B2B ecommerce is set to reach $1.8T this year, accounting for 17% of all B2B sales. Its annual growth rate for the next five years is forecast at 10%. The purchasers behind those dollars are increasingly Millenials with expectations for an omnichannel experience, seamless navigation, and an Amazon-level customer experience (CX).
The challenge is on you to meet these expectations while navigating multiple purchasing channels, varied pricing models, a range of payment methods, and complex shipping needs. Whether you’re searching for a new B2B ecommerce platform to help you get it done or considering replacing your current platform to do it better, these 10 considerations will help you select the right solution for you and the needs of your customers.
1. Know Your Requirements
Before implementing a B2B ecommerce platform, it’s important to set the stage for an internal consensus on requirements prior to platform selection. Involve stakeholders from the beginning so you can get their input and understand current projects that will be affected by a new platform.
The requirements for a B2B ecommerce platform are distinct from what many B2C platforms offer. By setting your requirements ahead of time, you can ensure that you’re only engaging with providers who can actually provide what your company needs. Otherwise, you risk trying to make your company fit a platform rather than finding platforms that fit you.
Here are some things to consider as you make your list of requirements:
- What works and what doesn’t with your current platform
- The purchasing method of your buyers: online, offline, purchase orders, credit cards, etc.
- Order fulfillment and shipment: varied shipping methods, processing time, large orders, and inventory management
- Customer loyalty programs
- Integrating account representatives for customer support, customized orders, shipping questions, etc.
- Managing recurring orders
- Specific promotions, payment terms, and pricing models (and the business rules behind them)
- The consistency of your brand, information, and CX across multiple devices
- Product merchandising including categories, product information, product images
- Advanced search capabilities for your product catalog
- The engagement channels of your customers
2. Customer Experience
B2B buyers are generally B2C buyers in some capacity and they’re grown accustomed to the seamless, intuitive experience found on many B2C sites. Simply put, they want the same experience from B2B sites.
However, it’s important to keep in mind that while their expectations of the experience across B2B and B2C sites may be the same, their actual needs as buyers and their buyer’s journeys are different. Avoid B2C ecommerce solutions that have just had a few features slapped on them and called B2B.
So, what do you need out of your B2B ecommerce platform to ensure you’re supporting customers and meeting their expectations?
Consider:
- Request for quote (RFQ): allow customers to add products to a quote request and have customer service or sales members respond
- Multiple filtered catalog views by industry, market vertical, industry, application, region, country, location, etc.
- Catalog structure that accommodates multiple product types (both hard and soft goods)
- Filtering for product catalogs so customers can see only what they need
- Delegation of certain administrative tasks to designated users in a customer's organization
- Ability to add/edit delete users
- Hierarchical sub-accounts (ex.: by department or operating unit)
- Billing and shipping addresses - Ability to only show products that are allowed to be purchased under the user's contract, the contract price, and any associated terms and conditions
- Manual overrides for your account representatives to alter net terms, costs, and support contract pricing
3. Customer Service
When you select an ecommerce platform, realize that some of your customer’s experience will be in the hands of the ecommerce platform. Take time to review the company’s reputation for accessibility and responsiveness. What methods of contact and levels of support are included in your contract? Outages and downtimes will negatively impact any business and the aftershock can be enough to tank brand reputation, customer satisfaction, and employee morale.
Internally, what are your plans post-launch? If you plan to have an internal person(s) set up to maintain and support the platform, make sure training takes place long before the actual hand-off occurs to allow plenty of time for test drives and questions.
4. Integrations
Meeting the rising expectations of B2B buyers means delivering an omnichannel customer experience. To make it happen, you’ll need airtight integration between your front-end and back-end channels. Think about your key systems and plugins for tracking, shipping, inventory, customer service, accounting, sales, lead generation, etc.
Will the platform you’re considering play nicely with these systems? If you’re working with older, special purpose type systems, how will you integrate them with your ecommerce platform? You may need to consider replacing your legacy ERP with one that can fully integrate with ecommerce platforms.
5. Ordering
B2B buyers expect the same ease of ordering they experience on B2C sites while bringing with them additional needs and complexities. For convenience and time-saving purposes, you may want to allow customers to complete quick order form (or upload a spreadsheet) and proceed directly to checkout.
The same concept applies to re-orders. Your B2B customers may want to quickly re-purchase (or schedule a re-order in advance) specific products and/or entire orders based on past orders. They’ll need a simple way to access those past orders and edit items, quantities, and order information as desired.
A few other potential requirements to think about:
- Ability for customers to order products through their own system with integrated punchout
- Allow orders to be placed on hold for partially paid orders
6. Workflows
Customers of all types expect a seamless buying experience, whether they’re on their phones, laptops, or in-store. Forcing customers out of one channel into another is a surefire way to increase dissatisfaction. With workflow controls, customers can stay in the channel they prefer to be in.
You’ll also want to consider approval workflows. Your customers may have individuals in their organization designated to approve or reject pending orders. The platform you select should allow these users to perform this task, notifying buyers of their decision by email.
7. Payment
There are nearly countless payment methods out there and your customers will expect a certain level of flexibility when choosing how to make their purchases. While you probably won’t need to accept quite as many methods of payment as a B2C ecommerce company, you will need to offer enough options to attract and retain customers such as:
- Purchase order (PO)
- ACH, e-check
- Procurement punchout
- Credit or debit cards
8. Scalability
A scalable platform is critical to meeting changing customer demands, maintaining operations, and staying competitive. Think about where you want your business to be in 5 years and make sure the platform you choose can comfortably support your company.
Be aware of fees you may incur as your business grow as the pricing model may change based on the number of SKUs you have.
9. Tracking, Fulfillment, and Shipping
Accurate shipping times and tracking are critical to any online order. But for B2B buyers, you must also factor in greater sensitivity around delivery windows, just-in-time orders, and freight costs. Customers should be able to view the calculated freight capacity and be prompted to fill their shipment for maximum cost value. Make sure they can also find and track their order history readily from approval to shipping to delivery.
Additional functionality to review:
- Quick orders
- Re-orders
- Setting minimum order quantities per product
- Configurable billing and delivery terms for customers with specific requests
10. Internal and External Reporting
Your customers may have expectations about the type of reporting they’ll be able to access through your ecommerce platform. At the very least, customers should be able to access and download any documents associated with their accounts and orders. These may include quotes, proposals, invoices, bills, etc.
Customers with multiple locations, products, and applications may find it useful to filter their order history by these categories. If you’re working with large organizations, it’s worth it to consider offering more extensive reporting capabilities.
As for internal data, you may want insights on payments, repeat purchase trends, top products and categories, search terms, and abandoned shopping cart rates. Think about how robust you want the reporting capabilities to be, if you’ll need to clean up existing product data and/or enlist any third-party applications to reach the advanced analytics you’re looking for.
Next Steps
Of course, selecting a B2B ecommerce platform isn’t as simple as making a list of requirements. You need to consider how the new platform will function in your larger technology ecosystem and align with your company’s plans for transformation.
Lokion’s experienced commerce team can help you tackle the challenge of implementing a new commerce platform from setting requirements to custom integration and training. To make sure you get the experience and ROI you’re looking for from your new platform, get started by chatting with the team at Lokion.
