When we talk to wholesalers and manufacturers about the benefits of B2B commerce portals, they all agree that the procurement of products is increasingly being handled digitally (which is not surprising). But what advantages do digital customer portals based on store software bring?
#1 Reduce process costs
The sales team of the store operator always has the B2B customer portal at hand as a working tool and can place orders even closer to the customer (on the same platform), ensure communication with the customer or even prepare offers and place them in the customer's "account".
The fact that the B2Bsellers Suite is built on Shopware 6 means that standardized interfaces can be used for products, customers and order data. Customer portals are also often developed separately from B2B stores.
With the B2Bsellers Suite, both strategies can be realized with one software solution, which of course significantly reduces costs.
#2 Increase customer satisfaction and loyalty
If the customer can view all relevant data, make purchases and maintain contact with the sales representative in one platform, customer loyalty is significantly greater than if the customer has to work in several distributed systems.
In addition, the digital activities of customers are recorded. On the one hand, this enables further upsales to be realized, but it also enhances the customer experience by enabling customers to place orders themselves 24/7 at their negotiated conditions or to access all the orders they have placed. Regardless of whether the order was placed online or offline.
Practical features such as "automatically triggered orders" and "order releases" support the purchasing customer in his daily work. Take on a pioneering role! Because since the pandemic, "buyers" are even more digital on the go and therefore expect corresponding "digital" service.
#3 The sales team benefits in the day-to-day business and is relieved
We have often seen that sales teams are skeptical about open B2B customer portals. This is usually due to the lack of internal communication during the digital transformation and the fact that sales staff think that work is being taken away from them. B2B store operators, however, basically want exactly the opposite. They want to relieve the sales team by handling regular small orders and everyday problems as automatically as possible, so that sales staff can take care of the big orders (where personal commitment is important).
And that's exactly what digital commerce customer portals are perfect for. This is because they give customers the option of efficiently processing small orders in the B2B store at any time and calling in sales staff accordingly for large project orders, framework agreements, technical questions, etc.
A sales representative does not enjoy having to enter master data such as the customer, contact person or delivery and billing address for every quotation, and it is precisely for these tasks, which are nevertheless necessary, that we relieve the sales staff by having the customer himself fill in this data himself when requesting a quotation.
#4 Enable more sales with higher margins
If many processes are automated and solved by software, there is consequently also more sales potential, since more orders can be processed with the same personnel. Of course, I would like to mention that this also ensures a more sustainable sales process.
Why should a B2B customer portal be based on store software?
There are countless customer portals on the Internet. Many of them have been specially developed 100 % from the green field for the customers. Often - with a lot of effort - ERP systems, PIM systems or service portals are docked so that all systems can then communicate together in one customer portal. A time-consuming and costly affair.
Exactly for this reason it is easily explained why #shopware 6 should be used as a starting point for B2B customer portals: API-First, Headless, Vue.js in the "customer login area" - these modern and established technologies make it possible to get started easily and efficiently in B2B e-commerce. The big advantage is that all relevant ERP systems have a standard interface to Shopware 6. In addition, the database with customers, products, orders, documents and CMS content is already handled here.
Why always start from 0 when there is a suitable B2B solution?
The B2Bsellers Suite convinces with its large feature set. Customer portals can be set up "out of the box" in conjunction with the B2B store. 📈🤝