But that does not mean manufacturers can rely on the same business practices forever and expect to grow. COVID-19, among other recent disruptors to the supply chain, underscored the need for even manufacturers to stay agile and adapt quickly to the changing needs of the marketplace. The increased popularity of online shopping and the growing number of remotely working employees have added fuel to the fire, making eCommerce a more attractive proposal than ever.

Manufacturing Customers Shifting to Digital

The distributors, wholesalers, and retailers that make up the core of a manufacturer’s customer base are finding a lot to get excited about with the increased capabilities of eCommerce. They are digitizing their business in droves for a variety of reasons, from managing sales to improving customer service ^[1], and some of these benefits can be realized by manufacturers as well. Going digital makes sense for B2B manufacturers looking for a more efficient way to track stock and ship purchases. As a manufacturer, if your customers are becoming more and more enamored with eCommerce, it follows that they would be attracted to a supplier using the same model. So, while your focus remains B2B, the fact that your customers are increasingly utilizing eCommerce in other channels means that is the model they are becoming more familiar and more comfortable with.

Manufacturers Getting Into eCommerce: 7 Benefits

Increased Sales

ECommerce for manufacturers means less reliance on face-to-face marketing and sales, allowing a company to branch out into markets previously untapped because of limitations like location or previous experience. These days, customers appreciate the ability to research products online without having to schedule a meeting and may be more likely to select a manufacturer with an online presence.

Enhanced Customer Experience

Even with strict social distancing mostly in the rearview mirror, the appeal of online shopping and conducting business remotely is going strong and not likely to trend in the other direction anytime soon. Being able to place or renew orders online is not just more appealing but, in many cases, expected. Increasingly, companies with no online presence or one that is outdated and challenging to use are losing business to competitors with solid B2B eCommerce capabilities. A virtual storefront that allows a potential customer to find out what your organization is about, how you price things, and whether or not you have what they need in stock is imperative to stay competitive.

Direct Access to Customers

DTC sales may not traditionally be the purview of a manufacturer, but it is a channel that is seeing increasing popularity in the industry. The public’s general familiarity with platforms like Amazon and eBay is leading B2B customers to expect the same kind of shopping experience for products much closer to the original source.

Improved Efficiency

Advancing business technology has always been primarily about increasing efficiency. B2B eCommerce for manufacturers is no different. Having up-to-the-second information about orders, stock, and supply is critical for timely transactions and key for identifying potential problems in the chain and calculating the best use of resources.

Scalability

Along with the increased efficiency supported by eCommerce comes the capacity to rapidly scale. Being able to quickly shift between channels or use a hybrid omnichannel approach when appropriate is becoming increasingly important for growing businesses. If sudden, welcome market changes occur that provide more potential for future business than your current boots-on-the-ground sales team can manage, you need additional options to close those contracts. And having a highly digitized inventory and transaction management system in place will help fulfill those new orders.

Innovation

Implementing a solid B2B eCommerce for manufacturers solution not only helps a business stay relevant in a rapidly evolving industry but also allows that business to be better positioned for future innovation. B2B ecommerce platforms like the LANSA Commerce Edition are increasingly modular and customizable, allowing manufacturers to quickly adapt to whatever advances are on the horizon.

Cost Savings

Last but never least, there is the bottom line. While any new and improved process involves an upfront cost, the long-term savings from becoming more efficient and flexible with a thoughtful approach to manufacturing eCommerce are hard to dismiss.

LANSA Customer: The Weidmüller Group

The Weidmüller Group is a leading provider of solutions for the transmission of power, signals, and data in industrial environments with production facilities, sales companies, and agencies in over 70 countries. Weidmüller in North America, based in Richmond, Virginia, has over 750 distributors and direct customers.

They had a B2B eCommerce solution in place, but the majority of their distributors found it cumbersome and unusable. As a result, many continued to place orders by fax, phone, and e-mail, opening the door to problems like misquoted prices and items on backorder. They also found themselves with a glut of standard inquiry calls that could have easily been handled through an informative online approach.

Weidmüller engaged with LANSA for a solution, and within two months, the company was able to implement a B2B eCommerce solution that exceeded their expectations. “Less than two years after implementing the first B2B site, we are receiving nearly 50 percent of orders online and are well on the way to achieving our target of 60 percent. Just as importantly, the volume of inquiry calls has also dramatically dropped,” – Selena Garner, Customer Service Manager at The Weidmüller Group.

How Can Manufacturers Effectively Use eCommerce: Best Practices

Choose the Right Platform

When looking at your eCommerce for manufacturer options, make sure you have identified the aspects of your business model that you want to improve. They could be current pain points that you have received negative feedback about or areas where you think there is an opportunity for growth. The platform you select should have a proven track record in these specific areas.

The LANSA Commerce Edition is such a platform, having been successfully implemented by a wide variety of companies looking to improve their B2B eCommerce market share. Rotary Corp leveraged LANSA’s expertise to craft a compelling B2B website, and manufacturing mainstay Bemis partnered with LANSA for a complete ERP overhaul. Whatever your industry, whatever opportunities for improvement you have identified, LANSA has done it before and can leverage its experience to help you.

Create an Engaging, Functional Website

Think of your website as your virtual storefront. Customers would not patronize a brick-and-mortar business that looked broken down and inaccessible from the outside, and the same applies to your online presence. You want to attract potential customers and keep current ones by creating an inviting space that grabs their attention and features functionality that appeals to them.

Provide a Personalized, Dynamic Product Catalog

With eCommerce, you do not have to make your clients pore through a massive tome of products to find what they need. You can customize their view to show them only what applies to their business, displaying transaction history for easy re-order, and even changing the aesthetic of the web page they access to make it a more personalized experience.

Optimize Product Listings With Real-Time Information

A functional eCommerce solution can keep your catalog updated in real time so customers immediately know what is available and what is on backorder. It can also highlight any new options that might appeal to them. Pricing and shipping variables can be kept current so that at the time of the transaction, a client knows how much they are paying and when they can expect it.

Ensure a Smooth Experience for Both Suppliers and Buyers

Clients used to face-to-face transactions may balk at going digital, so it is important their online experience be as simple and personalized as possible. For your suppliers and buyers new to eCommerce, you want the online experience to be a refreshing revelation so they can immediately see the benefit of digitization. For those suppliers already used to the online ordering experience, you want them to feel as comfortable as they do when doing business on any other site — if not more. Having an easy-to-navigate site with intuitive features that guide your buyers and suppliers through the transaction process is important for customers, whether they are seasoned eCommerce users or brand new to online purchasing. Features like a virtual storefront customized for each user, extensive and easy-to-use search functions, and frictionless checkout will provide the online experience your customers deserve.

Integrate Communications

Make correspondence with sales and customer service quick and easy to access. Whether through an online chat service or a customer inbox, make online communication so effortless that your customers do not have to pick up the phone unless they really want to.

Embed Payments and Logistics

Yet another way to highlight a personalized feel and increase the benefit of your eCommerce for manufacturers solution is to make accounting transparent. Allowing your customers to manage payments for current orders and view the history of previous orders with a few easy clicks will go a long way toward converting any of your paper invoice holdouts.

Feature Customer Reviews

With eCommerce, you will have a natural platform for promoting your brand by sharing good news. Positive feedback from existing clients could go a long way toward swaying potential new ones. Yelp, Google, and others have conditioned customers to look for favorable ratings before making a purchase, so make sure yours are front and center.

5 B2B eCommerce for Manufacturers Challenges

Any technology shift will come with its share of challenges. Adapting to eCommerce is no different. While any upgrade can feature obstacles like affordability and resource constraints, there are some challenges more prevalent when adopting eCommerce. Below are a few of the most pervasive potential issues.

Why LANSA Commerce Edition is the best for your Manufacturing Goals

LANSA has helped thousands of companies up their eBusiness game, and the LANSA Commerce Edition is a road-tested, customizable, and comprehensive solution to your eCommerce for manufacturers’ needs. Its low-code modularity and extensive integrative capability mean it can fit with any existing ERP system and be highly customized to create a look and feel that will immediately put your customers at ease. The numerous benefits of investing in an eCommerce channel are well worth exploring for many manufacturers. And LANSA has the platform and track record to help you make the most of it. Check out this webinar for more about the LANSA approach to eCommerce.

To Sum Up

The exponentially increasing popularity of eCommerce is not due to flag any time soon, and even manufacturing companies who have traditionally eschewed business technology cannot ignore the benefits a successfully implemented eCommerce solution can offer. Contact us today and let LANSA guide you to the future of manufacturing business by showing you how using the LANSA Commerce Edition can help you not only remain relevant but also gain an edge in the manufacturing marketplace.

The post B2B eCommerce for Manufacturers: Discover Growth Potential appeared first on LANSA.

Advantages for Distributors Getting into eCommerce

Increased Sales

The popularity of eCommerce among distributors is well-founded, in large part due to the impact on sales. The ability to quickly and efficiently extend your market reach and offer a highly personalized purchasing experience is well worth the investment. Whether your goal is increased B2B sales or expanding your retailers’ B2C footprint, a solid eCommerce for distributors’ products can profoundly impact your bottom line.

Automation Capabilities

Automation is no longer just an up-and-coming industry buzzword but an evolving norm in today’s business. Automatically calculating shipping costs for a variety of destinations, propagating details for a rotating catalog across your systems, and having key metrics reported at scheduled intervals are just some of the benefits realized by distributors leveraging eCommerce.

Expanded Market Reach

ECommerce for distributors extends the reach of your business by allowing you to provide your product anywhere, anytime, tapping previously unexplored markets limited by outdated technology. And once your marketing team sees the level of control they have over communication and the public exposure to your company, they will never be happier.

Increased Efficiency and Cost Savings

Of course, one of the main drivers for embracing newly available technology is increasing the efficiency of your business. This is true regardless of industry or solution — but especially so in a market dealing with high volumes of merchandise and heavy storefront traffic. Being able to access and track orders in real time results in better accounting and a better customer experience.

Enhanced Customer Experience & Support

One size does not always fit all, and eCommerce allows distributors to shift this paradigm as well. Every customer can have a personalized user experience, allowing them to comfortably explore their options without getting bogged down by information they do not actually need. This also means that support can be requested in a way that makes the most sense for distributors, whether it is initiating a real-time chat with support staff or submitting detailed correspondence for later review.

Scalability Options

Fluctuations in modern business necessitate the need for systems that can expand (and sometimes contract) quickly. While growth is always the goal, it sometimes makes sense to pull back or adjust to the changing needs of the marketplace, and eCommerce for distributors can make this adjustment much more fluid. Challenges like rapidly increasing transaction volume and expanding product lines can be handled in stride.

Competitive Advantage

All of these increased capabilities together spell a distinct competitive advantage for you in the marketplace. Presenting an online experience that is not only simpler than analog but offers vastly more potential for growth will set your business up for success. The distributors who can successfully pivot to eCommerce will be more agile, more capable, and more accessible than their competitors who don’t.

5 Key Features of a Distributor eCommerce Platform

Keeping the advantages of a digital approach to business in mind, what does an effective eCommerce for distributors platform look like?

Customer-Specific Pricing and Discounts

A high-performing eCommerce for distributors platform will have an easy-to-access, simple-to-navigate storefront that specifically addresses the needs of individual clients. For example, you may have different contracts for different retailers or wholesalers, which means different pricing schedules for the same products. You want to make sure that the price your clients see is the one that specifically applies to them and to easily make adjustments when prices change, or discounts are available.

Customizable Catalog Management

A distributor’s catalog of available products and services must be relevant, current with existing inventory, and flexible enough to adapt to changes in supply. This catalog can be extremely dynamic, and you want your client to have the flexibility to manage it in a variety of ways to suit the current needs.

Real-Time Inventory Updates

If your business lives or dies by the accuracy of its inventory, then the benefits of distributor eCommerce are especially significant. Even for companies that eschew a just-in-time approach to supply, keeping up to the second tabs on the status and location of the goods you are buying and selling is a critical function that requires a battle-tested solution. Selling products you do not have in stock is not always a workable approach, and if not, you want your system to update the minute it is available and let interested consumers know.

Integration with ERP Systems

A robust eCommerce for distributors solution that does not play nicely with your existing Enterprise Resource Planning systems is not going to provide much benefit to your company. LANSA Commerce Edition has been successfully integrated with at least 16 of the most prevalent ERP applications in the market, with the low-code flexibility to adjust to any smaller or homegrown systems just as effectively.

Personalization and Innovation Capabilities

Worried that a transition to distributor eCommerce could de-personalize your relationship with your customers? What if you had the ability to craft a unique user experience for each of them, including only the functions relevant to their business? LANSA Commerce Edition can maintain that personal touch that your clients value while offering more options than they ever had pre-digital. Features like advanced search capabilities, detailed product specs, and customer-specific pricing make LANSA Commerce Edition a worthwhile foray.

LANSA Customer: Rotary

Rotary Corporation is the world’s largest supplier of parts and accessories for outdoor power equipment, such as lawnmowers, chainsaws, snow blowers, and more. They sell exclusively via dealers and have been offering their dealers an eCommerce website since 2002. Although still functioning reliably, the site was showing its age and could not meet Rotary’s new business requirements. The ability to search for products on their website was extremely limited, and their marketing team had very little control over the digital, public-facing front of their company. They enlisted LANSA Commerce Edition to help them modernize. After a thoughtful and thorough collaborative effort, Rotary was not only able to improve its online presence but also harness data previously disconnected from its systems, allowing consumers to search for specific details on over 9,500 SKUs.

“The website is an important instrument for how we do business with our dealers and how we present ourselves to the bigger public. The LANSA team didn’t just simply copy our requirement definitions. They took the time to improve on it and came up with great suggestions to improve the functionality and enrich the user experience. We felt they were as dedicated to the success of the website as we were.” – Caylee Bickmore, Web Marketing Coordinator at Rotary Corp.

6 Best Practices to Successfully Implement eCommerce for Distributors

So you have decided you are ready to up your eCommerce for distributors game; what’s next? Careful planning.

Thoughtfully Develop Project Requirements

The first order of business is deciding exactly what you are trying to accomplish. Are you looking to augment your online presence or start building one? Are there transactional pain points you are looking to alleviate? What do your current customers have to say about it?

Be sure to consider how you will address crucial parts of your business. The way you calculate tax and process payments, how you build and publish your catalog, and how you fulfill orders are all elements that a worthwhile eCommerce for distributors system can not only address but streamline and improve.

It is probably worth investigating your competition to see where they struggle and where they succeed. When you implement your eCommerce solution, you want it to stand apart by offering services and an aesthetic that other distributors either are not offering or not presenting as well as you could.

Choose a Reliable eCommerce Platform

There are a lot of things to consider when selecting an eCommerce for distributors platform, we’ve boiled down the list here into a quick cheat sheet of the most important factors reported by distributors across the industry.

When you know what needs to be done, finding the right partner and platform to help you across the finish line is imperative. You want a solution that provides improvement, stability, flexibility, and security, among other things. A product like the LANSA Commerce Edition can help you check all those important boxes. LANSA has built thousands of e-business sites for a dizzying variety of clients worldwide and has the experience and track record of making your eCommerce for distributors solution everything it needs to be.

Carefully Choose Your eCommerce Team

Implementing the right eCommerce solution for distributors should be a collaborative effort between you and your technology partner. Once you’ve got a solid platform in mind, the employees you choose to be a part of the implementation team should embody this collaborative effort. No one knows your business better than you, and the input your team provides to your technology partner is crucial for the success of the project.

You will need staff from a healthy cross-section of departments, who ideally have some past experience with eCommerce. You want seasoned marketing professionals who can help craft an appealing front end and keep your company message on point. Technical support, whether you are talking about integrating existing ERP systems or managing your new data streams is also critical. And finally, you need strong leadership for the project to champion the upgrade and foster buy-in from the rest of the company.

If your team lacks some of the skill sets you think you will need to succeed, do not be afraid to leverage the resources of your technology partner or another third-party specialist with a wealth of experience with eCommerce transformation.

Always Keep Customers Needs in Mind

What your consumers need should always influence the project decisions you make. Whether you survey your clients directly to find out what they would like to see or aggregate data that helps you determine what is working and what is being largely ignored, take the pulse of the people you are doing business with. If you offer cutting-edge functionality that none of your customers want or need, then your hard work is for naught.

Do Marketing Right

Also important is making sure your customers actually know about your new and improved eCommerce interfaces. Let them know how you have improved transactions they thought were lacking and get them excited about the new capabilities they have. For many, this kind of digital overhaul presents a great opportunity for re-branding. Do your homework and make sure your brand is on point.

Ensure to Comply with Industry Regulations and Standards

Finally, make sure you are crossing all the T’s and dotting all the I’s that your regulatory agencies are looking for. Protecting private or otherwise privileged information is a must, and should be a standard part of a healthy eCommerce for distributors implementation.

Why Should Distributors choose LANSA for their eCommerce Goals?

Here are some of the more compelling reasons to leverage LANSA eCommerce Edition for your eCommerce needs:

In Summary

Your distribution organization can benefit dramatically from an investment in eCommerce. The market has spoken, and eCommerce is no longer just the wave of the future, but the new standard for doing business. Digitizing your commerce should not be merely about staying current, but improving the way you are able to conduct business and expand your market share in ways you may not have thought previously possible. From aesthetic appeal enticing potential customers to detailed and accurate inventory management and everything in between, eCommerce for distributors offers some exciting ways to re-envision your company. With low-code modularity, extensive integrative capability, and a proven track record, the LANSA Commerce Edition can help your B2B eCommerce for distributors platform realize its full potential.

The post eCommerce for Distributors: How to Get it Right appeared first on LANSA.