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eCommerce


The 10 critical eCommerce capabilitiesneeded for


online sales growth by Kevin Murray (pictured), Managing Director at Greenlight Commerce


O


nline business-to-business (B2B) retail has now reached a seminal point, with the market expected to


outgrow the business-to-consumer (B2C) market by 2025. Modern buyers are becoming increasingly reliant upon eCommerce to locate and purchase the products and services they need. Electrical wholesalers in particular have a lot to


gain from investing in eCommerce capabilities, as they provide a real opportunity to make significant leaps in growth. In order to deliver the online experience buyer’s need, electrical wholesalers must adopt strategies that incorporate best practice from their B2C counterparts. However, B2B is not a duplicate of B2C commerce that predominantly focuses on providing rich and engaging experiences. The focus on B2B eCommerce sites must centre on functionality and ensuring that online purchasing is simple. In order to tackle the oftentimes daunting task of evaluating eCommerce solutions, Greenbrook Commerce has compiled the below list outlining the most important things to consider to leverage online selling to drive business growth.


1. Real-time, customer specific pricing As opposed to the standard pricing in the B2C world, electrical wholesale customers often have negotiated individual price lists – these are normally stored in a number of systems or spreadsheets. Individual pricing lists need to be available to


customers across all buying channels in real time, and businesses need a system that supports continual price changes that could be different for each customer accessing the system.


2. Quick order and auto-replenishment Wholesale customers usually know exactly what they want to buy, and are increasingly dependent upon eCommerce to quickly find and purchase the required products. In addition, they also need to be able to bulk order items they have previously bought.


The traditional method of doing this was to


use spreadsheets to create large lists, but this has since become an outdated process. Nowadays, a portal in the eCommerce platform can be used to enter codes and show the availability of stock.


26 | electrical wholesalerFebruary 2019 An eCommerce platform should be able to


replenish orders in the future, automate replacements and inform the customer when stock should become unavailable.


3. Bundle and tiered pricing Many products offered by electrical wholesalers are very low cost, and often aren’t worth listing individually or selling unless they’re grouped together. As well as offering discounts on products bought together, bulk discounts are sometimes offered on the number of items or packs purchased by a business. B2B commerce platforms need to allow businesses to group and price products in a way where they can be easily marketed, merchandised and purchased.


4. Future stock availability Visibility of overall stock and Available To Promise rules are critical in managing the supply chain. Without this, customers may decide to abandon their buying journey. An important feature of B2B commerce


platforms is to provide visibility of future stock orders, even if there is no stock available. If businesses do not offer enough stock, they’re able to inform the customer when the next expected order is due or advise them on lead times.


5. Customer self-service and administration


Corporate buyers will often have customer hierarchies for approval workflows and processes, and may also have different buying limits, cost centres and approvals. The overhead of having to develop systems to


cater for setting up and removing users, company structures and buying workflows, may not be cost-effective to sustain. However, it is crucial to do so as these customers are usually large, with bigger spending budgets.


6. Invoice and credit reporting Customers within the B2B space have many needs when it comes to reporting on order invoicing, returns and credits. To help keep track of inventory and cash flow, customers require this data to be added to their internal systems. However, the cost to manually gather and send this data to customers can be expensive. It’s crucial to have a system that automates the


sending of reports and allows customers to access the data themselves.


7. Procurement Integration If customers require purchasing to be done within their own procurement systems, modern B2B eCommerce solutions have the ability to send their shopping-cart and purchasing information to external systems. Once approved in a customer’s internal system – the order is then placed. As digital transformation continues to occur


across the electrical wholesale sector, businesses need to provide technical integration support to facilitate the use of their own procurement systems in the purchase process. Those that offer this capability earlier than others will capitalise on acquiring new large account customers.


8. Personalisation Just like B2C shoppers, B2B buyers also expect ‘consumer-like’ online experiences. For example, recommendations and promotional offers that are specific to them. A top priority for B2B retailers is to create a unique and personalised experience through innovation in technologies.


9. Contextual assistance A key expectation of electrical wholesalers is to provide support to customers during the buying process. If any support issues are not dealt with quickly, or do not convert into a purchase at the end - it can become a costly activity. In order to resolve any issues the customer is facing when ordering online, enabling your representative access to the same tailored customer-facing platform allows the issue to be resolved quickly and effectively.


10. Cloud


Reducing capital expenditure in infrastructure to support digital platforms is a key consideration for electrical wholesale businesses. Businesses should prioritise driving revenue and reducing costs, rather than producing and managing technical infrastructure. Harnessing and outsourcing cloud-based


systems provides agility, flexibility and reduced costs, allowing businesses to ensure its platform is offered as-a-service, rather than having to cater for large in-house IT teams to manage and service the platform.


greenlightcommerce.com ewnews.co.uk


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