In a bid to fast track their digital commerce transformation, B2B organisations are now looking to connect systems – and combine ecosystems – enabling an interconnected digital enterprise infrastructure that’s engineered for customer-centricity.
According to a recent independent study conducted on behalf of Intershop, today’s B2B organisations are reaping significant rewards as a result of having embarked on a B2B e-commerce strategy. The survey of 400 European e-commerce decision makers in the UK, US, France, Germany, the Nordics and Benelux, reveals the extent of the gains - and how this success is driving a greater need for more integrated business processes and greater collaboration between functional teams.
Almost all (99%) organisations participating in the study reported that their digital B2B channel had delivered one or more benefits. Most cited was the ability to sell to new customers (54%), the generation of more sales and sales-per-rep (46%), and the ability to deliver self-service tools that make it fast and easy for customers to access key information during or after the sales process (41%).
Clearly, B2B commerce is delivering on its promise. But this fast paced success has come at a price.
The drive to evolve
With B2B e-commerce teams under intense scrutiny to perform – the pressure is on to take B2B digital commerce to the next level. The research shows a variety of metrics are being utilised by B2B organisations, with customer satisfaction (65%), revenue growth (64%), average order value (48%) and spend-per-customer (47%) the most frequently used.
This ability to measure the impact of existing B2B e-commerce investments is helping the drive to invest in yet more tools and technologies and further evolve B2B commerce platforms to meet future customer expectations.
And the appetite to evolve the B2B commerce experience continues at a relentless pace. Those B2B e-commerce professionals who participated in the study confirm their organisation’s digital platforms are set to grow by 13% in the next two years, and 98% foresee significant opportunities will arise from this continued digitisation of the business.
When it came to priorities, survey respondents were clear what areas were seen as ripe for investment in the next 12 months; cloud-based services (62%), e-commerce platforms (48%) and mobile applications (47%) all topped the wish list for those organisations surveyed.
Yet 91% of respondents admitted being daunted by the challenges they’ll encounter when growing their digital platform. And that’s especially true when it comes to evolving their B2B commerce offering fast and effectively.
Digitalisation ambitions are high
It’s clear that organisations looking to address the expectation shift of today’s B2B customers are on a fast track enterprise digitalisation pathway. And that involves having to rethink and re-engineer their customer engagement strategies, putting in place a new interconnected B2B e-commerce model that uses pricing, data management and integration to drive customer personalisation and customisation to the next level.
Consequently, the integration of IT systems into the B2B commerce landscape is universally viewed by B2B decision-makers as being a primary goal for the next three years. Yet the vast majority (94%) say their organisation is yet to integrate at least one IT system into their B2B commerce landscape. That’s a worry when it comes to delivering a seamless customer experience across multiple touch points.
Because others are already planning their transformative move to the next era of B2B digital commerce; one in which the enterprise is able to enable cross-team working and uses data to enable an entire customer engagement platform in which different best of breed systems interact efficiently.
The race is on
The message from survey respondents is clear. Digitalisation is rewriting the rules of competition and placing B2B organisations under ever greater pressure to integrate their e-commerce operations directly into the business infrastructure – including supply and demand chains.
With sites like Amazonsupply.com in the US eyeing up the B2B market, many organisations are already looking to enable seamless B2B commerce platforms that not only allow buyers to browse and shop a range of product quickly and easily – but also make it possible to undertake seamless multi-channel distribution via supply chain partners.
With over a quarter of respondents (28%) saying their organisation has already coordinated and integrated with suppliers in the supply chain – and a further 27% having done so with customers and partners in the demand chain – the race is on to garner competitive advantage ahead of the pack.
It’s time to say hello to a new, interconnected and synaptic B2B e-commerce model capable of leveraging every channel – old and new - to deliver a seamless, value-add customer experience.
By Dr. Jochen Wiechen, CEO of Intershop.
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