e-Commerce

Introduction:

In the dynamic realm of customer service, businesses continuously seek innovative ways to provide exceptional experiences that are both personalized and efficient. Sonata Software Ltd, a global Modernization engineering company, has made a groundbreaking leap by integrating OpenAI's ChatGPT with SAP Commerce Cloud. This fusion of cutting-edge technologies unlocks new possibilities for customer interactions and sets a new standard for conversational customer experience (CCX). In this blog, we will explore the exciting features offered by this integration, revolutionizing the way businesses engage with their customers and optimize their operations.

Enhancing Customer Experience and Boosting Business Efficiency: The Power of ChatGPT and SAP Commerce Cloud Integration. 

The integration of ChatGPT and SAP Commerce Cloud is poised to transform customer engagement by leveraging the Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) Model. This combination harnesses the strengths of AI-driven ChatGPT and the robustness of SAP Commerce Cloud, enabling businesses to provide real-time assistance and personalized solutions across a range of customer touchpoints. From product inquiries to order tracking and personalized recommendations, this integration creates a seamless and intuitive shopping experience, surpassing customer expectations.

Exciting New Experimental Features Unveiled!

1. Intelligent Order Inquiry:

With ChatGPT and SAP Commerce Cloud integration, businesses gain the power to retrieve order information from the extensive commerce platform database seamlessly. Leveraging ChatGPT's language model, businesses can provide customers with real-time updates tailored to their specific inquiries. This intelligent order inquiry feature ensures efficient and personalized conversational experiences, fostering customer satisfaction.

2. For Business-to-Consumer (B2C) Capabilities:

• Obtain comprehensive order summaries, including payment details, delivery status, and more.
• Easily search and filter orders based on specific criteria such as order numbers or dates.
• Track order status in real-time and receive prompt updates on any changes or delays.
• Empower customers with a user-friendly interface to create and manage support tickets for efficient issue resolution.

3. Expanding to Business-to-Business (B2B) Capabilities (Building on B2C Capabilities):

• Access enhanced order information tailored to business customers, including order history, invoice details, and shipping information.
• Enable users to search for orders based on customer-specific criteria, such as sold-to account or sold-to party, providing a comprehensive view of business transactions.

4. For Business User Capabilities (Admin):

• Gain a summary of all orders placed within a specific day, week, or month, providing valuable insights into order volume and trends.
• Obtain an overview of overall transactional revenues, allowing admins to track and analyze revenue patterns over time.
• Identify the most sold product during a specified period, facilitating pricing strategies and sales forecasting.
• Generate detailed reports and analytics to assess order metrics, customer behavior, and revenue performance, enabling informed decision-making.

5. Effortless Multilingual Content Translation:

To expand business horizons and cater to a diverse customer base, ChatGPT, and SAP Commerce Cloud integration offer seamless content translation into multiple languages. Business users can effortlessly trigger the translation process with a simple click in the back office interface. This feature breaks down language barriers, streamlines content localization, and enhances global reach, enabling effective customer engagement on a global scale.

6. Streamlined Content Enrichment:

In the fiercely competitive e-commerce landscape, providing comprehensive and captivating information is vital. The integration of ChatGPT and SAP Commerce Cloud simplifies the content enrichment process. Content managers can leverage the Backoffice interface to enrich product content effortlessly. With a click of a button, product descriptions can be enhanced, engaging multimedia can be added, and customers can enjoy an immersive shopping experience.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, the integration of SAP Commerce Cloud and ChatGPT, brought together by Sonata Software Ltd, opens up exciting possibilities for businesses seeking to elevate their customer service and enhance overall customer experience. By harnessing the power of AI-driven ChatGPT and the robustness of SAP Commerce Cloud, companies can revolutionize customer engagement and provide personalized, real-time assistance across various touchpoints.

Multi-channel marketing offers several advantages to retailers, advantages that make it a worthwhile investment.  The pandemic (we can’t call it a post-pandemic era just yet) has made it clear that e-commerce is an essential element of any retail strategy, one which needs to be supported by activities on social media platforms and a consistent, coherent digital marketing strategy. 

For retailers, its no longer a question of running a physical store – or even a chain, with an option for customers to buy online. In fact, that’s the bare minimum.

The transformation in retail has been so marked that even small neighbourhood stores are finding ways to serve their customers online. In June 2020, The Washington Post reported that “restaurants closed dining areas and scraped by on pickup and delivery ordered via apps. Small shops that sell physical goods such as clothes and books figured out ways to list products online and in some cases created websites for the first time. Stores that still sell from physical locations are changing how they get paid — moving away from riskier cash and even physical credit card payment systems to prepaid invoices and contactless options.” In Latin America, small retailers moved to WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram to sell their goods. In India, even the roadside and-cigarette stores tied up with delivery service companies to sell their goods. 

The future is Omni-Channel

Recent market research suggests that the customer these days are looking at multiple touchpoints before confirming a purchase.

• 74% of buyers bought at retail stores
• 44% at different web stores
• 54% at e-commerce marketplaces
• 36% at “other” locations

The data indicates that purchase at physical locations still remains important, but is increasingly supplemented by digital shopping. 

What are Multi-Channel and Omni Channel Retail?

Multichannel is when a company uses several channels to communicate the same message or idea to customers. The company’s message is sent out via social media communications, personalized ads on Google, email campaigns and retail store displays.

Omni channel outreach is much more customer-centric. The channels that the customer uses to engage with the brand not only have a unified message, but that message adapts to each touchpoint a customer has with the brand. 
 

5 Advantages of going Omni Channel

• Greater Consumer Satisfaction: Giving a consistent but wide range of choices to the customer allows them to use the channel they are most comfortable with. Consistency also gives the seller a distinct identity, one that facilitates quick and easy recognition – which can translate into customer confidence. 
• Better Conversion: When products are made visible to prospective customers through a variety of channels, there is a greater possibility of an actual purchase. 
• Faster revenue impact: This is a natural fallout of 1 and 2 - Increased Return on Investment is the key metric in any endeavour. With accurate segmentation and personalization, an omnichannel marketing strategy can be very successful. Higher customer engagement will lead to more conversions and higher ROI.
• Better Operational Efficiency: There are other benefits that an omnichannel strategy brings. Since all touchpoints are built around the customer – redundancies decline. A Forbes study has noted that retailers using omnichannel can reduce cost of service by as much as 15%.  
• High Quality Data: In a nutshell, multichannel marketing tends to splinter into silos where data and journeys are kept on the dedicated channel, omnichannel is built around transparency, and therefore customer data and journeys are synchronized across all channels – leading to better quality customer data

Sonata’s ready Digital retail industry platform Brick & click integrated with your dynamics ERP to manage omni-channel needs

Retailers that need an omni channel system – one that integrates the shopper’s experience across every touchpoint - online & offline, payment & invoices and logistics and shipping - will be well served to implement an ERP integrated solution end to end. Sonata’s ERP integrated Brick & Click solution provides a seamless flow of data that covers customer on boarding, orders, inventory, shipments, and payments.
 

E-commerce has undergone a metamorphosis over the years. It has completely redefined the retail industry. With people becoming more informed and technology easily accessible, E-commerce continues to evolve to make online shopping effortless for customers.

There has been a steady increase in purchasing power globally and internet penetration, majorly being through mobile devices. Each year, the E-commerce Industry witnesses progress not only in the technological front but also in the way the experience is delivered to the customers.

To stay ahead of the game, retailers should channelize their efforts into delivering an exceptional customer experience and being attentive to their responses so that customers experience the ease of shopping at every stage of the process.

E-commerce trends that are redefining shopping forever

It is essential that retailers closely monitor and adapt to the latest technological advancements to stay relevant and flexible to the volatile market dynamics. These technological trends arise from various factors. It majorly centres on how the customers shop, what they shop, and their response to the marketing efforts used by the business. E-commerce giants like Amazon, Alibaba, and Walmart are driving the adoption of the latest trends.Let us analyze how these trends are transforming the shopping experience of the customers forever.

Unified experience – deliver a seamless shopping experience across channels:

Nowadays, people are increasingly selective while shopping because of the ease of access to the best products, newest technologies, and unlimited varieties to choose from. However, they don’t always get the optimal experience during shopping online.
Retailers are now trying to deliver an Omnichannel experience to customers for a smooth and uniform shopping experience across channels. For this, retail businesses must be able to manage the integration across disparate systems, applications, distributors, and ecosystems. This can be executed by connecting the digital, in-store, and back end operations seamlessly. When the retailers aim to deliver a consistent, frictionless engagement across both online and offline channels. This will ensure an enhanced customer experience for customers and a smooth customer journey. The E-commerce businesses will have improved visibility across channels, better operational efficiency, and reduced costs. This will entail a rise in digital sales.

Adapting to newer Delivery models to combat market dynamics:

Online shopping has never been easier with customers doing purchases through the medium which they find most convenient. Retailers selling online are in the pursuit to craft the perfect delivery models which are most convenient and safe. Hyperlocal is a platform initiated to facilitate local offline businesses to reach out to their customers within a short span of time. This service model can connect local businesses to their targeted customers with a few meters to a few kilometres of their business. This enables customers to access to good quality products and services within focused geography enhancing the visibility of the local businesses.

E-commerce websites are striving hard to provide a seamless shopping experience on their site with a variety of delivery options for the customer to choose from. One such delivery model developed is Same-day delivery. This is one of the most opted E-commerce services globally. With this method coming in play, E-commerce firms have witnessed a substantial reduction in delivery time and therefore a major impact on shopping online. This has been opted majorly by online shoppers because of enhanced customer experience and reduced cost of logistics services.

Curbside pickup has emerged to be a preferred medium during the current pandemic where there is a great emphasis retailers ensure on delivering high quality products in the safest medium possible. Customers can place orders from the comfort of their home from their preferred stores and pick it up at their convenience. The ordered items are delivered safely to your car at the scheduled time. Other benefits of Curbside pickup are:

• Enhanced customer experience
• Brand loyalty is improved, as customers tend to stick to brands that offer such delivery models
• Low-cost delivery for retailers as they can save on delivery costs and avoid-free delivery that is mostly preferred by customers

The service model can connect local businesses to their targeted customers with a few meters to a few kilometres of their business. This enables customers to access to good quality products and services within focused geography enhancing the visibility of the local businesses.

E-commerce websites are striving hard to provide a seamless shopping experience on their site with a variety of delivery options for the customer to choose from. One such delivery model developed is Same-day delivery. This is one of the most opted E-commerce services globally. With this method coming in play, E-commerce firms have witnessed a substantial reduction in delivery time and therefore a major impact on shopping online. This has been opted majorly by online shoppers because of enhanced customer experience and reduced cost of logistics services.

Curbside pickup has emerged to be a preferred medium during the current pandemic where there is a great emphasis retailers ensure on delivering high quality products in the safest medium possible. Customers can place orders from the comfort of their home from their preferred stores and pick it up at their convenience. The ordered items are delivered safely to your car at the scheduled time. Other benefits of Curbside pickup are:

• Enhanced customer experience
• Brand loyalty is improved, as customers tend to stick to brands that offer such delivery models
• Low-cost delivery for retailers as they can save on delivery costs and avoid-free delivery that is mostly preferred by customers

Establishing Innovative Self Service models for both online and offline shopping:

E-commerce retailers are in the pursuit to simplify the shopping experience in the easiest manner possible. For this, they have come up with the Self-service delivery that involves minimum interaction and the easiest way possible for customers. This is powered by AI centred self-service Chatbots to assist customers to make the customer experience a memorable one. Chatbots have been introduced to simplify the entire online shopping process. Chatbots have become a powerful aid as they act as the personal shopping assistants. AI-powered Chatbots enhance the user experience by providing the customers with relevant personalized options. Chatbots are the future of personalized online shopping which organizations need to leverage this stay ahead of the competition in delivering an exceptional experience to the customers.

Self-service delivery at Brick and mortar stores tries to collaborate both online and physical store experience that will keep the focus on constantly making customer shopping convenient. This helps in delivering ease of service through contactless payments enabled at various stores where all payments are accepted online. There are also multi-location-centred digital kiosks that can be manned or unmanned which are installed usually at locations where there are high footfalls.This will help customers feel safer when purchasing because it is conducted in a manner where there are zero physical transactions.

Personalized shopping through Kartopia- Sonata’s cutting edge E-commerce Platform

Sonata enables E-commerce companies with enterprise E-commerce solutions in Retail, CPG, and distribution to grow faster through digital transformation. Through Kartopia, Sonata supports multiple E-commerce models: B2B, B2C, and marketplaces. The organization gets a single view of the customers, inventory, and order details. Sonata’s Kartopia has facilitated multiple clients to build engaging user experiences, served customers across channels, and developed varied E-commerce models with a single stack. Visit our Kartopia offerings page to know more about how we can enable you on your path to true digital transformation.

A few months ago, Gartner published its 2017 Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce and, not surprisingly, SAP Hybris found a spot in the ‘Leader’ quadrant. Having been associated with SAP for several years, including as a SAP GDC partner since 2012, we’ve had a chance to closely observe SAP’s efforts to help B2B and B2C brands deliver the phenomenal shopping experiences their customers expect.

Here are some key features of SAP Hybris that we believe make it a winner in the Digital Commerce space:

• Allows retailers to deliver a consistently great experience at every touch point
• Scalability: Allows a seamless transition to relevant packages as the business grows
• Ability to cut cost, time and complexity for customers

Sonata and SAP Hybris
Today, companies of all sizes operate in an environment where growth is defined by speed, flexibility & technology. Retailers grapple with several issues when it comes to maintaining their existing software platforms and orienting them towards growth and agility. They face several key strategic & operational challenges such as:

• Optimization of supply chain planning and execution
• Need to improve operational efficiency and reduce overhead costs
• Rapid assimilation and integration of strategic acquisitions
• End to end process standardization
• Unavailability of insightful reports and analytics to drive informed decisions
• Prohibitive cost of purchase and implementation of conventional enterprise products

For over a decade and half, Sonata has worked in the E-commerce space, helping companies across geographies transform their business. Our alliance with SAP on Hybris has been an important factor in enabling this.

If you’d like to know more about Sonata’s SAP Hybris offerings, check out our SAP Hybris page: Click Here

To know more about Sonata and SAP Alliance visit us at

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The retail revolution is coming at us at a dizzying pace, transformed by digital technologies and access to the ongoing data explosion. While traditional retailers are definitely feeling the heat, those who embrace technology are reaping unexpected rewards.

The changing nature of today’s consumer has been a big driver for this change. Empowered by unprecedented access to information, contemporary consumers have at their disposal new technologies and tools that provide them pricing deals and product reviews. Add in the plethora of endless retail options due to the explosion of online retail.

Today’s consumers are also decidedly different from their counterparts from even a few years back. They display little to no brand loyalty, have extremely high expectations of product/service features, immediate availability, quick delivery, vast range and impeccable after sales support.

Consumers also expect a seamless experience – whether they are physically in the store, online on their smartphones or computers, or anywhere else they choose to shop from. Many retail brands are still struggling to come to terms with an omnichannel presence. The main challenge they face apart from operationalising omnichannel, is to create a consistent brand experience across all touch-points that is imperative in keeping the attention, and consequently, gaining wallet share of the customer.

The shift towards omnichannel has put a considerable focus on end-to-end supply chain management and mobilising customer fulfilment. Customers today could order online and pick up the product at a physical store, or try a product at a physical store and order for the same online. Add in the extra layer of empowering store sales executives with an app to help customer see more options, and the complexity of the picture begins to emerge.

To be successful in this context of real time retail, retailers need one unified platform that offers a compelling customer experience across all touch-points. Using a variety of technologies that operate in silos and do not talk to each other cannot work in the real-time retail context we operate in now.

Ability to Scale is Crucial

Equally important, the infrastructure needs to scale seamlessly as operations grow. Most customer-centric solutions require a combination of multiple technical architectures to work together seamlessly to address various current and growing needs. Scaling to demand isn’t a matter of buying more licenses alone. Apart from vision and planning, it requires careful consideration of choosing integration design and architecture that is suitable for the different systems and capabilities, which can have IT departments scratching their heads in frustration.

The answer is to invest in a platform-led digital transformation solution that can help retailers engage with connected ecosystem, drive intelligent transaction, integrate with open systems, and enable scale across markets & segments.

This need was one of the key drivers for the launch of Kartopia, Sonata’s new e-commerce platform that is designed to help businesses gear up for unprecedented business growth and wider customer reach. It draws heavily from our deep experience with the retail sector, spanning over 15 years.

Apart from its ability to scale with the business, Kartopia enables businesses to provide a superior customer experience, integrates with important security features like SSL certification and fraud protection services, and is compatible with all the existing ERP and payment gateways. It also comes with out of the box order fulfilment module, order cancelation, order status summary, and order dashboards with best-in-class returns and refund features.

More details on Kartopia are available here: Kartopia

For retailers who want to take on the digital future, investing in a robust e-commerce solution that can improve processes, boost efficiency and facilitate better communication is absolutely crucial. A digital transformation through an e-commerce solution can help you grow your business and achieve an expanded geographical footprint.

While there is a wide choice of both proprietary and open source options available for e-commerce platforms, it is important to choose the right option after weighing the pros and cons associated with each.

For retailers who are looking at adopting a digital platform for the first time, there are many reasons apart from the obvious cost benefits, to consider an open source-based solution.

Easy Customisation and Integration

Every business has its own unique requirements and business processes and no off the shelf software is likely to be a perfect fit without some degree of customisation. Besides, for any retailer, the e-commerce platform can an important differentiator because has a huge influence on customer experience.

How would customers like to navigate through your site to achieve superior experience? How can you make it easy for them to add items to the cart? What features will encourage them to come back to your site? How can you increase loyalty? Designing a unique and rewarding experience for your customers is top priority for any retailer. Customisation allows you to achieve these unique features specifically made for your customers to bring out your differentiators. An open source platform lends itself very well to these customisations since the source code is available.

Integration with external platforms is required to help the platform expand & enhance business functionality. An open source platform makes this process much simpler.

Customer Experience, Scalability and Security with Kartopia

Sonata’s Kartopia Open Source E-commerce platform is a great way for retailers to adopt a digital presence. Kartopia enables businesses to provide a superior customer experience through features such as B2B and B2C suites in the same package; support for multiple themes, multiple currencies and multiple languages; best in class content management system; Multi-channel capability (Mobile, Web, customer service); targeted personalization and promotions.

One of its biggest benefits is its ability to allow for seamless scalability. The Platform is built to grow to accommodate the needs of growing businesses. The platform allows for easy usage and integration thanks to its simplistic design.

Kartopia also integrates SSL and required fraud protection services. It is DDoS safe and allows for easy extensible third-party integration for shipping gateways, payment gateways, ERP etc. Besides it is compatible with the existing ERP and payment gateways and comes with advanced order fulfilment module, order cancelation, order status summary, and order dashboards with best-in-class returns and refund features. It also provides advanced commerce functionalities such as promotions, store credit, loyalty management, express checkout, cross sell/up sell, rating and reviews, faceted search, social media integration, wish list, product variants etc.

If you’d like to know more about how Kartopia can help your retail business and sign up for a free trial, click here, or write in to us
@ info-SDCP@sonata-software.com

When can we say that different applications are deeply integrated? Is providing a seamless customer experience on every channel with personalization predominantly your priority? The answer to the first question is that, applications and systems can be truly integrated when a platform that provides a single view to the customer, and engages him consistently at every step of his buying journey, is employed. Determine what the answer to the second question is when you’ve read this write-up.

To enable solutions accessed by customers across physical and digital touchpoints, SAP CX Commerce Cloud is extremely well suited. You will definitely be able to reap the benefit of a seamless integration with all the other solutions across your existing business landscape.

To elaborate on this, the pre-built integrations of SAP Commerce Cloud enables end-to-end process management that ranges from web storefront browsing, cart management, service ticket management and order management – all directed towards providing a consistent and customer friendly experience.

Take the example of cart management. For the end to end process of search to order – integration is a prerequisite. At any point in time, customers need to be provided with data which can come from different systems such as, recommendations engines, Promotions, Backend systems - for inventory management and pricing, and third party integrations like payment gateways, shipping providers. The data needs to be to consistent, accurate and timely giving the customer an excellent customer experience.

What will interest you, is that the solution includes integrated tools for product content management, an omni-channel storefront, experience management, advanced personalization, and a sleek order management. The integration tools used, help your business improve conversion rates, increase order value and most significantly, ensures a most differentiated customer experience that will inadvertently have an impact on better ROI too.

So how is this integration achieved? The SAP Cloud Platform Integration service assists in its progress, with the help of publicly available APIs that is backed by a back-end integration solution called REST. These integrations are made to be watertight with encrypted content and data storage encryption and isolation during runtime, transparent monitoring, synchronization of master data and persistency.

All these keep the data safe and act as a guard against breaches, assuring the customer that their information is well protected, and giving you the edge for providing a single source of truth - thereby differentiating SAP Commerce Cloud from other e-Commerce solutions.

While the digital revolution has significantly changed the way we research and conduct travel bookings, travelers are continually seeking inspiration via social media, friends and colleagues. Omni-channel being the essence, an integration between physical and digital customer touchpoints leading to capabilities that are market-leading will help travel providers in meeting traveler demands.

Travel providers are increasingly finding the need for improved technology as its disruption has also led to non-linearity in the search and book process. The SAP Commerce Cloud solution, through its Travel Accelerator, has the capability to benefit the travel industry.

What lies at the heart of SAP’s Travel Accelerator is the data model, which can be both adapted and extended to meet implementation needs. The accelerator is inclusive of the primary data objects for hospitality and transport providers, such as, hotel, air, cruises, rail, buses and ferries.

Some of the key benefits of the SAP Commerce Cloud Accelerator include the ability in supporting General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requirements of the Travel industry, improvised conversion rates with a completely responsive storefront and “context based” content management, which features the following:

• Travel search
• Fare selection
• Ancillaries
• Passenger details
• Booking management, etc.

All these can lead to a seamless customer experience, don’t you think?

Besides, the travel accelerator also has the ability to connect directly for the International Air Transport Association (IATA), New Distribution Capability (NDC) to agencies, B2B partners and corporate travel departments as well as integrate with existing revenue, reservation, and loyalty systems, which helps them deliver cutting edge customer engagement.

In addition, the accelerator can provide extraordinary customer service and support for bookings that are excessively complex; use open technology to swiftly build and deliver new travel bundles; contains intuitive administration via a single platform to deliver a web content management system, merchandising, IATA NDC, order management, and an omni-channel experience.

What’s more, the travel accelerator has an open technology architecture that provides API-first strategy for business services, which is Cloud borne; and has a potent offer management that provides personalization, promotional direction, merchandising in a single platform that helps in delivering superior customer experiences.

So what are you waiting for, click here to establish connection with us and realize your market-leading potentiality.

e-Commerce as a concept is fairly old and established. It has disrupted the market since its advent with its unique proposition of buying orders online, without having a view or feel of the product before. Skeptics have long been silenced about its ability to change the market and e-Commerce juggernauts like Amazon, eBay, Flipkart etc. are one of the biggest companies today in the geographies they operate.

While B2C e-Commerce has been quite prevalent and accepted throughout the world cutting across every consumer segment, the story of B2B industry has been a little different. B2B industry to a large extent still operates in a traditional way, where buyers and sellers like to talk and negotiate in person before carrying out any transactions.

However, the B2B industry is changing faster with changing buyer demographics. With more and more millennials joining the B2B industry, the obvious effect of e-Commerce acceptance is showing here too. In a 2015 research, Google found that nearly half of B2B buyers are millennials, a 100% growth since 2012. The overall size and growth of B2B e-Commerce is also encouraging, with a phenomenal rate of growth being clocked mainly driven by the Chinese market.

“The B2B market will outgrow the B2C market by 2025, with China taking the lead”- Frost & Sullivan

What has been driving the B2B e-Commerce market and what are going to be the driving features of it?

Source: Verto Analytics, e-Commerce demographics, who shop online

A major reason, as mentioned before, is the changing demographics. The millennials are more comfortable with mobiles, tablets and laptops than their previous generations. They want the same B2C buying experience in their fields too. When the same person can experience the personalized feel of a B2C e-Commerce in his everyday life, the need for similar experience in his workplace leaves no secret code to decipher.

Payment methods are another major driver for e-Commerce. While acceptance of orders through fax is still not uncommon, online payments through the website is becoming more of a norm. About 80% of the B2B companies are more prone to accepting orders through web as opposed to taking orders through phone, email and other options. Increasing appetite for online orders feeds into online payment as well. 94% of people taking online orders are taking payments paid by credit cards while checks, payment terms and purchase orders are still viable and dominant options (51%, 53% and 50% respectively). It’s important to understand that B2B companies accept payments in various forms from their customers. Speed of payments also increase by a good extent for the Companies to encourage more online payments.

Availability of service: B2B companies receive calls and orders only during the operational office hours. That creates a huge gap when a mission critical order needs to be fulfilled. Hours of delay in such cases may incur in huge losses for customers. e-Commerce here can receive the orders 24*7 and process them without manual intervention if automated for odd hour orders, or orders from different time zones.

Wider Reach: With an online store, businesses can grow and reach out to newer geographies and customer base without making huge investments in setting up local infrastructure. Third-party logistics Companies make it easy to fulfill the orders across large geographies. Clients won’t have to bother about visiting your business location. They can place orders online even if they are halfway across the world

Source: Report by Economic Times on demographic shifts, e-Commerce, digital space to reshape FMCG

Lower effort and cost: Traditionally, the sales team would put in a lot of effort either through phone calls or customer site visit just to convince the decision makers and get the orders. Many times, these attempts are futile, costing businesses millions of dollars. Although, it’s required to connect with the clients on a regular basis to maintain interpersonal relationships, the availability for customers to place an order online definitely saves both your and the customer’s time.

Managing customer specific programs with ease: Sales reps visit customer sites today with not only the catalogue, but also specific promotional programs that entices the customer to buy more from you. While, it’s truly personalized, it’s extremely inefficient. e-Commerce can help with the same personalized promotional programs online that is extremely efficient and effective, as the promotions can change frequently as the need arises. Another customer specific program that becomes ineffective is customer loyalty programs. Customers never really know at which stage his loyalty program is and what more can he do to get more from the program. e-Commerce can easily make all this information available and give the customers the option to utilize the loyalty program to the fullest.

Source: DeZyre, How Data Science increased profitability of the e-Commerce industry

Data driven operations: It is said that the data is the new gold. Any organization that is transacting with multiple stakeholders are generating a huge amount of data. The same data can be used for better decision making, developing customer insights, managing operations efficiently, giving the customers personalized experience etc., that is otherwise impossible. e-Commerce can capture and utilize this data and as a result a business can do wonders that is not otherwise achievable.

B2B e-Commerce, if coupled with some simple yet important features, can be a game changer for businesses. Personalized promotions like product offerings, curated prices, native languages and native currencies, automating manual processes like price negotiation for bulk purchases, otherwise known as quote process, recurring orders can make business users life considerably simple. Added to that the ecommerce system must be connected to all the existing IT infrastructure to maximize the effectiveness thorough a thorough data driven approach.

However, there still are a lot of challenges for B2B e-Commerce. The main problem is user adoption. Many businesses still prefer doing it the traditional way due to the personal touch they can give during the whole process. Also, B2B ecommerce process and functionalities are yet to be fully standardized, thus it requires to be built in a more customized way. The rise of ecommerce in B2B industry is proof that it’s going through the right growth path.

Click here to know about our enterprise e-Commerce solution

1979 was the pivotal year for e-Commerce, when a salesperson from Honeywell, UK, in his quest for new options for increasing his revenue target, came up with the very idea of it. World’s first B2C e- Commerce store would be opened in 1984 by Gateshead SIS/Tesco and the first B2B e-Commerce store would be opened, quite surprisingly, in 1981 by Thomson Holidays. Since the inception of internet and the later World Wide Web, e-Commerce has been a case of continued and exponential growth story, disrupting almost all the industries. That which was a tiny $550 billion industry worldwide is driving a revenue of $3.5 Trillion today. What was merely a western world innovation, is being driven by the APAC region today, led by China.

Although B2B e-Commerce has made huge inroads size-wise, the acceptance of the same is not at the same level as B2C e-Commerce. If seen across industries, manufacturing is the slowest to adopt e- Commerce with only 40% Companies having adopted e-Commerce till date, according to a survey by B2becNews. Some of the main reasons are complex and Company-specific business processes which includes pricing, legacy procurement processes and existing business relations, Internal Push against digital transformation due to preference for in person sales, Organizational structure etc. B2C ecommerce, on the other hand, thrived because the buyers were millennials as well as due to the proximity of mobile commerce. There also remains a lot of skepticism about the value differentiators that B2B e-Commerce can bring, due to non-clarity of its vast possible offerings. Let’s take a look at a few key defining factors behind the B2B e-Commerce ecosystem.

Decision Making Process: In B2C e-Commerce, the buying decision is taken by individuals on the spur of the moment, which can be called as impulse buying. However, in a B2B scenario, a well-structured team at various decision-making levels take a planned buying decision. Thus, B2B e-Commerce needs to enable a similar structure for the buying Company as well as the selling Company. A clearly defined org. structure in the e-Commerce platform itself will simplify, complement, and replicate the traditional practices.

Negotiation: In the B2B buying process, negotiation plays a key role. Negotiation happens, chiefly, for price discounts, but not limited to it. It can also happen for specific changes required in product, special requests for delivery, etc. A simplified online Quote/Request for Quote process can make life simpler for the people on either side of the spectrum.

Recurring Orders: Some institutions consume/buy specific amount items in a regular frequency due to their usage pattern. Hotels, CPG retailers, etc. fall in this category. For them, repeat ordering again and again can become a tedious job. B2B e-Commerce can automate this task and save not only a lot of time and effort but also the horror of a missed regulation shipment on time.

Personalization: Although personalization is becoming one of the most important concepts in B2C, it plays a major role in B2B e-Commerce. Promotional offers, discounts and even an entire product offering can change from buyer to buyer and region to region. B2B buyers would be more focused on the things that they want to buy, rather than exploring new items which are not in their areas of interest. A B2B e-Commerce platform must offer this capability to their customers.

Connected System: A B2C e-Commerce Company can sustain its business without necessarily connecting their e-Commerce platform with their ERP, CRM or other systems that they use. A SaaS based e-Commerce platform can enable your online store by just uploading your catalogue and stock information. However, in a B2B e-Commerce scenario, it’s imperative to connect the e-Commerce platform with your warehouse management system, order fulfillment system or a full-fledged ERP. The documentation process must be legally compliant and adhere to contract terms.

Contract terms: In B2C businesses, the exchange ends simultaneously, with one side providing the item sought for and the other side paying for it. However, in the B2B process, the concept of credit lines and contract terms dictates the payment process where a customer can continue purchasing without paying for the order every time as long as it has the required credit line approved by the seller. This process, if replicated in e-Commerce, can make keeping legal and financial information ready for users without paperwork.

Involvement of Sales Team: Field sales teams are the most vital part of any business organization today. B2B e-Commerce should not be aimed at replacing the sales team, rather it should enable the sales team to be more efficient with options to place orders on behalf of the customer, look at his purchase history and receive appropriate information that will help them to sell more and so on. Further integration with Sales force automation tools can help them to make intelligent decisions to manage customers.

Apart from all these, functionalities such as, range purchasing, assisted shopping, chatbots, shopping analysis, etc. can help both buyers and sellers to save time and make educated buying decisions which are not required in B2C e-Commerce. As the B2B industry is being reshaped with new growing trends where millennials will be the key people in buying process, the acceptance of e-Commerce will increase manifold. That’s why analyst companies like Frost and Sullivan are so confident when they say B2B e- Commerce will grow from $3.4 trillion today to $6.5 trillion by 2020.

Summary: e-Commerce since its inception has diversified itself into B2B and B2C platforms, which are, from a practical use and requirement perspective, a lot different. B2B e-Commerce platforms delve more into simplifying and digitizing traditional practices like decision making, negotiation, recurring orders, etc., and providing a connected, personalized platform that helps all the stakeholders including the Sales team. B2C e-Commerce is traversing the path of standardization of Retail practices into a digital platform that can be made available to the customers at the speed of lightning. To gain competitive advantage and stay relevant in the digital economy, it’s about time that B2B e-Commerce adoption is core to your digital transformation journey. What seemed luxury in the past, is definitely a necessity today!