2. B2B COMMERCE
Prior to the digital age, manufacturers and suppliers produced
thick, printed catalogs, employed armies of sales and account
managers to build relationships and close deals, and staffed
backshops and warehouses to deliver on their customers’ needs.
Today’s B2B commerce transactions typically involve multiple
organizations and cover a complex range of applications that
enable organizations to form both offline and online relationships
with suppliers, customers, distributors, resellers and other
partners.
While traditional B2B selling channels have remained the most
influential, a combination of ubiquitous digital technologies and
increasing buyer expectations have led a rapid shift towards
digital B2B commerce. Pure-play retailers like Amazon are using
their sizable momentum in the B2C world to double down in
the B2B market. These shifts are causing B2B sellers to rethink
their marketing and sales strategies and the corresponding
core investments around customer engagement and commerce
infrastructures.
A recent study shows that more than half of global B2B buyers will
make at least 50%2
of their purchases online within the next three
years. B2B customers are changing the game of business-to-
business as they become more accustomed to a buying lifecycle
that includes digital experiences well before and long after the
sale. B2B buyers, like consumers, now expect seamless, omni-
channel experiences, accurate and detailed product and inventory
information, reduced shipping and delivery times, and 24/7 self-
service access. B2B sellers need to adapt their strategies with a
B2C focus, manage the complexity of B2B transactions, provide
seamless integration, and be fast, reliable, and efficient to satisfy
changing buyer expectations.
Many B2B organizations have established an online channel and
are focusing on how to grow online sales in order to maximize
revenue. A study conducted by Frost & Sullivan projects that
B2B eCommerce sales will reach $12 million globally by the year
2020. But to succeed in the new B2B landscape, companies are
going to have to shift the way they think about the end customer
and their buying experience. In this guide we look at the top 4
trends that are driving B2B companies to re-platform and rebuild
their eCommerce sites to satisfy the growing demands and high
expectations of their customer.
75%
93%
OF B2B BUYERS PREFER
ONLINE PURCHASING OVER
A SALES REPRESENTATIVE1
OF B2B BUYERS PREFER
CONVENIENCE OF PURCHASING
FROM A WEBSITE VS A SALES
REPRESENTATIVE1
3. TOP PRIORITIES
FOR B2B BUYERS & SELLERS IN 2015
3
:
Enhance search
functionality
on website
Enhance search
functionality
on website 48% 60%
SELLERS BUYERS
Access to website
through mobile app
Improved
personalized product
recommendations on
their website
42%
Improve personalized
product or service
recommendations on
website
39%
58%
Visibility to rates &
reviews of products
and/or services
50%
4. OPTIMIZING THE B2B
EXPERIENCE TO MATCH
B2C EXPECTATIONSAs B2B buyers become more empowered, they are
demanding the same type of experience as B2C consumers:
control, transparency, inventory visibility, product information,
and convenience. The B2C customer experience has put
tremendous pressure on B2B commerce, and buyers are no
longer satisfied with fragmented experiences – they want a
seamless one. The path to purchase is no longer linear and
offline. Today’s buyers are transitioning their product search
and purchases from traditional, offline channels to digital (i.e.
web and mobile) settings and companies that do not adapt
their technology to their buyer’s needs will fall behind.
We can see this happening in the B2C world as companies
adapt more digital technologies to create seamless
experiences to satisfy customers. Customers move between
a multitude of touch points that did not exist before,
researching product information and reviews, checking
social networks, and posting/tweeting about their experience
through the entire shopping journey on a wide variety of
social channels and communities. B2B companies can utilize
social channels to help expand their brand, engage with
different communities, express a vision, promote products
and offerings, and offer customer service and/or support.
OF B2B CUSTOMERS
ARE INFLUENCED BY
SOCIAL MEDIA
KEY CHALLENGES
High demands and expectations for B2C-style
offerings and buying experiences
Understanding the buyer’s B2B shopping
journey
Providing deeper levels of product information
and rich content
Managing and tracking communities and social
interaction
Delivering targeted and personalized
experiences that grow sales and retention
TREND 1
75%
5. THE IBM-PERFICIENT
SOLUTIONIBM’s Smarter Commerce offering provides B2B
organizations with unique tools and solutions to
meet today’s eCommerce demands and challenges.
Perficient & IBM worked closely to develop the
Smarter Commerce portfolio, providing technology
to implement web, tablet, and mobile sites tailored
for both B2B and B2C using business user tools and
a configurable framework to target customers with
pertinent and contextually relevant content, better
product content and recommendations, complex
product entitlements and pricing rules, a flexible
promotions engine, dynamic search capabilities,
and visibility into past purchases across multiple
customer channels. The IBM Smarter Commerce
solution provides a single view of supply and demand
across channels and a coordinated and customizable
fulfillment processes to support various channels and
suppliers.
Perficient XD is a creative digital agency within
Perficient that partners with our B2B and commerce
experts to provide seamless, end-to-end client
solutions. Our agency helps clients transform the
way they connect with consumers through ideation,
research, creative design, and innovation. Our deep
B2C and commerce experience is a force multiplier
when coupled with our technical and industry
knowledge and our ability to deliver solutions to help
organizations realize their business strategy.
6. B2B OMNI-CHANNEL
Leading B2B sellers recognize the importance of
integrating systems and platforms that support
omni-channel requirements of today’s B2B
buyers. Driven by online purchasing experiences,
buyers are demanding omni-channel capabilities
across the buying lifecycle when making
business-related purchases. Flexibility, speed,
and convenience are the keys to adapting and
differentiating business models. In order to meet
this demand, B2B enterprises need to integrate
technology and transform of processes at the
same time. Most B2B organizations realize that
the need for online channels in their sales and
fulfillment strategy is imperative, but many are still
far behind when it comes to their B2B commerce
capabilities.
Omni-channel strategies help B2B suppliers
make it easier to conduct business – reducing
internal costs, optimizing operational efficiency,
and enabling sales teams to provide more value
where it counts, manage relationships, and grow
the business.
TREND 2
KEY CHALLENGES
Connecting consistent experiences to all customer
touch points (field sales, all digital channels, call
centers, and in-store experiences)
Sharing customer data and insights across locations
and channels
Disjointed sales messaging and incentives among
sales channels and departments
Understanding the engagement between peers,
account reps, other company stakeholders, vendors
and service providers
Access and integration to systems and data across
multiple business processes
OF B2B COMPANIES
HAVE DIFFICULTY
INTEGRATING BACK-
OFFICE TECHNOLOGY
44%
7. The intricate nature of B2B buying and selling requires an advanced level
of sophistication on the backend, both in terms of platform functionality
and integration. B2B organizations often deal with various networks and
channels of business partners, manufacturers, resellers and dealers
within many different locations, requiring configurable business rules and
workflows to execute sales and marketing strategy across all channels.
IBM’s portfolio delivers the necessary capabilities to deliver on the omni-
channel needs of B2B providers.
Perficient has deep experience leveraging IBM products to meet
the needs of B2B providers, including:
• A single-view of supply and demand across all channels to
improve inventory utilization and provide accurate promise dates
• A coordinated and configurable workflow modeling to manage
IBM-PERFICIENT SOLUTION
complex B2B fulfillment processes across store, call center, and
online channels
• A single-view of all backend processes such as purchasing,
fulfillment, and reverse logistics, across the entire supply chain
• The choreography of integration to backend enterprise resource
planning and other legacy systems to provide consistency across
the enterprise
By providing business-driven solutions and technical expertise to
implement the IBM portfolio, Perficient drives the business value B2B
providers need to retain customers as the competitive landscape
continues to intensify with new entrants to the traditional B2B markets. By
providing a superior experience, organizations can build loyalty with their
customer base and target new organizations with an enticing offering.
8. THIRD-PARTY PROCUREMENT PROVIDERS
TO INSOURCED B2B PLATFORM
The days of faxing procurement orders are over for most B2B companies. By moving
away from third-party procurement providers, B2B sellers can establish stronger
relationships and achieve greater visibility into customer needs and behaviors. B2B
customers expect integrated channel fulfillment so eCommerce sites need to be
integration-ready to make it easier to interface with inventory availability and real-time
pricing. B2B sellers have realized that they can gain a higher level of control over the
buyer’s journey, their brand, sales, and customer connections with the implementation
of their own eCommerce platforms and branded sites. By bringing these platforms
in-house, B2B organizations achieve greater differentiation and flexibility and reduce
outside costs with affordable, enabling technology.
KEY CHALLENGES
Complexity of insourcing customer direct
infrastructure
Ability to support tools to support the
fulfillment process
Management from one centralized platform
Pains associated with migration and change
management to support in-house commerce
Even greater reliance on understanding how
customers engage and buy
TREND 3
IBM-PERFICIENT SOLUTIONPerficient and IBM work closely to provide customers with comprehensive solutions. IBM solutions provide
the inventory synchronization to match B2B/B2C customer demand with the appropriate level of supply.
These solutions integrate with the IBM supplier portal to automatically generate PO requisition and transmit
to the supplier via the collaboration portal. The supplier portal provides EDI/XML/portal integration with
thousands of suppliers and manages the vendor onboarding process. This IBM solution provides visibility
and tracking at multiple levels to satisfy both the buyers and customers and can be integrated with drop
ship vendors to seamlessly supply products directly to customer locations thereby improving customer
satisfaction and increasing revenues. Additionally, the solution can be integrated with other systems
internally or in the cloud to provide PO management, invoicing, payments and contract management.
9. BUYER SELF-SERVICE
The B2B “connected buyer” is looking for empowered experiences to deliver
efficiency and convenience. Today’s self-serve eCommerce sites do more than
replicate their sales reps, often providing functions that humans simply cannot
do. B2B commerce sites provide the ability to research and understand products,
receive suggestions for assortment combinations, and manage their buying process
any time and anywhere digital channels give B2B customers control over the buyer’s
journey. But these benefits do not belong to the customer alone. While the customer
benefits from visibility, convenience and control, B2B providers are able to deliver
these competitive benefits at a lower cost point and accelerate the sales cycle, while
gaining more transparency and insight into the customer’s needs, patterns, and
buying cycles.
An empowered buyer needs to be able to navigate the complexity of a B2B
transaction easily, independently, and with the same level of service and accuracy
they have come to expect with their traditional relationship managers and sales reps.
TREND 4
KEY CHALLENGES
Multiple customer touch points
Sharing customer data and analytics across
channels
Setting the right incentives and metrics within
the organization
Seamless and accurate integration of self-
service systems
Understanding of buyer behaviors and needs
beyond the sale
10. IBM-PERFICIENT SOLUTION
The IBM portfolio is engineered to help B2B providers analyze
customer buying habits to continually improve the buyer experience of
buyers and to provide relevant content and product recommendations
during the buying process. Buyers can make informed buying
decisions without interacting with their providers and have the
information they need when they need it. Perficient works with B2B
providers to implement the requisite analytics and customer behavior
software offered by IBM to provide the necessary insights to offer
customers the right information at the right time. Using advanced
analytics, organizations can target and segment customers and drive
optimal price points for their customer base.
Perficient helps to build the appropriate interactions to meet customer
needs. We design and build the necessary B2B functions such as
periodic reorders from order history, collaborating with colleagues on
product requisition lists, quick order for power users, file uploads for
orders, and determining product availability and promise dates.
B2B providers who migrate their B2B customers to the online
purchase environment have experienced net increases in average
order value.
SOURCES:
1 https://www.forrester.com/Death+Of+A+B2B+Salesman/fulltext/-/E-RES122288
2 http://blogs.forrester.com/andy_hoar/15-04-02-us_b2b_ecommerce_to_reach_11_trillion_by_2020
3 http://www.b2bmarketing.net/news/archive/infographic-49-b2b-buyers-prefer-making-purchases-b2c-websites
11. These top trends and others are
helping to drive B2B ecommerce in
2015. B2B companies need to meet
customer expectations by reshaping
their channel sales strategies,
investing in new technologies and
rethinking the role of their sales
managers. To learn more about
Perficient’s B2B commerce solutions
and how they help B2B companies
stay ahead of the curve in the fast-
growing B2B eCommerce market,
contact us at sales@perficient.com
