the entire workflow – from order creation to fulfillment and follow-up. Integrations that don’t work correctly can cause delays in order fulfillment. In turn, this leads to inaccurate order tracking and disrupts the customer’s experience with the product and brand. Without such integrations, customers can become frustrated and confused. They take their business elsewhere before placing that second order.

Businesses that are missing integrations are connected in real-time, properly tested, and working as expected to avoid damaging the customer experience. This includes ensuring that all data is transferred securely, accurately, and quickly between different systems. As well as regularly monitoring the performance of the integration.

Why eCommerce Scalability is Crucial to Your Business?
B2B companies may suffer from a lack of scalability.

3. Customer Experience

Meeting customers where they are and delivering a consistent purchasing experience is a challenge.

Meeting Expectations

In fact, your customers want the convenience, transparency, and personalization that they get offline. Therefore, interacting with a storefront that’s easy to search, shop and use for post-order follow-up is no longer optional – it’s expected. According to Forrester, about 66% of exit traffic is related to frustration around product search experience. With large complex catalogs, complicated configurations, and technical data points, it’s not a surprise to see such high numbers.

Real-Time Information Delivery

Requirements for B2B eCommerce real-time data include the ability to access customer and product data in real-time, track and monitor inventory levels, and deliver orders quickly.

Customer Shopping Preferences

Meanwhile, customers want a secure, fast checkout process that allows them to purchase in bulk using multiple payment options. To clarify, this is key for customers to obtain their loyalty. Moreover, integrating Multi-Language & Multi-Currency features into your commerce website allows you to penetrate new markets. Both are the top key features you need to implement on your eCommerce website to grow your business internationally. In other words, accommodating your customer’s shopping preferences will lead to a higher conversion rate.

Most importantly, B2B eCommerce customers prefer a shopping experience that is tailored to their specific needs and preferences. Likewise, they are looking for an easy-to-use platform that offers a wide range of product and service options. Indeed, they are looking for shopping capabilities, a robust search, and the ability to sort and filter quickly and create saved product lists.

Digital Transformation
Meeting Customers’ Expectations is one of the key challenges facing B2B companies

Likewise, as a business owner, it is critical to meet your customers’ expectations. Certainly, enhancing your overall customers’ shopping experiences will allow you to quantify better results. That is to say, to grow your business, you might have to choose your battles.

To sum up. Chances are more than one of these common digital transformation challenges that face B2B companies can hit your business. Consequently, it’s important that your company, and the internal team, agree on the pain points that necessitate a migration project to a new platform.

Thus, to future-proof your business, you might want to leverage the help of a service provider agency like DigiCommerce. You may need a partner to guide you through your migration and integration process. With our partner Ultra Commerce, we can help you grow a completely agile eCommerce platform and grow your business. If you’re ready to embark on your digital transformation journey and invest in your B2B eCommerce, contact us today to learn more. Together we can shape your future innovations. 

DigiCommerce
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