In 2021 many B2B businesses have been convinced to go digital and the benefits of eCommerce features. We have seen a great deal of innovation with the B2B eCommerce model in recent years. So what eCommerce features are B2B companies most interested in. What features can make them more competitive going forward. For success B2B businesses must leverage a platform designed for this specific business model. DigiCommerce has highlighted some features that will be key for the digital word in 2021 and beyond.
Catalog Configurations
Paper catalogs are certainly out of date at this point. Even pdf catalogs have their limits as well. A B2B eCommerce solution gives businesses the ability to create an interactive digital catalog. The administrator can also apply permissions so when customers log on, they see what they have permission to see. Businesses can control which products specific buyers can browse and purchase with account specific catalog views. This streamlines the entire buying process. B2B eCommerce must provide flexible multi-site and multi-catalog support in 2021 and beyond. The more complex the eCommerce model, the more important it is. With multiple sites, one master catalog across all of them is particularly useful. It helps brand management, as managers can manage all functions in one place as opposed to duplicating it across all sites.
Self-Service Features
Today’s consumers need the ability to order at any time and seamlessly. This reduces the work a sales rep has to put in. B2B eCommerce empowers potential customers to better purchase and manage their individual accounts. It extends to self-service functionalities like account and order management, shipment tracking as well as reordering. A strong B2B digital infrastructure facilitates one-click reordering, based on order history data.
Pricing and Discounts
B2B pricing is complex as pricing may be different based on country, region or account type. There are also subscription based products that may have different prices. Managing this different pricing requires a modern B2B eCommerce platform like Elastic Path and BigCommerce. It provides businesses with the flexibility to manage pricing rules to reflect the internal pricing structures based criteria like segments, tiers of customers or subscriptions. A robust B2B platform must equally have the ability to apply discounts effectively and let businesses reflect common promotion strategies. This is based on bulk purchases, grouped products or cart validation rules.
Integrations
You probably already have a CRM, ERP, marketing automation, shipping, payment, invoice software and other third party solutions in place to help run your business. Find a solution that is able to integrate and connect these systems seamlessly to not only streamline your business operations but also to allow all of these different functionalities to be managed on one platform easily, all resulting in an enhanced experience for your customers. You can also ask vendors for customer references with integrations you are looking for to assess how experienced the vendor is at implementing these integrations.
Sales Rep Enablement
Sales teams often fear that modern eCommerce technology might replace some of their job functions. On the contrary eCommerce is a big benefit to the sales team and gives them space to do other things. A robust and B2B digital infrastructure must empower sales teams to be more time efficient and more strategic. This is opposed to helping customers with placing orders. B2B solution. Ideally, sales reps should be able to see what customers can view when they first log into an online store and take control of customer accounts if need be. For example, this could involve creating and editing orders.
In conclusion, a truly robust B2B eCommerce platform must provide sales teams with actionable intelligence through data. AI backed intelligence can alert managers when buying certain goods are trending up or down. They can take advantage of account specific dashboard to monitor KPIs, order forecasting and other insights, empowering reps with the needed information to know when to act to help win back accounts that might want to buy from competitors.