ONLINE PURCHASING
Net savings
There are a host of compelling reasons to purchase online, but only if the user experience matches the needs of the end user, Wayne D’Aranjo, marketing manager of Brymec, explains.
O
n 11 August 1994, not long after the internet became mainstream, someone bought a CD by singer Sting in what was the world’s first secure online transaction. Since then, online purchasing has grown at a scorching pace as more people recognise its convenience, speed of response and ease of use.
Research company Frost and Sullivan expects global business-to-business e-commerce sales to rocket to more than $6.6 trillion – over £5 trillion – by 2020. My own company’s online performance reveals just how far building services businesses have come in terms of online purchasing. In 2013, around a fifth of our customers bought online. Since then we have seen a 20% increase in the number of customers making transactions online, and the number of orders placed online has increased 170%. In terms of product types, Brymec sells a wide range of components for the building services sector. The most popular items have historically been plumbing and refrigeration copper tube followed by end feed fittings and channel. However, our customers buy everything from refrigerant gases to motorised valves and duct fans to access handling equipment, many of them from the internet.
24 March 2019
Indeed, no wonder businesses have embraced the online revolution so enthusiastically; the advantages of buying and selling online are compelling. For sellers, it offers smoother stock management, allows them to show their entire product offering in one place at one time and it also has real time benefits in that, unlike a printed catalogue, it is constantly being updated with new products and offers. Buyers benefit from faster delivery times and greater delivery flexibility. It is also more convenient; our own website, for example, has the functionality that allows us to work with a customer to build a tender quote for a project and for the customer then to ‘call off’ products against this. Furthermore, introducing a digital platform results in massive efficiencies, eliminating the risk of errors in translation as information is passed between engineer, site foreman, project manager, purchasing team and supplier. The best online accounts provide their customers with up-to-the-minute pricing with offers tailored specifically to them. Some, like
brymec.com, go a step further by giving customers the ability to save orders as a list or tag items as favourites to revisit later.
However, beware: e-commerce will be worse than useless
www.acr-news.com
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