The Unique Nature of B2B ecommerce
B2B ecommerce has received much of a spotlight recently, as selling to other businesses is becoming increasingly important across multiple industries. Business-to-business ecommerce faces more challenges than business-to-client, as their transactions are typically driven by enterprise needs rather than specific individual preferences. For instance, to deal with enterprises, you have to handle intricate catalogs, volume-based pricing, custom workflows and integrated systems for smooth trouble-free operations. Let’s try SAP Commerce Cloud services to cater to the demanding needs of B2B ecommerce.
The companies that are buying services from other companies are known as more demanding, as the stakes for them are higher. The entire buying procedure is, as a rule, more complex and takes longer time. It often involves multiple interested parties, complicated approval processes and ongoing negotiations that require constant attention. To cater to these needs, you require a highly adjustable platform that can support complicated business models that can scale along with the business expansion.
SAP offers robust instruments that can make all processes easier — from product catalog management, pricing models — all the way through to workflow automation and seamless integrations. With all these tools, SAP Commerce Cloud has become the go-to choice for all the large companies that are interested in succeeding in the B2B ecommerce space.
Case Study: B2B ecommerce Transformation
Let’s try to illustrate the power of SAP Commerce Cloud in action and look at a real-world example. One of the leading global industrial equipment manufacturers had troubles with its complex B2B sales procedures and the intricate management processes. The company offered hundreds of products at varying pricing models. Besides, it had a diverse customer base and struggled with the provision of a seamless online shopping experience. Its legacy systems were not integrated, which led to delayed order processing, inaccurate stock levels and inefficient customer relationship management.
To solve all these issues, the organization decided to streamline its product catalog and pricing models and offer tailored pricing for various customer segments. Then, the experts helped them to carry out the system’s integration with the company’s ERP and CRM systems. This ensured that inventory levels would be always accurate and that orders would be processed without delays. Customization of the workflows helped ensure smooth approvals and order processing. Then, it allowed for faster transactions and fewer bottlenecks. As a result, the business owners witnessed a significant increase in online sales, improved customer satisfaction and decreased operational costs.
The Power of Custom Workflows and Approvals in B2B Sales
Each transaction usually involves several subsequent steps, which includes approvals from different stakeholders within a company. All these processes are an integral part of ensuring that pricing, contract terms and order specifications are compliant with the internal standards and regulations. If there is no right system in place, all these manual workflows slow down the sales procedures and create bottlenecks and delays in customer orders.
With custom ecommerce solutions, you can integrate custom workflows and approval processes directly into the sales process, which will help your organization to effectively automate and streamline these tasks. The platform enables businesses to define specific approval hierarchies so that all relevant requests and quotes would go through the right channels for the approval. The sales representatives can check the progress of approvals instantaneously after the changes have been introduced. These actions ensure that orders will be processed in the most efficient way.
Don’t forget that all the workflow features of SAP Commerce Cloud are highly customizable. Businesses of different domains can adjust their approval flows so that they would fit the specific needs of different customers, industries and internal teams. For example, some clients may need senior management approval before they would place large orders. Other customers may have predefined contracts that can bypass certain approval stages. SAP Commerce Cloud is a great tool that would ensure that these workflows would be easily implemented and remove all the manual effort and the loopholes for errors and malicious actors.
How SAP Commerce Cloud Is Tailored for B2B Marketplaces and Buyers Alike
When SAP Commerce Cloud was designed, developers understood that B2B buyers and sellers can operate in an environment that requires a flexible approach with the highest level of personalization. As you may know, old-fashioned traditional ecommerce platforms are often ill-equipped and couldn’t handle the multi-faceted requirements of B2B businesses. For instance, they can’t successfully deal with large product catalogs, tiered pricing and custom workflows. Thanks to the extensive features of SAP Commerce Cloud, you can address these complexities by offering functionalities that are specifically tailored to meet the demands of B2B companies.
One of the most innovative ways that this platform can cater to the client needs is its advanced product catalog management system. As you may know, B2B businesses often have to deal with massive inventories that can span countless items and products. With new technologies, you can enjoy easy organization and categorization of products. So, buyers are invited to navigate through large product catalogs with ease. This becomes possible due to features like advanced filtering, sorting and extensive search functionality. The robust platform enables companies of different sizes and domains to structure catalogs in a way that reflects the unique requirements that are specific to each customer. By doing so, the platform can guarantee that product offerings stay always relevant and up-to-date.
Besides, don’t overlook the feature that allows for multi-level, customer-specific pricing and discounts, which becomes crucial for all transactions that occur in the system. This ability means that companies are free to provide unique pricing structures that are tailored to different clients. This can be based on a variety of different factors, such as order volumes, contract terms and long-term business relationships. The whole system ensures that pricing would be updated in real time and can subsequently undergo extensive customization. These factors all contribute to the accounting for complex rules, for instance, negotiated rates or volume-based discounts. Thanks to such robust characteristics, the instrument provides transparency for customers and streamlines internal processes for companies from different domains.