There’s no secret to B2B ecommerce personalization. Salespeople have always understood how important it is to get to know and understand customers.

Regularly visiting customers to discuss their needs and preferences helped to secure and increase sales. Even completing order forms together was all part of the service.

However, B2B buyers are busy people and the time available for your salespeople to develop a deep understanding of every customer’s business is limited.

Now, most B2B purchasing research is completed online. Digital content is widely shared across buying groups as part of the decision making process. A new approach is needed to engage and retain customers.

The key features of B2B ecommerce personalization

To meet your customers’ needs you’ll need to provide more than an online product catalog. You must translate your traditional standards of customer service and engagement into digital experiences.

Your B2B buyers now carry out much of their research online. They’re also happy to make significant purchases using a B2B ecommerce site.

You can simplify complex procurement processes and make them efficient and convenient with personalized B2B ecommerce. You can optimize your customers’ buying journeys, reduce costs and increase sales.

B2B ecommerce personalization opportunities

Almost all your digital touchpoints with customers are opportunities for B2B ecommerce personalization.

Search – your B2B buyers want to find relevant products and useful information quickly. You can help them with effective product information management (PIM). You’ll make it easy to search by technical specifications, product numbers, or even images. They can also find products by scanning barcodes using a customer ordering app.

Catalogs – you can give your customers bespoke menus and customized home pages based on agreed terms and previous buying histories. They can use an easy login to search through their regularly bought items. You can set up multiple accounts in different locations, supported by favorites and wish lists. Larger customers can view different catalogs for each department with specialized imagery, personal greetings, and regional contact information.

Pricing – you can tailor pricing based on different tiers of client with comprehensive custom pricing tools. Pricing rules can be delivered from your integrated ERP to allocate tiers, individuals, and customer groups. Your quote to order process will be faster and deliver accurate prices using a powerful configure, price, quote (CPQ) tool.

Promotions – you can enable promotions to appear on your ecommerce site when certain criteria are met. For example, if a specific customer places an order over $500, you can notify them about a special offer. It could be a free item related to previous purchases or a discount code. Alternatively, you could offer them an overall discount on one of their previously bought product categories.

Product recommendations – almost every B2B buyer will have received Amazon-like ‘people also bought’ recommendations when shopping online. They will expect the same for their business purchases. Thanks to ERP integration you can make helpful recommendations about compatible products, spare parts and consumable items that can save your customers time.

You can use your customers’ own buying histories or collect information about what others have bought to offer added-value bundles of products.

Ordering, payment and shipping – you can simplify ordering by allowing your customers to use their preferred methods. This might include electronic data interchange (EDI), Excel uploads or PunchOut, for example. Customers can streamline their purchasing with a personalized checkout so they can use the method that best suits their needs. You can also connect with third-party providers for real-time shipping calculations to be integrated into your online purchase order process.

Customer service – an integrated order management system (OMS) allows customers to track their order status using their online self-service portal. You can reduce the number of customer service calls for order status updates and increase customer satisfaction as well. Your customer service team will then have more time to handle more complex enquiries.

Key accounts – you can provide purchasing experiences that are completely tailored to the needs of your larger customers using pre-defined workflows in your ERP system. You can provide named online greetings, create specific buying groups and purchasing approval processes. You can make sure each person is only shown the products and purchases they’re authorized to access. You’ll become a procurement partner, building confidence and long-term relationships that will increase the lifetime value of the account.

Book a free Cloudfy demonstration to find out more about the benefits of B2B ecommerce personalization for your business.

Business to business (B2B) ecommerce automation will help you outperform your competitors.

A report from Mckinsey found leading digital B2B companies had better revenue growth, operating profits and returns for shareholders. Their revenue was likely to increase five times more than their competitors.

B2B ecommerce automation is one of the ways you can build customer loyalty with excellent around the clock support.

How B2B ecommerce automation can transform your business

Customer pain points will affect your sales and retention rates. These might include managing high order volumes, inventory management issues, and increasing customer service expectations.

Many B2B operations use multiple systems to manage marketing, sales, order processing, and shipping, for example. This means data is fragmented and can be duplicated or inconsistent. Information might be difficult to find, and it could become out of date. You risk showing customers inaccurate inventory details, taking too long to process their orders, or sending deliveries to the wrong place.

When you integrate your business systems with your Cloudfy ecommerce platform data transfer can be automated. You will have accurate and consistent near real-time information that will make all your operations more efficient and secure.

Combined with machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) you can streamline, simplify, and automate multiple processes. Your professionals and experts then have more time to add value for customers.

The benefits of B2B ecommerce automation

Automating repetitive processes will reduce your order costs and allow you to re-focus staff priorities to deliver high quality customer experiences.

The integration that powers automation can include your ERP, customer relationship (CRM), and product information (PIM) systems. When you have a complete view of your business and up-to-date information on sales and customers you can improve decision-making.

Automated order processing, contract negotiation, and reordering will allow you to save money and scale your business more easily. Marketers can create, deliver, and test campaigns based on current buying behavior, and respond more quickly to trends and preferences. Automated prompts and scripts can improve customer support and after sales services with personalized messages based on ordering behavior.

B2B ecommerce automation tools for your business

There’s automation potential across your business. Here are just some of the possibilities:

Invoicing and collections – you can invoice customers directly from your ERP, triggered by rules generated in your Cloudfy ecommerce portal. Alternatively, integration with your payment gateway can allow customers to pay immediately during checkout, improving your cashflow.

Complex orders – with hundreds of possible product variations and configurations, manually generating specifications and accurate pricing is time consuming. Worse still, errors can creep in which could be costly or even cause orders to be canceled. Cloudfy’s powerful Configure Price Quote (CPQ) builder provides your customers with a behavior-guided automated process. They can only select features and combinations you can deliver so they will receive accurate prices in near real-time.

Returns management – handling returns is a cost to your business. With Cloudfy you can automate returns management authorization (RMA) to save time and money. Workflow rules can be set easily to control how a return is handled and processed. Instructions can be automatically returned to your integrated warehouse management system (WMS) or ERP.

Notifications – you can free up time for your customer service team when you offer automated notifications. This might include back in stock messages or delivery updates.

Order approvals – the B2B buying journey is complex and can often involve up to nine people. You can simplify your customer’s procurement workflow with multi-level authorization (MLA) tools. Buyers, managers and stakeholders can all be added. Orders will only be placed when they have been approved by all the relevant people.

Subscriptions – automatic ordering through a subscription service can save your customers time and make sure they always have essential supplies. It’s also an ideal way to maintain a steady cashflow for your business. You can set the frequency of orders manually or automatically. You can also specify the length of the subscription and the lead time you need to meet requested delivery dates.

Mobile ordering – simplifying mobile reordering with Cloudfy’s mobile ordering app allows customers to place their orders easily, wherever they are. With real-time stock visibility, custom catalogs, and barcode scanning you’ll improve customer engagement and reduce your administration costs. Customers can even compose their orders offline, ready to submit at a later time.

Book a free Cloudfy demonstration to find out more about the benefits of B2B ecommerce automation for your business.