What’s your B2B E-Commerce platform doing for you?
If your answer is limited to transactional activities, you’re missing out on what’s actually driving the future of B2B E-Commerce.
Read on for 3 trends that you just cannot afford to ignore –
User Experience
Long gone are the days when a paramount user experience was strictly restricted to B2C E-commerce.
In fact, the line between B2B and, B2C is fast fading as 90% of B2B executives are willing to increase spending on customer experience, moreover, even 86% of customers, are keen to pay more for a paramount customer experience.
Gartner predicts that by 2018, 70% of eCommerce will move from B2C and B2B models to ones that focus on the individual customer experience.
A customer would expect some basic facilities, for instance, being able to make a purchase, manage his/her account, set up recurring orders and, avail assistance from a B2B company, just like they would enjoy all of these, when dealing as a consumer, with a B2C business.
Omni-channel Strategy
The rise of Omni-channel strategy in B2B marketing documents the abrupt shift in focus to deliver a customer experience, which is second to none.
Mirroring B2C modus-operandi, a B2B buyer would want to interact with vendors, both online and, offline, seamlessly, across all platforms and devices.
The crucial point is to consolidate the entire information of a buyer and, his interactions with your business, into a unified comprehensive customer profile to create a customer-centric experience that efficiently walks him through the buyer’s journey.
Integrated Order Management
In order to deliver your customers with a feature rich, yet seamless user experience across all channels, you ought to integrate your E-commerce system with your offline order management systems.
Many B2B companies are striving hard to develop a unique B2B E-commerce platform, with order management system, in harmony with every channel, to facilitate synchronization of customer information in real time.
The consolidation of all procuring systems enables businesses to support Just-in-Time (JIT) availability with automated renewal, customized and, complex procurement workflows to reduce cost and, improve efficiency.
Over to you — what forecasts and trends are driving your B2B eCommerce decisions? Leave a comment below to share your insights.
