The B2B customer journey

Online shopping from B2C brands has been perfected over the past decade, and ordering the things we need online has become second nature for most people. And now, customers expect the same seamless and user-friendly buying experience they’ve grown used to in B2C, but from B2B brands.

This has serious implications for B2B companies, and the businesses that realize this and plan accordingly have a serious competitive advantage. The days when B2B businesses would receive their orders over the phone or email are over. Today, people expect a digital buying journey, where they’re the ones who are in control of the pace of the process, what content they consume, and when they eventually decide to convert.

This means a mindset shift is required, where B2B businesses focus less on hard selling – and more on making it easy and attractive to buy.

B2B ecommerce, is the selling of goods or services from one business to another via an online business website. Instead of orders and sales being managed manually by sales reps, orders are received digitally. This means that cost efficiency is improved and that the business becomes easier to scale.

50%

of B2B buyers are millennials

75%

of B2B buyers research at least half of their purchases online

48%

of companies conduct a majority of all corporate purchases online

41%

of B2B companies list self-service functionality as a top priority

Changing B2B buyer behavior

With a new generation of customers, digital interactions, and new business models emerging, businesses must evolve their customer engagement. For organizations to be successful in the future, they need to adopt an omnichannel approach that provides a seamless flow of interactions across all touchpoints.

Successful digital transformation will not only increase sales but also add value to your customer relationships. Buyers demand immediacy and convenience; they want a faster buying process and the flexibility and autonomy of a full online buying journey.

While almost everyone agrees that digital transformation is the agenda for most organizations, the question is often how to get there, who should be engaged in running the new processes, and what activities are needed to enable change. We help B2B companies digitize their operations, facilitate and establish tried-and-tested roadmaps and methodologies, as well as best practices and benchmarks to guide you.

Unique accelerators for B2B ecommerce development

Technical accelerators

Vaimo has launched more than 400 successful ecommerce projects, and we have a deep technical understanding of what makes up ecommerce excellence. We work with the world’s best technical solutions, and we can guide you to the optimal technical architecture and data design for your B2B project.

Strategy and consulting

We help our clients understand why, how, and what to prioritize on their digitalization journey, and we bring a strong strategic outlook on digital trends. Our extensive experience means we know what has worked well in the past and can advise you as you build out your B2B ecommerce strategy.

UI and UX expertise

Good UI (user interface) and UX (user experience) for your ecommerce website are critical success factors. At Vaimo, we have specialized UI and UX teams to help you build user experiences that will wow your customers

Moving your B2B business online will create new opportunities and help you deliver positive customer experiences – across all channels and devices. B2B ecommerce solutions are snowballing, and this is the time to get started to start reaping the benefits of a digital business.

B2B customer engagement

With a new generation of customers, digital interactions, and new business models emerging, businesses must evolve their customer engagement. For organizations to be successful in the future, they need to adopt an omnichannel approach that provides a seamless flow of interactions across all touchpoints. B2B customers are becoming increasingly tech-savvy and expect the same ease of purchase as they would find when shopping for B2C products. Successful digital transformation will not only increase sales but also add value to your customer relationships. Buyers demand immediacy and convenience; they want a faster buying process and the flexibility and autonomy of a full online buying journey.

Optimize your sales operation and reduce costs

Among the main benefits of digitizing your ecommerce business are improved efficiency and reduced costs. By implementing automation and artificial intelligence, you can reduce the need for manual labor and automate previously manual tasks. Ecommerce allows for fast and frictionless purchases without the need to interact with sales, which means you will free up time and resources internally.

Quick ordering tools
Order by SKU
Requisition lists
Fast reordering
Request for quote workflow
PunchOut support
Custom catalogs and price-lists
Segmentation and targeting
Multiple tailored sites
In-store pickup and delivery
Warranty lookup and processing

Automation to improve customer experience

By empowering your customers with self-service options, you create a modern and attractive customer experience. Automated processes eliminate human errors, which means fewer mistakes and increased customer satisfaction. When you can manage orders across multiple channels, it means you can serve your customers on their terms, when, where, and how they prefer. Automated business rules for inventory sourcing and maintaining delivery SLAs will help you scale quickly and maintain a high level of customer service.

Corporate accounts, buyer roles, and permissions
Payments on account, order and quote tracking, account history
SKU inventory validation
Custom catalogs and price-lists
Self-service ordering
Zero manual data entry

Increase sales with seamless experience

Your prospects are already looking for your products online. With an ecommerce website, you make it as easy as possible for your customers to interact with and buy from you. Vaimo can help you build and leverage a mobile-ready, responsive site and powerful merchandising and promotions to drive conversions and increase sales.

Implementing a robust content management system, campaign staging, and multichannel ecommerce will help you get found by your target audience.

Mobile-ready, responsive site
Powerful merchandising and promotions
Robust content management
Campaign staging & preview
Multichannel ecommerce
Extensive APIs and off-the-shelf extensions
Reliable and scalable hosting
High-speed CDN and performance management tools
Single contact for licensing, hosting, and support services

Fuel your growth with business intelligence

With predefined reports, report-building tools, and BI, you can collect actionable customer, product, and campaign insights. Integrating and analyzing the data from multiple sources will give you a deeper understanding of your business and supply chain. Important BI Integrations should help you populate or work with the below:

Predefined reports and report-building tools
Actionable customer, product, and campaign insights
Combine data from multiple sources for deeper insights
Central order management system and inventory allocation across channels
Automated business rules for inventory sourcing

Having worked with hundreds of ecommerce projects, we bring tried and tested methodologies and playbooks to the table.

To learn more and discuss the different opportunities, reach out to our team today.

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